RAT Distortion
The Season 1 finale, featuring Kalamazoo's greatest export, and a certain favorite colourful band.
Extra fun content from Episode 6 of the Effect Pedal podcast, the season 1 finale!
Check out the RAT Distortion playlist on Spotify with songs that have a RAT pedal (and one with two TurboRATs) in them
Buy a RAT Distortion pedal t-shirt or art print from the MeteorWright shop, featuring the 1980’s “Big Box” version:
The classic “Cult of Personality” video from Living Colour that exploded my head in 1988:
I talk about Vernon Reid’s Big Box RAT pedal in the episode, but his RAT was actually modified by Robert Keeley, which you can see in the Stompbox book by Eilon Paz
If a YouTube video was a textbook, then here are two of them: Premier Guitar’s two Rig Rundown videos from 2013 and 2016 with Vernon Reid (and Doug Wimbish):
(No RAT pedals here, but there are plenty of other cool pedals.)
Here is more detail on how the RAT pedal works, in “The FX Files” from MusicRadar.com
SoundAffects.com has “Ten Guitarists who love the ProCo RAT” (from 2018)
A fascinating recounting in Sound on Sound of the recording of the Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light album, recorded completely on tape with no computers in Dave Grohl’s two-car garage. Spoiler alert: Grohl uses a RAT pedal not on his guitars but his vocals on “White Limo”
Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo had a RAT2 on his 2018 touring rig (via MusicRadar.com)
A lot of guitarists are said to use the RAT pedal, here is a Wikipedia list of them; I have not independently confirmed them all
Graham Coxon of Blur (one of my top favorites) has a JHS-modified RAT2 on this alternative board in this That Pedal Show video:
Speaking of That Pedal Show, required viewing is their episode on the RAT
Here is a cool 2019 deep dive on the RAT pedal (with sound samples) from The Anatomy of Guitar Tone
The RAT pedal homepage from ProCo
Be on the lookout for deluxe video episodes of Effect Pedal in the coming months! Please send in your ideas for Season 2 of the podcast too ⤵️
Thanks for reading!
-Wright
Effect Pedal podcast: Subscribe
Effect Pedal Project website: effectpedalproject.com
@EffectPedal on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Effect Pedal merch: meteorwright.one/shop/effect-pedal
Send an email: effectpedal@meteorwright.com