ProCo Turbo RAT

You would truly have to be an ultra-maroon to not figure out how this works.

I haven't found "That Sound" that I want from this. However, I play through a tube amp that already provides more than enough gain for most humans. My opinion is actually that nobody needs a distortion box or high output pickups, they need clean tone going to a GOOD AMP.
Soldano and seymour duncans anyone?
For what it does, it does it pretty well, but through my amp it is a clean channel only option or the tones get so muddy you cant tell what youre playing.

Built like a Tonka Truck. Now I just need an elephant to stand on it

never needed any

I play what I like to call "lamenco Metal"Power Chord Runsand rolling scales/arpeggios, but never anything the same way twice. Try to pick every note. I also like to play some classic rock like Nugent and Sabbath, with a little BlackFoot thrown in too. Like Classical acoustic as well.
I have a whole stable of guitars, including BC Rich handmades, and Gibsons... my everyday player is a heavily beaten and customised Gibson Studio with Seymour Duncan Custom 5 in the bridge and a Peraly Gates in the neck. series parallel switching.
This unit, for me, gets in the way of my music, it just doesnt work well with my setup. I already have enough gain to destroy small villages, I just wanted a little more high end, this doesnt do it.

I must say that I still havent't found the right setting on this one. The sound that this steel monster produces is very low, bassy... I bought it, because I wanted a grunge distortion (DS1 has disapointed me), but still...Maybe with some proper setting...Help!

I am using a Squier Strat and a YAMAHA VR3000 amp with an 110W power. I think that the amp is main factor for lack of quality sound that my RAT gives. I tried all the possible setting on RAT as same as on YAMAHA. And yes, when my amp is on bedroom volume, the sound is pretty good, but when I turn it past half, it starts to produce strange sound. But I would'n blame it on RAT.

It has already been said! Like a rock!

I play mostly grunge, but that include artists like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains to Nirvana. RAT suits my Pearl Jam obsession best, while it lacks in producing more metal sound for AiC. I've been playing for three years now, had two other effects (Zoom 505 and BOSS DS-1) and I must say that I liked DS-1 the most. I bought TurboRAT because I 've read here about its variety. Price is quite high here in Slovenia, Europe (we don't even have a distributer here) so it was hard to get one. I wouldn't say it is a complete disappointment, but If it was stolen, I wouldn't buy another one. But I must say, for readers who want to buy Turbo RAT, that I didn't yet explored all of what RAT has to offer. I think is the amp that is keeping me from musical nirvana with Turbo RAT. :)

As with all Rats this pedal has three knobs. But it's not easy - all the knobs are very reactive. Changing one knob (even the volume) will change the tone. For example increasing the distortion will also make a bassier sound. Increasing the volume will make a fuzzier more distorted tone. It will take a while to find the sweet spot for you. Rats can sound bland and ordinary until you find the sweet spot when it sings for you. Unless you work with it it just sounds OK. The tone knob is actually a low pass filter and it goes the opposite way to a tone knob. I often find I have to re-tweak the knobs each time I play and the pedal sounds better after I've been playing for an hour or so after it's warmed up. It's analog and true bypass.

I use a Tele with the following pedals: Boss BD2, MXR Blue Box, Vintage Rat, Turbo Rat, Boss DM2. I sometimes use other pedals like a Volume pedal or Ring Mod but that's just the essentials.
I used a Vintage Rat pedal for years and loved it. It was the only distortion pedal I found that sounded good with a band and stood out. I tried most of them out there. With a booster pedal and a Rat I got the perfect thick saturated singing lead tone I wanted. Rats actually have a quite stupid amount of gain. They have more distortion than anyone will actually need with a band unless you are in a bedroom. This is why DOD "FXExtreme Distortion" pedals that hugely distort the sound are not used by many pros. Most players discover quite quickly that with a band you need far less distortion than you think you need, if you use too much you just sound like fuzzy static and no one can hear what you are playing. You can get a HUGE tone with just an overdrive and Fender amp if you know what you are doing. I only use the Vintage Rat distortion at 1 o'clock or less and I like a quite fuzzy tone. I liked the Rat so much decided to get a second Rat pedal (this one) so I could use two with different settings.
I'm mostly basing my review on comparing the Turbo to the other Rats since no one seems to have done that yet. This pedal sounds slightly different to the other Rats. It isn't actually much heavier than the vintage Rat. It is a bit louder because the volume knob has slightly more range so you can get a little more gain if you so desire. But the distortion knob and it's range sounds pretty similar. The main difference between the Turbo and the other Rats is that this one is darker sounding. It has a slightly meaner sound. You can still get an all treble sound if you want to though. The difference is quite subtle. I use this pedal with the distortion way down to almost zero to get a tone similar to PJ Harvey's Dry Album or too add more bass to my already distorted tone. I know Black Rebel Motorcycle Club use a Rat of some sort and I'm fairly sure it's the Turbo. This pedal sounds quite similar to "Spread Your Love". Jesus and Mary Chain fans will be over the moon with this pedal. You can get a fabulous thick feedback. The Turbo still has the sweet singing lead tone I loved about the other Rats. You just need to tweak it to find it. This pedal sounds great for a mean garage rock sound which seems to be quite fashionable at the moment as the Kills and White Stripes get bigger and bigger. The pedal can have a bassy sound but it more defined than the Big Muff. I found the Big Muff too thick and fat for me and most other distortions too thin or noisy. But this one is good.

