RATS
The PackRat is the ultimate tribute to the 40+ years of rodent evolution and its impact on the guitar’s sound. Artists from every genre have used the iconic tones in this unassuming black box to create their sounds, including Nirvana, John Scofield, Pink Floyd, Metallica, REM, the Eagles, Jeff Beck and Radiohead.
The operation of the PackRat is about as simple as it gets. The “Volume” control adjusts the overall volume of the pedal. The “Distortion” control lets you raise and lower the amount of gain or distortion that the circuit produces, and the “Filter” control allows you to brighten and darken the sound of the overall effect. This is effectively a simple, low-pass filter. Lastly, we have “Mode” control. This is a stepped pot that clicks into place as you scroll through the nine legendary versions of this circuit. As you change the mode, the analog circuitry is rewired, resulting in brand new values of resistors, capacitors, diodes and op amps.
1. The OG (1979-83)
The OG mode is a perfect recreation of the first production RATs ever made. This era of roughly four years covers what is referred to historically as the V1 and V2 models.
2. White Face V3 (1984-1986)
This “White Face” model has gained a reputation as one of the holy grail RATs, and this mode will switch to a tapered “Filter” control with an entirely different feel.
3. Turbo V6 (1989)
Every RAT until 1989 utilized a typical silicon diode, just like the DOD 250 and BOSS DS-1, but the new Turbo RAT used LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). It is also worth noting that this model was the first RAT that offered the sloped enclosure that we see today.
4. BRAT (1997)
In 1997 ProCo got into the budget pedal game by releasing the BRAT, adding an input buffer circuit and soft clipping (inside the loop of the op amp) on top of the standard hard clipping of the previous RATs.
5. Dirty (2004)
Inspired by the "Dirty RAT" tone originally spawned in 2002, this circuit utilizes germanium diodes in the symmetrical hard clipping section of the circuit. In addition to the diode changes, this model has several different capacitor value changes resulting in a different distortion character and feel.
6. LA (1986)
In 1986, Ibanez released the “10 Series” line of pedals that included three RAT style pedals including the “LA Metal” which included a great input buffer, several key capacitor changes for frequency response, and no clipping diodes at all. The distortion is produced by overloading or “clipping the rails” of the op amp.
7. Landgraff MO’D (1999)
Between 1999-2000, a man named John Landgraff started building pedals by hand in Florida, including the a distortion pedal that he called the “MO’D,” a distant cousin of the RAT.
8. Caroline (2010)
Philippe Herndon's clever take on the RAT circuit called the Wave Cannon is unique addition to the Packrat.
9. JHS Mode
Reminiscent of the now discontinued JHS All American and the long-running JHS PackRat modification, the JHS Mode preserves what makes the RAT unique with a little twist.
