I got the amp, and it was time to build a distortion pedal. I found the Electrosmash website with great analysis of the Pro Co Rat pedal. I also bought the ‘How to Modify Guitar Pedals‘ book and found some common modification to the Rat pedal. First I built the prototype with a LM308 chip. I did it the old way, drawing lines with permanent marker on a PCB board.
As I mentioned somewhere else, my dad is an art restorer and, aside from other things he collects, he loves Japanese prints – and so do I. After looking through a catalogue, I found the image of a Samurai fighting a skeleton from Utagawa Kuniyoshi. I asked my dad to paint it on the enclosure of the prototype.
The pedal sounded great, but according to the book and the internet, it could be modified to sound even better. So I did the 3-way switching to choose from silicon, germanium or LED diodes clipping. Then I read some post about one guy modifying it for a bass guitar. Great! Our bass player might need it for a few of our songs. By accident, I wired the add-on parts in the wrong sequence and it made the pedal sound even better with the bass guitar. So I added a 2-way switch for that.
I ordered some nice knobs and switches from Tube Town, downloaded some PCB creator software to design the final circuit I wanted to use, and asked the guys at Kavalir (the printers that made all of my amp panels and logos) to print the circuit to the PCB board.
I also asked the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design if I could use my version of the Skeleton from the Utagawa Kuniyoshi painting. I redrew it, converted it to vectors, and ask the printers to print that to the top of enclosures.
Below is a video of me making the pedal and some photos.
