Some circuits are so complete that trying to improve them is a form of vandalism. The Pro Co RAT is arguably one of them. Three knobs, one op-amp, a pair of clipping diodes and a low-pass filter that behaves like nothing else in the distortion world — it has been on hit records for four decades and it still sells new for less than the price of a decent set of strings and a tank of petrol. Every year somebody releases a boutique RAT variant, and every year a chorus of players asks the obvious question: why would anyone pay more for a circuit that costs seventy dollars to buy in its original form?
Brian Wampler’s answer, released in March 2021, is called the Ratsbane. The name is a piece of deliberate old-English cruelty — “ratsbane” is an archaic term for rat poison — and it announces the pedal’s intent before you have plugged anything in. This is not a reverent boutique clone in a nicer enclosure. It is a RAT circuit with two switches bolted on that fundamentally change what the pedal can do, shrunk into an enclosure barely wider than a mobile phone, with the op-amp deliberately mounted in a removable socket so you can swap the brain out if you disagree with Wampler’s choice.
The result is one of the more interesting distortion pedals of the past decade, and one of the most quietly under-discussed. It also arrives with a peculiarly honest problem attached, which this article will address head-on rather than burying: almost nobody famous is documented using one. That is not a criticism of the pedal. It is a fact about how the gear-documentation ecosystem works, and it makes the Ratsbane a genuinely useful case study in how to evaluate a pedal on its merits rather than on whose feet it has been photographed beneath.
The Origin Story: Answering a Thousand Requests
Brian Wampler founded Wampler Pedals in Indiana in 2004, out of a modification and education operation — he wrote openly and technically about how pedal circuits actually work at a time when most boutique builders preferred to imply their tone came from magic capacitors and secret transistors. That transparency built a reputation, and the reputation built a business. Across roughly fifteen years of it, one request came in more often than almost any other: build a RAT. Wampler’s own launch copy is unusually direct about it, describing the Ratsbane as “Brian’s answer to the countless requests he has received to build his interpretation of this much-loved design.” Premier Guitar’s press announcement, published on 1 March 2021, used the same framing, describing the source circuit only through gritted teeth as “a classic ‘Rodent-based’ 1980’s high gain distortion pedal” — the kind of careful phrasing that manufacturers use when they want everybody to know exactly what they mean without printing a rival’s trademark.
Wampler himself has been blunter than the press release. On the product page the headline quote reads: “The Ratsbane is sort of my ‘tribute’ to the original Rat circuit, incorporating how I mod the circuit.” That single sentence explains the entire pedal. Wampler spent his early career modifying other people’s designs. The Ratsbane is not what he thinks a RAT should sound like from scratch — it is what a RAT sounds like after he has been at it with a soldering iron.
The launch did not go entirely to plan. Wampler’s own blog, published in April 2021, describes a leak ahead of schedule that sent the forums into speculation, most of it wrong: first, that the pedal would be a straight clone with nothing new to offer; second, that Wampler would cheap out on the op-amp with a surface-mount chip rather than anything a purist would respect. The response to that second prediction produced the pedal’s most unusual feature.
The Circuit It Is Built On, and Why That Matters
To understand what the Ratsbane changes, you have to understand what the original does. The Pro Co RAT is a hard-clipping distortion built around a single op-amp gain stage running at very high gain, with silicon diodes clipping the signal to ground, followed by a filter stage. The magic — and everyone who has ever used one agrees on this — is the Filter control. It is not a tone knob in the conventional sense. It is a variable low-pass filter, and crucially it runs backwards relative to what your hand expects: counter-clockwise means maximum high end, clockwise means minimum.
That single inverted control is why the RAT has such an unusually wide personality range. Fully counter-clockwise it is a bright, mid-forward slicing tool that cuts through a mix like a bandsaw. Fully clockwise it becomes a dark, wooly wall of low-mid mud that is genuinely useful for doom and stoner rock. Between those extremes lives everything from amp-like overdrive to searing fuzz.
