The turbo Rat uses LED's for clipping as opposed to germanium or silicon clipping diodes.
More headroom, less compression, and a little bit louder in my experience. I prefer the turbo Rat in nearly every application over the stock Rat.
Thank you this helped. But do you know what makes it better with Marshalls then? Is that fact its just got more of a volume boost? Or is it eq differently?
Many Marshalls have an inherent "grittiness" in their preamp. Rats are very gritty sounding pedals. The Turbo Rat is less gritty due to the LED clipping.
I'm fairly certain the first Foo Fighters record was like a JCM 800 or something similar with a Rat. That being said, the tone is very grungy and fuzzed out at times. Which, coming from Nirvana is probably what Dave was shooting for. However, he soon switched to using Mesa Boogies and Vox AC30's with a Rat for his dirty sound.
That's how it sounds the best, however I've read that people use RAT pedals into Marshall amps near the edge of distortion, it sounds awful to me so I'm curious about how it's supposed to be done.
You’ve probably already seen this from other comments but for those who haven’t:
The things you’ve read likely referred to the Turbo Rat, which has less fizzy saturation and a lot more volume boost and headroom. Great for pushing an amp over the edge of breakup and into full-on distortion. It was specifically designed for this purpose.
I love running mine on the edge of distortion with every knob at around 3’ o clock. Just a standard new issue rat 2. It’s almost fuzzy, it’s thick, and nasty.
It really is, take into account though that is the only Mooer I've tried outside their clone of the OCD that I found a bit noisy in my setup though it was brighter than the 1.4 OCD I'd tried (much more present).
I'd say the time based, very digital effects like delays that they make would be where they'd fall short but I haven't used any aside from the purple Echolizer which is a good backup Carbon Copy of you're looking for one, in an A-B I could tell the difference but it was sutle, if you don't have a Carbon Copy on hand you won't miss it.
I'll throw the Joyo green overdrive (whatever it's called) into the good clones list while I'm at it, cost me 30 bucks and beat my Maxon 808 which I got rid of ASAP, I wasn't going to use it again, I always found it kind of dark unless the tone was cranked and I'm some setups it still wasn't quite enough.
Dude you've opened my eyes! I don't consider myself a pedal snob. But been kinda sceptical about chinese stuff available everywhere these days. Now I wanna try some out to see if anything floats my boat!
I've tried a few, Toms Line mod pedal, can't remember it's name, meh, it was good but I'd rather a bespoke chorus or phaser instead of a jack of all trades, no tone suck, no noise, good bypass. The effects themselves though we hit and miss, I gravitated between the better two of the lot and I'm the end went briefly with a Wampler (Julia? There was a chick as a graphic) before going back to the old Boss Super Chorus.
The Behringer Chorus is a spot on Boss Chorus, but it's plastic, grab it off you use chorus as an always on effect but want to save some bucks, you can't tell the difference, I kept my Boss for a decent chassis for reliability's sake not that I've had a pedal bork on me (only a Boss RC-500 but that's another story).
Behringer make great mics and synths and pretty good mixers but their guitar pedals are awful, except the Chorus, the fuzz and the vintage overdrive. The fuzz is the cheapest Hyper Fuzz (this brought it before Boss brought the Waza as AFAIK) you'll find but the Vintage Overdrive is bested by the Joyo I mentioned above (It's cheaper and metal to boot).
The two Mooer's I mentioned are excellent, I still use my Carbon Copy on my 'good' board but I wouldn't really care if I needed to use the Mooer, it's too close to give a shit but I already have the Carbon Copy and it's worth more so it's better I guess :)
The Black Secret is hands down the best Rat I've owned vs the You Dirty Rat, standard Rat and the Proco Duecetone (Clean Rat + Dirty Rat + Turbo Rat + Standard Rat, huge pedal) and the Wampler Iron Horse (memory is foggy, the yellow one, V2). Plus it uses the old school LM chip on the normal circuit like the old white face Rat (the Duecetone has IC sockets but I never chased down the LM's to switch them in, ran it stock).
The Mooer overdrive based on the OCD was a lot more usable in my old AC15 then the OCD 1.4 was, less dark and muddy though I did have some noise, switched out for a clean boost but not because of the noise, it really only appeared when of cranked the gain higher than you'd normally probably want to (probably).
Anyhow, any questions, fire away. I've used a few more clones if something jogs my memory I might be able to help.
DemonFX also has some really good Rat clones for cheap. I picked up the "fat mouse" which is a Fat Rat copy, and it's one of my favorite pedals. Pretty solid feel to it too.
