ProCo Turbo RAT

3 knobs and a switch. pretty easy. no stupid names(like DOD, manufacturer of the worst pedals around imo, has a tendency to do with distortion pedals) for the knobs. distortion and volume speak for themselves, the filter seems to act like a tone knob. careful with the volume knob as it is quite sensitive and this thing can add a lot of volume. (which is what some people want)

never read the manual, if it even came with one. i honestly don't remember.(i have something against manuals in general. i prefer automatics, but i live in Yurop nowadays so am condemned to driving manuals. ha!)

varying setups depending on what i'm playing and which band/collective but most-used setup: yahama pacifica (2x single coil + humbucker at bridge)> Trat > boss CH1 or ibanez cs9 > ehx holygrail > dunlop wah > amp supplied by venue or rehearsal-space (is usually tube amp, thank god) back where i used to live before moving to yurp i had a crappy peavey bandit (120 112 or some similar number, forgot it over the years, could look it up at peavey website, but too lazy) at home. now i got a free 20W mini-amp (VMI "the animal" had never heard of the brand) from a friend here but i hate it so much i play nothing but my acoustic at home now. but enough about my shitty setups.

for what i usually play this pedal is perfect. i mostly play post-rock, surfy-punk, powerchord connect-the-dots punk and noisy minimalism. the rat (along with holy grail) especially suits my 1-string dick dale-imitating surfpunk. got this pedal initially becuz sonic youth also use it and i used to be pretty crazy about them. i also use it for some bluesy stuff and even occasionally for some unorthodox reggae, but it clearly does not work nearly as well for that as for the aforementioned "heavier" types of music.

a very sweet pedal, with a wide range, can come pretty close to a relatively "clear" overdrive-sound, which sounds decent, but really shines in the fuzzy distortion.
it's massive gain turned up together with my humbuckers can be a feedback machine, but powerchords still come out very well even then.(blues chords forget it) this is avoidable by changing my standard setting to less volume and distortion, but like i said before this pedal is at it's best with the heavier distortion. also i find it sounds best through my singlecoil pickups.
and the bypass works perfectly.

i recently lost this pedal though and am now usually borrowing a boss metalzone. up untill i lost it and had to use the metalzone i had no idea how much i would miss this pedal. (bit of an unfair comparison, the metalzone is a different sort of distortion and not my taste at all) however, i always thought it was better than another bandmember's boss od2 and ds2 (he recently also bought a rat, vintage rat however, to replace his bosses after having borrowed my Trat)

mine never broke....because i lost the it!!!! in the 6 years up to that i had no complaints whatsoever though. in fact i found it so reliable i also ordered my new cables from proco(previous cables were lost) unfortunately i also lost those cables with my Trat.
hopefully one day i'll stop losing.
am busy with looking for a cheap 2nd hand one, because i'm having a hard time getting by without this baby, might even buy a new one soon because i can't see myself playing upcomming gigs without this pedal. and i use it at gigs without backup, mainly because i don't have money for a backup though. i always put in new (1 euro)batteries for a gig though. couldn't use adaptor because pedal was odered from gringo-land and that does not go very well with this goddamn 220V shit in yurp. batteries do last a long time though, so it's no real problem.
so reliable and exterememly sturdy. when the apocalypse comes, i hope to have my giant Trat-duplicate bunker ready.

i ordered it on the internet and never dealt with them since, simlpy because there was no need to whatsoever.

overall great pedal. suits my needs and was not too expensive. great low-end sounds. i see a lot of people recommend a equalizer to make the high end frequencies come out more, but i like it for it's rather dark sound. that's all a matter of taste though. it would be nice if it would sound a little fuller/warmer at lower distortion settings though, so no 10. but i don't know of any other (affordable) distortion pedal i'd rather have than this one. beats all the other distortions i've tried out or heard over the years (boss, most ibanez and certainly dod distortions, even bigmuff imo) once again, this could be a matter of taste though. but there are lots of people with bad taste out there (and they're using dod, did i allready mention how much dod sucks?)

i lost it and am now desperately seeking another one, will even buy it new again if i have to in spite of small budget. was planning to add a delay pedal to my equipment, but that'll just have to be postponed. can't live without my rat.

