Pro Co - Vintage RAT

[needleboy]

Hi there.
This will be my first proper review here, hope i'm up to the standards.

Pro Co - Vintage RAT
A reissue of the classic Rat distortion pedal.

http://www.procosound.com/ratindex.htm#vintagerat

I bought mine out of lack of choise, actually. Was going for a Russian Big Muff, but apparently, they don't import the Russian ones to Israel anymore, so I went with my second choise which is this. Not too bummed about it either.
Well, here we go:

Sound - 8/10
The Rat sounds amazing! I would've given it a 10 with no problem, but there is a feel, when playing, that you do lose a bit on the low-end. Don't forget this IS a guitar distortion, and if I know anything about electronics (and I don't know a lot), I'd say that it's meant to work at frequencies higher than what we normaly play.
It doesn't stop this baby from kicking ***, though. From the lowest of the lowest grouls to high pitched twangy solos and slaps and pops. It just sounds great.
It has a Filter knob, something you'll find yourself fidling around with a lot. It basically sets the tone of the sound, but it works more like a filter. When dialed in at 0, it gives you a huge low growl, filtering the high-end twangs of your pick or thumb. On my gear, it sounds more or less like the bass on Tool's Lateralus.
Turn the filter up half way, and you have a more active low-end, mixed with lots of mids. Sounds like the bass on any heavy Muse song.
But then you hit the high numbers of the filter, and **** starts hitting the fan. It just sounds wrong... like an electric guitar tuned a whole octave too low. This is basically the only sound problem I found until now.
The Distortion knob is a distortion knob. No explanations needed, I hope. I play it on about 30-50% at most, as it gets far too heavy for me if set higher than that, but it still sounds good. Hardly any feedback even at 80%. The metal types will love this, as it gives you such a gargantuan growl, you'd probably take over the whole sound of your band...

Ease of use - 8/10
No playing around here. Simple and to the point controls.
The Rat has 3 knobs. Distortion, Filter and Volume. All it takes is to set the distortion level to your comfotable easy-listening preference, and then just fiddle with the filter a bit, to tweak the sound to your ears. Nothing special.
They did lose two points here on one important issue. No god-**** LED! Looking at the electronics inside, it is no problem to wire one for yourslef, but it's a bitch that it doesn't come with one. How can you go and build such a great product, and forget such an important feature?

Construction - 10/10
A god-**** tank!!! It's even quite ridiculous. The body is a huge metal box, black and square all around. If you take a look inside, the electronic board takes up not more than 30% of the space inside. A waste of space, makes for a big size, which is a downside, BUT, it's great for hiding drugs, which we know is a big problem for musicians
Three knobs made of hard plastic and an on/off foot-switch. I usually play bare-foot, and that switch is killing my foot. It's so painful! You actually need to use force to switch it. Meaning, the switch is good hardware, and will live long.
Turn it upside down, and there's a battery compartment, with a nice metalic cover. On the inside of the cover, it has two clips which will hold the battery in place. Changing batteries takes just a few seconds. No screws, no tools needed.

Overall - 9/10
Amazing distortion pedal. Would've given it a 10, but the lack of a LED is really annoying me.
Something else bothers me though. Going through the GuitarGeek.Com database, you'd find that most proffesionals using the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (Russian and USA), and not even one bass player who uses The Rat. Though they do have only twenty or so bass players in their database, so that's hardly a statistic.

To close this review, if you have the $99.99 ([URL=http://www.music123.com/Pro-Co-Vintage-RAT-i76450.music]Music123[/url]) buy it!
If you happen to have double that money, check out Pro Co's Juggernaut, the bass distortion.
But whatever you do, don't settle on their cheap models (Rat 2, Turbo Rat, You Dirty Rat). The price tag really represents the quality of the product here.
They made a fine reissue, use it!

Some specs, taken from the [URL=http://www.procosound.com/ratindex.htm#vintagerat]Pro Co homepage[/url]:
- Input Impedance: 1 Megohm
- Equivalent Input Noise: -110 dB
- Output Impedance: 1 Kilohm
- Maximum Gain: 60 dB
- Filter: 6 dB/octave low-pass
- Power Requirements: 9V battery or external DC power supply (RPS-1)
- Battery Consumption: 800 µA/600 hours
- Height: 3-1/8" (79.4mm)
- Depth: 4-1/2" (104.3 mm)
- Width: 5" (127 mm)
- Weight: 1.5 lbs (0.7 Kg)
- Shipping Weight: 2.0 lbs (0.9 Kg)