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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
There are four basic versions of the original - Vintage, II, Turbo and You Dirty Rat. Vintage is the most middy and overdrive-like, II is grittier and edgier, Turbo is louder and smoother, YDR is rougher and raspier. There are also many copies and derivatives which allow you to switch between approximations of some or all of these - they're all basically the same circuit, but with some component differences in well-chosen places.
I like the II and the YDR best personally, but I know a lot of people prefer the Vintage or the Turbo.
In the end I stopped using them though - while they do a huge range of sounds, all of them sound like a Rat... if you see what I mean! Eventually I just got tired of that.
The chip does *not* make any difference to the sound. What does is the pots... really! These were changed at about the same time as the chip and the switching, so the idea that it’s the chip is understandable - but it’s actually the pots that matter. You need the older US-made full size pots with the correct taper.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I also like the 2 and YDR more than the others. I actually like my straight-after-they-got-worse Rat2, which has the wrong chip. It's a slightly softer sound than my original-circuit clone (fuzzdog kit ftw!) but it's what I used for the best part of 10 years so it feels like it's part of me, even if it's not the "good" one.
No, I got mine new in about 2004. It's had a slightly dodgy something in the wiring for a very long time but I've never been able to work out what. One of these days I should take it apart and try and fix it properly...
I’d agree with practically everything said above and add that playing it at home volumes vs live is very different - it’s quite compressed (the Rat 2 is anyway) which means when you dig in you don’t get much extra volume. I’ve had the volume almost at max for a gig and then turned it on at home without thinking and SMACK, full volume face slap!!
The Turbo Rat bridges the OD/Distortion barrier quite nicely and is much less compressed.
See also Thorpy Warthog if you want Rat flavours with all round better-ness, apparently.
Still very curious to try a Warthog though.
That hyperfade colourway is lush.