Product reviewsPRO CO RAT2 Distortion Electric Guitar Effects Pedal FREE SHIPPING NEW

Modded rat

This is a great drive pedal and has become my go to when I want a tighter distortion sound than my tubes provide. The 3 different gain stages give me a wide range of options and the dead bat mod is fun to mess with to get even more tonal range. You can easily go from a tight modern distortion sound to a fuzz type sound with a sweep of the filter knob. This pedal has actually inspired me to look into doing my own mods and pedal building so kudos to alchemy audio for a job well done. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: alchemyaudio

Good Classic Rock Pedal. Well built.

PROs: The RAT is good for some classic 80's pop metal sounds, AC-DC type sounds.

CONS: Not very versatile.

FINAL: Great sounding, well built, classic rock pedal. But, to me, it's a one trick pony. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: *boynton_pro_au...

Run it into a tube amp for awesome tone.

The RAT is one of those pedals like the TS9 that everyone should have at some time in their playing life. But in my experience, the tone you get from it depends a much on your amp as it does the pedal.

I originally tied out a frinds early '90s RAT with a solid state practice amp. I hated it. I couldn't dial in a tone that sounded good no matter what I did.

After I bought my tube amp (a VOX AC30C2) I decided to give it a try again as I noticed that a number of my pedals I already had sonded much different through the tube amp. I was absolutley blown away. The RAT running through a good tube amp (even one like the AC30) sounded much better, much warmer, and really brought out some great FUZZ tones. That's right, I said FUZZ. YMMV but to me the RAT is as much a fuzz pedal as it is a "distortion".

If you want a great distortion pedal for your solid state amp, look elsewhere, but if you have a tube amp and you want it to get all fat, nasty, and broken up, even the newer RAT pedals will do wonders.

A side note: if you are proficient with a soldering iron, I would recommend desoldering the OPAMP and soldering in a DIP8 socket. Then try out a number of different OPAMPs in the circuit. The RAT is farily easy to mod on your own if you know what you are doing and there is a wealth of knowledge on the internet to help you out. Additionally, there are a number of mod services out there that will mod your "new" RAT to a more vintage spec at a resonable price. To date, I have modded mine with a standard BOSS/Ibanez power jack and changed the OPAMP and I couldn't be happier.Read full review...

Great all purpose distortion pedal. A classic!

I've been using the RAT pedal since the 80's, and to my ears the new model sounds just as good as the vintage ones regardless of the chip they are using.Blues,Zeppelin, Trower, it's all there. I typically have the distortion knob set at about ten o'clock which covers a lot of musical ground.It's also still built like a tank which makes it great for gigging.

This is a very versatile pedal that can get you from mild overdrive to full out fuzz. I have always liked the Filter knob rather than a standard tone knob. The Filter knob is a treble cut, allowing you to cut the high frequencies while leaving the bass intact without making it muddy.

If I could could only have one distortion pedal on my board, it would be the Proco RAT!Read full review...

rat pedal delivers

Pedal arrived promptly and in excellent condition. Very easy to dial in.
Big tone. Great pedal. Nice response going from quiet playing to loud playing.
Even with lots of distortion dialed in I am able to play supporting lines very smoothly and then get really loud when needed.
I really like the Filter on this pedal. Heavy filter gives more of a fuzz sound and less filter gives a clean saturated distortion as well as louder signal. I think the Rat is just a more practical pedal than Ibanez TS-9's or any other boutique pedals because of the price and sound quality. I know players with multiple distortions and overdrives in their effects chain which is totally cool but if I could only have one it would be the Rat.Read full review...

ProCo Rat - Original and 2

The most Awesome Pedal ever... perfect controls... perfect nuances between effects... great fuzz characteristics... great sustain adder... I love these things, been using them since 1984. The only pedal I use besides a crybaby.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: musicgear4u

You can't go wrong when you buy a used Rat2 for around 50 bucks on Ebay.

Two of my all time favs, MXR Dist 1, and the Rat. MXR changes tone to use it for a lead pedal. Have to change tone settings on the amp. Seems like all manufactures have to push upper mids. TONE CONTROLS ON THE PEdALS DON'T DO IT. The Rats filter is perfect for a one knober. Works both upper mids and leaves the brite sound in. I bought this to use on my back up pedal board. A Rat is on my main board. It stays in the trailer and always seems to be up front. So I do some fillin gigs and needed it. The Rat2 seems to have a little more gain than the older one I've had for 25 years. These are one of the best pedals you can ever have. Keep one in your gig bag when that 300 dollar, "Hand Wired" pedal fails.Read full review...

