Hi everyone, I know Surf posted 7 pages back, Jan 2011 a big piece about Rat Valve Amps, but I thought I'd share my 1st hand experience of one.
The only mods Andy didn't do( which later became available) were a valve rectifier and a Class 10 !!! with 2 el84's and different transformers.
what it did have done was Power scale, Master volume, Accutronics spring reverb, 2 tone stack variations, 3 bias levels, 3 gain levels, a foot switch for boost and reverb, Emulated line out and a serial FX loop.
The first thing I noticed was it sounded dull ! so I contacted Rat and Andy said no one had ever said that before. Now I realise from your posts that is how the Class 5 is supposed to sound especially at low volume.
So I had all these fancy ways of sounding dull !
I wish I'd had the brightness mod that some of you guys have done, it sounds like exactly what I needed.
In the end When I started getting the 1 Watt amps, which are tonally more focused I sold it.
By the way, the power scale to my ears sounds no different to my Motherload attenuator in that the more you turn down, the more top end and dynamics you loose.
The good things about the amp was the reverb and when cranked and the gain flat out it was clearly better than stock (we a-b the 2 amps in my local Marshall store) .
Anyway this recording was with master and gain at 12 o clock and using the Schecter C1 35th Anniversary with EMG's to boost the input and add a little brightness.