Pawn shop find: ProCo Rat.

[Fingerpickingood]

Several of you have recommended this to me, and I've seen its merits touted on many OD/distortion threads. I found one, in near mint condition, with the box... For $50. This is a worthy pickup, yes???

 

[gregmon79]

Several of you have recommended this to me, and I've seen its merits touted on many OD/distortion threads. I found one, in near mint condition, with the box... For $50. This is a worthy pickup, yes???

It's a decent price. I think they go for $100 new. The problem is, those will drop your lows. It's a seriously tasty pedal, but unless it's modded with that ruetz mod or for bass, it is going to rob your low end. Severely.

There are a ton of better options out there for you though if you want a rat. They'll be more than $50, but they'll be worth it.

Blower box
Rat/cat tail
Volt thrower
Wood cutter
Don't shred on me

Those are all pretty affordable. The volt thrower and wood cutter are a little on the high side, but from what I hear, very worth it. I've been quite happy with the blower box for a while now. And I have a rat tail on the way too.

 

[bassbrad]

50 bucks is decent and it will bears to flip if u don't like it. I luv a Rat on guitar and piccolo bass, not so much on bass even w a clean blend pedal. Ymmv.

 

[JimmyM]

Whether it works for you on bass or not, I'd say that's a pretty good score.

 

[Fingerpickingood]

To clarify: I do not want for overdrive with my current setup; I've simply taken a headlong tumble into the rabbit hole of The Effects Effect.

 

[shinybeast]

See if you can get a Boss LS-2 to go with the Rat. If you put the Rat in loop A and leave Loop B clean and set it in A+B mix mode, you can mix back in your clean signal for bass retention. The prominent upper midrange bite of the Rat helps keep it from being buried in a clean blend as can happen with some other dirt pedals.

Rat-based pedals are a unique flavor of dirt. Unless you already have a Rat-based pedal in your set-up, you can probably find a setting that's not going to be redundant with your other overdrives.

 

[blindrabbit]

Several of you have recommended this to me, and I've seen its merits touted on many OD/distortion threads. I found one, in near mint condition, with the box... For $50. This is a worthy pickup, yes???

I'm with @gregmon79 in saying this a decent price. I've seen them priced at that before. The Rat marked is relatively fluid, so if nothing else you should be able to sell it for what you bought it.

The other part of the question is tougher. I personally don't (yet?) like Rat tones much. The ProCo Rat by all accounts is a low end sucking machine. Now, that said, your ears may love the Rat tones - lots of people think they are awesome - and if you can find a blender, all the better. Also, the last gig I played at, I was the only one out of 5 bassists on the bill that didn't have a ProCo Rat on their board, and everyone else was getting KILLER tones that night. So, I realize I might be the outlier here.

TL;DR - No harm in picking it up at that price, but it isn't a pedal designed for bass, so see if it works for you!

 

[gregmon79]

To clarify: I do not want for overdrive with my current setup; I've simply taken a headlong tumble into the rabbit hole of The Effects Effect.

Then yes. It's a good price of its in great shape.

 

[FaithNoMan]

I fed one into a BDDI using my friend's J bass once.
Dropbox - RatBDDIJazz.mp3