Are Rat style pedals the best way to get an 80s metal type of tone?

[overdrive city]

I love the 80s metal type of guitar tone. Are the rat style distortion pedals the best way to get that type of tone?

[newfish]

Try Howie's Metal Simplex.

Astonishingly simplebuild, but does a very respectable job of nailing the 'hairspray and spandex' era.

I think there's a layout / schematic around here somewhere...

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=69987.0

Hope this helps.

[darron]

i think that it has something to do with your hair...

[jkokura]

The best way to get that kind of 80's tone is to use similar amps and guitars to what they used. For example, Randy Rhoads was pretty famous for using Jackson guitars, Marshall amps, and a Distortion + at times. Other guitarists have similar rigs, but others were pretty different. I think Kirk Hammet used a Mesa MK2 and ESP guitars (Though Jacksons are a possibility). Slash uses Marshalls and Les Pauls, as did Joe Perry I think. I never really paid much attention to the gear used in those other hair metal bands.

In a pedal, Rats are good, but they're more typical of the late 80's into the 90's post hair metal stuff IMHO. The classic DOD and MXR distortions are just as likely to have been used, as would Tubescreamers.

We are all pedal builders here, and pedals can do some crazy stuff, but the pedal craze didn't really become super popular (IMHO) until the late 90's. They have existed for a long time, but Boss really took off when they started releasing lots of stuff. Guitarists used to rely a lot more on amps and guitars. This is all based on my experience growing up in the 80's and 90's by the way, and I think it was really typified in the change from: "I need a les paul and a marshall so I can sound like Slash" to "I need a small stone and a DOD Grunge Pedal so I can sound like Kurt Cobain".

So to answer your question, no. The best way is to find out what the whole signal path was for a particular guitarists. Building a rat might be a lot simpler and cost effective.

Jacob

[cobra94]

In a nutshell 80's tone come from marshall amplification (cranked).  Hair metal and others used Les Pauls and Strats and a majority of the Strat style guitars had humbuckers (thanks to EVH).  Pedals were the Boss or MXR's of the time but the important thing here is that many used some combination of the following effects mixed in; chorus, phase, and/or flanger.

From my experience a Dist + or BSIABII will get you most of the way there, the rest depends on your guitar/amp combination and how you EQ the whol thing.

Cheers

[Philippe]

The best way to get that kind of 80's tone is to use similar amps and guitars to what they used....So to answer your question, no. The best way is to find out what the whole signal path was for a particular guitarists. Building a rat might be a lot simpler and cost effective.
Jacob

Jacob's point is spot on. Consider trying an amp that offers a lot of variable pre-amp gain (those master volume types) with the older style Mesa-Boogie style rectifier stage.

Pedal fxs are useful in many cases but a good number of them are simply cranked power stage tone simulators (i.e. Tubescreamers, BSIAB, Rat et al)...handy for running through larger rigs at lower volume levels or for approximating a certain sound with smaller amplifiers in a bedroom-practice environment.

[DougH]

Don't know if you're referring to just hairspray bands or also NWOBHM but for the NWOBHM I find a simple booster/distortion into a cranked Marshall does the job. My son and I jam on Iron Maiden, Priest, etc and running my "Tone Source" (brown source derivative) into my cranked "Marshall" sounds pretty good for that stuff. An EQ, D+., even a TS9 to some extent will work for that too. Get some amp distortion going then hit it with a boost/distortion on the front of the preamp.

[anchovie]

Don't know if you're referring to just hairspray bands or also NWOBHM

Good point about being specific. Carcass released records in the 80s!

[overdrive city]

OK thank you all. I have a couple of Marshalls. I just can't crank them where i live. I also have a couple of B.C. Richs and Kramers. I was just looking for the best pedal for that over the top distortion that's hard to get without a pedal of some sort.

[petemoore]

  Rat has like the Q sound, but is otherwise D+ like in the to-ground-diode clipping.
  'Magic Dist+' recent thread...carefully added periphery makes it pretty tunable in the distortion dept., it never was a great booster.
  Getting it just right [for me] involved the TC and a mild Jfet preboost.