mike_shmorgun's Reviews

its an opamp device, the diodes don't even make a huge difference, sure germanium sounds a little different than silicon but mainly is the massive forward voltage drop (compare a distortion+ to OD250). Did you replace whatever opamps were int ehre for LM308s? That's the only audible change to make to a rat in part type and not part value. The 308 has an awful slew rate for an audio opamp and is a big part of the rat's attack and decay character and even a little of its lower gain dirt, that ahze of ahrmonics you get before the diodes are squaring your waveform... adding germanium diodes fucks that up, by the way, they clip so much earlier that the cools tuff the opamp does to your sound gets shaved off to ground. The rat is a weird pedal like the fuzz face or rangemaster in that it takes advantage of design flaws in its gain generating component to create a special sound.

The DeuceTone has different clipping diodes and they actually make a huge difference. That's the point of the pedal. Unfortunately, Pro Co has a habit of advertising pedals as having germanium diodes and then actually using silicon Shottky diodes.

I mean, germanium's a bit smoother than silicon and LEDs, but what always stands out to me is the larger voltage drop. But where do they get off not putting germanium in if you paid for germanium? that's messed up. Its not like diodes are expensive.

Again, that's the difference between the three basic RAT pedals (silicon, germanium, red LED) and the four toggles in the DeuceTone (Clean RAT has no diodes). They told me it was an aftermarket mod because I bought the pedal used and sent me a schematic showing that it's supposed to be 1N270's. That's great, except when you look at the internet and see the sheer amount of complaints people have about find the exact same Shottky diodes in their Dirty and DeuceTone RATs, many brand new.