well, it isnt hard. you press the silver button to turn it on. and you have 3 knobs distortion, filter, volume. its easy to get a good sound. but its hard to get a quiet sound. this is a very loud pedal. there isnt a manual for mine but you can view one on the procosound.com website.

im currently using the rat with a boss ds-1 and an electro harmonix small clone. theres an electro harmonix bigg muff coming soon too. im using a squier strat. the proco rat makes the boss ds-1 look like a baby. sound wise. i always loved the tone i got out of my ds-1. its very scratchy. the rat blows it away. tit has a heavy bass sound. it wasnt what i expected. i expected a loud ds-1. an intence scratchy sound. but i got something so much better. the ds-1 is a strong pedal but sounds very weak if you compare it with a rat. i cant get the sound of kurt cobain. a turbo rat wasnt my first choise. i wanted a rat 2. but i could get this #20 cheaper. my pedals are top of the range. its the only thing ill go all out on. clothes, jewelry, games? no. if i can make good sounding music, then that will make my day. this pedal has made my year. this pedal is loud. this pedal is amazing.

its a little tank! i havent giged with it yet. i dont use backups for gigs because i cant aford them. my rat i think will do well live. rats look like there more reliable than boss pedals. i can depend on it with out backups. acording to all the other reviews, they last for years and years.

no need to contact them, and i hope there never is.

i play indie, punk, grunge, anything realy, but this pedal suits all. i wouldnt try jazz or blues with it. but you never know. iv been playing for 4 years and iv never come across a distortion pedal as incredable than this. its amazing that when they say its like a distortion youv never heard before. because it is. i love everything about it, i cant find any flaws. it helps me writer and play music. if your looking for a good distortion pedal, this is the one to get. its not exactly the cheapest pedal in store, but its the best. i 110% recomend it.

it's pretty straitfoward, battery change seems easy

ok, i play bass and returned this pedal after like a month. i dont know how this works out for guitar but IMO this is a p.o.s. the distortion is almost synth-like, sounds like a robot farting. and when i tried to back it into overdrive it still sounded unnatural, only with horrid string noise over the top. not the "good" kind (if you are into that). depspite this string-noise, it still sounded dull and smothered no matter how much i tweaked the filter or settings on my amp. i dont know, i guess im not a rat person.

i think i either got a dud, or it dosnt agree with me bass.

this thing could survive a holocaust and will probably outlive the human race, very solid, no problem eceltronics-wise

contacted them, they are helpful people

considering the repution proco rats have, they must get better than this.

Simple.

I run a '62 RI Tele into a VOX AC30 via a Boss TU2 tuner, the Turbo Rat, and a Visual Sound Liquid Chorus and Echo pedal.

I originally got the turbo rat because I loved the way it sounded on a Peavey Classic 50. It provided a great, thick distortion when layered over the top of the Classic 50's dirty channel.

My new Vox, however, is an entirely different beast and I have had trouble with finding a good spot for the Turbo Rat. The Rat is a distortion pedal that is designed to have its own sound in addition to whatever sound your amp and guitar produce. When the rat is engaged, the character of the Vox entirely vanishes. To a certain extent, this is not a bad thing as it allows me to dial in a fierce heavey sound (but definitely not metal). However, the low-end of the rat is pretty loose (not great for palm-muting) and the low-end of the Vox is a little loose too as a result of its tube rectifier. Thus, while it sounds huge, low string notes get a little mushy. I also have had an immense amount of trouble sorting out where to place the filter. As i shave off the high end via the filter, it also takes away some of the crunchiness of the sound. Perhaps this is somewhat the fault of the Vox being a bright but warm and rich amp while the Rat without the filter is a bright but unrefined pedal. The combination of the Vox and the Rat means that the highs of the vox come off in harsh instead of smooth. When the filter is used to compensate, the warmth and crunch of the vox is lost as well.

Had it for a year and have never worried. I've never known a rat to die.

