Catalinbread Naga Viper

Catalinbread describes the Naga Viper as a booster in the tradition of the Dallas Rangemaster Treble-Booster, which was used by British guitarists such as Tony Iommi, Brian May, Marc Bolan, and KK Downing and Glen Tipton of Judas Priest.

The Naga Viper is Catalinbread’s version of this circuit and it adds two controls, Range and Heat, to the original’s single Boost control. The Range knob is a continuous control designed to allow you to go from classic treble-boost to a full-range boost and anywhere in-between. The Heat knob gives you control over the gain level, unlike the original which was fixed at maximum gain.

Besides enhancing treble response, it adds its own harmonic distortion and gives you “push” to saturate the front-end of your tube amp. The Naga Viper has a Range control that allows you to dial in what frequencies get boosted.

The traditional way to use a treble-booster is to plug it straight into an already cranked and overdriven tube amp like the Marshalls, Laneys, and Voxes the British guitarists used. Since the amps were already cranked up, a full-range boost would result in a muddy sound with no definition.

But today many guitarists use overdrive pedals that emulate the sounds of cranked big amps into their smaller combos. The Naga Viper is said to be voiced to allow you to boost your “amp-in-the-box” pedals to to get those juicy, saturated sounds at reasonable volume levels. Catalinbread says the Naga Viper was made to go with their Dirty Little Secret MkII and CB30 overdrives.

No pricing info.

For more information: Catalinbread