Plenty of Rat options apparantly
Including clones, I bought and flipped 3 rats during the last decade, and I heard/tried several different types of rats from friends...so even though I'm curious where my love/hate relationship will end up when I give the Rat another try with my current rig, I can't say I've got huge expectations
No shortage of dirt options, thanks everyone
Next stop: everything else
There's a BIG difference between building a board for just home use and occasional jam sessions, or putting one together for a band that plans to gig/record. Accidentally stomping two pedals at hte same time is NOT cool, falling on your face due to a challenging pedal dance becomes a risk, hauling around a case the size of a ping pong table isn't exactly convenient, having you cheap patch cables fail on you in the middle of your set is hell,..etc etc etc
Most of that is fairly easy to fix, but the issues I have with my beloved cheap old pedals should probably be fixed if I replace some of them with better pedals
Silent switching, reliable inputs/controls, accurate tap tempo, quick tracking on my octave down pedlol, true bypass switching, no noise...All of a sudden I'm beginning to see why it could make sense for someone to swicth from thrift store mojo to new/boutique...