N/A

I know my Sound Quality section came off pretty harsh. But that is because I consider this pedal a poor fit for the AC30. I only use it when I need heavy distortion and even then, the looseness of the low end bothers me. On the other hand, the rat worked great on the Classic 50. I have also used the rat with a Fender Deluxe 1x12. On these two amps (which have pretty piercing highs and the lack of a particurly musical overdrive channel), the Rat excelled and the filter worked. When coupled with the warmth and smoothness on my Vox, the Rat destroys my tone. So, basically I'm in the market for an OD pedal that will sit better with my vox. I think that I may even be able to keep the rat for some situations if I use an EQ to try and make it fit-in frequency wise with my Tele and the Vox. I think this is a solid pedal to have, especially if you want to add some distortion to Fenders or Peaveys. But if you've got a particularly warm and responsive amp, the Rat will destroy those characteristics. I'm keeping it as a back-up. Plus, you never know, one day I may find a useful place for it with the Vox. But we'll see. I think a numbered rating is too hard on this one, since I love it and hate it at the same time. hopefully this review will help anyone who wants to get High gain sounds out of a Vox or similar amp go the EQ pedal or boost pedal route instead of buying a Turbo Rat.

Really simple. Only thing that confused me at first was that you need to turn the 'filter' knob the opposite way to what you'd expect.

I use an Ibanez Iceman & Laney GH100S amp. Other effects are Marshall BB2, DOD Flanger & a modified Jim Dunlop Crybaby.

I only bought the Rat because it was really cheap & has direct bypass. I was going to use it as a kill-switch. However, after about 30 mins of experimenting I realised how awesome the gain is & it is now my main overdrive. Reallty thick sound with plenty of top end & string clarity.

The rat was beaten to hell & back when I bought it but it works perfectly. Its unbelievably robust.

Not had to deal with them.

I'm using it for Extreme Metal & would buy another at full retail price if I lost it. its got more gain than most people will need & a big volume boost. I have 5 distortion effects including a USA Big Muff & the Turbo Rat is the best & most flexible of all.

This is a review of the Turbo Rat Diode on the Deucetone.

I've compared the Dirty Rat, Vintage and Turbo diodes on the Deuce and to my ears the Turbo comes out on top. It supposedly has a bit less compression which, according to Proco, makes it brighter. Hmmm...I think it sounds warmer in fact than the Dirty or Vintage. Correspondingly, the bass notes are a little "looser" but "wider". I like it and to me is my favorite Marshall grind sound out of this pedal. The Vintage is more compressed and cuts through largely in the upper mids to treble - when you dial back the filter it gets a very industrial, shrill cut in the leads - not icepick though. The Dirty is most compressed and sustains longer but is a bit more tamed EQ than the Vintage.

While this is for reviewing the Turbo, I have to say if your going to shell out $90 or so bucks in a Turbo, you might as well save up and get the Deucetone...much more variety and interesting cascading between channels for new sounds. Also, the ciruit they use in the Deuce is differnt yielding warmer sounds overall. I know - I've had the Vintage Reissue and it sounded thin to me vs. the Deuce.

"What is good sound?". If good sound from a stompbox that boasts double the distortion of it's predecesors is gobs of sustain and gorgeous harmonics, then good sound isn't far off. Just tweak around with the three knobs (dist.,filter,volume) and it's 'magic' tone is yours. The manual with mine gave really cool and colorful summaries of each Rat distortion pedal (..."to bone crushing rock n' roll!").

I'm using a Jackson DKMG with a Seymour Duncan Distortion Trembucker and among other 'boxes', the Turbo Rat is sorta noisy on high impact settings, but who isn't using a noise gate (MXR Smart Gate)?! The only time the pedal seems weak is on lowest settings, like minimal distortion and volume, but turn at least one of those up and "Whoooo!"- watch out! I'm using a Crate (MX65R) amp set on kill! Straight tube tone without the tubes. Jealous? Just tweak those amp knobs, and a quality pickup helps. The artists this pedal reminds me of on my settings are Metallica on 'Kill 'em all'. I didn't try to sound like that sound but I was looking for a bright lead tone, which I acheived. The distortion range goes from unRat-like to distortion that the Rat name is sucessful for. That is, Rip roaring raging uncontrollable hell. I must say that this pedal to me sounds somewhat natural compared to overprocessed sounds, which is why I opted this pedal from my collection for a lead boost.

I can depend on it 'cause it takes a tank to destroy a small town. I have two other Rat pedals (vitage Rat re-ish and Rat 2) if anything went wrong, but I wouldn't bring them as a backup 'cause I shouldn't have to.

