Brian May Treble Booster adds too much feedback and noise

[obispojoe]

When I briefly tried to take an existing preset I have created that uses a mesa boogie Mark III and added the Brian May treble booster in the stomp section I got an incredible amount of feedback and noise even when dialing back the knob. The original preset is pretty quiet. I suppose I am not using this stomp correctly. Also, the feedback and noise does not occur when I select one of the BM collection presets. Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated.

[LocoGhoul]

Try to roll your guitar's volume down. It worked for me.

[obispojoe]

I solved the problem by relocating the treble booster in the stomp section. Originally in Stomp A section, I had a diode overdrive alone, in Stomp B I had a noise gate. I put the treble booster in the stomp A section and in each case, to the left and to the right of the diode overdrive, I got huge amounts of hiss even with the guitar pickup all the way down. So I tried the treble booster in the stomp B section to the right of the noise gate and everything quieted down, and now I have something I can play with.

By the way, which way does the signal travel in the stomp sections; from left to right? I assume the racks are from top to bottom. Is that correct?

[Peter_IK]

Left to right.

Note we also added a special noise gate to the Brian May collection of gear for the very reason that this type of setup will produce noise, no way around it.

[carlaz]

Virtually anything that adds gain and distortion is also going to accentuate noise. Authentic old treble boosters were noisy, freaky things; the "real world" unit modeled in the May collection is probably actually quite an improvement!

There's are some interviews online with Martin Barre (ex-Jethro Tull) in which he's asked about the Hornsby Skewes treble booster (similar, but different, than the Rangemaster) he used circa 1969-1970. I'm combining quotes from a few of those here, but:
"I started using a Hornby Skewes Treble Booster, which gave the HiWatts a bit of a kick. [But] it's the worst bit of kit ever made. You open it up and it's got just a few bare wires and a capacitor. They were virtually wireless receivers. Unfortunately, they picked up radio perfectly. Any gig within a mile of a radio station was a disaster! There were so many gigs in America where we'd be playing downtown, and atop of the concert hall would be a radio mast — just a nightmare. I used to neurotically look out the window of the car on the way to gigs, watching out for radio masts."

So, at least that's probably not happening with the Amplitube digital model!

[puranon]

Is the Gain Staging of all Amplitube Stomps matched to the levels of the hardware stomps they emulate?

I'm not sure its the case with Mutron III.