Premier Guitar’s Charles Saufley, reviewing the Ratsbane in September 2021, noted that the parent circuit “still verges on unappreciated and underrated,” attributing that partly to price: “Maybe the fact that you can still get a relatively decent new RAT 2 for 70 bucks has something to do with the lack of hype.” That is the competitive context the Ratsbane launched into, and it is why the extra switches matter so much. A boutique RAT that merely sounds slightly nicer than a RAT 2 has no reason to exist at twice the price. A RAT that can do things a RAT cannot do is a different proposition entirely.
Specifications
What Every Control Actually Does
Distortion
The gain control, and on this circuit it covers an extraordinary amount of ground. Turned fully counter-clockwise, the Ratsbane is not a distortion at all — Wampler describes it as “a deep but powerful gain booster,” and that is accurate. It is a thick, slightly compressed clean-to-edge boost with the circuit’s characteristic midrange bump intact but no meaningful clipping. Push it clockwise and it moves through amp-like overdrive, into the RAT’s classic aggressive rock distortion, and eventually into what the manufacturer honestly calls “a throaty, fuzz-like distortion” with rich harmonic overtones.
That fuzz territory at the top of the sweep is not an accident. It is one of the RAT family’s defining behaviours, and it is why the Ratsbane sits in Wampler’s Fuzz category as well as its Distortion category. A cranked RAT circuit is a legitimate fuzz substitute, and the Ratsbane is a better one than most because the extra gain positions push it further than the original goes.
Volume
Master output. There is a great deal more available here than unity gain, which matters more on this circuit than on a typical overdrive: the RAT topology is a genuinely effective front-end slammer for a valve amp, and having the headroom to push a Marshall-style preamp hard is part of the appeal. Set the character first, then set Volume to taste.
Filter
The single most important control on the pedal, and the one most likely to be misused by newcomers. It is a high-frequency roll-off, and it operates in the direction opposite to your instincts. Counter-clockwise gives maximum high end — bright, precise, cutting, the setting that lets a guitar find a gap in a dense mix. Clockwise progressively removes top end for a warm, buttery, thick tone that sits underneath rather than on top.
Wampler’s own copy calls this “the secret sauce” of the circuit and that is not marketing hyperbole. Premier Guitar’s reviewer independently arrived at the same conclusion, describing the low-pass filter as “the key to the original RAT’s multi-faceted personality.” Whatever else you learn about this pedal, learn the Filter. Everything else is comparatively straightforward.
Gain Switch (Three Positions)
The first of Wampler’s two additions, and the one that genuinely expands the pedal past its source. The centre position is the stock circuit — what the manufacturer calls the classic gain structure, and what Premier Guitar characterised as assuming “the gain characteristics of a vintage RAT: dry, mid-forward, but full bodied and chock full of overtone detail.”
The left position is described by Wampler as “a firm, yet smooth boost in gain.” Premier Guitar’s independent assessment adds important detail that the manufacturer’s description omits: this position is not simply louder or more distorted, it is differently voiced. Saufley described it as “more focused: heavier on the mids and top end,” comparing it to “bumping the presence on a Marshall,” and noted honestly that at some Filter settings it can become “quite nasal” — which he framed as a feature rather than a fault, since nasal is exactly what you want when hunting for a slot in a busy arrangement.
The right position, per Wampler, “delivers an insane level of creamy distortion.” Premier Guitar again adds the practical caveat: this position re-introduces low end alongside the gain boost, which “lends body to lyrical and more languid soloing,” but which means “power chord riffing can sound a little more muddled.” That is a genuinely useful warning. The right-hand gain position is a lead setting, not a rhythm setting.
Voice Switch (Two Positions)
The second addition, and the one that most often gets misunderstood. It is not, as many assumed at launch, a recreation of another vintage RAT variant such as the Turbo RAT. Premier Guitar addressed this misconception explicitly: “The Ratsbane’s alternate voice switch isn’t, as you might suspect, a take on another vintage RAT incarnation like the Turbo RAT. Instead, Wampler introduces his own tailored EQ formula.”
What that formula does is alter the compression and clipping behaviour. Wampler’s description is that it “tightens the distortion to be more manageable with greater levels of gain, while rolling back some of the fuzz qualities, to deliver a modern, high gain distortion.” Premier Guitar’s characterisation is more technical and more useful: the alternate voice produces “a more compressed and focused output with fewer of the messier and somewhat random peaks and fractured overtones that the Ratsbane’s fuzzier side can produce.”
