Vintage Pro Co Rat

[WhiteStrat]

Took my son off to college this weekend, and just couldn't resist dropping into the local banjo mart. I like to scour the used goods and in this college town, there were a lot more used goods than up in St. Lou.

Anyway, I picked up a Vintage Pro Co Rat. (Not that it's 30 years old, but it's the model titled "Vintage"--a reissue of sorts, I suppose.)

It seems redundant since I have distortion pedals for the little one channel tube amps, and my big amp--B-52 AT-212--is a 3 channel (2 gain, 1 clean) beast. But I was curious about the Rat mystique (there's 2 words that don't appear together very often) so I picked it up.

I'm glad I did.

This little transistor box actually drives the clean channel on my high gain combo better than the gain channels do. It's smoother and thicker at the same time.

So now the AT-212 is a 4 channel. One gain channel is set to just break up for a bluesy sound, the other gain channel is just above 25% for a nice 70's crunch rhythm sound, there's the unaffected clean channel, and then I punch in the Pro Co Rat (almost dimed out) on the clean channel for a sweet saturated lead sound.

Just thought I'd share.

 

[cephus]

Is that what people use a Rat for? I use the one I bought in 1985 witht eh first knob set at like 8 or 9 o'clock, the middle knob at 12 o'clock and the right knob at about 3 o'clock. Just gives a bit of sustain and sounds "turned up". I never really liked the sound of it with the distortion and filter knobs turned up like that.

Now, my Distortion+ is really gnarley. i set that with both knobs about all the way up. Sounds like freaking van halen to me. Krispy crunchie.

 

[tc4b]

That's my favorite way to use my od (fulltone ocd), just enough 'drive' to fatten it up and crispify it by 2-3%. Nice.

 

[WhiteStrat]

Is that what people use a Rat for? I use the one I bought in 1985 witht eh first knob set at like 8 or 9 o'clock, the middle knob at 12 o'clock and the right knob at about 3 o'clock. Just gives a bit of sustain and sounds "turned up". I never really liked the sound of it with the distortion and filter knobs turned up like that.

Now, my Distortion+ is really gnarley. i set that with both knobs about all the way up. Sounds like freaking van halen to me. Krispy crunchie.

That's my favorite way to use my od (fulltone ocd), just enough 'drive' to fatten it up and crispify it by 2-3%. Nice.

You're definitely right--the Rat works well at those low settings, but I already had those bases covered. And I was just kinda thrilled to find how good it sounded opened up and driving the clean channel into pure distortion. I'm sure as we get to know each other I'll also get into the settings you describe.