Starving a Rat

[BeZo]

Anyone ever sag the voltage to a Rat pedal? Does it behave like a fuzz, or something different?

When I used to play with fuzz, I always starved the fuzzes to get that splatty tone and weird decay. I kinda like it. That's why I ended up at Zvex fuzzes, because they all have that feature built in (mostly). Does that work with distortions too? Which distortions would fall apart like fuzz when the battery dies?

 

[Music&Chaos]

Anyone ever sag the voltage to a Rat pedal? Does it behave like a fuzz, or something different?

When I used to play with fuzz, I always starved the fuzzes to get that splatty tone and weird decay. I kinda like it. That's why I ended up at Zvex fuzzes, because they all have that feature built in (mostly). Does that work with distortions too? Which distortions would fall apart like fuzz when the battery dies?

I just love bias knobs on fuzzes and the like to alter voltage. I have not tried this with a RAT but I am following the logic and think it could be a lot of fun.

 

[Music&Chaos]

Sold a buddy of mine a power supply that had knobs on some of the input to change voltage going into the device. Pretty cool feature.

 

[griff10672]

I just saw a add somewhere for a pedal that does the 9 volt sag ....

Fuzzes run off transistors ... they'll do funky things when you mess with the bias voltage

The rat runs off of a single op amp IC ....

Not sure you'll get the same effect .... but who knows ... I think it will just work till it dies

 

[BeZo]

I just saw a add somewhere for a pedal that does the 9 volt sag ....

Fuzzes run off transistors ... they'll do funky things when you mess with the bias voltage

The rat runs off of a single op amp IC ....

Not sure you'll get the same effect .... but who knows ... I think it will just work till it dies

Yeah. Upon further research, it doesn't work as well with OP Amp circuits. I still wanna try it, but I'm tempering my expectations.

What distortion circuits would work with the voltage sag trick? The OCD is OP Amp too, right?

 

[griff10672]

OCD is dual op amp based ...

 

[BeZo]

Here is an old Wampler video where he sags the voltage to an OCD. It seems like the concept will work.

 

[griff10672]

I run two VooDoo Labs Mondo's under my board that have the Sag feature .... I never use it ...

I watched the whole vid ..... it made the blues driver sound a lot better .....

some pedals use transistors and op amps ...if the input and output stages are transistor based ... I guess you could alter the sound without totally killing the opamp's power ..... I got to go look at the Blues driver schematic now .... cause I think that's the case on that

 

[griff10672]

the blues driver is a real interesting circuit ..... it's pretty unique actually compared to the norm ( SD-1 , TS's )

it combines several JFET's .... some other transistors .... and has an op amp in the output stage ...

I built one a long time ago ..... I remember not liking it much .... maybe I should give it another go

 

[BeZo]

My Cioks don't have a voltage sag feature. I need to get an external device to experiment. I want to try to take the OCD down to like 7-8v.

 

[griff10672]

My Cioks don't have a voltage sag feature. I need to get an external device to experiment. I want to try to take the OCD down to like 7-8v.

you need a SAG pedal Bezo ?

 

[BeZo]

you need a SAG pedal Bezo ?

Yeah. I've been looking at them. I need it to be able to experiment. I might just order some power jacks and make one. The Gigrig Virtual Battery looks like the right size and format. Then again a big knob might be cool, like the Saturnworks. If I stash it underneath my pedalboard and "set it and forget it", the Gigrig would be the ticket. Then again, I love an OCD at 18v, and it would be nice to switch between starved and juiced. I don't need it though, because I have the lead channels on the Mark V and the Stiletto already. Really, I think a comparable tone to my rhythm tone with less stability and more sag might be the ticket. I favored the OCD because it got close with a slightly different gain structure. I think a starved and saggy OCD would be a great counterpunch to my main amp tone.

 

[griff10672]

Yeah. I've been looking at them. I need it to be able to experiment. I might just order some power jacks and make one. The Gigrig Virtual Battery looks like the right size and format. Then again a big knob might be cool, like the Saturnworks. If I stash it underneath my pedalboard and "set it and forget it", the Gigrig would be the ticket. Then again, I love an OCD at 18v, and it would be nice to switch between starved and juiced. I don't need it though, because I have the lead channels on the Mark V and the Stiletto already. Really, I think a comparable tone to my rhythm tone with less stability and more sag might be the ticket. I favored the OCD because it got close with a slightly different gain structure. I think a starved and saggy OCD would be a great counterpunch to my main amp tone.

I think JHS makes one too .....

 

[BeZo]

I think JHS makes one too .....

Yeah, but it's from JHS.

 

[BeZo]

I finally got my little voltage reducer pedal. I'm going to experiment with sagging the voltage to the OCD and the Rat and see what happens.

Wish me luck.