It begins!
So for those of you who’ve haven’t heard me yammer on about it: I’m in the process of designing and producing a boost pedal. It started off with a romantic fascination with Zvex’s legendary Super Hard-On and the ever elusive Landgraff Booster. Both really pricey pedals, that sound outrageously good, but have a very, very small parts count. So I decided, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. Which means: hand-wired everything, top-quality parts, a good circuit to work from, and lifetime guarantees.
So last night, after much deliberation and breadboarding, I got a working prototype done, and it sounds killer. It is more neutral sounding than the Super Hard-On, but it retains that added UMF that you get with the gain on unity. It’s a little less harsh when turned up, that’s mostly due to the higher quality filter caps and the non-PCB construction. Not to advertise, but I’m just really stoked about it. But hopefully in the next month I’ll have ten of these suckers done. I’ll be posting pictures of the process as I start getting parts in and begin to put them together. And keeping with my original “for the working musician” ethic, I think if I can keep costs as low as they are right now, I should be able to get away with only asking for 60$ for the sucker.
The initial trial run will be 10 prototypes. I think what I’ll most likely do is charge 60$ for the blank enclosure, and another couple of bucks to have my lovely girlfriend do some kind of wacky hand-painted thing on it. You know, just enough to cover paint and a couple of tacos or something.
If you have any questions, or to inquire about buying this thing, or getting something made for you, or asking me any kind of questions about why I’m such a know-it-all asshole, email me at: salvatorerex@gmail.com
Well, keep posted on more info. Thanks for reading!
Vintage Rat reissue LED mod
So I just finished putting an LED in a Vintage Rat reissue pedal. I was rushing to get it done, as it was for my friend in Sainthood Reps who are going on tomorrow, so there are unfortunately no pictures. I happen to own the exact pedal and the thing came out so great I might do a photo walk through with mine. I’m still totally not sure why they didn’t put an LED on these things in the first place. Anyway, here’s what I did:
First, after much deliberation as to what the best method is, I decided on replacing the stock switch, which is a DPDT switch, with a modern 3DPDT switch to easily allow the LED to be wire in.
Second, I yanked out the old switch and installed the new one. After about two hours of head scratching and cursing I figured out how everything is laid out, so here that is. You’re welcome:
Third, after everything was wired correctly I drilled a hole in the top left of the face to fit my quite pretty bright blue LED. This was to avoid the shorting hazard of the circuit board since this was going to be patched in. Also, if you’re into aesthetics you can play around with the resister between the LED and the power supply’s value to obtain different degrees of brightness. Lastly, before I put the thing back together I put some electrical tape on the enclosure by where the LED leads lay. I was having a problem with them shorting, and since this was about to be taken on the road, durability was of the utmost importance. I know it’s not very elegant, but it works.
Well, there it is. I’ll probably do a much more interesting to look at picture post of this in the upcoming weeks. Also, hopefully an instruction on how to build a boost.
In the interim before I make a huge post about the vintage Fender amps I’ve been working on, I figured I’d gush on about another pedal I have a particular interest in: in (in)famous ProCo Rat pedal.
Now before I get into how this pedal works, and what versions I particularly like, let’s talk about how Rats sound. The ProCo Rat is a real, balls-to-the-wall distortion pedal, make no mistake about it. It shares a lot of structural similarities with the Boss DS-1, but with more gain, more boost, and a much more useful filter section without all of that nasty high end and grind. It falls very sonically in the area right in-between an overdrive and a fuzz: with the gain cranked you can almost get that Fuzz Face/Big Muff sound out of it, but with the gain lowered and with the filter section all the way open (I’ll explain what I mean by “open” in a moment”) you can almost get a really nice harmonic overdrive from it. A good Rat pedal can really be a hell of a useful little box, but I’ll get to what I mean by a “good Rat” in a second.
Before I get there let me get nerdy for just a moment. The Rat utilizes a really simple schematic. It uses a pretty powerful op-amp into a pair of clipping diodes, and a passive, subtractive filter. Which means, basically, that unlike the average ”tone” knob, when the “filter” knob is turned all the way counter-clockwise it is supposed to have a minimal effect on your overall tone. As you begin to turn the knob clockwise it acts as a low-pass filter and gets pretty nasty and bitey, which can sometimes be a great thing. But the real key to this pedal is the op-amp and the clipping diodes. Most of the popular Rat mods tend to deal specifically with these two things. I’ll explain:
Op-amp (Operational Amplifier): The original Rat pedals use the highly sought after LM308 chip. Which is widely regarded as one of the main ways to get that quintessential ”Rat” sound. Many of the more recent reissues, namely the Rat 2 use different op-amps that are seen as sonically inferior to the original LM308. Some people even try and put other op-amps in there. I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences using a nice Burr Brown or a JRC-4558 and got a little more of an overdrive flavor out of it.