In practice this is the switch that turns the Ratsbane from a vintage-flavoured rock and alternative pedal into a modern metal-capable one. If you want the loose, sputtery, harmonically chaotic character of a cranked eighties RAT, leave it in the stock voice. If you want tight palm-muted chugging that stays defined at high gain, flip it.
The Socketed Op-Amp: A Feature Nobody Else Offers
This is the Ratsbane’s most distinctive engineering decision and it deserves its own section, because it is the clearest expression of Wampler’s attitude toward the whole project.
RAT mythology revolves around a chip. The earliest units used the LM308 op-amp, a slow, low-slew-rate device whose sluggish behaviour under heavy clipping is widely credited with the original pedal’s particular character. Later Pro Co production moved to other op-amps, and a cottage industry of forum argument has existed ever since about whether the LM308 units genuinely sound better or whether the difference is largely mythology.
Wampler’s position, stated openly on the company blog, is that the chip is not the magic ingredient: “the op amp isn’t really the magic sauce that everyone might think for this circuit.” The Ratsbane ships with a TL071 — a common, modern, well-behaved single op-amp — and Wampler’s stated reasoning is that it is “a modern, and in our opinion more harmonically complex, operational amplifier IC.”
Then, having said all that, Wampler socketed it anyway. The blog’s explanation is disarming: “we know there are some purists out there that will want to try it with an LM308 IC, so we put our ‘engine’ in a socket to allow those adventurous DIY ‘modders’ amongst you to have some fun. We don’t recommend it though and it shouldn’t be attempted by novices.”
The company has published the full disassembly procedure, along with a list of single op-amps confirmed to work in the socket: TL071, TL061, TL081, LM741, LM308, OP07, TL070, TL080, NE5534, OPA134, LF351 and CA3130. Only single op-amps will work — dual chips will not, and neither, as Wampler felt obliged to point out with some exasperation, will “a 555 timer chip, a dead spider, something with more than 8 legs.”
Two practical warnings come with this territory. First, the disassembly is not trivial: you must remove both knob grub screws with a hex driver, unbolt the two toggles and the footswitch, and lift out the entire circuit board, because the socket sits on the top face of the PCB. One owner who completed the swap reported needing 7mm, 10mm and 14mm sockets for the switches, knobs and footswitch, and found a size-0 Phillips driver worked on the grub screws where an Allen key would not seat.
Second, and more expensively: there are enormous numbers of LM308 listings on auction sites and not all of them are real. Some are rebadged op-amps from the same family, some are entirely different chips. If you are chasing a vintage chip on the strength of forum consensus, buy from a reputable component supplier rather than the cheapest listing.
There is one further internal detail worth flagging honestly. Owners have noticed a small trimmer potentiometer inside the pedal, and at least two have asked publicly what it does — one on the product page in January 2025, one in the blog comments. Wampler has not published an answer either time. The correct advice, in the absence of any documentation, is to leave it alone. It is almost certainly a factory bias or calibration adjustment set during assembly, and there is no upside to twiddling it blind.
Famous Players: An Honest Accounting
This is the section where most gear articles about the Ratsbane become quietly dishonest, so it is worth being explicit about method before naming a single person.
The Ratsbane has, as of this writing, no documented professional users at all. Equipboard — the most comprehensive crowd-sourced gear database in existence, which lists 240 artists for the original Pro Co RAT and 187 for the RAT 2 — has no artist usage entries for the Ratsbane whatsoever. It has six community setups from ordinary users, five wishlists and seventeen saves. Premier Guitar has run no Rig Rundown featuring one. No pedalboard photo feature, tour rig walkthrough or first-person interview surfaced during research for this article.
That is unusual for a pedal from a major boutique brand in continuous production for five years, and it deserves an explanation rather than an evasion. The likeliest one is structural. Wampler’s artist roster is built around the company’s signature and flagship products — the Paisley Drive, the Dual Fusion, the Pinnacle, the Dracarys. A $149 mini pedal doing a job the artist could also do with a $70 RAT is not what a brand builds an endorsement narrative around, nor what a journalist stops to photograph on a board covered in more expensive equipment. Small pedals are structurally invisible in rig documentation. The honest position, then: the Ratsbane’s credibility comes from the circuit it is built on and from the people who have put it through its paces, which is weaker evidence than a Rig Rundown, and this article will not pretend otherwise.
