Anyone use ProCo stuff?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TelePaul
  • Start date Start date
TelePaul

TelePaul

J to the R O C
Anybody playing with a Rat, Turbo Rat etc? How are you finding it? Birthday next week (the big 23 :O) and will probably add a pedal to my collection. I'm a few distortions already but have heard good things about the Rat. If anyone has any other suggestions with regard a slightly different sounding OD/Distortion, I'm all ears.
 
I built a Rat clone last year and it is great with some amps and not too good on others. Over all it is a great alternative to the typical Tube Screamer.
 
Fulltone OCD; I bought it a year ago, planning to try many over time and make up my mind. But I've fallen so deeply in love with it, I'm not looking for others any more.
 
TelePaul said:
Anybody playing with a Rat, Turbo Rat etc? How are you finding it? Birthday next week (the big 23 :O) and will probably add a pedal to my collection. I'm a few distortions already but have heard good things about the Rat. If anyone has any other suggestions with regard a slightly different sounding OD/Distortion, I'm all ears.
Click to expand...

I had a Rat a long time ago. I never found it as anything more than bland.
I think there were a lot less choices when it came out, so it got a reputation which has stuck with it.
 
All I've got from ProCo is my guitar cables. I like em.
I also like cheese.
:D
 
Outlaws said:
I had a Rat a long time ago. I never found it as anything more than bland.
I think there were a lot less choices when it came out, so it got a reputation which has stuck with it.
Click to expand...
When it came out, there also wasn't such a dearth of high gain guitar amps. You were expected to plug this into a JCM800 and go. There wasn't much else one would try to use it for...
 
Farview said:
When it came out, there also wasn't such a dearth of high gain guitar amps. You were expected to plug this into a JCM800 and go. There wasn't much else one would try to use it for...
Click to expand...

I gotta agree with Jay, high gain amps were far from whats out there now!
I'm really not a Fuzz-tone fan, I had a Big Muff and an MXR Distortion+ when I started out many years ago, mostly due to the cheezy amps I had to boost with them. Fuzz more or less hides the tone characteristics of your guitar, and I now just use the gain on the amp and a volume pedal-to get the guitar's tone back.
 
Wow not alot of love for the Rat. You guys seem to be saying that it's trading off it's rep. Cool cool. Well then it's back to the drawing board for me. ANyone care to amke suggestions on Distortion pedals?
 
love my rat. mine is an early 80's big box version. i play either a strat or tele into an early 80s fender concert amp and leave the rat on basically all of the time. gain around 10 or 11 o'clock, volume loud enough to be equal to the volume without the pedal on and filter turned up far enough to neither be adding or taking away from the amount of treble that the amp already has.

in this way it is a nice medium to low gain overdrive that adds a nice marshally character to my fender amp. and i can stack other overdrives in front of it when i need a boost and it still sounds natural.



i would never get rid of this particular rat pedal.
 
TelePaul said:
Wow not alot of love for the Rat. You guys seem to be saying that it's trading off it's rep. Cool cool. Well then it's back to the drawing board for me. ANyone care to amke suggestions on Distortion pedals?
Click to expand...

Budda Zenman
 
...

I have the Pro Co Road Kill distortion.

It's a decent pedal with Dist, Level and Tone controls. Incl. AC adapter jack. I'm not sure how I'd pit it against other distortion pedals. What is a "fine" distortion box, or "fine" distortion, anyway? Something that's grittier? Smoother? Fuller tone? F/E, the cleanest setting on the Road Kill is pretty gritty, and the top end dist is full on compressed fuzztone. The tone control gives a bit of versatility. I use it about 50% of the time I need distortion. I like it pretty well. I also use a DOD OD250 and a Boss BE-5(multi) on occasion.
 
I have several old Rats that see some action for bass, piccolo and guitar, it is a love it or hate it thing but I like the touch response and false harmonics. Hooking 2 up in tandem is an interesting way to get distortion and feedback.
 
i've always thought that if you can't get something useable out of a rat that you are doing it wrong. maybe your amp or guitar is the problem. or the way that you are setting it up. either way they almost always will work if you know how to use them.

however i've not tried the newer ones with revised circuits and such. i'm talking about real deal rats with lm308 ic's in them. i did try one of the newer models with the slanted top and didn't like it.
 
Alot of pedals come and go on my board, but the Turbo RAT has a permanent spot. Great pedal for 90's rock distortion or classic rock.
 
With rat's, usually the older they are, the better. If you're dealing with loud amps, a vintage rat will give you a fat, yet crunchy OD. A new Rat will give you a tinny, crunchy OD. A new Turbo Rat will give a good mix of each. Of course the older the rat, the better the sound, so this applies to the Turbo rat as well as the regular rat.
 
TelePaul said:
So despite being labelled a distortion, it's more of an OD?
Click to expand...


ime it's a distortion -- and a very lovely distortion at that -- and not at all an OD. I've had a Rat since 1988 or '89, so I suppose the new ones might be different, but this original Rat was excellent at getting a buzzy, sinuous, mid-70's Robert Fripp fuzzbox sound without sounding as nasty or synthetic as either an MXR Distortion+ or an EH Big Muff.

I still use it fairly regularly, alongside an original TS-9 Tube Screamer. Now that's an overdrive. Apples & Oranges.

============

I also have a ProCo patchbay in my studio, and I've used ProCo speaker selectors in other studios.
 
This is how I use my early-mid-80s rat. But, t's not a big box:

second skin said:
love my rat. mine is an early 80's big box version. i play either a strat or tele into an early 80s fender concert amp and leave the rat on basically all of the time. gain around 10 or 11 o'clock, volume loud enough to be equal to the volume without the pedal on and filter turned up far enough to neither be adding or taking away from the amount of treble that the amp already has.

in this way it is a nice medium to low gain overdrive that adds a nice marshally character to my fender amp. and i can stack other overdrives in front of it when i need a boost and it still sounds natural.



i would never get rid of this particular rat pedal.
Click to expand...

I have a really old distortion+ on my pedalboard, too in front of it. If I run them both at once, it breathes fire, for sure.

But, to be honest, it's just what I have. They're only slightly unique-sounding. Categorically, they're cool old pedals. But they are just pedals I bought in the mid 80s and never got rid of. Not really special at all.

I do sub gigs with another guy who is a great country player who played on the road with a lot of country greats. Awesome player. Great tone. He has some shit boss OD. I think it's yellow. Some turbo distortion or something. He gets a great sound from it. It all depends on how you set them. He puts his on top of his amp so he can see the knobs and tweaks them a lot to dial it in.

I just have always set mine like this: 9, 12, 2 o'clocks.

- | /

And it sounds the way I like it. But I'm not super particular anymore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top