Voltage Boosters

Voltage boosters, or voltage multipliers, are used in many effects containing tubes. There are a few ways to go from a lower voltage to a higher and you can do it with both AC and DC. But to multiply a DC voltage you essentially make it into AC by pulsing it.

AC voltage multiplier

This is a voltage multiplier that uses only diodes and capacitors. The shown configuration multiplies the incoming voltage by four (minus four times the forward voltage of the diodes).

Links to other multipliers

A voltage booster. This is essentially the same as the one posted above, but using a 555 timer to generate a square wave instead of using AC.
More voltage multipliers
Voltage multiplication by transformer - Using a transformer to go from 6Vac to ~110 Vac to about 150Vdc.