Chicago RAT!

[greysun]

Inspired by the recent conversation I'd started about the possibility of an all-transistor RAT to get some different sounds, I went the route of a certain mr. Jimilee and made a RAT with 8 different clipping options on a rotary switch.






I call it the Chicago RAT! (But really, it's should be called the jimilee rat ripoff extravaganza - but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite right, hehe).

I'll make a video in the coming days of the varied sounds, but the clipping options are all pretty unique and there isn't one that I don't like. I never used the ruetz mod on the slow loris pedals I built long ago, so I didn't include that, but I did add the FAT switch, which is great for bridge pickups, but kinda muddy for neck. I feel like hum buckers would be straight mud with the fat setting.

Clippers are: 4148/bs170 - 4001/bat41/bat41 - red led/red led - 4001/4001 - 2n7000/2n7000 - 1n34a/1n34a - 4148/4148 - no clipping (op amp only).

The filter pot is reversed for me - not sure how that happened, but it might be that I'm just not that good at Eagle. It works, so I don't care what direction it goes.

I've had the enclosure drilled for another pedal like 10 years ago, but I rehoused that one - I just never found knobs that worked with this enclosure's color, but once I had some metallic gold knobs for another build, it became my mission to salvage this one (always thinking sustainably!). Filled the holes with JB weld, the did my best to re-drill. Not exact. But close enough.




The foot switch was originally drilled to fit a 9v battery, but I don't use those, so I got a jewel lens cover. I wanted to use a 555 timer to flash lights inside, but it's too tight in the enclosure, so I'll have to save that for other pedals I convert later. This just gets an added LED.

Pro-tip (or, well... greysun tip, lol): I had gotten solder lug pots when I thought I was etching this myself, so to convert them to board mounted, I just twisted some excess leads together - little solder, little trimming, and we're good to go.




I have one more to make... wish me luck!

[jimilee]

Nicely done man!  That's the spirit of DIY. I don't know why no one had done that as a project. The every flavor rat. The tone pot is actually supposed to be more bassy the more you turn it clockwise. Supposed to help with bass loss as you increase the gain. I think I reversed mine, I can't remember.


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