BuddytheReow
Breadboard Baker
- Build Rating
This is probably one of the most expensive and longest builds I've ever done. Keep reading and you'll see why. It's a little graphic. You've been warned...
Huge shout out to @steviejr92 for the PCB and enclosure.
Around fall time of last year I had an itch to build something that was more in depth and different from the "standard" 125b enclosure. I wanted to combine a build using woodworking as it's been a hobby I stumbled into right after COVID and working on my first house (I still live there). One of my favorite circuits is the almighty Rat. IMO, a truly versatile dirt machine with a unique sound. Boost, drive, distortion, and borderline fuzz territory all in one! By itself it's a bit thin sounding for a basement/bedroom player such as myself. There are a few mods you can do to adjust for that. @steviejr92 has been churning out enclosures, PCBs, breadboards, you name it! I mention him since he was super cool and released his take on the Rat with a PCB called "Rat Salad" toward the end of 2023. This board was sitting in my stash for a while.
Like I said, I wanted to incorporate woodworking into the build in some way. My first thought was to simply route out a nice block of wood, but I didn't have the proper router bits to do that and what I did use turned out like crap. Spoiler alert: make a jig for nearly any woodworking project unless you wanna try it out freehand. Anyways, the wood block was out so I then had another idea. Some of you are really good at sheet metal bending your own enclosures and put wooden stands/caps on the end. I don't have a proper brake or frankly any of the proper tools to try it out so I hit up Stevie and niiiiicely asked if he could build me an enclosure. He asked what board I was looking to put in there and after a few days I decided to make this a truly Stevie inspired build so I said "Rat Salad." A little bit of back and forth (plus some time for him to get through his orders since he was doing me a solid) and a dark green enclosure arrived at my doorstep toward the holiday season of last year with screws and a LM308! Cool dude. Get on his good side
During holiday break is when I pretty much take a week off of work and usually get to building. This time it was the Rat Salad. The build of the board itself went without a hitch and tested fine with my test box enclosure. Is the 308 really different compared to, say, a OP07? IMO, not really. I think it's just for cork sniffers. Since this was a more special build for me I decided to put in a relay bypass switch just for kicks (plus I had the time and said "why not?").
Then it sat on my pedalboard for a few months until it came to me how to proceed. The Contour knob brings in the much needed bass and a huge game changer.
Once the weather started getting a bit warmer (March), I decided to run to my local lumberyard for some nice dark walnut for the end caps. I used a 1x4 for this project. I cut the boards to length and they seemed a bit thick for the sides being 1" thick. So, I decided to rip it on my table saw to the proper thickness. I should have used a band saw, but I don't have one. I thought I was being super careful being a power tool. Whelp, as I took off the last little bit in my cut, the end piece fell into the inset plate and knocked my left thumb right into the blade! "OOOOOWWW!"
I knew at that exact moment I was done working on this project. I look at my thumb and there was a piece of it missing right at the tip along with part of the nail! I told my wife we need to go to a Minute Clinic/Doc in the Box. So she drove me there and they took one look at it and pointed me right to the emergency room. 4 hours later I'm all bandaged up (no stitches since there was nothing to really stitch together), picked up antibiotics, and walked back into my home. A followup appointment with a hand surgeon the next day and he only gave me good news: everything would grow back. This happened mid-March and I'm still getting bills in the mail from the hospital. Lesson learned: get good insurance if you can just in case. Good news is you don't notice the difference between both thumbs at this point unless you're really lookin.
Shit. This build cost me upwards of 2 grand.
Anywho, no building or playing for me for about a week since it was too painful. Each day it got better, but I was playing with some compression tape on my thumb and was odd/uncomfortable. That lasted for about another 2 weeks after that and I switched to a band aid. Another week or two and I'm raw dogging it. Now I don't notice it at all when playing.
Now we're into this past May and I've got a bare enclosure and a strip of walnut sitting in my garage. I finally told myself "it's time". So, I sanded down the walnut, measured what seemed like a few dozen times and put in the counter sink holes for the screws, sealed it up with a few coats of Tung Oil, and let it sit for a day or two to cure.
Now it's time for the enclosure artwork. You still reading at this point? Good for you! Most of you probably scrolled already just to see the pictures of my build. Eh, it happens. The internet has just made us all lazy.
Anyways, I wanted something to say "Rat", but not "Super Hardcore Badass Duke Nukem" Rat. Plus, I've already done a number of Rat builds. Then it got me thinking...
Pizza Rat! What, or should I say, Who is Pizza Rat? See below. Pizza Rat was a rat found in a NYC subway almost 10 years ago carrying a slice a pizza for it's next meal! Plus, I feel like pizza rat when I go into the office since I usually grab leftover pizza as a snack if it's ever ordered for a lunch meeting. I usually feel like crap that night or the next morning, but hey, it's pizza. Being in New Jersey, we know good pizza and there aren't many places around here that have bad pizza that stay open for long.
Some acrylic paint, a steady hand, a few coats of matte clear coat to seal it all up, slap the wooden caps on the end and...
Pizza Rat!
Thanks for reading. If you can get one of Stevie's boards, or at least the gerbers, I would highly recommend. There are enough mods to get it to the tone you'd like without sacrificing the "true" characteristic of the almighty Rat.