This pedal is much heavier and more compact than the Vintage Rat. It's actually really heavy. Therefore I'm much more confident about this pedal holding up at a gig. I like that fact that this pedal has an LED so you can see it's on. But this also means that the batteries don't last as long.

Never tried.

This is a great pedal. I love any Rat I've tried and I'm a big fan of their pedals. They are very versitile and reliable pedals and I base most of my sound on them. For the price you can't beat them. This pedal is good for garage rock and dark indie. I know Sonic Youth use this pedal. The vintage Rat gives the trebley indie sound (Blur, Elastica). This pedal is a bit darker and more emotional. I wouldn't reccommend this pedal for Nu Metal but it sounds good for alternative rock and Emo. It will definately work for early Sabbath and 80's Goth like Bauhaus. The Turbo isn't quite as versitile as the Vintage or Rat 2 but it's still fantastic. Not for everyone but try it and see because it might be for you.

you can dial in in a fairly good sound quickly ( all dials at 12 O' clock is fine in most situations) but its gonna take a while to get something mind blowing

My setup is... Gibson SG Standard > Crybaby > Nobels Pre-Amp/Booster > Turbo RAT > Boss BF3 Flanger > Marshall VS265

As mentioned above a useable sound is easy to find but i'm yet to capture the exact sound i'm after. It gives anything from light overdrive to the nastiest distortion this side of a Metal Zone ( somewhere in between works for me) Harmonics come through nicely

Well its tough alright (insert dodgy reference to tank/brick/house here) i'm gonna have to gig without a backup cos i can't afford one, though i'm sure i won't need one

No idea only had it a few days

I play punk/rock mostly mixed with some metal and older rock, it sounds fine for hammering out some powerchords in your favorite punk songs as you'd expect but don't expect anything ground breaking without some tweaking. If it was stolen (insert reference to hurting thief in a nasty way here) i doubt i could find another one in such good condition at this price but my setup doesn't rely on it (amp distortion is nice)

It's easy to get a decent sound. It's harder to get a "good" sound out of it. No manual but who cares.

I'm using a Fender American Strat with EMG SA pickups through a Tech 21 Trademark 60. It's not noisy at all. I'd say it is a standard distortion sound. A lot like the Big Muff but less likely to break in my opinion.

I'd depend on it. My amp has distortion so it isn't necessary to have a backup. Never depend on any piece of electronic equipment. Everything fails in the end (I'm not being cynical, it's just the nature of the beast).

I'm e-mailed them and I never heard back. That kinda sucks but I don't want to slag the whole company for that.

I play rock music. I've been playing for 6 years now. It's not great, it just is. I can't believe some of the rave reviews for it. It's a distortion pedal! Whoopie. I think the "Turbo" tag is a bit misleading. I was expecting something a bit more over the top. I think next time I'm going to buy the 3ms Noise Swash. Distortion is fine but I want something that signals the impending armaggedon. I'm looking for a Nine Inch Nails meets Radiohead meets space/psychedelic rock sound. This thing does sustain nicely when used in conjunction with my amp's distortion sound. Just not crazy enough though. I'll keep it until something better comes along.

Three knobs and the all have an amazing influence on the tone. Who needs a manual?

