TTK Reviews the Pro Co 1985 Whiteface Reissue RAT
Marc Johnson | Mar 29, 2010 | Comments 3
February 16, 2010
Pro Co 1985 Whiteface Reissue RAT
By Marc Johnson for TheToneKing.com
From listening to my opening licks you can tell that something brutal came my way for me to check out. For old school players the Pro Co RAT was the stomp box of the 80s. Well, Pro Co has reissued their little baby with the Pro Co ’85 Whiteface Reissue RAT. I use the word ‘reissue’ loosely because, unlike most reissues, this is the essentially the same pedal that you would’ve bought back in the day.
When I pulled the gain almost all the way back, I had a blues tone that would make any bend wail. Many distortion pedals ‘die’ when you try to back off of the gain, but this one let the notes come through with amazing clarity.
The thing that really got me going, though, was when I started rolling the gain back up again. The first thing I thought of was Van Halen Circa ‘78-’85 and instantly wished that I had taken the time to learn “Eruption” all the way through. It had all the articulation and dimension of Eddie’s ‘Brown’ sound with a real bite.
When I turned down the filter knob, that let loose some of the blistering high frequencies. As I moved in the other direction, it took a bit off of the top but still left enough behind to cut through the mix. This little beast may look like a pedal, but it sounds more like a preamp.
I think the thing that distinguishes the RAT from most other pedals is the fact that it’s not a one trick pony. You have your “metal” pedals and your “blues” pedals, but when you try and push them, they leave your guitar sounding like it’s playing out of 10 watt amp inside of a garbage can. The RAT gives you a range of sounds to play with. And guess what. They all sound good!
Pro Co’s website claims that they didn’t want to simply make a reissue that sounded like the RAT. They just wanted to make the RAT, and that’s exactly what they did.
Watch the video review by clicking PLAY below :
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I owned the original and kept it until I went “Line 6 POD Pro” ‘cuz it seemed redundant at the time. I miss it. Thankfully Amplitube 3, Guitar Rig & Line’s Gearbox/POD Farm have very good emulations of the pedal.
The LM308 rat (The Chipset contained in this and the vintage rat) is quite different from any other ProCo Rat Chipsets. The main difference is an issue of warmth and how nicely the pedal cleans up toward low end settings. This pedal is a big part of J. Yuenger’s Thunder kiss ’65 (White Zombie). A tone that I personally think is one of the best single note low E tones going. I mean think about it the song is almost entirely low E 8th and 16th notes in standard tuning if that song was to be successful (and it was) he had to have great single string tone on the low E.
By the way Tone King, I know you are a rock guy, but for those of use who play metal it would be nice if you chugged away for just a few seconds on the products you reviewed, it would save us a trip to our local music store. One of the most useful reviews you had for me was the Peavey shootout at NAMM because you had Nick “Evil Twin” Catanese chugging away a bit on each amp. And now I can’t wait for the 6534+… But anyway thanks Tone King!
this is exactly what I wanted to see…thanks..i was about to get Proco Rat 2..this seems to be better sound pulling off of what I want..