Easy, yet badass ProCo Vintage Rat mod

If you're like me and you dig on raw tones of the good ole ProCo Vintage Rat pedal, but often find its lack of low end response dissapointing, then pay attention. I stumbled across the Ruetz Rat Mod awhile back while cruising the internerd and it's been a life-changing experience. If the ProCo Rat is an important part of your life it could work for you too. If you have a screwdriver, a pair of wire snips, a metric ton of enriched uranium, and three minutes to spare you can make this mod happen. Hell, now that I think about it you don't really need the uranium after all. Scratch that.

So basically, there's an evil resistor just chillin' out up the Rat circuit that's responsible for two things: 1) Low-end suck and 2) Some gain. The Ruetz Rat Mod involves finding said resistor and clipping it, the results being considerable fattening and tightening of the Rat's low end, and the halving of its gain. Open up your Rat pedal, find that bastard, and snip it with your wire snips. That's it. Here's a shot of my Rat's guts with the offensive resistor clearly labeled.


I never used all the gain my Vintage Rat pedal had on tap anyway, so less gain was no problemo. In the modded incarnation your Rat can function as a thick-ass overdrive with all those ratty overtones we all love, or with gain rolled back and volume up you get a semi-clean Rat Boost. Push your tube amp to the sweet spot with just a smidget of Ratty Flava! It works fricken magic on my seventies-era handwired Traynor YGM-3 combo. Behold the official The Bird is The Most Popular Finger Ruetz Rat Mod setting (PAF -ish humbucker with the Traynor on "6") :


If your model of ProCo Rat Pedal is different than mine (the circuit has seen a few variations through the ages) there are several different gut shots from different eras available on the www.diyguitaramp.com/rat.html page. Do it, then proceed to rock out. If you don't like the mod (You WILL like the Mod) it's a piece of cake to drip a little solder in the right spot and return your Rat to its original state. No worries sucka.

Currently rocking out to: Traindodge - "Bag of Vipers" (Ascetic Records)