This is the Harley Benton Rodent – an extremely affordable (€20/$20!) take on the ProCo Rat 2 from the brand’s new MiniStomp compact effects pedal range of FX pedals.
I’m kind of surprised we haven’t seen a Rat-type pedal from Harley Benton before, given the pedal’s massive and enduring appeal, but here we are!
Get the Harley Benton Rodent here: [ Ссылка ]
The ProCo Rat is one of the world’s most beloved distortion/overdrive/fuzz pedals. It’s been on the boards of pretty much every top guitar player ever at some point since its inception in 1978, and it’s also a pedal that pretty much every other pedal builder and company has had a crack at over the years.
Get the ProCo Rat 2 here: [ Ссылка ]
Standard Rats have three controls – Distortion, Filter and Volume – but the Rodent has an additional switch with three modes: Normal, Turbo and Solo. These represent three of the different ProCo Rat models (Normal being a standard or vintage Rat, and Turbo and Solo being more niche Rat models), and this means the so then Rodent offers us a little extra flexibility.
The Rodent should give us everything from light overdrive to crushing distortion and face-melting fuzz, and in this video I’m using my Fender Telecaster and my Epiphone Les Paul, so we’ll get to hear single coil and humbucker tones.
I also test the pedal in all my favorite music styles – indie, classic rock, punk, alternative rock, metal, and more – and afterwards I do a loop on each guitar where I tweak the Rodent’s knobs to show you all the extremes you can get with it.
Then comes the highly anticipated shootout against the original, the ProCo Rat 2! Here, I run a hard rock loop and tweak the knobs on the two pedals so you can hear how close they get tonally.
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Hello!
00:40 Introduction to the Harley Benton Rodent
01:48 The Rodent’s controls
03:40 Clean reference tones and turning on the Rodent
04:05 Indie rock rhythm sound
04:33 Southern rock chord arpeggios
04:54 Indie rock octave chords riff
05:43 Indie rhythm sound
06:16 Upbeat indie barre chords
07:07 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
07:30 Greta Van Fleet inspired classic rock riff
07:54 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
08:27 Groovy classic rock rhythm tone
09:19 Another Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
09:53 AC/DC inspired hard rock riff
10:35 Classic hard rock riff
11:10 Hard rock riff
11:43 Glam rock riff
12:12 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
12:46 Alternative rock riff
13:40 Pop punk riff
14:07 Pop punk melodic lead sound
14:39 Punk rock power chords riff
15:07 Less Than Jake inspired punk riff
15:29 Punky grunge riff
15:57 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
16:28 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy rock riff (Drop D)
17:00 Hardcore chugging riff (Drop D)
17:30 Hardcore punk riff (Drop D)
18:01 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff (Drop D)
19:05 Rodent as boost into a dirty amp
19:48 Fender Telecaster indie rock loop with Rodent tone tweaking
21:59 Epiphone Les Paul classic rock loop with more Rodent tone tweaking
24:04 ProCo Rat 2 vs Harley Benton Rodent loop: here I run a hard rock loop while I tweak the Rat 2 and the Rodent to see how they compare!
26:58 My thoughts – the Rodent does the Rat thing!
27:49 Why I love Rat pedals – versatility and sounds
29:56 The three switches: Normal, Turbo and Solo
30:52 Mini pedals are practical
31:11 What I don’t like: too much gain?
32:12 What I also don’t like: squealing noise
34:02 Is the Rodent worth the money?
34:49 Other Rat pedal alternatives
35:42 Final conclusion and goodbye
You can watch my full ProCo Rat 2 video here: [ Ссылка ]
My setup was as follows: I ran the Rodent straight into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head. That went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my TC Electronic Ditto Looper to play the loops.
Here’s some links to those bits of gear:
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H&K Black Spirit 200 head: [ Ссылка ]
TC Electronic Ditto Looper: [ Ссылка ]
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!): [ Ссылка ]
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Enjoy!
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Controlled Distress – Biz Baz Studio.
#HarlyBenton #RatPedal #ProCoRat #DistortionPedal #OverdrivePedal #FuzzDistortion #FuzzPedal
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