Sentimental Bob Electronics' Tephra delivers a wonderfully potent extended range take on the Rat Distortion - with added 6 x Clipping Options, Octave and Powerful Independent Boost

What we have here is a further extended take on the EQD Life Pedal essentially - in a compact enclosure. It’s similar to my Demiurge Doomy O))) - with second Boost Footswitch, while the Tephra delivers additional clipping options and somewhat more range.

The amount of range in this pedal is extraordinary - particularly with both Distortion (+60dB) and Boost  (+30dB) applied together. And the Clean Boost is fully independent and can be brought to bear on other pedals in your signal chain - which is really useful. Generally I find the metal can LM308’s can render a little softer and less raspy than the chip variants, while Sentimental Bob’s Volodomyr - with his clever clipping options and enhanced circuit tuning makes that distinction difficult to discern on this particular variant. This has the honour of being my 44th Rat style Distortion in the Reference Collection.

There is vast range avaialable on every dial, and all the clipping modes sound fantastic - where my particular favourites on the Tephra are the Asymmetrical, LED and Ge Modes. And where I usually end up settling for the greater sustain of the LED Turbo Rat mode - on this pedal I think I very slightly prefer the Germanium clipping - as it delivers slightly more harmonics and texture into the mix. Germanium typically adds a little more grit into the sound - and whatever volume drop that might occur there is more than compensated by that superb Clean Boost channel. The Clean Boost also adds sustain to the output of course!

This is every bit the top tier Rat Distortion - up there with all the very best of this genre - which for me are typically the more extended range editions. I do like the occasional standard 3-knob Rat too - but find that the Extended Range varieties deliver a lot more - which better suits my preferences.

Controls - Volume, Clipping : OpAmp / Asymmetrical Silicon / Symmetrical Silicon / MOSFET / LED / Germanium, Distortion (+60dB), Boost (+40d), Filter, Octave, Boost Footswitch, Bypass Footswitch.

Clipping option Rat variant equivalents :

• OpAmp ≈ Deucetone Rat
• Asymmetrical ≈ Solo Rat
• Symmetrical ≈ Standard / White Face Rat
• LED ≈ Turbo Rat
• Ge ≈ You Dirty Rat

Preferred settings - Volume @ 3 o’c, Clipping on Ge, Distortion @ 2 o’c, Boost @ 2 o’c, Filter @ 8 o’c, Octave @ Noon, Boost Footswitch On, Distortion Footswitch On.

You really can’t go wrong with this Rat variant - it’s currently on sale too @ $180 on the Sentimental Bob Reverb.com store. This is most definitely a top tier Rat for me, and comes highly recommended! I would be very surprised if others weren’t as bowled over by this pedal as I am - it really is exceedingly potent - and of course sounds properly full-on and fantastic across all its modes of deployment!

Note that Sentimental Bob electronics pedals are typically made to order - mine were made in the week following the order, and then took around 2 weeks to arrive from Ukraine - which is actually surprisingly good going. So you should make allowances for a month really from the time you submit and pay for your order.

The Tephra distortion is already perfect as is - while since it uses those soft-touch digital footswitches, I can’t help but think that you could engineer the Jackson Audio style dual press - so you can switch the Octave in and Out on-the-fly - that’s the only nice-to-have tweak I would advocate for!