Rich_S
HomeGrownToneBrewologist
It took me a year to build this thing. I bought all the parts back in winter '10, finished the enclosure, then got busy with other things and didn't get back to it until now. I wanted a Rat, but pedalboard space dictated it had to be a Boss-pedal footprint or smaller. It's built on a "Slow Lorus" board from Madbean. This was a low-budget build, so I drilled a surplus 125-B enclosure that I got for free because it had no back plate. The box was prefinished in redish-pink (or maybe pinkish-red) powdercoat, hence the name "Rosie the Rat".
The photo doesn't show the true color - it's more pinkish than orange for better or worse. Meh, it's what I had in the junk box. You can't see it in the picture, but the finish on the top is uh.... textured. Yeah, that's the ticket, it's textured. What that means is, I accidentally bought a can of Krylon GLOSS clear acrylic instead of my tried-and-true satin acrylic. The gloss started to wrinkle the powdercoat, but I noticed in time, let it cure, and resumed with the satin. (Another box I was painting at the time didn't get off so easy; I had to sand it down to the primer and start over.) In the end, Rosie was not built as a work of art - she's meant to be stomped on with a pair of funky old red Converse hightops.
Nothing out of the ordinary inside. It's an old-school LM308 Rat, with an added switch to provide LED (Turbo Rat) clipping in addition to the standard diodes. The center switch position gives no clipping diodes for yet another sound.
With any luck, I'll get a chance to try it through my amp later in the day. I finished it so late last night that I could only test it through my Vox Amp Plug, which doesn't take boost or dirt pedals well. However, early indications are, it sounds like a Rat. I'm glad I changed my mind at the last minute and added the 3-way clipping switch; there seem to be a lot of different tones in there with the "LED" and "none" options.
The photo doesn't show the true color - it's more pinkish than orange for better or worse. Meh, it's what I had in the junk box. You can't see it in the picture, but the finish on the top is uh.... textured. Yeah, that's the ticket, it's textured. What that means is, I accidentally bought a can of Krylon GLOSS clear acrylic instead of my tried-and-true satin acrylic. The gloss started to wrinkle the powdercoat, but I noticed in time, let it cure, and resumed with the satin. (Another box I was painting at the time didn't get off so easy; I had to sand it down to the primer and start over.) In the end, Rosie was not built as a work of art - she's meant to be stomped on with a pair of funky old red Converse hightops.
Nothing out of the ordinary inside. It's an old-school LM308 Rat, with an added switch to provide LED (Turbo Rat) clipping in addition to the standard diodes. The center switch position gives no clipping diodes for yet another sound.
With any luck, I'll get a chance to try it through my amp later in the day. I finished it so late last night that I could only test it through my Vox Amp Plug, which doesn't take boost or dirt pedals well. However, early indications are, it sounds like a Rat. I'm glad I changed my mind at the last minute and added the 3-way clipping switch; there seem to be a lot of different tones in there with the "LED" and "none" options.
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