The Demonstrator Tier
The strongest first-party evidence available is demonstration rather than endorsement, and it should be labelled as such. Pete Thorn — a session and touring guitarist with a long history with Chris Cornell and Melissa Etheridge, and one of the most technically credible demo players working — produced a launch demonstration that Wampler’s own blog singles out as the video that settled the “it’s just a clone” argument, specifically at the moment the voice switch was engaged. Sweetwater published a full demo with Brian Wampler himself as a guest on 26 February 2021.
These are commercially arranged demonstrations, not pedalboard credits. What a Thorn demo establishes is that a player with world-class ears made it sound convincing across multiple settings — meaningful, but not the same as him keeping one on his board.
The Sonic Lineage Tier: Who Actually Used the Circuit
Every marketing line about the Ratsbane leans on the parent circuit’s discography — Wampler’s own copy says the pedal “is based on a true benchmark sound amongst guitarists that has been heard on thousands of famous recordings.” That statement is entirely accurate as history and entirely misleading as endorsement. Not one of the players below has ever been documented using a Ratsbane. They used RATs, and in most cases they used them before this pedal existed. The line is worth drawing clearly.
Jeff Beck ran a Pro Co RAT live from roughly the mid-1980s through 1999 and used it on Guitar Shop (1989). His use is instructive because it demonstrates the circuit at its most refined — Beck’s pick-free, dynamics-obsessed playing needed a distortion that added sustain and harmonic complexity without flattening touch response, and the RAT delivered exactly that. Beck died in January 2023, having never been associated with the Ratsbane.
Kurt Cobain‘s primary distortion was the Boss DS-1, and the popular attribution of the entire Nevermind sound to a RAT is overstated. The documented RAT moment is more specific and more interesting: producer Butch Vig split Cobain’s signal on “Territorial Pissings” and ran a Pro Co RAT directly into the Neve console alongside the amplifier signal, blending both. That is the RAT used as a parallel texture processor, not as a stompbox. Cobain died in 1994, twenty-seven years before the Ratsbane existed.
Graham Coxon is the most committed RAT user in this group by some distance, and his account of it is refreshingly unromantic. Speaking to Guitar World, he described the Blur years: “When I was growing up, I had a Rat pedal. I would just hit that in the chorus and turn it off for the verse. That’s how simple it was.” He has also described the pedalboard that carried it as “this big fucking thing that, when we turned it on, it would be brighter than the stage lights.” Two RATs running simultaneously are documented during certain Blur periods. One correction that matters for anyone chasing the sound: “Song 2” was recorded with a DOD FX76 Punkifier, not a RAT.
James Hetfield‘s use of a RAT into a modified Marshall 1959 SLP on Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All (1983) is one of the most repeated facts in the pedal’s history and explains much of why thrash players gravitate toward the circuit. One precision, though: the attribution is well established across gear-documentation sources, but a first-person Hetfield quote naming the RAT for those sessions has not surfaced publicly. The circumstantial case is strong; the primary source is absent.
Nuno Bettencourt provides the single most useful data point for Ratsbane owners, and it is completely counterintuitive. In a March 2024 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown, a Pro Co RAT 2 is confirmed on his board with the Distortion knob set to zero. Not low. Zero. He uses it purely as a low-end tightener and impedance conditioner ahead of the amp, exploiting the way the circuit’s output stage firms up pick attack even when no clipping is occurring. If you own a Ratsbane and have never tried it with Distortion fully counter-clockwise as a permanently-on tone shaper, you are ignoring the setting a working professional built into his rig.
Beyond those five, the RAT’s documented user list is so wide that it functions as an argument in itself: David Gilmour, Thurston Moore, Robert Fripp, Andy Summers, Joe Perry, Bill Frisell, John Scofield and Frank Black among many others. A circuit that satisfies Fripp, Frisell and Hetfield is not genre-specific. It is structurally sound.
The honest summary: buy a Ratsbane because the circuit underneath it has fifty years of evidence behind it and because the two switches add capability the original lacks. Do not buy it because a famous person uses one, because as far as public documentation goes, none of them do.
