comradehoser
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Hey folks! After a hiatus devoted to music making, my friend was booting around for a distortion, and I was all: rat, rat, rat! It can do everything! He took too long, so I decided I would just build one.
He plays mostly cleanish tele into Fender amps, so I figure a variable rat. Scoped the Helios on Aion, looked like it would fit the bill. Breadboarded it, and I don’t know if it was my chip or a celestial conjunction of components, but this baby cooked. Verrrry nice sounds throughout, nice decay, great distortion and fuzz, really well balanced for a guitar.
Settled on symmetric/led/asymmetric for the clipping toggle.
Implemented via my invariably ranky tanky PTP skills. I’m out of practice or something, because I’m not so sold on the “organic” right side elements. And things came out a bit unbalanced and wonky. I might revisit the split in the VA line. Upon reflection, it looks dumb, and I had to fight dumbness and tendencies towards extraneous ornamentation throughout this build.
Fired it up and I spent à half hour troubleshooting before I realized that I hadn’t connected the 1 pin of the distortion pot.
Enclosure graphics: Rat face graphic will also be different and hopefully more menacing. Got too enthusiastic with the lettering and it’s like “why do the rats say bitte? Are they German?” Oh well. No take backs in stamping.
Overall: it’s a classic for a reason! Gonna build me one! It sounds awesome at all positions of sweep of the distortion pot
Edit: final version graphic
He plays mostly cleanish tele into Fender amps, so I figure a variable rat. Scoped the Helios on Aion, looked like it would fit the bill. Breadboarded it, and I don’t know if it was my chip or a celestial conjunction of components, but this baby cooked. Verrrry nice sounds throughout, nice decay, great distortion and fuzz, really well balanced for a guitar.
Settled on symmetric/led/asymmetric for the clipping toggle.
Implemented via my invariably ranky tanky PTP skills. I’m out of practice or something, because I’m not so sold on the “organic” right side elements. And things came out a bit unbalanced and wonky. I might revisit the split in the VA line. Upon reflection, it looks dumb, and I had to fight dumbness and tendencies towards extraneous ornamentation throughout this build.
Fired it up and I spent à half hour troubleshooting before I realized that I hadn’t connected the 1 pin of the distortion pot.
Enclosure graphics: Rat face graphic will also be different and hopefully more menacing. Got too enthusiastic with the lettering and it’s like “why do the rats say bitte? Are they German?” Oh well. No take backs in stamping.
Overall: it’s a classic for a reason! Gonna build me one! It sounds awesome at all positions of sweep of the distortion pot
Edit: final version graphic
Attachments
Last edited: