Proco Rat 2 Distortion

First off, I play this pedal with my main amp, a 2017 Vox AC15C1. If you look around on YouTube you might see my demo/review of it. It's another highly requested pedal by my viewers and I wasn't too sure what I was getting into with this thing.

It does the subtle drive brilliantly, does nasty mid-drive tones and even gets fuzzy if you need it too (although I suggest using an EQ/comp in front of it for that).

The housing is the best out of all my pedals, sort of feels like you could drive over it with a tank and it would be fine. The footswitch is sturdy and road worthy, the buttons feel like quality stuff as well.

For the price, it is hard to beat. It's a classic for a reason. Just get one, thank me later.

Tested with:
- Vox AC15C1
- Vox AC4
- 1966 Gibson GA-15RVT

Build quality: the chassis itself is sturdy, but has spaces on the sides that will make dust have an easier way to the PCB. It appears to be a "feature" of the older RAT versions also, but I'm not a fan of it.
The rubber feet are not easy to remove, since the screws have an hard time reaching the bottom without them, and that makes appliyng velcro a pain.
Glow-in-the-dark controls are a nice touch.

Features: a no-nonsense pedal: gain knob, filter knob that works clockwise (makes the sound darker the more you turn it to the right), and level (volume) knob. While essential, the controls have the potential to make it nicely versatile. Note that the pedal requires a "jack-type" connector for power, so make sure you have an adapter handy.

Sound: gritty, ballsy, dirty. It loses a bit of definition in the bottom end maybe, but fortunately the internal components are not SMT and you can mod it to your taste if you want to. Still, when buying this pedal you should be aware that RATs have their "signature" sound. If you like it, you'll like this pedal. Works best with medium to high output pickups IMHO.

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.