PPCB Raincoat

J

jcpst

Well-known member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
I have a cycle of expanding my pedalboard, adding more sophisticated programmability along the way, and then I hit a threshold where it’s too much and it distracts from just playing the instrument.

I pared down over the weekend, and I found myself wanting to add a fuzz to the board. I have some fuzzes I like, but a lot of them were not what I was looking for.

I went into my box of mostly populated PCBs, and saw the Raincoat. If you search the forums, you will see a lot of praise for this.

What is it? From what I understand, a muff variant with the clipping diodes and some resistors removed.

There’s only one change from stock. I didn’t have a 10nf cap on hand, but did have a 12nf.

Some pedals feel good from the first note you hit. For me, this is one of those. Thick saturation, and less mid-scoop than a muff. Double stops and chords sound amazing. Rather than clash and clang, it grinds and beats. It’s really satisfying. I put a Squidward (green ringer) in front of it and it brings that attack back, and sounds super rad.

I like it as much as I liked the Kewpie. Bonus points for less controls and being able to fit in a 1590B. It’s gonna hang out on my new pedalboard setup so I can test drive it at a jam session.



IMG_3778.jpeg IMG_3780.jpeg
 
jcpst said:
I have a cycle of expanding my pedalboard, adding more sophisticated programmability along the way, and then I hit a threshold where it’s too much and it distracts from just playing the instrument.

I pared down over the weekend, and I found myself wanting to add a fuzz to the board. I have some fuzzes I like, but a lot of them were not what I was looking for.

I went into my box of mostly populated PCBs, and saw the Raincoat. If you search the forums, you will see a lot of praise for this.

What is it? From what I understand, a muff variant with the clipping diodes and some resistors removed.

There’s only one change from stock. I didn’t have a 10nf cap on hand, but did have a 12nf.

Some pedals feel good from the first note you hit. For me, this is one of those. Thick saturation, and less mid-scoop than a muff. Double stops and chords sound amazing. Rather than clash and clang, it grinds and beats. It’s really satisfying. I put a Squidward (green ringer) in front of it and it brings that attack back, and sounds super rad.

I like it as much as I liked the Kewpie. Bonus points for less controls and being able to fit in a 1590B. It’s gonna hang out on my new pedalboard setup so I can test drive it at a jam session.



View attachment 116932View attachment 116933
Click to expand...
Man, now I need to dig mine out and play it. It's been a minute but I remember loving this thing!
 
jcpst said:
I hit a threshold where it’s too much and it distracts from just playing the instrument.

I pared down over the weekend, and I found myself wanting to add a fuzz to the board. I have some fuzzes I like, but a lot of them were not what I was looking for.
Click to expand...

... and here I am planning a daughter-pedalboard just for overdrives.
 
jcpst said:
What is it? From what I understand, a muff variant with the clipping diodes and some resistors removed.
Click to expand...
The key difference (besides the clipping diodes) is replacing the Big Muff tone stack with a simple hi-cut tone control. The Big Muff tone stack is the perpetrator in the case of the missing mids. (Check out the "tsc-in-the-web" site, big muff tab). So naturally the Rain Coat has less of that mi-scoop. I agree it sounds great.

Also, it's the exact same circuit as the Flugelhorn (based on Noel Cornet Revu), but with different transistors.
 
genXslacker said:
... and here I am planning a daughter-pedalboard just for overdrives.
Click to expand...
It was more of a programmability issue. 8 MIDI devices by different manufacturers utilizing multiple channels, LFOs generating expression signals, MIDI clock, PC message mappings, a single treadle used for 5 different parameters across devices…

It was pretty badass, but had cognitive overhead. When I was about to grab a 3-ring binder and print out all the manuals for reference and add my implementation notes, I asked myself ‘what the hell am I doing?‘. Now I’m down to just 4 MIDI devices and just using PC messages. I can get back to just playing.
 
spi said:
Another to check out is the Acid Rain. It's the Raincoat with a different tonestack.
Click to expand...
Nice, I’ll be checking both of those out. I have yet to traverse deep into muffs yet.

The Electro-Harmonix Big Muff guys! Jeez, get your minds out of the gutter.
 
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