Das Musikding Die Rat

[TillMack]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

So, I really have to stop building pedals, but there are some more on my bench.
Then I need to stop for a year.
This is the ProCo Rat clone from Musikding.
I just ordered the PCB, cause I have so many parts laying around and from time to time I check if I could build something with parts I had left.
So I ordered the PCB.
For the enclosure I choose Tayda Matte Black, which turns out really nice.
The build is pretty straight forward.
My first pedal was from Musikding in 2012 and Klaus improved his PCBs a lot.
Yes, sometimes he is very slow, but I never had any issue with Musikding.
(Still waiting for my Chop Shop stuff since three weeks).
Used a LM308 IC and 2N5457 transistor.
Could not test it yet in real world, but with my signal generator and oscilloscope the sound come through.
First time I used a 4 pin cable, which is really nice and I should used it in all my builds.

Some pedals I find kind of useless to build, cause you can get the ProCo Rat for a good price, but I was curious how it sounds.

 

[Nesquick953]

Hello, i just buy this kit,
and i was wondering if you replace the original diod with a germanium one, does it lower the general volume of the pedal ?
And do you just need to change the diod or there are other things you need to change ?
Thnks for your answer
Nestor

 

[jwin615]

Hello, i just buy this kit,
and i was wondering if you replace the original diod with a germanium one, does it lower the general volume of the pedal ?
And do you just need to change the diod or there are other things you need to change ?
Thnks for your answer
Nestor

In a hard clipping orientation Ge will generally always lower the output due to lower Vf, assuming no makeup gain.
If you decide to go with Ge diodes, you will want minimal leakage from them.
Note, much of the sound of a RAT comes from the opamp clipping, not the diode clipping. I actually prefer LEDs (higher Vf) or no clipping diodes. Not that Leads sound better, but less hard clipping does, IMO. There's really no knee to the clipping diodes as you already have a squared waveform.