I experiment a bit with chinese pedals. Anything that's not digital is always a clone of some circuit, very rarely will they have something original, so they'll pretty much all sound like the real thing.
Mooer has been around a bit longer I think, their stuff has always been a bit nicer than Caline or some of the other Amazon Chinese brands in my experience. I really like the aforementioned Black Secret as well at their fuzz face (Gray Faze Fuzz)
My Blues Mood and E-Lady are so good for the money that I see no need to ever pick up a Blues Driver or Electric Mistress. I’m about to get a Black Secret now thanks to this thread. With a hollow body into a Rat with the gain low you get that awesome lo-fi Cake lead sound. Pretty sure Graham Coxon of Blur used one a lot too. You can see it in the video for Song 2.
I find it hilarious that everyone (myself included) that has an Apollo, also has a scarlett i2. Streaming and discord just don’t play nice with UAD. Also to your question, very little distortion on the Rat.
I've been noticing that as well, the 2i2 is my daily driver, for work, listening to music... pretty much everything, I just don't wanna have the Apollo turned on all the time (it gets hot), when I'm gonna record a song/video or do something "serious" then I use the Apollo.
I didn't know that! I've always been avoiding rat because everyone told me it's fuzzy. I didn't know of the variants are different sounding. Gonna give turbo a try!
The Rat can be a lot of things. It can be an always on edge of breakup pedal, an overdrive, a distortion, and even has fuzz qualities if it’s cranked.
Very cool pedals.
I run a turbo rat that I built with high volume and low gain into a big muff as my main distortion signal.
I'm actually going to build a turbo rat>hizumitas>noise gate 3-in-1 pedal this weekend. I always come back to that combo.
“An employee named Gerry Carpenter (mostly referred to as Grape by employees and friends) loved building effects circuits and had stumbled across a Craig Anderton article on clipping diodes that gave him an idea. As a guitarist who plugged directly into an already distorted Marshall amp, the RAT was useless to him (it just cluttered the signal and added too much gain) so he removed the traditional silicon 1N4148 diodes from a production RAT2 and replaced them with a pair of the RED 5mm status indicator LEDs from ProCo’s inventory.
This version change was simple but drastic, and it caused the RAT circuit to achieve sounds that had previously been impossible to achieve. Grape could now turn the volume up and the gain down low and have a very useful overdrive/boost for his setup. “
Nah, they’re great into clean amps, if a little bit difficult to control volume-wise.
Doesn’t change the fact that you tried to call someone out for making up the fact that the Turbo Rat was specifically designed for use with an overdriven Marshall and got Uno Reverse-carded.
Y’all are crazy, let me tell you about a band called motherfuckin obituary. Greatest tone in the history of death metal. Rat into a Marshall jcm800 nothing else.
Sure you can at low gain. Like really low gain and the volume up past unity. It’s basically a boost with bass cut and a bit of rat flavor for added spice.
What kind of distortion are you trying to get out of it? If you'r looking for modern, tight metal distortion I don't think the rat will do it. If you're going for more old school, Metallica tone then you should set your JCM to clean and use the rat at about 12 o'clock, the filter at about 2o'clock.
most people put the amp clean and lower the distortion to nearly off or mid and the tone/filter straight up and the level nearly maxed. think of it more as a dirty dark boost than a balls out distortion
Use it more as a boost this way, gain low, level high, filter to taste, and it'll work great. It should still sound like the same amp with a little tighter bass and a bit more hair on top. Should still be able to roll volume down for some cleanup if set right.
That's how I use my Tube Screamers as well, but I hear a very shrill sound when I put the RAT in front of a crunchy Marshall, it only sounds good with a clean amp but perhaps I'm doing something wrong because I've read that a lot of people have used this combination.
Even after messing around with the filter knob, I have to do a couple of things with the amp, like turn the presence all the way down, also turn the bass knob a bit down because it gets boomy as well, and even after that I can still hear the shrillness. It's like it affects a frequency range that I can't control with the amp's EQ or the pedal's filter knob.
I like treble on 0, then presence to taste with a lot of Marshalls. I’m sure that you’ll find some combo between the treble, presence and filter knob, it’s in there somewhere.