I only gave this build 4 stars since I lost a piece of my thumb and 2 grand.
Huge shout out to @steviejr92 for the PCB and enclosure.
Around fall time of last year I had an itch to build something that was more in depth and different from the "standard" 125b enclosure. I wanted to combine a build using woodworking as it's been a hobby I stumbled into right after COVID and working on my first house (I still live there). One of my favorite circuits is the almighty Rat. IMO, a truly versatile dirt machine with a unique sound. Boost, drive, distortion, and borderline fuzz territory all in one! By itself it's a bit thin sounding for a basement/bedroom player such as myself. There are a few mods you can do to adjust for that. @steviejr92 has been churning out enclosures, PCBs, breadboards, you name it! I mention him since he was super cool and released his take on the Rat with a PCB called "Rat Salad" toward the end of 2023. This board was sitting in my stash for a while.
Like I said, I wanted to incorporate woodworking into the build in some way. My first thought was to simply route out a nice block of wood, but I didn't have the proper router bits to do that and what I did use turned out like crap. Spoiler alert: make a jig for nearly any woodworking project unless you wanna try it out freehand. Anyways, the wood block was out so I then had another idea. Some of you are really good at sheet metal bending your own enclosures and put wooden stands/caps on the end. I don't have a proper brake or frankly any of the proper tools to try it out so I hit up Stevie and niiiiicely asked if he could build me an enclosure. He asked what board I was looking to put in there and after a few days I decided to make this a truly Stevie inspired build so I said "Rat Salad." A little bit of back and forth (plus some time for him to get through his orders since he was doing me a solid) and a dark green enclosure arrived at my doorstep toward the holiday season of last year with screws and a LM308! Cool dude. Get on his good side
During holiday break is when I pretty much take a week off of work and usually get to building. This time it was the Rat Salad. The build of the board itself went without a hitch and tested fine with my test box enclosure. Is the 308 really different compared to, say, a OP07? IMO, not really. I think it's just for cork sniffers. Since this was a more special build for me I decided to put in a relay bypass switch just for kicks (plus I had the time and said "why not?").
Then it sat on my pedalboard for a few months until it came to me how to proceed. The Contour knob brings in the much needed bass and a huge game changer.
Once the weather started getting a bit warmer (March), I decided to run to my local lumberyard for some nice dark walnut for the end caps. I used a 1x4 for this project. I cut the boards to length and they seemed a bit thick for the sides being 1" thick. So, I decided to rip it on my table saw to the proper thickness. I should have used a band saw, but I don't have one. I thought I was being super careful being a power tool. Whelp, as I took off the last little bit in my cut, the end piece fell into the inset plate and knocked my left thumb right into the blade! "OOOOOWWW!"
I knew at that exact moment I was done working on this project. I look at my thumb and there was a piece of it missing right at the tip along with part of the nail! I told my wife we need to go to a Minute Clinic/Doc in the Box. So she drove me there and they took one look at it and pointed me right to the emergency room. 4 hours later I'm all bandaged up (no stitches since there was nothing to really stitch together), picked up antibiotics, and walked back into my home. A followup appointment with a hand surgeon the next day and he only gave me good news: everything would grow back. This happened mid-March and I'm still getting bills in the mail from the hospital. Lesson learned: get good insurance if you can just in case. Good news is you don't notice the difference between both thumbs at this point unless you're really lookin.
Shit. This build cost me upwards of 2 grand.
Anywho, no building or playing for me for about a week since it was too painful. Each day it got better, but I was playing with some compression tape on my thumb and was odd/uncomfortable. That lasted for about another 2 weeks after that and I switched to a band aid. Another week or two and I'm raw dogging it. Now I don't notice it at all when playing.
Now we're into this past May and I've got a bare enclosure and a strip of walnut sitting in my garage. I finally told myself "it's time". So, I sanded down the walnut, measured what seemed like a few dozen times and put in the counter sink holes for the screws, sealed it up with a few coats of Tung Oil, and let it sit for a day or two to cure.
Now it's time for the enclosure artwork. You still reading at this point? Good for you! Most of you probably scrolled already just to see the pictures of my build. Eh, it happens. The internet has just made us all lazy.
Anyways, I wanted something to say "Rat", but not "Super Hardcore Badass Duke Nukem" Rat. Plus, I've already done a number of Rat builds. Then it got me thinking...
Pizza Rat! What, or should I say, Who is Pizza Rat? See below. Pizza Rat was a rat found in a NYC subway almost 10 years ago carrying a slice a pizza for it's next meal! Plus, I feel like pizza rat when I go into the office since I usually grab leftover pizza as a snack if it's ever ordered for a lunch meeting. I usually feel like crap that night or the next morning, but hey, it's pizza. Being in New Jersey, we know good pizza and there aren't many places around here that have bad pizza that stay open for long.
Some acrylic paint, a steady hand, a few coats of matte clear coat to seal it all up, slap the wooden caps on the end and...
Pizza Rat!
Thanks for reading. If you can get one of Stevie's boards, or at least the gerbers, I would highly recommend. There are enough mods to get it to the tone you'd like without sacrificing the "true" characteristic of the almighty Rat.
I only gave this build 4 stars since I lost a piece of my thumb and 2 grand.
glad it all worked out. 
