About Pro Co
Pro Co Sound was founded in 1974 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, by Charlie Wicks, growing out of an earlier local music business, The Sound Factory. The new company built speaker cabinets, PA systems, and sound cables, work serious enough that, according to multiple accounts, Pro Co cabling carried sound at venues including Walt Disney World and Carnegie Hall. That professional-audio backbone, cables, stage snakes, direct boxes, wall boxes, and now Dante-compatible digital audio distribution, is still the company's core business decades later.
The pedal we tested grew out of that same shop. In 1978, Pro Co engineer Scott Burnham designed a distortion circuit in the company's basement while chasing a raunchier sound than anything else on the market; only a dozen of the original hand-built units were made before demand pushed Pro Co into full production the following year. That circuit became the RAT, one of the most cloned and sampled distortion sounds in pedal history, carried on records and stages by guitarists from Kurt Cobain and Jeff Beck to Andy Summers and Dave Grohl. Its place in music history is now literal: the RAT has been the subject of exhibits at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and the National Guitar Museum's touring show Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World.
Brand website: procosound.com
What Pro Co makes
Pro Co's catalog runs wider than the gear we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
RAT2 Distortion Pedal
the current-production RAT, with an LED bypass indicator and true-bypass switching — featured on House of Octave
RAT pedal family (Turbo RAT, You Dirty RAT, FATRAT, Deucetone RAT)
variants on the original RAT circuit with different clipping diodes and control sets
Instrument & microphone cables
cables and stage snakes for touring and studio use, the company's original product line
Direct boxes & wall boxes
DI boxes and wall-mounted audio connection panels for live sound installs
Dante-compatible digital audio distribution
networked audio routing gear for broadcast and installed sound
Why we recognized Pro Co
The House of Octave Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose gear consistently stands out in our player-tested category guides. Pro Co earned it on the strength of the products below, judged the same way every product on this site is: assessed on build, tone, and playability, weighed against what players actually report over years of use, and ranked on merit.
Pro Co gear we rated highly
Pro Co RAT2 Distortion Pedal
One of the most sampled and cloned distortion circuits in pedal history, the RAT2 is the amp-in-a-box sound behind Kurt Cobain, Jeff Beck, and Radiohead. A single Distortion knob spans a huge usable range, from mild edge-of-breakup grit to full, aggressive high-gain, and the unique Filter control (a reverse tone knob) shapes brightness in a way most distortions cannot. True bypass in an all-metal chassis makes it a road-proven board mainstay, which is why it holds 2,113 ratings at a 4.7-star average, one of the deepest review bases in our whole roundup.
Read the 10 Best Distortion Pedals of 2026 (Metal, Rock, Blues & Budget) guide →What earned Pro Co the recognition
- The RAT2 is our Best for Classic Rock pick in our distortion pedal testing, backed by 2,113 ratings at a 4.7-star average, one of the deepest review bases in the whole comparison.
- The RAT circuit, designed in Pro Co's Kalamazoo basement in 1978, is one of the most cloned and sampled distortion sounds in pedal history, and the RAT2 is the current-production descendant of that original design.
- It has been the amp-in-a-box tone behind guitarists across genres and eras, from Kurt Cobain and Jeff Beck to Andy Summers and Dave Grohl.
- The RAT's cultural footprint goes beyond the guitar press: it has been featured in exhibits at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and the National Guitar Museum's traveling show Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World.
- Pro Co built its reputation on professional-grade audio hardware, cables, DI boxes, and now Dante-compatible digital distribution, before the RAT made it a household name among guitarists.