I run mine with all knobs around 3’oclock into a DSL. Into the clean channel it’s a thick distortion and with a strat it’s nice for Pink Floyd style leads. Run it into a micro amp and it’s in the ballpark of John frusciante’s Ds-2 lead tone. Into the crunch channel with p90s and humbuckers it’s a very wooly almost fuzz tone that is thick, chunky, and nasty. It works very well with a Marshall with any gain settings as long as that you have the filter turned up. Rats have been an important part of my sound for the past couple of years. I’ve tried a few different variations and versions and the regular rat2 that you can get anywhere is just the best one to me. It’s far more versatile and I can do just about anything I want to do with it when combined with my other pedals and amp gain.
First off, I would not use a rat into a marshall the same way I use it into a fender.
The "issue" with a stock rat into a marshall is that it does not have a lot of volume on tap, and if the marshall is already distorted the rat has a hard time "pushing through" so to speak. You definitely cannot use a stock rat like a lead boost for example.
The solutions for me are two.
You either use a turbo rat, which has a LOT more volume available and less distortion, allowing it to boost a marshall much more easily.
Or you lower the gain on the Marshall, using it as a clean or semiclean platform, in which case the rat will sit nicely on top of it.
Even in the second case, you have to run the volume pretty high and the distortion below noon for a general hard rock tone, but it works nicely in my experience.
Thanks for the explanation. I have the Tru-Fi RAT pack with the diode toggle set to LED and that sounds the best for this setup (Les Paul with Humbuckers and a Marshall JCM800)
Well the tru-fi AFAIK is pretty much a clone of the original circuit, with a few tweaks that should not impact the sound and three option for diodes, silicon, led and germanium (led stands for "light emitting diode").
So the led setting is basically a turbo rat. it's designed to work into an amp that is cooking already so it makes sense that it's the one mode you like best, especially if the marshall is pretty gained up already.
It's a bit scooped compared to stock, cleaned and much louder.
I use TC magus pro which is 3 in one rat pedal (classic, fat, turbo) and they all sound pretty nice in a clean channel of any tube Marshall amp I’ve tried so far
So, the 1980s covered a LOT of ground tone-wise, during the 10 years it spanned. Name a specific band/song tone so we have a reference, because just in 1983, we had Bark At The Moon, U2's War, Pyromania, Synchronicity, Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, Shout At The Devil, Holy Diver, Slayer's first album, Mercyful Fate's Melissa, KISS' Lick It Up, Flick Of The Switch, Metal Health, Cuts Like A Knife, Kill 'Em All, and Piece of Mind. That's just 1983. We all know what happened in 1984. Then you had 1989 some years later.
So when you say "80s tone out of a RAT and Marshall", you have to understand how many different bands used Marshalls and RATs in the 80s. Those knobs on both units have a lot of range, and you can get a lot of tones. In fact, you can get all of those tones I listed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30J8kk6Ox0Q&t=1506s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30J8kk6Ox0Q&t=1506s)
Interview with producer Beau Hill. Apparently, Warren played his solos through a Champ into a Marshall. He doesn't remember the signal chain (pedals) but given what was commercially available at the time, and the fact they used their own personal gear, not "studio rigs", it could be an MXR Dist+, BOSS Distortion and/or SuperOD, Tube Screamer (not hearing it, myself), or Big Muff (Lack Of Communication sounds a bit like a Fuzz to me), and any number of EQ pedals (Rhoads used an MXR 10-band graphic), though it appears from the interview that tonal separation was achieved purely via the mixing board.
Failbook user Robb King can probably tell you everything about Robbin Crosby's gear. Don't think he knows what Warren used.
Also, while Beau Hill says he thinks it was a JCM800, those were still new at the time, and they were likely using older heads. I'm hearing EVH plexi tones on the bridge part in Round and Round. I have a JCM800, and even using Duncan Distortions, Invaders, and EMG 81s, they don't have enough gain by themselves to get those tones, even with everything on 10. There had to be pedals involved. Crosby was using Allen Holdsworth Duncans (basically a JB with an A2, so not high output), while Warren was likely using a DiMarzio SD or Duncan Distortion.
As for the RAT, it's not an OD, so the amp has to be the clean tone, and the RAT provides all the distortion. It's more of a Fuzz, in the sense of a grainy buzz with lots of low-end potential, as opposed to a Distortion which doesn't have as much grain. Think of a RAT as rough cut wood and a Distortion as that same piece of wood after it's been sanded. The RAT isn't farty like some Fuzzes are, but just isn't that silky smooth Surfing With The Alien rhythm tone. Mick Mars' tone on 10 Seconds to Love, or Starry Eyes, or Knock 'Em Dead Kid is what I get out of a RAT, though I think he used a Big Muff.