Tone Recipes and Settings
Recipe 1: The Stock Eighties RAT
Start here, always. Gain switch centre, Voice switch in the stock (non-modern) position. Distortion at 10 o’clock, Filter at 12:30 (mid-position, moderate high-end roll-off), Volume to unity. This is the reference tone the whole pedal is built around — dry, mid-forward, full-bodied, harmonically dense. One owner posting on Wampler’s own product page in September 2023 reported reaching a convincing match to the original pedal with Distortion at 10, Filter at 12:30, the gain toggle centred and the voice toggle flipped right, and described the noise floor as “exactly on par with the original.” Use that as your calibration point and adjust from there.
Recipe 2: The Bettencourt Zero — Distortion-Free Tightening
Distortion fully counter-clockwise. Gain switch centre. Voice stock. Filter around 11 o’clock. Volume set so the pedal sits at or just above unity. Leave it on permanently.
This is a direct transplant of a documented professional technique — Nuno Bettencourt runs his RAT this way — and it is the single most under-used setting on the Ratsbane. With no meaningful clipping occurring, what you get is the circuit’s input and output impedance behaviour tightening the low end and firming up pick attack before the signal reaches the amp. Single-note riffs gain definition. Palm mutes gain a sharper front edge. Nothing sounds distorted. It is a conditioning tool rather than a dirt box, and it costs you nothing but a slot on the board.
Recipe 3: Modern Metal Rhythm
Voice switch to the modern position. Gain switch to the left (focused, mid- and top-forward). Distortion at 2–3 o’clock. Filter at 1 o’clock — the extra roll-off keeps the fizz under control at high gain. Volume to taste.
The modern voice is what makes this possible; in the stock voice, the same gain settings produce the sputtery, chaotic peaks that read as vintage character and as mush under palm muting. One Wampler customer, playing through the dirt channel of a PRS MT15 head in September 2022, reported that the pedal handled palm-muted metal rhythm work without needing a separate overdrive in front of it — which is not the normal experience with a stock RAT and is a direct consequence of the voice circuit.
Recipe 4: Lyrical Lead Boost
Gain switch to the right (the low-end-restoring, gain-boosted position). Voice stock. Distortion at 12–1 o’clock. Filter around 11 o’clock. Volume clearly above your rhythm setting.
Premier Guitar’s assessment of the right-hand gain position is that it “lends body to lyrical and more languid soloing” — that is exactly what this recipe exploits. The restored low end gives sustained single notes weight that the stock position lacks. Do not use this position for chordal rhythm work; the same review notes that power chords “can sound a little more muddled” here, and that is accurate.
Recipe 5: Doom, Stoner and Fuzz Substitution
Distortion at 4–5 o’clock. Filter at 3–4 o’clock (heavy high-end roll-off). Gain switch right. Voice stock. Volume high.
At its extremes the RAT circuit is a legitimate fuzz. Wampler explicitly categorises the Ratsbane under Fuzz on its own website, and the company’s own blog claims it “makes one hell of a replacement for traditional fuzz pedals at its most extreme.” This setting is where that claim lives. It is thick, saturated, harmonically chaotic and enormous. If you have been carrying an EHX Big Muff Pi purely for one song, try this first and see whether you still need the second pedal.
Recipe 6: Front-End Stacking
Distortion at 9–10 o’clock, Filter around 11 o’clock, Volume high, placed before your fuzz or your main distortion.
Premier Guitar was emphatic about this application: the Ratsbane is “a highly cooperative and cordial stacking partner for fuzzes and other distortions,” and specifically noted that at cleaner settings it “adds focus and clarity to muddy or octave-rich fuzz like Shin-ei FY-2 clones and Russian Big Muffs (particularly when situated in front of a fuzz).” If you own a Green Russian Big Muff that turns to soup in a band context, the Ratsbane in front of it is a proven fix.
All clock positions assume a standard pot sweep with 7 o’clock as fully counter-clockwise and 5 o’clock as fully clockwise. Filter positions are stated in clock terms with a reminder of direction each time, because the inversion catches everybody at least once.
