Скачать или смотреть Fuzz Imp DRAT! (Distortion)

https://www.fuzzimp.com/product/drat

A story in 3 parts detailing an experience of missed opportunities and happenstance and eventual victory.

I started playing guitar in the early 2000s, I bought my first pedal (Digitech Death Metal) in about 2003, and I would work summers in the family business. One of the other employees was a local musician and saw my enthusiasm for playing and love for gear and mentioned having a few spare pedals kicking around his house.

One of said pedals was a Proco Brat. It worked amazing, even with my Squier bullet SSS Strat and MG10 combo, it made the perfect pop punk sound I always was chasing and sounded better than the built in drive on my combo. Plus at practice I could kick in a pedal and go from clean to dirty which was mega useful.

The Brat had more or less 3 major drawbacks that led me to eventually regift and not have it in regular rotation: it had no indicator LED, a very fragile footswitch, and no power Jack (battery only)

This was pre internet days and even the modding and DIY scene was mostly a handful of books and being from a small town it wasn’t obvious that all 3 were relatively easily solved

Fast forward to the early days of Fuzz Imp, whilst in conversation with my first PCB designer and bouncing ideas for pedal offerings I asked what he had worked on that was rat like. He mentioned he did a careful trace of his Brat pedal and had made a board already and would license. PERFECT. So I get it licensed and rebranded, but the only product I used it for in the early days had a lot of mods to it. I don’t think I played it stock or to spec at all.

One of the major differences between a brat and a rat pedal is an additional quad of soft clipping diodes that kind of gate the sound. Not sure why that was included in the design back in the 90s maybe it helped things? Regardless. Brats have a tasty softer top end and tight low end that isn’t too soggy.

That short lived mod version eventually fell off the menu in favor of other designs and even though I had learned the ins and outs of the schematic I only had one other time done some work with it.

Then. A couple weeks back I was kicking around for something to do over a weekend and checked the closet scrapyard for something I could resurrect and make functional. For some reason I had a full board wired up with some extra wiring that I had set aside for ? Reason. Redid a few things and fired up a “stock” Brat on my board. I was using a Tele bridge single which I hadn’t really tried and OH MAN. What glory emerged at this pairing through the plexi Wangs head I have for cleans.

I then decide kind of inspired by my friend Eric or Frost Giant fame, who recently did a run of faithful repro of some Black Russians kind of as a quiet side project that maybe it isn’t so bad to “modern equivalent” a favorite from our past. Hence. DRAT! Is born.

Anyway this particular pedal has more story than most and I figured was worth sharing.