Rat with even more gain?

[farwest1]

I built a Rat (Muroidea) and I totally love it. But I’m wondering if there’s a way to get even more gain out of it? Like, insane amounts of gain?

Basically I’d like current max to be at 1 or 2 o’clock. “This one goes to 11” kind of thing. An ultra-rat or king rat.

I’m new to pedal building so I realize this may be a noob question. Feel free to school me

 

[Barry]

You could stack it with a boost or another overdrive

 

[farwest1]

thanks! Is there anything that could be modified in the circuit itself? Or is it already near-perfect?

 

[Barry]

Chuck D. Bones would be one to answer that

 

[Nostradoomus]

The LM308 in a rat is already almost on the verge of collapse. You won’t get much more out of it. You could try playing with different diodes like 1n5817 but you’d be better off stacking it with another pedal.

 

[Nostradoomus]

ElectroSmash - ProCo Rat Analysis

Pro Co Rat Schematic, Power Supply Stage, Clipper Amplifier, Voltage Gain, Low/High Pass Filtering, LM308 Op-Amp Selection, Diode Clipping, Tone Control, Output Stage, Pro Co Rat Frequency Response, Resources

www.electrosmash.com

 

[bobson dugnutt]

Definitely play around with stacking it with other pedals, there's a lot of great combinations depending on the sound you're going for! I love slamming it with a tubescreamer style circuit; you get some bonus mids and pushes it into a fuzz-like territory. Lots of people throw the rat before fuzzes (especially ones that are sensitive to input gain) for monstrous sounds. There's infinite possibilities!

 

[farwest1]

Definitely play around with stacking it with other pedals, there's a lot of great combinations depending on the sound you're going for! I love slamming it with a tubescreamer style circuit; you get some bonus mids and pushes it into a fuzz-like territory. Lots of people throw the rat before fuzzes (especially ones that are sensitive to input gain) for monstrous sounds. There's infinite possibilities!

Yeah, funny you should mention fuzzes. I put it in front of a Mastotron just now (my favorite fuzz) and it sounded massive. Good call.

 

[Chuck D. Bones]

Build an Expandora (Pandora's Box) and mod that. It's a Rat with a noise gate built in. It has an additional gain stage, so you can get a shit-ton of gain by changing a few resistors. If this is something you might be interested in, I can provide some guidance.

 

[moonlightpedalbuilds]

Put a rangemaster type pedal in front of the rat pedal. See Catalinbread naga viper

 

[farwest1]

So thanks to everyone's comments, I have discovered a truly incredible sound (ultimate toan, as they say.)

I put a Hudson Broadcast in front of the Rat, which then feeds into a Zvex Mastotron. Just the Broadcast+Rat sounds amazing together—full and powerful. But if I then click on the Mastotron, it's transcendent. The subs in the Mastotron coupled with the Rat's clarity create a really magic sound.

Gain wise, these three cover most bases. The one thing missing is a smoother TS-style overdrive (my go to is the SD-1 with C6 mod.)