DailyDovetails
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is my second pedal that I have bread boarded and then turned into a finished pedal. I have been learning about pedals for a while now. My first attempt at building one was actually around 2004 but not long after that I started a pretty demanding job and had kids and didn't come back to the hobby until this year. One of the most fun parts about this hobby for me is all the research and experimentation. I had been doing a lot of research on the different clipping diodes and configurations and wanted to come up with a project that would give me a platform to experiment with them.
The lower 4 switches on this let you choose from BAT41(up), LED(middle) and 1N4148(down). The diodes are wired so that one switch goes forward(soft) or to ground(hard) and the other goes backwards(soft) or from ground(hard). The top 2 switches disconnect the diodes from the circuit. The switches on the left side are for a soft clipping stage that I installed between OP pins 2 and 6 and the right side control the standard hard clipping phase. In my mind this circuit gives you all the standard rat configurations with soft clipping off both switches in the middle is turbo rat, both down standard rat and both up is an approximation of the you dirty rat, with both clippings turned off it gives you the clean rat. Some of my favorite new settings on this so far are all 4 set to BAT41 for a super compressed sustaining distortion, soft LED and 1n4148 for a dirty overdrive and one LED and one BAT41 on each side for a distortion that is somewhat articulate and has a fair bit of grind/growl at the same time.
This is a fairly vanilla rat with the exception of the diode switching. The few other changes I made were that I added a 47K resistor between the output and ground to help control the volume levels(the turbo and clean rat are super loud!) I also used a J201 that I soldered legs onto instead of a 2n5458.
I tossed around names for this thing for a while but settled on Hella Rats as it reminds me of when I learned that word moving from SoCal to NorCal as a kid. It was also around the same time that I got a ProCo Rat which was one of my first pedals.
I may explore this concept a bit more with a pair of 6 or 8 way rotary switches.
There is a rats nest of wiring hiding under the board.
The lower 4 switches on this let you choose from BAT41(up), LED(middle) and 1N4148(down). The diodes are wired so that one switch goes forward(soft) or to ground(hard) and the other goes backwards(soft) or from ground(hard). The top 2 switches disconnect the diodes from the circuit. The switches on the left side are for a soft clipping stage that I installed between OP pins 2 and 6 and the right side control the standard hard clipping phase. In my mind this circuit gives you all the standard rat configurations with soft clipping off both switches in the middle is turbo rat, both down standard rat and both up is an approximation of the you dirty rat, with both clippings turned off it gives you the clean rat. Some of my favorite new settings on this so far are all 4 set to BAT41 for a super compressed sustaining distortion, soft LED and 1n4148 for a dirty overdrive and one LED and one BAT41 on each side for a distortion that is somewhat articulate and has a fair bit of grind/growl at the same time.
This is a fairly vanilla rat with the exception of the diode switching. The few other changes I made were that I added a 47K resistor between the output and ground to help control the volume levels(the turbo and clean rat are super loud!) I also used a J201 that I soldered legs onto instead of a 2n5458.
I tossed around names for this thing for a while but settled on Hella Rats as it reminds me of when I learned that word moving from SoCal to NorCal as a kid. It was also around the same time that I got a ProCo Rat which was one of my first pedals.
I may explore this concept a bit more with a pair of 6 or 8 way rotary switches.
There is a rats nest of wiring hiding under the board.
