Thanx. Yeah, I can't wait. I also got a whole bunch of chips with it, including the almighty LM308, thouh the previous owner said differences are very subtle, at best. Will report ASAP
I,ve found it,s really a question of what amp I,m using and what tone settings and levels are. I prefer to set the gain high and dial back the vol. on the sg for clean, then just crank up the vol on the git for grit and dirt. However if I,m using a pedal w the sg std. I'll quite often use rat w a warm amp or a tube scream w a brite amp.
I've yet to find a distortion pedal that doesn't sound like ass to me (with my sound and playing style). Any amp with pre and post volume controls tends to get a good enough sound for me. I do often use a fuzzface or a super fuzz clone for single string riffage, but I turn it back off as soon as I'm playing chords again.
My favourite distortion is from slaving one amp head into another, but there are times when you it's not practical to do that. Just picked up a SolidGoldFX Rock Machine OD, very interesting pedal for thickening up your tone a bit. Been playing it with my '66 Bassman and Green Beret loaded Vox 2X12 cab - quite tasty. [ame]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxcriermcPw[/ame]
Well, tried out my Rat 2, finally... One thing that amazes me is how sensitive the distortion knob is, especially in the first 1/4 of the turn. My main pedals are a behringer TO800 (a very good TS 808 copy), and a Behringer Super Fuzz (a boss FZ-2 copy), and RAT can nearly cover them both, so it fits perfectly in betweeen. Much more hair on the rat than the TS, but still sounds quite organic and friendly to the skull sutures. And has way more bottom end. I still can't say enough good things about the other two pedals, though if I could only keep one, RAT sure covers much more ground. It does color the overall sound much more than the TS, so with just a little tweaking of the pedal, I can use hum SG, p90 SG and a strat on the same amp settings now (good for emergeny replacements during a live show). Plus, TS800 into a clean amp was just a bit too weak for single coils, which is the reason I bought the rat in the first place. Good investment. I'm keeping all 3!
happy tom, I'm tickled to death to hear of your good results with your RAT! I really like the way that it never looses it's tone so to speak. The "Filter" is the key to the tone I've found. By it being sort of backwards, in that it gets darker as you go clockwise than like other pedal's tone does, it lets you cut some of the bite out of it without loosing top end. Of the 4 dirt pedals I own, the RAT is the one that I use and enjoy the most. Again, I am pleased to hear of your RAT being a success for you. Enjoy!! Wade
yep I gotta agree on the filter being key. gear man dude had that filter cranked to 6 oclock then say's it too harsh ya think so. I wish some one would do a real you tube demo if I had the means I would becuase all YT demos Of the rat suck!!!!!! Maybe tom will do a good one once he masters the RAT !!!!!!!
Yes sir, that would be good. As it is, I've used a RAT for decades, but I can't even get a Youtube thing to open. I could just see me trying to do something like that! Shucks, I even failed "Photobucket 101"!! Can anyone say "Wade, stick to what you know?" tom's our best bet here...
proco rat hands down!. love mine. makes my '68 bassman sound like a 100 watt hiwatt gravel dumper on 11!
My only distortion pedal (besides my fuzz) is a Boss DS-1. For the dollars, it's not a bad piece of kit.
A couple of days ago I traded an MXR CAE Boost + Fulltone Catalyst for a Fulltone GT-500... I was BLOWN AWAY!!. If this isn't the best distortion pedal I've tried, don't know wich it will be... really really really nice, lots of gain, pick sensitive, organic sound. Love it so much!
I have a 20+ years old Boss DS-1. I use to think it was amazing and in some way still is. Now a day I hardly use it. I have turn to the amps natural distortion for almost everything. For blues and some classic rock, Fender Blues Jr. Everything else Marshall DSL 40 and for heavy metal peavey 6505+.
That's what Randy Bachmann used to do. Kept blowing up his amps too. So, Gar Gillies built the Herzog.
You'll only blow your amp if you daisychain the amps with full speaker output level. If you use line level to slave, you'll never blow an amp. In fact, the Herzog was basically just a Champ with a big-ass resistor on the speaker out to bring down the load to line level.
