LM308???

[Canucker]

has anyone ever tried one of these in a distortion plus? I couldn't get a hold of a LM308 for my rat so I used the 741 I had for a distortion plus....so I'm guessing that means a 308 would do the trick in a distortion plus.

[Eric.nail]

In my experience..Which grant it, it's not a whole lot but...The chips all seem to have a different flavor of distortion. So my guess it that it's personal preference. It also depends on the IC's Pinout. If they match, Then yes they'll work. Try Pedalpartsplus.com for LM308's. I got mine through them. Mammoth Electronics carries them too(mammoth is still backed up on orders due to their blackfriday sale).

[Mark Hammer]

I got mine at Honson, but that was a while back.  No idea if they still carry them.

Keep in mind that the importance of a 308 to the Rat is a function of how it behaves when you aim for gains in the hundreds and thousands.  The max gain in a stock Distortion+ is  213x.  There is also the matter of the input bias current.  A Dist+ provides the Vref through a 1M+1M divider, fed through a 1M resistor to the non-inverting (+) pin.  That's not a whole lot of current.  I have absolutely no idea what the comparable might be for a 308.  Of course if the goal is not to mimic a Dist+ with a 308, but to explore no terrain, then I guess it might not matter a whole lot.

[Tony Forestiere]

Does it also make a difference that the 308 requires an external compensation cap?

[Canucker]

I can't imagine the pinouts being different since I used a 741 in my rat (can't remember where it was advised as a substitute but no way did I make it up).  I saw the 308s at Honsons but they're $8.50 as opposed to sixty cents or whatever the 741 was...and I figured I'd go the cheap route until I knew I had a working project and it would then be a good excuse to do some mail order...the rat worked right away with the 741 and its the best sounding build I've done to date! I can't imagine it sounding better. Sounds amazing with a bass too. I'm going to do the mail order thing soon... so I was just curious if it was worthwhile to order extras for a distortion plus