Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This is the Tone Charm Audio Szczur: a boutique, made-in-Poland take on the iconic ProCo Rat boost/overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedal… times two!
Get a Szczur here: tonecharmaudio.bigcartel.com/product/szczur-distortion-pedal
Yes, the Szczur (Szczur means Rat in Polish) is two Rat circuits in one box. And, as if that seemingly couldn’t get any better… one of them is a low gain take on the Rat circuit! Which excites me greatly, as I’m someone who loves the lower gain side of the Rat, but often find my ProCo Rat 2 quite fiddly to dial in for anything less than full-on high gain carnage.
The ProCo Rat – first released way back in 1978 – is one of the best affordable all-round drive pedals money can buy. With a Rat pedal on your board, there’s no dirt tone you can’t achieve, and the humble Rat has been played by legends like Kurt Cobain, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Nuno Bettencourt and more over the years.
The Tone Charm Audio version incorporates two Rat circuits in one box. Each has its own dedicated Gain control, and the two channels share standard Rat Volume and Filter controls. The Gain I channel is a lower gain version of your standard Rat pedal, whereas the Gain II channel gives you all of that classic Rat oomph.
On top of that, the Szczur offers two modes: Classic and Modern. Classic is pure vintage hard clipping Rat drive, while Modern adds some soft clipping into the equation to tighten up the pedal’s low end, which should give it some added clarity for modern high-speed chugging action.
(And FYI, the Szczur features OP07 op amp chips – just like the Rat 2 – rather than the fabled LM308 found in vintage Rats, but Tone Charm put some extra asymmetrical clipping diodes into the Szczur’s circuit to get it sounding indistinguishable from classic rats of yore.)
The Szczur is handmade in Wroclaw, Poland, and prices at time of writing are around $180/€160 – making it more expensive than one ProCo Rat (the Rat 2 can still be had for under $100), but definitely cheaper than two! And the Szczur’s double circuit also fits handily into an enclosure that’s very similar in size to that of the ProCo.
I personally love Rat pedals, and I own way too many Rat clones and variants already… but there’s always room for one more! Or, in this case two. Plus, the Szczur’s low gain channel is something I have yet to own in a Rat. (The only others I know of that place some emphasis on cleaner tones are the ProCo Deucetone Rat, which features a Clean Rat mode, and the 1981 Inventions DRV.)
So, let’s try the Szczur out and hear how it performs! In the video, I test the Szczur in as many musical styles as possible, from blues, pop and rock, to punk, indie, grunge, sludge, doom and metal, to hear how many usable sounds we can get out of it.
We’ll also run a loop into it to try it out against the ProCo Rat 2 and hear how truly versatile this double Rat beast really is! Guitar-wise today I’m using my 2026 Ibanez AZ Standard HSS, so you’ll hear a wide range of single coil and humbucker tones throughout.
Let me know what you think of the Szczur in the comments!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Introduction to the Szczur
01:18 Why the ProCo Rat is so legendary
02:06 Tone Charm Audio and how I discovered the Szczur
03:41 Pedal controls, features and info
07:01 Today’s rig and plan
08:37 Clean reference tone and turning on the Szczur
09:04 Pushed clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
10:46 Indie and alt rock tones
13:13 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
15:08 Hard rock tones
16:40 Alternative rock tones
17:03 Punk rock tones
17:55 Modern and progressive rock tones
18:37 Metal and heavy chugging tones (all in Drop D tuning)
20:18 Doom and sludge tones (Drop D)
22:09 Matching the two Gain channels
22:47 Guitar volume knob roll off
23:12 Szczur on the amp’s Crunch channel
23:37 Alt rock loop – tone tweaking and ProCo Rat 2 shootout
32:30 My thoughts
33:13 Things I like: tones and versatility
36:09 Build quality, low noise floor
36:34 Things I don’t like
37:20 What other similar pedals are out there?
40:28 My conclusions on the Szczur and why you should buy it
My setup was as follows: I ran the Szczur into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 amp head. The amp went from the Red Box AE+ DI out straight into my Zoom H6 recorder. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.
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My gear at Thomann: thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
At Sweetwater: sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.
#ToneCharmAudio #Szczur #ProCoRat #RatPedal #Fuzz #RichWordsMusic
*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*
@ToneCharmAudio
This is the Tone Charm Audio Szczur: a boutique, made-in-Poland take on the iconic ProCo Rat boost/overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedal… times two!