Rats are great they are very scarce in our country so when I saw one I bought it right there. Gilmour has a rat in his setup and so do several other Pro's. If you speak to experienced players of 10 years plus all of them will tell you these pedals are amazing. They never fail even after over ten years of abuse. If you haven't got a Rat you need to get one. It does blues right to the most extreme metal you can imagine.

This thing won't break! The only piece of equipment that I need a backup for is my guitar when I break strings, there is nothing in my rig that will break and that why the Rat is pert of it

I will never have to deal with them.

I love all guitar music this pedal covers it all blues, country, grunge, rock, industrial, metal and new wave metal. This is one of the best pedals ever made!

Easy enough.

I must say I am not very impressed with this pedal. It is not terrible or anything, but it doesn't seem to have any real character. Whatever things I found unique about it, I also found annoying. The tone knob really doesn't seem to help color the sound nicely, but rather seems simply to muddy it up. The distortion is gritty and artificial sounding.

Extremely easy to use (best results with a Marshall valvestate 80WATTS):

Distortion
Filter (excellent for warm blues when on full)
volume (it kicks asses)

This pedal has been in my house since the eighties and only recently I have used it extensively for Hendrix, SRV stuff. It sounds great in combination with my relic Stratocaster, Cry Baby and Valvestate 80W (old model from 1990). I absolutely love the versatility of sound and the ease of use! Couldn't live without (actually I did but played lots of crappy effects in comparison...I must have been stoned for many years...lol)

survived neglect, dust, house moves, kids etc. What more can you ask for? Surely ants would use as a nuclear bunker! Extremely well built

is there one???

Should I say more? Go and buy one you won't regret it!
Played for 18 years, mostly blues and tried several setups. This is the best one so far.

It could not be easier. The pots are smooth and consistant and the foot switch clicks with athority so that you know it when you switch. A nice bright LED makes the on off status claer as can be.

I have run this pedal through so may setups it would be hard to list them all. I have used it for Guitars, Basses, Synths, Vocals you name it. My best Guitar ton has com fron a Rickenbacker 620 run through the rat into a hiwatt custom 50. Only problem there is that the Hiwatt runs so loud that it is best heard from at least a hundred yards away. In every case the Rat has delivered exactly what I wanted. Any problems with the sounds I get seem to relate to the guitars or amps. The rat is perfect for my needs.

As everyone here has noted this thing is bullet proof. I have owned mine for 15 years, toured and giged with it more times than I could possibly remember(certainly over a thousand shows). Loaned it out, had many, many full beers poured on it, droped it , kicked it, and thrown it. To this day, it has never even hinted at failure. The paint is waring off and it shows a little rust but that is it. The pots are not even scratchy despite never having been cleaned and the switch still clicks solidly.

I am sure I will never know

I have basicly played Punk, Blues, Rock and New wave with this pedal. It will get a edgy garage sound or a fuller british stack type tone. Between sounding great, being simple and intuitive, and never ever failing, how could it be beat? I love it.

It's supereasy of use, distortion knob - filter knob - volume knob. That's about it actually =)

Setup: Godin Radiator - Digitech Whammy re. - ProCo TurboRat - EHX '73 Smallstone - DOD Equalizer - H&K 80 watt amp

Well it's easy to get a good Rock 'n Roll sound out of it (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Hives and The Strokes for example). But it's actually quite difficult to get a really heavy sound with this. I've found the trick though, just get yourself an equalizer (recommend that to everyone by the way) and you cut off the mids, et voila: Boss MZ eat your heart out...
So it's quite versatile, but without the equalizer I'd say the sound comes closest to the bands above. Does sound JCM800-ish (so with everything cranked up bit, it sounds great for Rage against the machine) as someone mentioned before. Get an adapter by the way, the battery will have a long life but it will get weaker at the end and that makes the pedal really muddy.

Well, you sure can depend on it. I've got this pedal for about 1,5 year and the last 3 months I only had 1 problem: there's a *click* in the footswitch. Guess I'll have to take it to the shop.
Don't drop this thing on your foot by the way... If you do you're on your way to the hospital.

Never dealt with ProCo, I get everything fixed at the local shop.

For the music that I play in the band (alternative/indie/hardcore) it's great. Especially with the EQ, going from harsh softer distortion to really hard distortion: it's great. As mentioned before by someone, with all the distortion way up you can still distinguish chords (can't in case with the Big Muff!). Just wish that the switch wouldn't crank/click, but that's probably just my RAT because it didn't do that at first. BUY BUY BUY! =)