The Randale Pedale Blackout is a distortion pedal built around the circuit of the ProCo RAT. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio, who covered the pedal on its release, describes it as "a RAT-inspired distortion"1. It sits in the distortion family, alongside overdrive and fuzz, and it is voiced to work on both electric guitar and bass.
Controls and voicing
The pedal's control layout is simple but broad. It carries a Baxandall bass and treble control, a style of equalization that lets you dial in anything from "a wide range of mid-rangey or modern and edgy scooped sounds", in De Gregorio's description1. A Baxandall control works differently from a single tone knob: bass and treble are shaped independently, so you can keep mids intact while cutting or lifting the extremes.
A toggle switch selects between "three different distortion characteristics on electric guitar & BASS"1. De Gregorio frames the choice this way:
"No matter if you want to live up to the classic and sharp sound of its ancestor or a more open sounding clipping characteristic"
In other words, one setting leans toward the sharp, classic RAT character, while the others open up the clipping for a looser, more modern take. For players who know the RAT sound, the Blackout is a way to get that reference point plus two alternatives in one box1.
Videos
Dennis Kayzer
Alberto Barrero
Sources (1)
- Randale Pedale Blackout Distortion, Delicious Audio, 2018-10-31