Drunk Beaver's Fat Bat is the Beefiest Rat Yet - taking on 3 Classic Circuits - Ibanez Fat Cat and LA Metal, and ProCo Fat Rat
Vitalii Bobrov’s Bat series has been a genuine revelation for Rat fans - culminating in the supremacy of the Heavy Bat - which is probably my favourite ever Rat to date - even against something as excellent as JHS Pedal’s PackRat.
On the PackRat the La Metal voicing is my favourite - and Vitalii has taken that as one of his key markers on the Fat Bat - alongside its Ibanez stablemate Fat Cat, and of course ProCo’s own original Fat Rat. You essentially have 3 different takes on the Fat Rat format.
Controls - Distortion, Tone, Volume, Mode : LED / LA Metal / Germanium / Fat Cat / Bat / Fat Rat, Op-Amp : Fat Cat / LA Metal (RC5234) / Bat (CA741), Fat (Low Boost) : Fat Cat / LA Metal / Fat Rat.
This follows the other Bats in having two classic choices of OpAmp - here the JRC5234 used on those original Ibanez varieties (Fat Cat and LA Metal), and an LM741 adjacent CA761 OpAmp for the core Bat voicing.
Apart from some of the abbreviations where I’ve provided a legend - this is really identical in topology to the Standard Pink and Cold War Bats. I pretty much love all of those equally - each has its killer moments.
My only tiny niggle here is that I feel I could have done with a little more Output Volume on-tap - just to push it over the top - while it’s really fine as is and will suit most players. It’s really cool to have all these Beefier flavours of Rat on the same pedal. While you can pretty much cover these with the 3-Band HM-2 style EQ and other options on the Heavy Bat.
I have two favourite settings here really that I tend to spend most of the time on - while there are all kinds of cool in-between sweet spots too.
- Setting one is LED + FC/LA + Fat Cat
- Setting two is LA + Bat + Fat Rat
For both presets I have the Distortion knob at noon, and Tone and Volume at 3 o’c!
Pricing is at $175, and the first batch is now available on the Drunk Beaver Reverb.com store.
How do you like your Rat in the morning!?
Demos