Diodes: The diodes used in the clipping section are just as, if not more important that the op-amp. These control what kind of distortion the pedal actually produces. The stock Rat pedal comes with a pair of silicon diodes, which produce that growly, agressive type of distortion we all know. A few other options are to cut the diodes out altogether, which would add a ton more volume and would make the pedal have an overall “crunchier” sound. A few other popular mods are to replace them with germanium diodes, which would have a litte less distortion than the silicon but would be darker, and a little fatter, or to replace them with LED’s, which would increase the overall volume, gain, and aggressiveness, but it happens to add some lows and some sizzle. I particularly love LED clipping in most of my modded distortions, be it a Rat or a DS1 or whatever else.
Things to look for if you’re buying a Rat pedal:
The rule of thumb is typically, the older the better. I’ve had an early 80’s pre-LED Rat, a 91’ big-box reissue (which I bought back from a friend today, prompting this whole ranting nonsense), a Rat 2 with an LED and a Turbo Rat. I could say that the 80’s Rat had the least gain, but the most harmonic content, and the 91’ has without a doubt the most useable gain, without sacrificing too much actual tone. The Rat 2 and the Turbo Rat, in my mind needed a ton of modifications for them to sound like what I think a Rat pedal should sound like (new film caps, a few resister changes, swapping the op-amp, new diodes, ect.). If you want a really flexible Rat sound, and don’t want the hassle of a 20+ year old pedal, or you’re not too savvy with a soldering iron, there are a few companies I rather like making Rat clones or modded Rats that sound unbelievable.
1. Freak Show Effects Rabbit- This pedal allows you to switch between a vintage Rat clipping style, double LED clipping, and a Vintage Rat style section with an extra diode for more gain. There are two internal trimpots, one to set the mids and one to set the clipping amount for the LED section. It comes with the original LM308 chip, and it sounds fat and amazing. The other guitarist in my band has one and if I didn’t like to tinker so much I would have bought one. And they’re cheap as hell, if the sound alone wasn’t enough.
2. BYOC Mouse- The Rabbit was directly based on the things available with the BYOC Mouse, which is really just an exact replica of an 80’s rat with all of the mods anyone could want on it. The Rabbit’s circuit is a bit different than the original, so you won’t be getting that “purist” vintage Rat sound, but it definitely stands on it’s own. If you’re looking for a pre-modded, DIY solution to all of the hoops you’d have to jump through, check it out. I’ve always been blown away by BYOC effects.
3. Keely modded Rat- The good old standby. Everyone and their mothers have played a Keely pedal and have been really surprised that some shitty Guitar Center pedal could sound that good. His Rat mods are absolutely not different. However, I do think you could get a better result by doing it on your own and tailoring your sound, or going for a boutique solution, it’s definitely not the worst you could do.
So, there’s my rant about the ProCo Rat. I’m hoping to have a picture heavy post about the restoration of my 66’ Super Reverb and 75’ Twin Reverb soon. Maybe even a DS1 modding tutorial. But please, if you have any questions, please email me, I could always use more things to write about:
salvatorerex@gmail.com
Thanks for sitting through all that!
I get asked pretty frequently about overdrive pedals. Once a week someone texts or messages me asking something like, “Hey, I want to get a new overdrive pedal, but I want something that doesn’t sound like a tubescreamer. What do you recommend?”
So, here’s my gear nerd guide to overdrives that aren’t tubescreamers:
The first and most important question you need to address if you’re like me is, why don’t you like the (in)famous, Ibanez tubescreamer? The archetypical TS sound comes from the TS808, which is characterized by a compressed, mid-gain, mid-hump overdrive, with the nasty tendency, even in the best tubescreamers, of cutting lows and flattening highs. So I’ll attack a few key problems.
First off, some people wish that tubescreamers had more gain. That was definitely one of my biggest issues with it. If you’re looking for a mid to high gain overdrive, I’d say to check out:
1. Fulltone OCD- This pedal is a god-send for a ton of guitarists. It lacks the clarity of tone that some upper-end OD pedals have, but it’s ability to go from a fat boost, to a low-gain OD, to a big, nasty, fat distortion is really unbelievable. These pedals eats up single coils for breakfast, seriously. It does, unfortunately, have the tenancy of getting a little muddy with humbuckers, particularly of the PAF family. Definitely worth a try if the mid-heavy quality of the tubescreamer doesn’t really bother you.
2. Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret- The Dirty Little Secret does what it’s supposed to do absolutely perfectly: it’s designed to sound like a cranked Marshall JTM45. It sounds organic and natural and ballsy. I don’t want to put it as number two, because I do honestly think it sounds better than the OCD, but it’s not nearly as versatile or universal as the OCD. But for what it’s worth, it’s harmonic qualities really feel like you’re playing a really nice, handwired amp. The way it responds to your playing dynamics and volume knob could easily double blind trick the hell out of a player.
3. Mad Professor Mighty Red Distortion- Let me first say that I think Mad Professor make some of the best pedals in the world. They have two different lines of pedal, one being the handwired series and one being the PCB series. Having A/B’d nearly every single one of their pedals I can honestly say that I think there’s a night and day difference between the two. The PCB always ends up sounding brighter and more harsh and less organic sounding. Anyway, back to the MRD. This pedal is one of those pedals that tend to blend the qualities of a distortion pedal and a fuzz. It can get pretty gnarly. It’s supposed to emulate the sound of a cranked JCM800, which is most definitely high gain at it’s finest. The only downside is that it lacks the range of useable gain that the other two have.
Runner Up: Zvex Box of Rock
Another one of the biggest problems with the tubescreamer family of pedal is that it tends not to be transparent at all, and I, like most of you, love my guitars and want to hear them. Not to mention I get asked even more frequently for what is termed as a “natural” sounding overdrive pedal. Which sounds like a fairly simple request, but it turns out that sort of search is pretty neverending and quite expensive. So here’s my list of “natural” sounding low gain overdrives:
1. Klon Centaur (or any of it’s variants- I know. I know I know I know. It’s not interesting or surprising that I’d list the fabled Centaur first. I also am totally aware that these pedals go for 1000$-ish on ebay. But there are a ton of great companies making Klon Klones that sound just like the real deal. I’ve had the pleasure of comparing the JHS, the Snatchtronics and the Madbean Klones all to an original horsie and I can say they definitely hold up. But for those of you who haven’t ever heard this magnificent thing, it has the most natural sounding overdrive I’ve probably ever heard, also one of the most unique. I’ve read lots of critical analysis of the circuit, and it’s still one of the most mysterious pedals in the world to me and lots of pedalnerds out there. Somehow it takes your guitar’s wonderfull tone and just makes it sound like it’s going through a completely transparent tube amp with a great tone knob. So you’re not at risk of coloring your sound at all, and it still sounds like whatever amp you’re playing. Put a Klon in front of a twin, and it sounds like a good 6L6 breakup should. Put it in front of an AC30 and it sounds like those EL34’s are really getting hot. It’s a really unique lady if you can track her down. The Klon also has an amazing built in buffer (the JHS buffer is supposedly modeled after this, I cannot confirm or deny) and does a clean boost really well. If you can try out one or any Klone do it, but be warned, you could be stricken forever.
2. Mad Professor Sweet Honey Overdrive- The Sweet Honey is low gain at it’s finest. It’s a tad brighter and doesn’t quite offer the gain range of the Klon, but it’s a really flexible and really amazingly natural sounding pedal. My personal favorite thing about it is the “focus” knob, which roughly decides where on the frequency spectrum you want the breakup to happen. For instance, if you wanted a nice blackface style breakup, you can throw the knob to the left and find the nice spot in the low-mids that will make it sound like a Tremolux being pushed pretty hard. Repeat for the middle (AC30), and high-mids (Plexi). It really does nail those amp sounds and wherever else you might want your gain to be pushed, and it cleans up beautifully and is again one of those “great amp in a box” type pedals.
3. BYOC Bluesbreaker- One of the finest pedals that went under people’s radars was the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal. It was one of the first pedals I know of to offer a really nice, transparent, low drive gain structure. Pedals like the Klon and the Sweet Honey would never have existed without this stepping stone and it seems like this pedal went entirely unnoticed in the public eye. It’s just now being rediscovered as something really worthwhile. BYOC (buildyourownclone) makes a phenomenal kit version using the original everything. I’ve built a bunch of these for people and everytime they seem to love it. It reminds me of the really nice transparent breakup of the Sweet Honey with a tad more compression when you start getting at it, but without the flexibility of the Sweet Honey. If you’re trying to get at nice natural OD on a budget, this could be your man.
Runner up: Barber LTD Overdrive
So there it is, a long rambling about overdrive pedals and I really only gave you six to try out. And I know what you might be thinking now: 1) Why the fuck should I listen to you, guy? and 2) what if I really like tubescreamers? Which are the best sounding ones? So to answer those two questions, first, I’m just some dude who really likes pedals and helping people find what they’re looking for. And as for tubescreamer pedals that sound better than tubescreamers:
1. Mad Professor Little Green Wonder
2. BYOC Overdrive 2
3. Ibanez TS808HW
Runner up: Way Huge Green Rhino
So, thanks for reading. Go play some stuff and listen. Yeah.