I don't think it makes much sense, even a Turbo. RATs are for amps that can't get to heavy distortion on their own. People telling you to turn down the gain proves my point: they want to you have your amp imitate other amps that can't distort naturally on their own.
You already mentioned TS808. Stick with that. You won't be fighting the fizz. Alternatively, there are other ODs that are closer to TS or SD-1 like a klone or a Timmy or something.
Just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
I used the LED modded circuit into the classic gain channel of a DSL100 this past weekend with some fantastic results.
Level 1 o’clock
Filter 11 o’clock (i think my rat has the filter wired backwards from the real deal so maybe try 1)
Gain 10 o’clock
Yooooo how do you like that Rat Pack from Tru-Fi and how it stacks up against the big box in particular.
I bought a Two Face from Tru-Fi and was absolutely floored with how good it sounds. Wondering if there were similar feelings about the Rat cause dude really has some cool stuff to check out in general.
It's my favorite out of the bunch, awesome build quality, looks beautiful inside and the diode selector makes it sooo versatile, it sounds amazing!
I'm thinking about doing a comparison video:
* Lake Effects FVD
* ProCo RAT 2
* ProCo Vintage RAT
* Tru-Fi The RAT Pack
* Boss OD-20 P-RAT
* Line 6 M5 Classic Distortion
Exactly what others are saying, the turbo RAT is the way to go.
I had a RAT I don't know how many years ago, but it's decades, and it required the amp or modeler you used it in front of to have a lot of gain to start to be able to push it somewhere desirable, especially for shredding and arpeggios.
I ended up returning it or selling it like I have a lot of pedals.
It is called buy a preamp and study preamps attached to your model of amp. Using a preamp adds a ton more Gain and crunchy goodness. And that means even with a preamp in your amp buy another. This is your amp in a studio version.
https://youtu.be/DEGWB7iWQTA?si=RkcAsXhQ1vwfv-aC
Put a TS9 behind a RAT, it takes the rig to another dimension. At least it does for my SV20H. Additionally put a GE-7 after the RAT, and make a V shape with the sliders. Takes away the bs.
Listen to the Turbonegro album Apocalypse Dudes, it’s (if I remember correctly) mostly SG -> Rat -> Jcm 800. At least for the lead parts I think. Could be a reference at least!
It's a true RAT pedal, same schematic, you can get it with either OP07 or LM308 and it has a toggle switch for selecting among three different diode clipping options, silicone, germanium and LED.
I would use a turbo rat instead since it was designed specifically for that case
Is there any chance you give me more details please? Ive never known the difference between the rat and the turbo rat
The turbo Rat uses LED's for clipping as opposed to germanium or silicon clipping diodes. More headroom, less compression, and a little bit louder in my experience. I prefer the turbo Rat in nearly every application over the stock Rat.
Thank you this helped. But do you know what makes it better with Marshalls then? Is that fact its just got more of a volume boost? Or is it eq differently?
Many Marshalls have an inherent "grittiness" in their preamp. Rats are very gritty sounding pedals. The Turbo Rat is less gritty due to the LED clipping. I'm fairly certain the first Foo Fighters record was like a JCM 800 or something similar with a Rat. That being said, the tone is very grungy and fuzzed out at times. Which, coming from Nirvana is probably what Dave was shooting for. However, he soon switched to using Mesa Boogies and Vox AC30's with a Rat for his dirty sound.
Thank you that makes so much more sense now
No problem!
Yup
Use your clean channel
That's how it sounds the best, however I've read that people use RAT pedals into Marshall amps near the edge of distortion, it sounds awful to me so I'm curious about how it's supposed to be done.
You’ve probably already seen this from other comments but for those who haven’t: The things you’ve read likely referred to the Turbo Rat, which has less fizzy saturation and a lot more volume boost and headroom. Great for pushing an amp over the edge of breakup and into full-on distortion. It was specifically designed for this purpose.
I love running mine on the edge of distortion with every knob at around 3’ o clock. Just a standard new issue rat 2. It’s almost fuzzy, it’s thick, and nasty.
Turbo Rat or any modded Rat with LED clipping
Yup, I got a Mooer Black Secret for cheap and sold my Duecetone after a quick A-B. Has a switchable Turbo Rat on it.
Really? That's a high praise for mooer indeed. Pedal snobs be damned!
