01—ProCo
RAT 2
Every Jonny Greenwood record from The Bends onward — the most range-having distortion pedal under $100.
The cheapest pedal here that has genuinely changed music. Buy it without hesitation. Should be on more boards than it is.
02—On the bench
ProCo's hard-clipping distortion — the loudest, most aggressive, most versatile drive pedal made for under $100. The RAT was designed in 1978 by Scott Burnham at Pro Co and refined into the RAT 2 in 1988; the circuit uses an LM308 op-amp into hard-clipping silicon diodes to produce a distortion that's tighter and more focused than a Big Muff but more aggressive than a Tube Screamer. The 'filter' knob is a low-pass that lets you go from dark sludge to cutting bite. Used by Jeff Beck for cleaner overdrive (low gain, filter low), by Kurt Cobain for grunge crunch (mid-everything), by James Hetfield for early Metallica tone, and by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood across virtually every record. Cheap, indestructible, and one of the most range-having drive pedals ever made.
- 01filter knob is a low-pass — left for sludge, right for bite
- 02at low gain, behaves like an overdrive
- 03at high gain, full-on hard-clipping distortion
- 04scoops less than a Big Muff — more midrange presence
- 05stacks well into a clean amp or a dirty one
03—In the room
Where else this pedal lives.
- Jeff Beck
- Kurt Cobain
- Jonny Greenwood
- James Hetfield
- Thurston Moore
JHS Pack Rat if you want all the LM308-era variants; standard RAT 2 if you want the canonical one.