Favorite Rat

[Chistopher]

I have been toying around with the idea of replacing the stock tone control on my Rat with a James tone stack, but that would require a daughter board.

[hamerfan]

I have a Sonicake Rude Mouse (same factory as Mooer) and currently building a rat variant with bass pot and a blend for the hard clippers. I like the Fat Rat with a strat.

[treyhaislip]

Have to go with the Proco SOLO. Most versatile to my ears with amazing searing tones. But...I do feel that I've never had a bad experience with a Rat.

[JMP/HBE]

Modified RAT w/ NOS LM308 and some tweaks.

[Aceman]

I remember the rat having some big areas of the controls where nothing happened, not a lot of bass, and being pretty bad at low gain.

Your opinion is your opinion, but I'm thinking you remember wrong.

[Chistopher]

I couldn't tell you, but I see them a lot, so people like them.

[BadAspen]

I'm looking at a used 1981 DRV at my local pawnshop but I'm unable to get a chance to play it. And No Refunds.

Has anyone here tried it and how does it compare to a vintage rat? I remember the rat having some big areas of the controls where nothing happened, not a lot of bass, and being pretty bad at low gain. Has tbe DRV addressed this?

[Driver Blues]

This thread got me looking into RAT clips and I spent maybe a little too much money on a whiteface reissue.

This thing rips! With just 3 controls and the knobs on my guitar I can do just about anything with this thing! Especially with the interactivity that was mentioned earlier.

I could do a whole set with this thing with just the onboard controls on my guitar!

Definitely holding onto this one

[solspirit]

[Chistopher]

Yeah, they definitely have a very narrow sweet spot where you can very quickly go between too much gain and too clean

[devastone]

I'm have a Rat 2 and a JHS Series 3 Distortion which is basically the same thing with a switch which I think basically switches diodes for Rat or Turbo Rat. The form factor just fits better on my board. I love Rats as boosters with the gain low and the volume high.

[RanchManSandy]

I've never been able to get along with my Rat but then again I've never put much effort into trying. What does it stack well with, how do I dial it in?

It stacks well with a 6505 amp with the pedal drive set to, like, 4 and the amp gain set to 3 and the filter knob at about noon.

[Chistopher]

I bought this Rat looking to modify it, but I'm struggling to find any issues that need resolved. Maybe it has a tad too little bass and a tad too much gain for what I usually do, but not enough to change it from stock. The beauty of these things are their flexibility, and I feel anything I do to improve it won't be an improvement so much as narrowing it's scope.

Maybe I will put a 220 nF capacitor in parallel with the clipping diodes to thicken up the clean portion of my sound, but that's all I can think of

[GuitarStv]

I don't notice huge differences between the versions of rat that I've tried to be honest.

[Chistopher]

The thing I like about RATs is that they don't really sound like an amp at all, or even a fuzz. They kind of do their own thing. Running a RAT into a fuzz makes it sound even less like an amp, which is pretty cool, but sometimes it can be a bit extreme. Never tried a TS into one, might give it a shot.

Maybe it's because I wasn't paying as much attention to it back then, but I'm just now noticing the controls on these things are extremely interactive. The filter cuts volume, the gain control effects the way the filter works and increases the bass, rolling the volume back on your guitar cuts a little bit of bass (probably just a treble bleed interaction).