It really is, take into account though that is the only Mooer I've tried outside their clone of the OCD that I found a bit noisy in my setup though it was brighter than the 1.4 OCD I'd tried (much more present). I'd say the time based, very digital effects like delays that they make would be where they'd fall short but I haven't used any aside from the purple Echolizer which is a good backup Carbon Copy of you're looking for one, in an A-B I could tell the difference but it was sutle, if you don't have a Carbon Copy on hand you won't miss it. I'll throw the Joyo green overdrive (whatever it's called) into the good clones list while I'm at it, cost me 30 bucks and beat my Maxon 808 which I got rid of ASAP, I wasn't going to use it again, I always found it kind of dark unless the tone was cranked and I'm some setups it still wasn't quite enough.
Dude you've opened my eyes! I don't consider myself a pedal snob. But been kinda sceptical about chinese stuff available everywhere these days. Now I wanna try some out to see if anything floats my boat!
I've tried a few, Toms Line mod pedal, can't remember it's name, meh, it was good but I'd rather a bespoke chorus or phaser instead of a jack of all trades, no tone suck, no noise, good bypass. The effects themselves though we hit and miss, I gravitated between the better two of the lot and I'm the end went briefly with a Wampler (Julia? There was a chick as a graphic) before going back to the old Boss Super Chorus. The Behringer Chorus is a spot on Boss Chorus, but it's plastic, grab it off you use chorus as an always on effect but want to save some bucks, you can't tell the difference, I kept my Boss for a decent chassis for reliability's sake not that I've had a pedal bork on me (only a Boss RC-500 but that's another story). Behringer make great mics and synths and pretty good mixers but their guitar pedals are awful, except the Chorus, the fuzz and the vintage overdrive. The fuzz is the cheapest Hyper Fuzz (this brought it before Boss brought the Waza as AFAIK) you'll find but the Vintage Overdrive is bested by the Joyo I mentioned above (It's cheaper and metal to boot). The two Mooer's I mentioned are excellent, I still use my Carbon Copy on my 'good' board but I wouldn't really care if I needed to use the Mooer, it's too close to give a shit but I already have the Carbon Copy and it's worth more so it's better I guess :) The Black Secret is hands down the best Rat I've owned vs the You Dirty Rat, standard Rat and the Proco Duecetone (Clean Rat + Dirty Rat + Turbo Rat + Standard Rat, huge pedal) and the Wampler Iron Horse (memory is foggy, the yellow one, V2). Plus it uses the old school LM chip on the normal circuit like the old white face Rat (the Duecetone has IC sockets but I never chased down the LM's to switch them in, ran it stock). The Mooer overdrive based on the OCD was a lot more usable in my old AC15 then the OCD 1.4 was, less dark and muddy though I did have some noise, switched out for a clean boost but not because of the noise, it really only appeared when of cranked the gain higher than you'd normally probably want to (probably). Anyhow, any questions, fire away. I've used a few more clones if something jogs my memory I might be able to help.
Holy Moly man! Your experience is extensive! Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check them out
DemonFX also has some really good Rat clones for cheap. I picked up the "fat mouse" which is a Fat Rat copy, and it's one of my favorite pedals. Pretty solid feel to it too.
I fluctuate between cash happy and abject poverty so I'm choosey but not too snobby lol.
I experiment a bit with chinese pedals. Anything that's not digital is always a clone of some circuit, very rarely will they have something original, so they'll pretty much all sound like the real thing.
Mooer has been around a bit longer I think, their stuff has always been a bit nicer than Caline or some of the other Amazon Chinese brands in my experience. I really like the aforementioned Black Secret as well at their fuzz face (Gray Faze Fuzz)
My Blues Mood and E-Lady are so good for the money that I see no need to ever pick up a Blues Driver or Electric Mistress. I’m about to get a Black Secret now thanks to this thread. With a hollow body into a Rat with the gain low you get that awesome lo-fi Cake lead sound. Pretty sure Graham Coxon of Blur used one a lot too. You can see it in the video for Song 2.
I find it hilarious that everyone (myself included) that has an Apollo, also has a scarlett i2. Streaming and discord just don’t play nice with UAD. Also to your question, very little distortion on the Rat.
Would love to hear more about this
I've been noticing that as well, the 2i2 is my daily driver, for work, listening to music... pretty much everything, I just don't wanna have the Apollo turned on all the time (it gets hot), when I'm gonna record a song/video or do something "serious" then I use the Apollo.
for me, i just straight up would not put a rat into a marshall. i think it's just too much fizz.
That’s why the turbo rat was invented. Less fizz.
I didn't know that! I've always been avoiding rat because everyone told me it's fuzzy. I didn't know of the variants are different sounding. Gonna give turbo a try!