Get a Szczur here: tonecharmaudio.bigcartel.com/product/szczur-distortion-pedal
Yes, the Szczur (Szczur means Rat in Polish) is two Rat circuits in one box. And, as if that seemingly couldn’t get any better… one of them is a low gain take on the Rat circuit! Which excites me greatly, as I’m someone who loves the lower gain side of the Rat, but often find my ProCo Rat 2 quite fiddly to dial in for anything less than full-on high gain carnage.
The ProCo Rat – first released way back in 1978 – is one of the best affordable all-round drive pedals money can buy. With a Rat pedal on your board, there’s no dirt tone you can’t achieve, and the humble Rat has been played by legends like Kurt Cobain, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Nuno Bettencourt and more over the years.
The Tone Charm Audio version incorporates two Rat circuits in one box. Each has its own dedicated Gain control, and the two channels share standard Rat Volume and Filter controls. The Gain I channel is a lower gain version of your standard Rat pedal, whereas the Gain II channel gives you all of that classic Rat oomph.
On top of that, the Szczur offers two modes: Classic and Modern. Classic is pure vintage hard clipping Rat drive, while Modern adds some soft clipping into the equation to tighten up the pedal’s low end, which should give it some added clarity for modern high-speed chugging action.
(And FYI, the Szczur features OP07 op amp chips – just like the Rat 2 – rather than the fabled LM308 found in vintage Rats, but Tone Charm put some extra asymmetrical clipping diodes into the Szczur’s circuit to get it sounding indistinguishable from classic rats of yore.)
The Szczur is handmade in Wroclaw, Poland, and prices at time of writing are around $180/€160 – making it more expensive than one ProCo Rat (the Rat 2 can still be had for under $100), but definitely cheaper than two! And the Szczur’s double circuit also fits handily into an enclosure that’s very similar in size to that of the ProCo.
I personally love Rat pedals, and I own way too many Rat clones and variants already… but there’s always room for one more! Or, in this case two. Plus, the Szczur’s low gain channel is something I have yet to own in a Rat. (The only others I know of that place some emphasis on cleaner tones are the ProCo Deucetone Rat, which features a Clean Rat mode, and the 1981 Inventions DRV.)
So, let’s try the Szczur out and hear how it performs! In the video, I test the Szczur in as many musical styles as possible, from blues, pop and rock, to punk, indie, grunge, sludge, doom and metal, to hear how many usable sounds we can get out of it.
We’ll also run a loop into it to try it out against the ProCo Rat 2 and hear how truly versatile this double Rat beast really is! Guitar-wise today I’m using my 2026 Ibanez AZ Standard HSS, so you’ll hear a wide range of single coil and humbucker tones throughout.
Let me know what you think of the Szczur in the comments!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Introduction to the Szczur
01:18 Why the ProCo Rat is so legendary
02:06 Tone Charm Audio and how I discovered the Szczur
03:41 Pedal controls, features and info
07:01 Today’s rig and plan
08:37 Clean reference tone and turning on the Szczur
09:04 Pushed clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
10:46 Indie and alt rock tones
13:13 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
15:08 Hard rock tones
16:40 Alternative rock tones
17:03 Punk rock tones
17:55 Modern and progressive rock tones
18:37 Metal and heavy chugging tones (all in Drop D tuning)
20:18 Doom and sludge tones (Drop D)
22:09 Matching the two Gain channels
22:47 Guitar volume knob roll off
23:12 Szczur on the amp’s Crunch channel
23:37 Alt rock loop – tone tweaking and ProCo Rat 2 shootout
32:30 My thoughts
33:13 Things I like: tones and versatility
36:09 Build quality, low noise floor
36:34 Things I don’t like
37:20 What other similar pedals are out there?
40:28 My conclusions on the Szczur and why you should buy it
My setup was as follows: I ran the Szczur into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 amp head. The amp went from the Red Box AE+ DI out straight into my Zoom H6 recorder. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.
---
My gear at Thomann: thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
At Sweetwater: sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
---
Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.
#ToneCharmAudio #Szczur #ProCoRat #RatPedal #Fuzz #RichWordsMusic
*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*
@ToneCharmAudio
