FC10 Fat Cat Distortion

The Ibanez FC10 Fat Cat Distortion, produced from 1987 to 1990, is known for its wide range of distortion sounds, fat sound, and ample sustain. Similar to the TS10 and DS10, the FC10 provides extreme level boosts to incoming signals, creating an overdrive distortion effect. It offers enough gain to overdrive even weak signals, such as single-coil type guitars and low sustain/fest decay tones, bringing them up to a high sustain level.

The pedal is designed to maintain its fatness even at high gain settings, making it equally effective for lead or rhythm guitar. To achieve the "growling" distortion sound, users can turn the distortion control up high while keeping the level control low enough to limit additional overdrive at the input of the amp. The tone control can be used to add harmonics for brightness and controlled feedback, with high tone settings increasing attack articulation, especially helpful on guitars with humbucking pickups.

The FC10 Fat Cat Distortion features a JRC5534 single opamp chip, providing the necessary compensation and balance features. It is noted that the chip is not directly interchangeable with the LM308 used in the original ProCo Rat, preventing a 1:1 conversion by simply swapping the opamp to ProCo specifications.