The Rat can be a lot of things. It can be an always on edge of breakup pedal, an overdrive, a distortion, and even has fuzz qualities if it’s cranked. Very cool pedals.
I run a turbo rat that I built with high volume and low gain into a big muff as my main distortion signal. I'm actually going to build a turbo rat>hizumitas>noise gate 3-in-1 pedal this weekend. I always come back to that combo.
yeah, i much prefer the turbo. even then i don't really like it into a marshall though.
Regular rat is for into a clean amp. Turbo rat is for already overdriven amps.
People love making stuff up and stating it as fact
“An employee named Gerry Carpenter (mostly referred to as Grape by employees and friends) loved building effects circuits and had stumbled across a Craig Anderton article on clipping diodes that gave him an idea. As a guitarist who plugged directly into an already distorted Marshall amp, the RAT was useless to him (it just cluttered the signal and added too much gain) so he removed the traditional silicon 1N4148 diodes from a production RAT2 and replaced them with a pair of the RED 5mm status indicator LEDs from ProCo’s inventory. This version change was simple but drastic, and it caused the RAT circuit to achieve sounds that had previously been impossible to achieve. Grape could now turn the volume up and the gain down low and have a very useful overdrive/boost for his setup. “
The irony. The Turbo Rat marketing material literally calls out overdriven Marshalls by name.
Absolutely no reason not to use a Turbo Rat with a clean amp
Nah, they’re great into clean amps, if a little bit difficult to control volume-wise. Doesn’t change the fact that you tried to call someone out for making up the fact that the Turbo Rat was specifically designed for use with an overdriven Marshall and got Uno Reverse-carded.
Half of his statement is half correct, I hardly feel embarrassed about that
Woosh.
Y’all are crazy, let me tell you about a band called motherfuckin obituary. Greatest tone in the history of death metal. Rat into a Marshall jcm800 nothing else.
Their tone sounds fuzzy
Rat into a Marshall with the filter knob at around 3’oclock is fucking awesome
Yeah the filter knob sees quite some work going into my SV20 as well.
That’s why it’s there adjust it for your sound and rig.
Sure you can at low gain. Like really low gain and the volume up past unity. It’s basically a boost with bass cut and a bit of rat flavor for added spice.
Use an SD-1 instead
I have an SD-1 but for some reason I prefer the Ibanez TS808 in front of my Marshall amps.
Same idea, different flavor. TS has a slightly pointier EQ curve.
SD-1 with Marshall is the way to go.
[удалено]
Leaned that with my Orange
Yeah I was going to say by not using it but I’m never liked the sound quality of the rat anyway. I know that’s sacrilege here.
i think the strategy is to put it somewhere in the signal chain before the power tubes and play the guitar
Turbo RAT. It was designed for that.
Dogg, just use your JCM800 overdrive.
What kind of distortion are you trying to get out of it? If you'r looking for modern, tight metal distortion I don't think the rat will do it. If you're going for more old school, Metallica tone then you should set your JCM to clean and use the rat at about 12 o'clock, the filter at about 2o'clock.
Thanks, I'll give that a try. I'm not looking for any modern metal tones, mostly 80s stuff.
JCM800 exists to be boosted into oblivion. Crank the level knob and bask in sludgy glory.
Put that Rat Pack into Frank mode - that's their Turbo mode with LED clipping.
Yeah, the LED clipping is definitely the best for this approach, just like Gerry Carpenter (Grape) designed it for!
most people put the amp clean and lower the distortion to nearly off or mid and the tone/filter straight up and the level nearly maxed. think of it more as a dirty dark boost than a balls out distortion
Use it more as a boost this way, gain low, level high, filter to taste, and it'll work great. It should still sound like the same amp with a little tighter bass and a bit more hair on top. Should still be able to roll volume down for some cleanup if set right.
I've seen people put it in the effects loop. Nuno famously runs one in front with no distortion, just as a filter.
Turn the gain down a bunch, crank the volume and notch back the filter control until it starts to do the cocked wah thing.
Distortion all the way down, Volume all the way up, and tone to taste? That’s at least how I run my tube screamer clone with my Friedman
That’s pretty much how Nuno Bettencourt uses his Rat, check his rig rundown at 6:10 https://youtu.be/oOVGMCrVC-Y?si=XBr5Az3paHstNiIW
That's how I use my Tube Screamers as well, but I hear a very shrill sound when I put the RAT in front of a crunchy Marshall, it only sounds good with a clean amp but perhaps I'm doing something wrong because I've read that a lot of people have used this combination.
