the rat pedal has been a go-to distortion for guitarists in many different genres
it can deliver that classic crunchy overdrive or crank it up and it can deliver fuzzy distortions
and it also has a pretty unique filter section as well in this video we're going to see if the free
nembrini audio black distortion can deliver that rat pedal sound i'm going to check it
out on guitars obviously i'll compare it to a pedal and i'll also check it out on some other
instruments i'm zane welcome to audio tech tv i've included a link down in the description
to the free nembrini audio black distortion it's available on mac or windows as vst2 vst3
au and aax formats and also to note you do need an ilock account to use this it's free to get one
and you don't need that dongle now let's jump in so before we give it a listen i just want to talk
about the signal chain for this i recorded my guitar into a di that was going directly
into my audient id44 audio interface and also on this track i do have the hybrit
lepou plug-in this is an amp head and then i have kabin from analog obsession and this is a
cabinet plug-in so i wanted the pedal to go through an amp head and into a cabinet just like
you would be using a real guitar pedal so this is what it sounds like with the distortion off
so it's a pretty clean guitar sound let's enable the black distortion
and hear what that sounds like
so that's about where i like to use the rat distortion right near the beginning of the drive
it kind of gives that nice classic crunch but as you heard when we crank it this thing can deliver
massive distortion now let's try it on another track that's a little more heavier by design
here's what this track sounds like without the black distortion very clean now let's enable it
so i really like that filter it can filter out some of that harshness at the top
and also brings out some of that bottom end if you turn it to the right if you turn it to
the left it kind of allows all that high-pitched stuff to go through and you'll hear some of the
harshness but maybe that's desirable in some sounds and in some settings
that's what it sounds like on guitar now i want to compare it to a pedal so i have
this black rat distortion pedal it is from mosky not sure if you can see that on there
it's a very budget price battle i don't have a rat anymore but this one is supposed to sound just
like a rat and it kind of competes with something that's also supposed to sound like a rat but isn't
so i'm gonna get this hooked up and then we'll listen to the guitar through this and compare it
with the plugin all right so i have it connected it's in here and i've just routed it
in there like it's a plugin so it's going to go through the same chain of the hybrid
and kabin the signal chain and the audio is the exact same so i'm just going to go over
and start to listen to the black rat pedal and we'll hear how that sounds
all right sorry about that i had to hold the camera while i was adjusting that so
the quality of me adjusting the dials wasn't the greatest but i actually like
the plugin better than the black wrap pedal so i'm going to disable the pedal
and we'll play around with this again just to remind you of how this one sounded
in my opinion this is a lot nicer than that pedal when we got up to the heavier drive
on the pedal it just it sounded terrible now let's just try it out on a couple of
other instruments that aren't guitars so i have easy drummer loaded up so we'll listen to what
the nembrini audio black distortion sounds like on drums here
all right maybe if you really wanted to mangle some drums up
that could be good on there just thought i would try it out now let's try it out
on a synth track so here's what the synth sounds like without the distortion
let's add it in there
all right so that was pretty interesting you might want to try that sometime put this on to your
synth sounds maybe even try it out on basses drums like i showed you whatever is it worth downloading
absolutely if you want that rat sound i wish i had a rat pedal to compare this to directly but
i do know from using rats for years that this does give you that rat sound and it's a free pedal
well worth the download and if you want to check out 20 free guitar amp sims click the video
on the screen right now if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up
also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this thank you so
much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon