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Who’s making a good rat with clean blend?

#22
I get an amazing thick and ballsy but articulate high gain RAT distortion on my bass, by blending a Mosky Black Rat, in Turbo RAT mode, in parallel with a Joyo Orange Juice, dialed in with a medium gain overdrive, via a Boss LS-2.

Even just with straight clean blend from a Boss LS-2 or similar effects loops mixer, for some reason, the Mosky Black Rat works really well, and doesn't sound like a clean signal sitting on top of the distorted one, as it otherwise tends to.

There is something about how the Mosky Black Rat is voiced that just seems to work perfectly for bass.
 
#28
My dirt quest ended with a Locust Star, I literally cannot get a bad sound out of it. I do want to try the Ground and Pound one of these days because I love my Alma so much.

I didn't get on with the Blower Box or MXR at all, but I am also not into the heaviest sounds so your mileage may vary.
 
#29
Variflex said:
First post. Hooray! That Tremond posted above looks great.

As a guitar player I don't like Rats. I had one of the Big Box Reissue Rats. It just killed the low end. My brother (a bass player) wanted to do some mods to it so I let him go for it.

First he did the Ruetz Mod. This boosts the low end but takes away some of the high gain (still plenty of gain though). He added a toggle switch to go between the mod version and stock version.

He then found plans online to add a clean blend pot. Plenty of room to do so in the big box Rat. It worked quite well.

While these mods made the pedal better the Rat still wasn't my thing. I ended up trading it to my brother. Now that I'm playing bass more often I kind of wish I still had it but he won't give it back.


TL;DR: find any Rat and add a clean blend pot. I'd also suggest looking into doing the Ruetz Mod. There are a few websites with schematics to do both. Sadly I didn't do the mods on mine (my brother did) so I can't tell you how easy/difficult the mods are.
Click to expand...
The Ruetz mod is very easy (literally just remove a single capacitor), but like you said, it decreases the overall gain. A better way of doing it is the G. Tranter mod, which adds two switchable RC filters. It's explained quite well here:
marcuseffects.wordpress.com

ProCo Rat Bass Mod

Everyone loves a big fat filthy bass guitar sound, and a lot of bass players use the Rat to get it. I love the Rat, it’s one of my favourite guitar pedals, but the trouble for bass players is…
marcuseffects.wordpress.com marcuseffects.wordpress.com
 
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#30
Hypocrite said:
The Ruetz mod is very easy (literally just remove a single capacitor), but like you said, it decreases the overall gain. A better way of doing it is the G. Tranter mod, which adds two switchable RC filters. It's explained quite well here:
marcuseffects.wordpress.com

ProCo Rat Bass Mod

Everyone loves a big fat filthy bass guitar sound, and a lot of bass players use the Rat to get it. I love the Rat, it’s one of my favourite guitar pedals, but the trouble for bass players is…
marcuseffects.wordpress.com marcuseffects.wordpress.com
Click to expand...
Worth noting is also that the Turbo RAT retains low end considerably better than the standard original RAT.

It's a somewhat different, more grunty and crunchy flavor of the RAT, but still unmistakenly a RAT, and overall I find it much more suited for bass in general.
 
#31
Ritter667 said:
Worth noting is also that the Turbo RAT retains low end considerably better than the standard original RAT.

It's a somewhat different, more grunty and crunchy flavor of the RAT, but still unmistakenly a RAT, and overall I find it much more suited for bass in general.
Click to expand...
Agreed, I'd prefer LED's over 4148's in a stock RAT, but when running it with a clean blend or in parallel, the extra distortion from the 48's doesn't become too mushy (fair enough, I've modded my RAT specifically to have LESS bass pre-clipping, but my point still stands.)
In any case, I prefer MOSFET clipping in my RAT, it's a nice compromise between the volume of LED's and the clipping characteristics of silicon or Schottky diodes
 
#33
johnk_10 said:
i ordered an idiotbox blowerbox deluxe on 11/30. i have an order confirmation email but never got a tracking number for it.
i emailed them about it but haven't got a reply. anyone else have this problem?
Click to expand...
I recall reading somewhere that there is a 1-2 week build time on these editions... so my guess is that tracking info will probably come out sometime next week or maybe even a little after.
 
#39
Seconding everything everyone says about the Blower Box, particularly the Deluxe version. Its a fantastic pedal. When I first got it I thought it was one of those "great, but every setting that sounds good is super heavy" type pedals, but no; after playing a bit, it honestly also provides fantastic subtle grit if that is what you want (you just have to keep the distortion all the way down). But it also does a killer distortion. Again, get the Deluxe version, its a ridiculous pedal for the price.
 
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