As an old hack guitarist i've been playing original ProCo Rats, Rat mods, and derivatives of Rat circuits for longer than i'd like to admit. The biggest issue with ProCo Rats is wild inconsistency between one pedal to other. There are distinctly different components in different years, and even production runs within a year, with wildly different tolerances, and the QC was always suspect. More of the OG Rats than not have a high noise floor, regardless of gain settings, and they're notoriously unreliable. That doesn't mean you can't have one that's lasted for ages, and sounds great, but the reality is the next 20 off the line may have been broken in 6 months, or sounded distinctly different... much like anything made by EHX. It's a product of the designer or company making the conscious decision to get the cheapest components and choosing the quickest manufacturing options for margins, and figuring it's close enough. I'm a fan of the DRV because the additional preamp gives it a depth & thickness that I don't hear in most Rats, especially on low to medium gain. It can ape pretty much all the high gain Rat tones, but it it's not introducing more noise (other than the gain) and it seems to soften a little bit of that fingernails on chalkboard high end that most original ProCo Rats have. My final point of differentiation would be the build quality and QC of the DRV is objectively superior. They sound the same from one unit to another and they're gig ready and road reliable. I recall thrash band buddies hauling around 2 or 3 spare Rats to gigs because they didn't trust that little black box to go BRRRRRR for an entire show.
😂 You sound like a real self proclaimed expert on RAT pedals until you start talking about how the old pedals are inconsistent and unreliable, that's where you fall off the deep end😅 My dad has the big box and I've got the white face like in the video and between the 2 vintage ones my dad and I have they are dead reliable and sounds almost the same, factoring in tolerance on parts that are very similar and built like a tank. I've had maybe 3 or 4 of the modern ProCo Rat pedals and a couple clones and the only ones I'd describe as unreliable and inconsistent are the crappy clones . The new ones sound pretty close to my white face but I think there's a bit more dynamic 3D stuff going on with the vintage that maybe you can only feel and not exactly hear it !?
@@AuntAlnico4 I didn't and wouldn't claim to be an expert. The component variability, wildly different tolerances, and reliability issues, are all well documented by a multitude of sources. I'm glad your anecdotal experience has been better than many if not most. That doesn't discount the objective realities discussed.
They all sound similar, I'd not be able to say which was which on a track, the whiteface RAT looks the best and is OG but the vintage big box RAT looks even better imho, so I'd go for that myself.
Subbed! Kzoo is a weird little town. I should’ve picked up a few when I lived there. They were everywhere and every band in town had someone who worked at ProCo. Just got a new one and love it. Bye-bye Big Muff.
I'm curious which one felt best. I have an '84 big box Rat which feels great. In this demo It almost sounds as if the Walrus has a tiny bit of compression to it? Have no idea.
I would like to see you put it against the world's cheapest A $23 Dolamo Vintage Distortion. I recommend sitting down. If you must stand then one of you should be ready to catch the other. I review pedals myself. In fact since 2014 my list says 3,048. When I tried the Dolamo I expected the pedal to be total garbage. I would have bet on it!!! I had my own trusty old ProCo sitting beside it and I picked my fave sound and duplicated it in about a half minute.