How the Ratsbane Compares
Versus the Pro Co RAT 2
The comparison that decides the purchase for most people. The RAT 2 costs roughly half as much, has fifty years of documented professional use behind it, and delivers the core tone that made the circuit famous. The Ratsbane costs more and gives you three gain profiles instead of one, a voicing switch that adds modern high-gain capability the original does not have, a footprint less than half the size, a socketed op-amp, and US assembly with a five-year warranty. If you want the classic tone and nothing else, buy the RAT 2 and spend the difference on strings. If you want a RAT that also covers modern metal rhythm and lead-boost duties, or if your board has no room for a full-size enclosure, the Ratsbane is worth the premium.
Versus the Pro Co Turbo RAT
Widely and incorrectly assumed to be what the Voice switch emulates. The Turbo RAT swaps the silicon clipping diodes for LEDs, which raises the clipping threshold and produces a louder, more open, more aggressive distortion. The Ratsbane’s Voice switch is not that — Premier Guitar confirmed it is Wampler’s own EQ and compression formula rather than a Turbo emulation. The two pedals get to “more aggressive” by different routes. If you specifically want LED clipping, the Turbo RAT is the pedal that does it.
Versus the Boss DS-1
The DS-1 is a different clipping topology with a fixed, brighter, more scooped voicing and an active tone control that behaves conventionally. It is cheaper still, it is indestructible, and it has its own enormous discography. The Ratsbane is warmer, thicker in the midrange, far more variable, and considerably more capable of a fuzz-adjacent extreme. Neither replaces the other; a great many boards have historically carried both.
Versus the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
If modern metal is the primary use case, the MT-2 offers a parametric mid control and a genuinely surgical three-band EQ that the Ratsbane cannot match for precision. What the Ratsbane offers instead is a far more musical low-gain and mid-gain range, a stronger boost function, and the ability to sound like a rock pedal rather than exclusively a metal pedal. For a player who needs one dirt box across several genres, the Ratsbane is the more flexible instrument.
Versus the EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
Plumes is the natural comparison for anyone shopping in the $99–$150 boutique bracket with a switchable clipping design. It is a Tube Screamer derivative with three clipping modes, which puts it in a fundamentally different tonal family — mid-humped, compressed, amp-pushing overdrive rather than hard-clipped distortion. Plumes is the better pedal for pushing an already-driven amp; the Ratsbane is the better pedal for generating the distortion itself.
Versus the Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe V2 and Plexi-Drive Deluxe
Within Wampler’s own catalogue the distinction is amp-voicing versus pedal-voicing. The Plexi-Drive Deluxe and Pinnacle Deluxe V2 are both attempts to sound like specific Marshall amplifiers, with full EQ sections and much larger enclosures to match. The Ratsbane makes no attempt to sound like an amplifier — it sounds like a distortion pedal, deliberately, and that has been a legitimate and desirable sound since 1978. It is also less than half the size and roughly two-thirds the price of either.
Buying Guide
Price Reality in 2026
The Ratsbane’s list price is $149.97, but that number has become close to fictional at retail. Major US dealers have been discounting to $127.47, described by price-tracking as an all-time low, and Reverb listings for new stock have been observed at $99.99 with dozens of units available. Used examples in mint condition have appeared from around $75. The practical implication is straightforward: do not pay list. At $99–$127 the pedal represents obviously good value; at $149.97 the argument against a $70 RAT 2 becomes considerably harder to make.
Versions and Revisions
There are none to chase. The Ratsbane has been in continuous production since March 2021 with no announced circuit revision, no anniversary edition and no V2. Cosmetics have been consistent. This is one of the rare current pedals where the only variables in a used purchase are condition and price, which simplifies the decision enormously.
Who Should Buy One
The Ratsbane makes sense for four specific players. First, the guitarist with a small board who wants RAT tones without surrendering a full-size enclosure slot — this is the pedal’s clearest advantage and the reason it exists in a mini format. Second, the player who owns a RAT and wants more from it, specifically modern high-gain rhythm capability or a distinct lead-boost voicing. Third, the one-dirt-pedal player who needs boost, overdrive, rock distortion and fuzz from a single box and is willing to learn the interaction between two toggles to get there. Fourth, the tinkerer who genuinely wants to experiment with op-amp swaps without desoldering anything, since no other RAT-style production pedal ships with a socket.
