Favorite Rat

C

Chistopher

malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
What's y'alls quintessential Rat? I like the Big Box reissue and the Fat Rat. I've never tried anything else except fiddling around with a JHS Pack Rat, but none of those impressed me as much as the real thing. I've heard nothing but good things about the 1981
 
Yoh Christopher, nice question. I bought the original big box Rat in the early 80s and it was my go to distortion pedal for decades. I loved it but we became seperated a few years ago and as I started building up my new rig I needed new torque. I had previously run a TC Electronics ark Matter and ordered one through Sweetwater but they were out of stock so I ordered a new small box Rat.
s...
I like the new small box Rat better. it is not as grainy or harsh as the big box Rat. But then again I am playing different guitars through different amps so who knows. I'm running it into the front of an 18 watt HW Marshall and a Mesa mark V 35 and it kills. Proco makes killer stuff and it's hard to go wrong with any choice.

my 2 cents...
 
Straight ahead Rat clone in a smaller enclosure built by Chicago Stompworks. It's called Mr Vermin. It sounds very stereotypical!
 
My MIA RAT2 showed up in one piece today, despite the UPS's best efforts. Some goon was selling a pretty clean one for $90 so I snagged it up. Far cry from what they used to go for, but cheaper than a new Chinese one. Obviously I had to go American because they enclosure is so much cooler.

Forgot how cool these things were. You may be able to find better sounds elsewhere with your fancy booteeks and modeling but the mojo of these things is through the roof.
 
I have played original Rat's back in the day, and since Hollywood Blvd, have had a few Rats. I did, early on have one on my board, and gigged an original 81/2/3 or so. I used it as a 3rd dirt channel into the clean on my Marshall VS100R.I also have currently the following:

1. Mooer Black Secret
2. Ikebe Rat2 (white)
3. Proco Solo

All in all, I have to say the Proco Solo is my favorite of all of them, for no other reason than the Flexibility; Hot, Melt and Burn gain modes, and a Tone and Scoop control.

That said, a generic Rat2 is all the Rat anyone needs for anything that needs a Rat.

The Mooer black Secret is really good (as is the Mosky Black Rat). The Turbo mode is nice for those who want to slam a Marshall or whatever.


There are so many good Rat Clones today, can't miss: 1981, Hartman, Katzenkonig, Rattler, Ratsbane, even the Joyo Splinter, and of course, for those who can't decide, the Pack Rat

They all do "Rat" pretty darn well. It isn't a hard circuit to do apparently. And I am a believer in LM308 doesn't mean a thing.
 
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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?
 
Playing my MIC Rat right now, sounds great with my strats into my amp just starting to break up, gain 6 o clock filter all the way to the right and volume at 3 o clock. Had not even played on one since mabe the 90's.Bought this a couple years ago and love it.
 
I used a Rat2 for a lot of years, through college mostly.
It sounded good for back then.
I find them too fat and sluggish these days.
 
To me, the cheese doesn't stand alone. Using a Rat into a clean amp will net you the most generic distortion pedal sound you can get. Not necessarily a bad thing depending on your use case, but it isn't really the most inspiring to me. I like to use mine with a Tubescreamer type circuit to boost into it, so that the midrange clips more than the other frequencies. I also like to use another distortion pedal after it. 3 consecutive lower gain sounds instead of one high gain sound.
 
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).
 
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
 
'59 said:
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?
Click to expand...

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