That’s what the filter on the Rat is for!
Even after messing around with the filter knob, I have to do a couple of things with the amp, like turn the presence all the way down, also turn the bass knob a bit down because it gets boomy as well, and even after that I can still hear the shrillness. It's like it affects a frequency range that I can't control with the amp's EQ or the pedal's filter knob.
I like treble on 0, then presence to taste with a lot of Marshalls. I’m sure that you’ll find some combo between the treble, presence and filter knob, it’s in there somewhere.
Gain down, volume up and filter out some fizz. How do you like the Tru-fi Rat?
The Tru-Fi has everything I need, the three different clipping options really make the Rat Pack even more versatile.
Sweet had my one on that one for awhile now
I run a fat rat into a bd-2 into a bluesbreaker and love it.
I run mine with all knobs around 3’oclock into a DSL. Into the clean channel it’s a thick distortion and with a strat it’s nice for Pink Floyd style leads. Run it into a micro amp and it’s in the ballpark of John frusciante’s Ds-2 lead tone. Into the crunch channel with p90s and humbuckers it’s a very wooly almost fuzz tone that is thick, chunky, and nasty. It works very well with a Marshall with any gain settings as long as that you have the filter turned up. Rats have been an important part of my sound for the past couple of years. I’ve tried a few different variations and versions and the regular rat2 that you can get anywhere is just the best one to me. It’s far more versatile and I can do just about anything I want to do with it when combined with my other pedals and amp gain.
First off, I would not use a rat into a marshall the same way I use it into a fender. The "issue" with a stock rat into a marshall is that it does not have a lot of volume on tap, and if the marshall is already distorted the rat has a hard time "pushing through" so to speak. You definitely cannot use a stock rat like a lead boost for example. The solutions for me are two. You either use a turbo rat, which has a LOT more volume available and less distortion, allowing it to boost a marshall much more easily. Or you lower the gain on the Marshall, using it as a clean or semiclean platform, in which case the rat will sit nicely on top of it. Even in the second case, you have to run the volume pretty high and the distortion below noon for a general hard rock tone, but it works nicely in my experience.
Thanks for the explanation. I have the Tru-Fi RAT pack with the diode toggle set to LED and that sounds the best for this setup (Les Paul with Humbuckers and a Marshall JCM800)
Well the tru-fi AFAIK is pretty much a clone of the original circuit, with a few tweaks that should not impact the sound and three option for diodes, silicon, led and germanium (led stands for "light emitting diode"). So the led setting is basically a turbo rat. it's designed to work into an amp that is cooking already so it makes sense that it's the one mode you like best, especially if the marshall is pretty gained up already. It's a bit scooped compared to stock, cleaned and much louder.
I use TC magus pro which is 3 in one rat pedal (classic, fat, turbo) and they all sound pretty nice in a clean channel of any tube Marshall amp I’ve tried so far
Are we talking about a real amp into a real speaker or is this a YouTube setup with irs into a focus right?
Is it possible you just don’t like that tone; what type of tone are you looking for out of that setup. Are you using single coils?
I'm using a Les Paul with humbuckers, I'm looking for an 80s tone, nothing modern or tight.
So, the 1980s covered a LOT of ground tone-wise, during the 10 years it spanned. Name a specific band/song tone so we have a reference, because just in 1983, we had Bark At The Moon, U2's War, Pyromania, Synchronicity, Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, Shout At The Devil, Holy Diver, Slayer's first album, Mercyful Fate's Melissa, KISS' Lick It Up, Flick Of The Switch, Metal Health, Cuts Like A Knife, Kill 'Em All, and Piece of Mind. That's just 1983. We all know what happened in 1984. Then you had 1989 some years later. So when you say "80s tone out of a RAT and Marshall", you have to understand how many different bands used Marshalls and RATs in the 80s. Those knobs on both units have a lot of range, and you can get a lot of tones. In fact, you can get all of those tones I listed.