N/A

I play heavy fast rock 99.9% of the time. I think you could guess if this pedal works for this style or not. I've been playing for at least a decade. If it went missing or something, I-I-I'd rather not think about it...please. I love it's (un)natural thick sustain and unique Rat tone. I kinda wish the box was a bit smaller. My fave feature is just the tone...Oh, who am I kiddin'- it's called: The 'TURBO' Rat !!! I compared it against my Boss Metal zone (which never had a use for me ever, not that it sucks, but it sounds like everyone else with that pedal). I just wish it was less old school size but it also wouldn't be as cool, right?

It is very easy to get a good sound out of this beast. Not a wide variation though, but that really doesn't matter.

I own a Mesa Dual Rectifier and a wide range of pedals, including other distortions. I absolutely adore the TurboRAT even in comparison to my Mesa distortion. No matter what people's opinions of Mesa rectos may be... a quick comparison of price between replacing the tubes on a mesa head and buying a RAT pedal, leaves me LOVING this pedal.

When in my early years, I used to think hmm... turn up the distortion on all pedals to full to get the best sound. So originally I thought the T-RAT was useless, because it begins to waffle the sound severely past low distortion settings. There's a retard who has submitted a review above (Jordan) who resembles me as a 12yr old in this respect(he also turned the filter the wrong way to reduce 'darkness'! and was surprised that reducing the volume made the sound of the signal including previous pedals -quieter! haha!). Now in my increased wisdom, I try to use the MINIMUM amount of distortion possible at all times.

With the T-RAT, this is essential. If you try this pedal out, set the distortion to about 9 or 10 o'clock. I personally set the filter fully anti-clockwise, which is very trebly until I EQ it. On these settings if you play very gently, the result is almost clean. With more attack, the sound can be very aggressive and quite frankly, beautiful!

The sound of the pedal reminds me very slightly of a Big Muff but more aggressive and with a far better capacity for muted notes. However, no matter what anyone says, you could not do 'proper' metal with it because the muted notes are not defined enough. This pedal is best for playing single note riffs or small chords. It loves you being messy as well (hardly sounds like a good thing!), I've ended up changing my style to encompass messiness (string scrapes and lefthand-mutes) because it sounds so good.

I'm planning to record soon with my lead guitarist using the T-RAT and myself using my Mesa. I think I'd actually like it to be the other way round but I've recorded my rhythm parts already.

TRY THIS PEDAL PROPERLY.

It din't get a ten for sound quality because it could produce slightly better muted notes.

I can't really comment as although I've had it for years, I've utterly dismissed it as poo till very recently when I tried it again. I had a little trouble with the battery cable not working sometimes but this will just be the wire coming away from the contact.

Haven't dealt with them.

I absolutely love the sound of this pedal and have turned two of my mates onto it as well (both of whom own Marshall stacks).

I'll have another quick go at describing the sound just for the hell of it... Imagine the aggression of a 5150 with less 'bee in a bottle' quality to it (5150 owners: don't go mental, I like their sound).

Sorry to bang on...

I've had this thing for about 10 years. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I put it on a shelf. When I love it, I set the Distortion at 12 o'clock, the Filter at 12 and the Volume at around 9. This puts it in the ball park of around the same volume off as on. With this thing on I can get some pretty sweet controllable feedback things that are pretty nice, at least today they were.

I use the TurboRat in a pedal board through a Crate GCXL65 2-12 amp. Some people poo-poo on Crate but mine is very dependable with a decent sound, or sounds, since it has clean and distortion channels, chorus and reverb. I also use a revolving cast of several other pedals but right now the Turbo is the first in the chain, then wah, then echo, and finally EQ. Sometimes I use the Crate to pre-amp a Fender SuperReverb to get tube tone but usually I dont need that much volume and I baby the Super.
You can't use the Turbo on the extreme settings. It will squeal and squawk in a nasty way. Around the middle range of the knobs is where the sweet spots are, as are most pedals. You just gotta play with it. I like to use it to get a lead sound that breaks into a sweet feedback after a few beats, kinda like Blue Oyster Cult at the end of the big guitar solo where it goes back into the vocal part.
There's painful feedback and then there's the kind that makes people go "YEAH!." Sometimes I can get the second kind with this. But it does kinda make the sound a little more treble and harsh. That's what EQ is for and I am forever tweaking.

