Bananaboost is a replica of the legendary 18V Power Boost by Colorsound. At the time Colorsound launched the first batch of their new booster units, the most commonly used boosters would be probably Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster and Electro Harmonix LPB (Linear Power Booster). Both of these models were very simple, minimalistic, one knob designs. A Booster is meant to boost the clean guitar signal with no distortion of its own, so it drives the amp and lets the amp do the rest of the job. Power-Boost was different - not only could it work like a fuzz (while turned up to the top gain setting), but it was also equipped with a dual-band tone filter.

The first units were fed from two 9V batteries (18V), which guaranteed a plenty of room for the clean sound, but later on they were converted to the standard 9V, which meant the opposite - enhancement of the fuzz part. A master volume button must have been added by time, as the extremely loud output signal couldn't be handled neither by people, nor by windows. The pedal was also renamed to Overdriver.

Why was this thing so popular? It is basically 3 pedals in one - booster, fuzz and equalizer. None of them was a top-notch unit of its kind, but the fact that you were buying 3 in one surely worked, not to mention that there was nothing like true bypass at the time, and guitarists were constantly fighting a huge treble loss in their tone (caused by the low impedance pedals like a fuzz box or wah-wah). The Power Boost was the way.

70's David Gilmour had Wah and Univibe in his rig, so no wonder he grabbed one of the Power Boosts to bring the lost sparkle to his clean sound. That was in 1972, when Pink Floyd kicked up with their Eclipse tour (early Dark Side of The Moon). The legendary "Orange Treble Booster" was born - orange in colour, and treble booster because David removed the bass control completely. Many people have been searching for a treble booster by Orange, but nothing like that really existed. Only recently, the right picture from the tour has been published, revealing the simple solution for the long time mystery (for more information see the brilliant Gimourish website). Perhaps the most famous presentation of Power Booster itself is the cranked guitar in Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

The circuit inside actually very much resembles Fuzz Face, which results in its great dynamic response, and its guitar Volume sensitivity - it cleans up really nicely. These lovely musical features were the reason Power Boost was often used as a straight-through booster, always on, and controlled just on a guitar.