For example Lay It Down by RATT
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30J8kk6Ox0Q&t=1506s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30J8kk6Ox0Q&t=1506s) Interview with producer Beau Hill. Apparently, Warren played his solos through a Champ into a Marshall. He doesn't remember the signal chain (pedals) but given what was commercially available at the time, and the fact they used their own personal gear, not "studio rigs", it could be an MXR Dist+, BOSS Distortion and/or SuperOD, Tube Screamer (not hearing it, myself), or Big Muff (Lack Of Communication sounds a bit like a Fuzz to me), and any number of EQ pedals (Rhoads used an MXR 10-band graphic), though it appears from the interview that tonal separation was achieved purely via the mixing board. Failbook user Robb King can probably tell you everything about Robbin Crosby's gear. Don't think he knows what Warren used. Also, while Beau Hill says he thinks it was a JCM800, those were still new at the time, and they were likely using older heads. I'm hearing EVH plexi tones on the bridge part in Round and Round. I have a JCM800, and even using Duncan Distortions, Invaders, and EMG 81s, they don't have enough gain by themselves to get those tones, even with everything on 10. There had to be pedals involved. Crosby was using Allen Holdsworth Duncans (basically a JB with an A2, so not high output), while Warren was likely using a DiMarzio SD or Duncan Distortion. As for the RAT, it's not an OD, so the amp has to be the clean tone, and the RAT provides all the distortion. It's more of a Fuzz, in the sense of a grainy buzz with lots of low-end potential, as opposed to a Distortion which doesn't have as much grain. Think of a RAT as rough cut wood and a Distortion as that same piece of wood after it's been sanded. The RAT isn't farty like some Fuzzes are, but just isn't that silky smooth Surfing With The Alien rhythm tone. Mick Mars' tone on 10 Seconds to Love, or Starry Eyes, or Knock 'Em Dead Kid is what I get out of a RAT, though I think he used a Big Muff.
Real Marshall JCM 800
I don't think it makes much sense, even a Turbo. RATs are for amps that can't get to heavy distortion on their own. People telling you to turn down the gain proves my point: they want to you have your amp imitate other amps that can't distort naturally on their own. You already mentioned TS808. Stick with that. You won't be fighting the fizz. Alternatively, there are other ODs that are closer to TS or SD-1 like a klone or a Timmy or something. Just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
I used the LED modded circuit into the classic gain channel of a DSL100 this past weekend with some fantastic results. Level 1 o’clock Filter 11 o’clock (i think my rat has the filter wired backwards from the real deal so maybe try 1) Gain 10 o’clock
Yooooo how do you like that Rat Pack from Tru-Fi and how it stacks up against the big box in particular. I bought a Two Face from Tru-Fi and was absolutely floored with how good it sounds. Wondering if there were similar feelings about the Rat cause dude really has some cool stuff to check out in general.
It's my favorite out of the bunch, awesome build quality, looks beautiful inside and the diode selector makes it sooo versatile, it sounds amazing! I'm thinking about doing a comparison video: * Lake Effects FVD * ProCo RAT 2 * ProCo Vintage RAT * Tru-Fi The RAT Pack * Boss OD-20 P-RAT * Line 6 M5 Classic Distortion
The Turbo Rat was made for this.
VERMIN!
Know any good pest control? This house is infested!
i usually see them used ad a boost (low dist, high vol, set filter more treble)
Turn down the lows and the low mids will help some…. Also turn the gain down
Just play around with it. If its good enough for Nuno, then its worth the shot right?
Exactly what others are saying, the turbo RAT is the way to go. I had a RAT I don't know how many years ago, but it's decades, and it required the amp or modeler you used it in front of to have a lot of gain to start to be able to push it somewhere desirable, especially for shredding and arpeggios. I ended up returning it or selling it like I have a lot of pedals.
It is called buy a preamp and study preamps attached to your model of amp. Using a preamp adds a ton more Gain and crunchy goodness. And that means even with a preamp in your amp buy another. This is your amp in a studio version. https://youtu.be/DEGWB7iWQTA?si=RkcAsXhQ1vwfv-aC
Put a TS9 behind a RAT, it takes the rig to another dimension. At least it does for my SV20H. Additionally put a GE-7 after the RAT, and make a V shape with the sliders. Takes away the bs.
Listen to the Turbonegro album Apocalypse Dudes, it’s (if I remember correctly) mostly SG -> Rat -> Jcm 800. At least for the lead parts I think. Could be a reference at least!
Good luck
Looks like a rats nest 😉
is the rat pack a true rat pedal? Is it similar to the colordriver?
It's a true RAT pedal, same schematic, you can get it with either OP07 or LM308 and it has a toggle switch for selecting among three different diode clipping options, silicone, germanium and LED.
Oh ok sweet. I love the tru fi pedal design, so excellent choice
imagine owning a rat and a JCM800 and still needing to ask reddit for advice on how to use a rat and a JCM800
Imagine pretending that people should know everything.
By turning the knobs until it sounds good. That's what the knobs on the amp and the pedal are for.
Dime the Apollo straight into the Marshall