Its very solid and well built. Its not the most important thing in my setup but its a cool toy. I like it way better than my Boss DS-1.

I used to live in Kalamazoo where ProCo is headquartered and I know some of the employees are pretty cool but I've never been in a position to ask anything of them.

I play hard rock/alternative/surf/sleaze/psychobilly/slut pop and I think this is a fine device for achieving the sleaze tone that I've been lusting after. It it were stolen I'd be pissed but I might experiment with other things. After playing with it just today, I'd have to say I love the way it makes nice controllable feedback and a raunchy chunky nasty filthy sleazey monkey shreik tone when I choke up on myself and attack it sideways.

It's simple if you've had experience with distortion pedals and know what kind of sound you want and already have an idea of what the TRat can do. If you don't, read some of the reviews here and get an idea of how to produce certain sounds with the TRat.

I use my TRat in a number of ways with a number of rigs. My standard set-up is a Gibson SG into a Peavey Classic 50 2x12. I dont have much money to throw around on equipment so I gotta make the best of what I got. When I use the TRat I have the Classic 50 on the dirty channel right at the point of breaking-up. I use picking dynamics and volume control to go between clean and light crunch. When I get ready to use the rat, I roll the volume up and then kick the Trat on. The result is a very crunchy distortion. The amp overdrive provides the basic foundation and the T-rat layers it with heavier distortion. When the distortion on the rat goes above 11 o'clock, I do think that the sound of the pedal gets a little darker and looses a little high end . . . for me, this makes it a great heavy crunch pedal for chords and riffs. It is perhaps not best suited for lead, though I have no money and therefore I still use it and it works fine. The TurboRat (obviously because of the name) is meant to really get some serious distorted sounds. If you think this pedal is going to give you a nice, light crunch, then you didn't even try this pedal. You can use it as a quasi-boost by keeping he dist really low and turning up the volume, but there are other pedals that are much better suited to do this. It has very high output, I rarely put the volume over 11. The filter works to reduce a certain scratchy quality that exists when the distortion is at lower settings, where it cuts out less high end. While in most situations, the distortion and volume should never ever be used at max, the ridiculously high output of the Trat provides a really cool fuzz effect. With the dist and volume maxed out, so much signal hits the pre-amp that it breaks up in a way that feeds back almost instantly in a very compressed, fuzzy way, which is actually very cool for certain things. Coupled with my Visual Sound Liquid Chorus and Echo, I can get some cool sounds using it in this capacity.

Anyway, to make a long and boring story short, this pedal is great for totally rockin' out your chords in a modern rock sort of way. If you tweak the pedal correctly, it will provide a quality modern distortion for boutique or vintage amps. Like other reviewers said, don't confuse distortion for tube overdrive. Those are two very different things. This is distortion pedal so don't judge it because it doesn't sound like a Dual Rectifier.

Solid as a rock. I'm poor so I have no back-up. This is part of the reason I went for it. Had it for a year . . . works great.

No idea

I play in an original rock band that sounds something like OK Computer era radiohead meets the slightly heavier side of American indie only without the money to afford the production nor the talent of radiohead. But, we give it our all. I have also found myself playing guitar in an emo band (not a big emo fan, but the dudes in the band are my friends, so I do what I can). The rat adapts to both situations very nicely. It especially likes the power chords and octaves, and 9th chords that emo depends on. Thom Yorke also uses one in his set-up, which is cool, I guess. This pedal is affordable, it is dependable, and it does what my amp can't do . . . and that is high-gain modern distortion (though I wouldn't say metal . . . just a heavy rock crunch). It is not the most versatile pedal in the world, but it doesn't pretend to be. If you know what you want, then get it.

Oh yeah, I also play bass in a couple of bands and I use the rat for fuzz bass occaisionally. It worked better in that capacity than I thought it would. It also sounds absolutely sweet connected up to synths when I feel like messing with weird loops and effects. Oh, and I also want to point out that, in my opinion, it's very important to put the distortion pedal EARLY in the signal chain. I put it right after my tuner. If you put it after delay pedals, etcetera, I find that the "naturalness" of the sound is severly compromised and the negative sides of the pedal (such as it's dark quality and removal of high-end) are seriously accentuated.