Rat 2 Distortion : Absolutely my favorite distortion pedal

I generally play 80s-style hard rock, so I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted out of a distortion pedal. My intention was to play through the clean channel of my amplifier and achieve whatever distortion I wanted using pedals, so that my tone would remain reasonably consistent at any volume. The ProCo Rat 2 delivers what I want almost exactly. The distortion can be adjusted from a relatively mild overdrive to a snarling crunch to fuzz. It is also a fairly quiet pedal, which honestly surprised me for such an inexpensive piece of kit.

Cons:

Construction. This pedal is built like a tank, but the casing is held together by screws which also hold the little rubber feet in place. In order to mount the pedal to my board using Velcro, I had to remove the screws, remove the feet, then replace the screws. The battery cover is also held in place by an enormous screw which must be removed in order to use Velcro. And the paint finish has an odd texture that makes adhesive-backed Velcro hard to attach. This is all easily overcome, but still a bit irritating.

The Rat 2 also doesn't play well with other boost/gain/overdrive pedals. The sound is a little "dry," so have tried throwing both a TS and a TC Electronics Spark Plug in front of it' both give me a somewhat "wetter" sound, but they also introduce more noise than I would like. I regard this as a problem with the other pedals, though, and I'm sure I'll find something quieter.

PROS:

The price. I'm amazed that I found a pedal this good for around euro 75!

It's solid as can be!

The sound! I absolutely LOVE the way this pedal sounds, and how flexible it is.

Edit: unfortunately, the noise problem is NOT the other pedals but appears to be the result of the 1980s-era circuitry. Although I really loved the Rat 2's sound, I just couldn't stand how noisy it was in combination with other pedals and ended up replacing it with a clone.

However, this is still a good classic pedal. It didn't work for me, but the popularity of this pedal with big-name recording artists of the past says a lot about it. I would still recommend it to people who want to experiment.