Anyone here a ProCo RAT lover? I was thinking about getting one, and after reading about the history of this little box, I was wondering if there is a preferred version. That is, at a reasonable price.

All of the different builds seems to mimic the history of the Big Muff.

Well, I don't know if this counts...but it turns out that my favorite distortion box for high gain solos on my Line 6 m13 is modeled on a Rat.

Not really an answer for you 02r96, just joining in the Rat love (albeit it in a digitized kind of way).

I use one. I have a one I bought a longtime ago. I've had to replace the OP amp chip and the switch.

It's on my board. I power it with a battery. I am not sure the adapter input is set for a normal polarity power. Reversed polarity power supply could blow the op amp chip. It uses a mini phono plug on the power input. I bought it around 1988-1990 or so.

I use it for harder rock stuff and I use a Visual Sound OD for stuff that is less hard. The Rat sounded great with my old blackface Twin. Not sure which one I have it just says RAT on the front.

If you like one of the various incarnations of the Rat distortion pedal, you might also like the late '70s IC/Op-Amp version of the EH Big Muff Pi or a good clone thereof such as the Euthymia ICBM; you might even like 'em better.

Between said IC Big Muff and the high-gain channel of the "red-knob" Fender 'The Twin' that I had at the time, I felt like the Rat was "not bad, but I've already got something that's better at what it does".

Rats are great! I managed to break the switch on mine... stepped on it one day and the switch tip shot up and hit me in the face somehow... But it's very versatile and cool.

I have a Rat from around 1980. I still use it for recording sessions. It's pretty beat up, but it sounds good for leads or as a layered tone with other guitars.

Hey, 02R96- Dan- ya might wanna check this out:

Popular modifications to the RAT

(Wikipedia, of all places! )

That's awesome Caev. Whoda thunk Wikipedia would have guitar stuff mods!

Yeah, I know, right?! I was searching up something, following up on mention of one of those Rat-mods in another thread on another forum, and lo and be-hold Google served that Wikipedia link up on a silver platter...

I know this says Rat lovers unite......but I won't be uniting.....specially since I don't know you well enough...... .........

But just to be oppositional, I bought a ProCo RAT in the 80's when they came out. I still remember the ad for it in GP and it listed all these players using one, and I liked them all just about. So I bought it. (i've grown out of that method of choosing gear BTW )

Well, I hated it. I could not get a sound out of that thing to save my ass. I tried all kinds of guitars and amps and all it did was sound fuzzy, whooshy, buzzy, thin, oversaturated, bassy while bright etc etc etc and was like the worst fuzz pedal from the 60's on steroids. Hell, even my old 60's "one-sound" Fender Blender sounded better.

So I 86'd it pronto. I cannot remember if I sold it or took it back.......I think I took it back. I generally do not buy gear I let go, so you know I did not like it.

That said.............I cannot get a tone out of a Mesa Boogie Mk *whatever* to save my life either......but I love the sound of them when other guys play them. I have a ProCo RAT emulation in Digidesign Eleven Rack and it is still not my favorite distortion, but I do use it occasionally.

I reckon if I found a RAT at a yard sale for cheap enough...I'd get it and revisit the situation.........but no way would I pay full pop for one. knowing I'd likely hate it all over again.

Just my take. I still like the way other guys sound using them.

I've had 2 Rats, a reissue of the big box, and one of the smallwer, square shaped one. I liked the smaller one better. I put it through a blackface Princeton Reverb, and liked it almost as much as my Mark III Boogie. I had to roll the distorion back almost all the way, and I kept the tone pretty low as well, or it got pretty spikey sounding. I'd like to try one of the modded ones sometime to see if I liked it as well as the one I had.

baclfacxe Princeton Reverb

Um Picker, is that like a Fender knock off from the former Soviet Union?