Who Should Not
Anyone who wants the pure historical article should buy a RAT 2. Anyone who needs a battery option is out of luck — the Ratsbane has no battery connector at all and requires external power. Anyone who needs precise EQ shaping should look at a pedal with a real tone stack. And anyone who prioritises quick on-stage adjustment should be aware of the ergonomic caveat below.
The Ergonomic Caveat
Premier Guitar’s single stated criticism of the pedal was blunt: “Tiny toggles in proximity to knobs make some operations tricky.” That is an accurate assessment of what happens when you fit five controls onto a 1.5-inch-wide face. Both toggles sit above the knobs in the top portion of the enclosure, and adjusting one without disturbing the other requires either good light or good familiarity. Practically, this means the Ratsbane is best treated as a set-and-forget pedal with switch positions chosen before the gig, not as a device you reconfigure between songs in a dark venue.
Living With One: Ownership Notes
Power Requirements Are Trivially Easy
At 2.5mA on 9V, the Ratsbane draws less current than almost anything else you own. Any isolated supply, any daisy chain, any power brick with a spare output will run it comfortably. Wampler explicitly supports 9V to 18V DC operation but states that the pedal “is intended to sound its best at 9V” — which is unusual and worth taking seriously, since most manufacturers push higher voltage as an upgrade. On this circuit, the compression that comes from running at 9V is part of the intended character. Try 18V by all means, but the manufacturer’s own recommendation is 9V.
Do not exceed 18V, do not use centre-positive adapters, and do not use AC power. And do not go looking for the battery compartment; there is no battery connector inside the enclosure at all.
True Bypass, No Buffer
Wampler confirmed directly, in response to a customer question, that the Ratsbane has “True bypass, no charge pump.” That means no buffering. On a small board with short cables this is a non-issue. On a large true-bypass board with long runs to a distant amp, you will want a buffer somewhere in the chain — a tuner with a buffered output or a dedicated buffer pedal solves it.
The Dialling-In Learning Curve Is Real
This deserves an honest note. One independent reviewer, writing after extended use, described the top end as harsh on first acquaintance and reported that the pedal “can struggle to produce liveliness at lower gain settings” without a booster in front of it, concluding that it “may not be the easiest to dial in for all users” but that patience uncovers a rich, dynamic sound, particularly with single-coil pickups.
That matches the circuit’s known behaviour. A RAT-family pedal has a lot of raw high-frequency content and the Filter is the only thing standing between you and an ice pick. Two practical responses: start with Filter further clockwise than feels right and work backwards, and if low-gain settings feel lifeless, put a clean boost in front rather than turning the Distortion up.
Noise Behaviour
The Ratsbane is as noisy as a RAT, which is to say noticeably noisy at high gain and unremarkable at moderate settings. An owner who directly compared the two reported the noise level “exactly on par with the original.” If you run the pedal at 3 o’clock and above with single coils, a noise gate is a reasonable companion. At normal rock settings it is a non-issue.
Placement in the Chain
Conventional placement is after wah and compression, before modulation and time-based effects. Two specific exceptions are worth knowing. If you are using the Bettencourt zero-distortion trick, place it first or nearly first, since its value is conditioning the raw guitar signal. If you are stacking it into a fuzz, Premier Guitar’s finding was that placing it before the fuzz produced the useful result — it focuses and clarifies the fuzz rather than being coloured by it.
Build and Support
The pedal is assembled in the USA and carries Wampler’s five-year limited warranty, which requires registration and a dated sales receipt. Wampler also runs a thirty-day no-questions-asked return policy on pedals purchased directly from its own website — a genuinely useful safety net for a pedal with a dialling-in learning curve — though that policy does not extend to purchases from dealers, which fall under each dealer’s own terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Wampler Ratsbane just a RAT clone?
No, and the distinction matters. The core circuit is RAT-derived and in the centre gain position with the stock voice it behaves very much like a vintage RAT. But the three-position gain switch and the two-position voice switch add tonal territory the original circuit simply does not reach — specifically a focused mid-and-treble-forward gain profile, a low-end-restoring lead profile, and a tightened modern high-gain voicing. Premier Guitar’s assessment was that these additions “cleverly fill holes in an original RAT’s performance envelope.” It is a modified RAT, not a copy.
