Aleph Null
Well-known member
I saw a few YouTube demos of people getting super sludgy, doomy sounds by running a Rat in front of an Acapulco Gold. This design began with asking, "What would happen if you just shoved the LM386 gain stage right inside the Rat where the clipping diodes usually go?" A high-gain turducken! There ended up being more to it than that, but that's where it started.
Bare metal felt like the right look.
This has become my standard for dealing with off-board wiring. Trying to make wire runs as short and straight as possible.
The Focus control grew out of the Ruetz mod for the Rat. The values were changed so that turning the Focus up cuts bass frequencies, but also increases the gain significantly. The clipping diodes help to limit how hard this first gain stage hits the input of the LM386—it can only take so much input signal before it turns to mush—and the asymmetrical arrangement emphasizes 2nd order harmonics, making the guitar sound more nasal and mid-range focused as the Focus control is turned up. This feeds the LM386 which is set up the same way we've seen it in the Acapulco Gold, the Smash Drive, the Clari(not) and other designs. Last is an active tone control that creates a high shelf at 720Hz. It's capable of -13dB to +7dB. This design may not be the most versatile, but I think it does very convincingly get into that Sleep/Sunn O))) territory.
Here's a demo:
@DGWVI also posted a great demo with his recent build report.
If anyone is interested, I have extra PCBs. Just shoot me a DM.
Bare metal felt like the right look.
This has become my standard for dealing with off-board wiring. Trying to make wire runs as short and straight as possible.
The Focus control grew out of the Ruetz mod for the Rat. The values were changed so that turning the Focus up cuts bass frequencies, but also increases the gain significantly. The clipping diodes help to limit how hard this first gain stage hits the input of the LM386—it can only take so much input signal before it turns to mush—and the asymmetrical arrangement emphasizes 2nd order harmonics, making the guitar sound more nasal and mid-range focused as the Focus control is turned up. This feeds the LM386 which is set up the same way we've seen it in the Acapulco Gold, the Smash Drive, the Clari(not) and other designs. Last is an active tone control that creates a high shelf at 720Hz. It's capable of -13dB to +7dB. This design may not be the most versatile, but I think it does very convincingly get into that Sleep/Sunn O))) territory.
Here's a demo:
@DGWVI also posted a great demo with his recent build report.
If anyone is interested, I have extra PCBs. Just shoot me a DM.
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