DVM's Rabid Rodent BYOC Mouse v.2 Proco Rat Clone review

[sunvalleylaw]

looking very cool Bob! Thanks for posting the progress pics. That one with it in the chain, guts only, cracks me up. I have been over at a block party where I got to listen to, then play with some guys doing pretty decent cover music. I got to play an Eric Johnson strat through a Tube Driver pedal into a mic'd Blues Jr, also plugging my strat into the same rig, then play my own rig to finish up. The EJ was nice, but I honestly liked mine just as well. It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait til the next time I get to and have some sick tones dialed up out of my new Rodent!

EDIT: Of course you are going to do some clips before you send it off, yes? I would ask for strat and Dot, since those would be the closest to my rig and soon to be rig. I feel it only fair that you test drive it and record it some to share with the faithful here.

[duhvoodooman***]

Of course you are going to do some clips before you send it off, yes? I would ask for strat and Dot, since those would be the closest to my rig and soon to be rig. I feel it only fair that you test drive it and record it some to share with the faithful here.

But, of course! : :

[tunghaichuan***]

Bob,

That pedal enclosure and PCB look killer. :

Excellent work. I've been following the various completed enclosure threads on the BYOC BBS, but your builds look much better than most of the finished pedals I've seen there.

I've never tried out any of the various Rat circuits. How do they sound in comparison to the various Boss OD/distortion circuits?

tung

[duhvoodooman***]

Thanks, Tung--always appreciate the encouragement. :

A big part of a neat & clean build is a high quality PCB, and I've never seen better than the BYOC boards. Very easy to work on & very forgiving.

To be honest, I really don't have much experience with the Boss distro pedals. The only one I've played (briefly) was a DS-1, which I really didn't care much for in stock form. Too harsh & trebly, IMO. I really bought it just to try one of the Allums mod kits (which, BTW, are very nice & reasonably priced, I thought), which turned it into a much better sounding pedal. Smoothed and filled out the tone very noticeably. Mudcat ended up buying it from me, so maybe he can comment.

As far as the Rat circuit goes, I find it to be kind of the quintessential '80's distortion sound. It doesn't have the thick bottom end a lot of fuzz pedals do, but still has gobs of smooth distortion & sustain. I particularly like to use it with a neck humbucker with the guitar's treble rolled way off--it mimics the famous Clapton "woman tone" almost perfectly. Of the distortion boxes I own, the original version of the BYOC Mouse is my overall favorite--but this new v.2 kit is even better, with the added clipping options. I may have to build one of my own--it's that good.