Classic Rat !

The Rat pedal is a classic and was my first pedal in 1986 when hi gain amps weren’t affordable to 15 year old kids. That pedal was mean ! It had the original lm308 chip and gave me the Kill Em All sound I craved. Fast forward to 2020 and the pedal has not changed much. It’s mean and can give you fuzz to mean hi gain rhythm and violin line like sustain on leads. For $69.99 it is affordable and awesome.

Cons : you can’t power this pedal with a standard Boss power supply. It’s either buy a Rat power supply/wall wart or run it on batteries. Also, the battery compartment is plastic and not as tank like as the rest of the pedal. The changing of chips does make the pedal lose some of its magic. The new chip is fine but I do miss the lm308 and maybe it’s hype I’m falling for. It likely is.

So what can you do ? I sent my pedal of to Utah to be rehoused. The pedal itself is hard to adhere to a pedalboard bc it is so heavy and awkward. So mine is being put in a more pedalboard friendly housing. Also, all the components like in and out jacks etc will be replaced/upgraded as well as some cheap components inside the pedal. You also get the lm308 chip. Hell yeah ! For $150 you get a massively improved pedal. Do you need to do this ? No of course not. But if you want the best Rat pedal you can get ( which in the new housing also allows being powered by a Boss style power supply via wall wart or pedalboard) then the mod will be a fun way to modify an already smoking pedal.
Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: sweetwatersound

I couldn't love this pedal more

This pedal had me hooked on the first power chord. Evan the heavy distortion is tight and musical. Like nothing I've played before, other than high quality amp distortion, but I need to keep my amp clean. There's so many tonal options too. Very high quality. Great fit and finish on the add ons. Ridiculous quality for the price. I'm thrilled shitless. Fantastic job by Alchemy. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: alchemyaudio

It's OK.

It's just OK. I have not used an original RAT to compare to, but I can compare to other distortion pedals. The RAT2 is just OK. If distortion is past 10 or 11 O'clock, it's basically fuzz. At about 9 is where I would use it, and seems to be the only place it kinda has the RAT tone we all know and love. Filter knob can get very harsh when turned down. I typically have it turned pretty high to cancel out some of the brittle highs (turning counterclockwise increases highs). Volume is volume. As someone has mentioned, the pedal really is finicky when it comes to the amp you're using. I have a single channel 100W all tube head, and turning the pre WAY down on my head to get a clean tone to use this, doesn't really sound that great. A friend with a two channel amp using my pedal on his clean channel sounds pretty good though. Seems the cleaner the signal path of the channel is, the better this pedal will sound. I will obviously keep it around, but I'm a bit bummed it doesn't immediately plug in, and sound like the classic RAT tone I was looking for. Having read many mixed reviews of this, and not trying before buying, I'd suggest trying it out first. Good luck!

EDIT: Tried it last night on a clean amp into 2x12's, and it actually sounds pretty good. Still can't turn the distortion super high, but it's sweet spot is right around 10 O'clock. Read up a bit, and seems a few people do use the RAT on their dirty channel, with distortion WAY down, and volume higher up. Basically more of a booster. I will experiment more, as I'm sure I can get it to sound good through my single channel high gain amp. As with anything, it takes more than two seconds to dial in an awesome tone.Read full review...

It's a RAT!

Not a lot to be said about a RAT that hasn't been said already. One of the all time great dirt boxes, and for good reason. It can go from slightly dirty, almost like a boost, all the way up to fuzzy, raspy, nasty distortion. A RAT has a certain character to its distortion that's not really able to be explained without hearing one. It's a love/hate thing, and I love it. A few things to add, I hear about the shoddy construction of the newer ones... myself, it looks pretty solid. Maybe not as good as some of the boo-teek jobs costing $150 more, but I don't see one dying on you anytime soon. And as far as old LM308 RATs from the 80's vs. the newer ones, tone is so subjective. The older ones do seem to have overall better tone, IMHO, but live in a band mix, I see no problem with newer ones. They sound great too.Read full review...