Rat 2 Distortion : Decent, versatile distortion pedal.

It's hard to fault this pedal. It punches perfectly within its weight as a cheap but good sounding and versatile distortion. It has a very rich saturation and tweaking the distortion control gives a wide range of tone in terms of gain and harmonic content. I find that as you turn up the distortion it quickly goes from a light overdrive to a fairly bright drive sound; however the pedal also has a low pass filter that you can use to dip the higher frequency content without making the distortion dull and muddy. Aside from that the only control is a volume knob, which is as exciting as it sounds. So the pedal isn't loaded with features but what it does - it does very well.

The build quality is very good. The pedal is housed in a heavy-duty metal case, with a quality switch and very sturdy knobs. It's definitely ready for years of abuse. However, those looking to integrate the pedal onto their pedal board need to take notice of the fact that the AC connection is not a standard 9v connection so an adapter is necessary to hook it up to a standard power supply.