What op-amp does it use, and can I swap it?
It ships with a TL071, and yes — Wampler deliberately mounted it in a socket for exactly that purpose. Compatible single op-amps published by the manufacturer include the TL061, TL081, LM741, LM308, OP07, TL070, TL080, NE5534, OPA134, LF351 and CA3130; only single op-amps will work. The swap requires full disassembly, since the socket is on the top face of the PCB, and Wampler is explicit that it does not recommend the procedure for novices. Be aware that many LM308 chips sold online are not genuine.
Does the Voice switch turn it into a Turbo RAT?
No. This is the most common misconception about the pedal. Premier Guitar addressed it directly: the voice switch “isn’t, as you might suspect, a take on another vintage RAT incarnation like the Turbo RAT.” It is Wampler’s own EQ and compression formula, which tightens the clipping, reduces the random peaks and fractured overtones of the fuzzier stock voice, and produces a more modern high-gain character. A Turbo RAT achieves its aggression through LED clipping diodes, which is a different mechanism entirely.
Can it run on a battery?
No. There is no battery connector inside the enclosure. The pedal requires external 9V to 18V DC power with a centre-negative barrel, and at 2.5mA it will run happily from any supply you already own.
Should I run it at 9V or 18V?
Wampler’s own guidance is unusual and worth following: the pedal “is intended to sound its best at 9V.” Most manufacturers promote higher voltage as a headroom upgrade, so a builder actively recommending the lower option is a meaningful signal. The compression and saturation character of this circuit at 9V is part of what makes it sound like a RAT. Eighteen volts is safe and supported and will give you a slightly more open, less compressed response if you prefer that, but it is a deviation from the intended voicing rather than an improvement to it.
Is it good for metal?
Better than a stock RAT, yes. The modern voice position combined with the left-hand gain position produces tight, defined, palm-mutable high gain that the original circuit struggles to deliver — a stock RAT at maximum distortion tends toward sputtery chaos rather than chug. One owner reported using it for palm-muted metal rhythm through the dirt channel of a PRS MT15 without needing an overdrive in front. For extreme modern metal with heavily scooped mids, a purpose-built pedal such as the Boss MT-2 or Wampler’s own Dracarys serves better, but the Ratsbane covers hard rock and traditional metal comfortably.
Which famous guitarists use the Wampler Ratsbane?
None that are publicly documented. This is worth stating plainly because a great deal of online content implies otherwise by listing classic RAT users as though they were Ratsbane users. Equipboard, which catalogues 240 artists for the original Pro Co RAT, has no artist entries for the Ratsbane at all, and no Rig Rundown or pedalboard feature has surfaced. The famous names attached to this circuit — Jeff Beck, Kurt Cobain, Graham Coxon, James Hetfield, Nuno Bettencourt, David Gilmour and many others — are RAT users. Cobain died in 1994 and Beck in 2023; several of the others’ documented RAT use predates the Ratsbane by decades. The pedal’s credibility rests on the circuit and on demonstrations by players such as Pete Thorn, not on endorsement.
What is the small trimmer inside the pedal?
Wampler has not published an answer, despite the question being asked publicly at least twice. In the absence of documentation, leave it alone. It is almost certainly a factory-set bias or calibration adjustment, and there is no user-facing benefit to moving it. If you have already moved it and the pedal sounds wrong, contact Wampler support rather than attempting to guess your way back.
Does it stack well with other dirt pedals?
Unusually well, and this is one of its strongest arguments. Premier Guitar called it “a highly cooperative and cordial stacking partner for fuzzes and other distortions,” and specifically found that at cleaner settings placed in front of a fuzz it “adds focus and clarity to muddy or octave-rich fuzz.” It also functions as a gain booster into an already-driven amp with the Distortion knob rolled well back. Both directions work: it will drive other pedals, and other pedals will drive it.
Is $149 a fair price for a mini RAT?
At full list, it is a defensible but not compelling price given that a Pro Co RAT 2 costs around $70. In practice you will rarely need to pay list — the pedal has been widely available new at $99 to $127, and used examples in excellent condition start around $75. At those numbers, a US-built pedal with a five-year warranty, five controls, a socketed op-amp and a footprint less than half the size of the original is straightforwardly good value.