Questions about RATS!

[magiclawnchair]

What?

that was the old rack mount dual rat that came back as the deucetone...

[comtrails70]

diy!

[sevenSHARPnine]

diy!

ProCo RAT.JPG.jpeg

heeeeey stanimal

[phantasmagorovich]

diy!

ProCo RAT.JPG.jpeg

Now this is a very good idea!

[comtrails70]

you can probably get the parts form conrads and spend under 40 uros.

[phantasmagorovich]

I haven't found decent footswitches at Conrad's but there's also Musikding.

This seems to be a very good project, once I got & finished my Moody Sounds Fuzz kit. I could first set it up on a breadboard and mess around with it a bit.


I do have a question concerning this schematics though. The Names and numbers at the side of the Board refer to the Pots, right? Are they numbered on the pots so that there is no mistaking? And Vol2 goes to the out jack? Is all of this right? I am still pretty much a rookie at building, but I do think I can produce decent enough soldering points. And this schematic comtrails posted is the most self-explanatory I've seen.

[Scruffie]

It's not a schematic, it's a vero (strip board) layout, but yes it is correct.

Vol 2 does go to the output and the Offboard is where the pots connect so you're correct.

Here's an actual schematic http://analogguru.an.ohost.de/193/schem ... t-1986.gif

[Scruffie]

It wont burn your house down, circuits are built to withstand the wrong voltages in case there's a spike, worse that'll happen is it'll pop and smoke a bit... then catch fire... then set fire to the curtains... and then the house...with the deeds.

But other than that it'll be fine! It'll most likely have diode protecion, that could burn out I guess... I'd take the challenge if I had an actual Rat but i'm afraid I don't and if I did it'd be a smoldering pile in the rubble of my house by now.

[Scruffie]

Higher voltage will most likely = increased head room and less distortion yes, might be a bit smoother though.

Honestly though, it'll be fine... *crosses fingers behind back*

[Scruffie]

If you have a good regulated power supply, the 16V caps will take 12V fine although not ideal as was said, replacing them with higher rated ones would be safer.

The reason there is no answer, is because there probably is no answer, tone is subjective... some may hear the difference, others may not, some may like it yadayada it's a case of YMMV so no one puts out a definitive answer.

You can easily crack it open though and look at the values on all the caps, too low then don't sweat it unless you feel comfortable replacing them, if they're high enough it'll run smoothly on 12V... you could probably even run it up to 18V if the caps were high enough.

[Scruffie]

Yeah i'll take a ganders at them for ya! I must say though, be deadly careful with those MN3005s... infact i'm quite jealous you have some so many fakes about now it's ridiculous.

I'm quite sure there's a way to bridge them though yes aslong as the clock will deliver the goods, which i'm sure it will, you (or I) could even buffer the clock to work better, can pull alot of delay out cleaner then.

470ms with clock noise!? that's quite alot for those chips... that pedal/rack must have some mad filtering to get that out with just a small amount of clock noise... most people struggle for 550ms from a Memory Man.. i'll be interested to see what's going on in there.

Yeah if you don't mind sending to the U.K. it'd be fun to have a poke around in, I could replace all those old electrolytics too while i'm at it to give it another 35 years of life and cut down on noise... not sure how heavy the unit is though... it looks sweet though.

[nbabmf]

Most of the Rat versions are pretty similar. Hell, even the el cheapo Brat/Roadkill is only a little ways away from being a Rat. I modded one to vintage Rat specs and rehoused it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCEOxg9ZX24

[comtrails70]

I haven't found decent footswitches at Conrad's but there's also Musikding.

This seems to be a very good project, once I got & finished my Moody Sounds Fuzz kit. I could first set it up on a breadboard and mess around with it a bit.


I do have a question concerning this schematics though. The Names and numbers at the side of the Board refer to the Pots, right? Are they numbered on the pots so that there is no mistaking? And Vol2 goes to the out jack? Is all of this right? I am still pretty much a rookie at building, but I do think I can produce decent enough soldering points. And this schematic comtrails posted is the most self-explanatory I've seen.

musikding is really good but i think banzai is cheaper and they have a much bigger inventory.

[Scruffie]

scruffie - cheers man ! I cant actually get to a scanner at the moment but will get it up as soon as i can - you cant download this anywhere ( its not the owners manual ) so will be of some interest to you and others here in the very least.

but def. , I'm in London , so can post and interested in the mod.

Awesome, yeah once you get the scanner going, i'll take a look over the schematics and I might even be able to collect it depending on where you live in London and give it a service.

But sounds good, give me a PM whenever

[phantasmagorovich]

So now I finally did it and built the Rat following the vero layout. I used an IC socket and ordered a couple of ICs to try out. But now it won't do anything. With the LM 358 it does just let the sound of the guitar through as if bypassed, at least on some settings of the volume control. It had LEDs in it, which I've now swapped for the diodes in the layout. With the LEDs it gave a clattering sound that got faster with louder strumming and was the LEDs firing. With the diodes it usually remained silent but with a little luck you could dial in a similar clatter but much slower.

I built everything according to the layout, just that two caps of specific values are electrolytic (with polarity) on the layout but I accidentally got ceramics (w/o polarity) instead.

Any ideas on this?