Bad Monkey

I have a Bad Monkey but have never owned another overdrive pedal. Are the others really that much different/better, in your opinion?

there are about a billion different od pedals out there, many of them are unique in some way. A good reference to listen to some consistent samples of a whole bunch is to go to the video library at proguitarshop.com
Or search proguitarshop.com on you tube. They have very professional demos. It is a good place to start.

There are tons of them out there and most do sound different but it also depends on what and how you play. You'll find lots of love for the BM in these parts. It's my only OD and I didn't get mine till I had tried 4 or 5 others, thinking that a $40 pedal couldn't compete with the big boys. I was wrong, it really works for me and gives me the sound I'm looking for. To me it sounds real tubey, not fake like many OD's I've tried. I'm strictly a Tele/ASAT/Blues Junior kind of guy and dig the sound of this pedal with my setup. By all means try as many as you can but you can definitely do alot worse than the very popular BM and I'm almost certain you can't do better for $40.

big fan of the BAD MOKKEY here,what a great pedal for $40.

Bad Monkey pretty much does it for me... I haven't tried many others but I really don't have too.

Now fuzz and distortion pedals - that's another story. Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

I have a Bad Monkey but have never owned another overdrive pedal. Are the others really that much different/better, in your opinion?



Are the others really that much different? Yes, for sure! They're all different, and they'll perform differently. BM is a TS based pedal, and there are dozens of other TS pedals out there.
Are the others really that much better? It's a subjective thing. BM is more than a decent little box.

Experimenting with other OD pedals is fun. If you can afford the cost, go for it!

Better? - Very few.
Different? - Yes, a lot of them.

BM is based on the Tube Screamer (TS) and so are a lot of other boxes. Boxes based on the TS design will share some basic character.

If you take a Boss OD1, SD1 or OD3 it will sound very different. Better, worse or just different will depend on what you are looking for. Personally I like both kinds. A BM for smooth Fendery saturation and an OD3 for a more Marshallesque tone.

I use my BM along with a Blackstone Appliances OD. I leave the Blackstone on all the time in its lower position. I step on the BM for more OD. Works great for me. I went through many pedal before arriving at this.

Just to show the versatility of the Bad Monkey and it's price point, I, personally have one on my pedal board. It's companion overdrive pedal... a Zendrive. The Bad Monkey is in no way inferior to the Zendrive... and I use both individually and frequently. The Bad Monkey is worth its weight in gold.

I got a Bad Monkey - my first pedal. Then I bought a Crybaby and a Chorus pedal and a Rotary pedal and a phaser... once you start down that path....

There are many others. I like the Cool Cat Drive (http://http://www.dolphinstreet.com/video_clips/video-66.php), it's quite transparent and can sound quite bright, which I like.

I have a Bad Monkey too, but I haven't used it in a while. Last I used it, I felt it sounded a bit dark, but I will soon take it out for a test again. Gear seems to sound different at different times in your life. :)

I have a BM and like it quite a bit. For the price it can't be beat.

For what you pay and for what you can adjust I think the BM takes the biscuit!

Green Screamer, modded TS-9 or a TS-808 clone

Another monkey lover here. Its one of the few pedals that is very good stock and most people don't bother modding it, that should tell you a lot right there. Almost every other pedal people tend to mod, tube screamers, blues drivers, etc. Of course there are some mods people are doing on the BM, but most use them stock. What I really like about it is the monkey seems to go well with just about any amp. I have 5 tube amps and every one of them loves the monkey.

I have a Bad Monkey and a Tube Screamer TS-7. I think.
I use the BM so much that I'm not even sure of the TS number...

I use the BM on my solid state amp on clean and love the sound, so its not just for tube-amps :) Great pedal. As long as it holds up I´ll never have to buy another od pedal.

I never really liked any overdrive pedals until I had a bad monkey. It really is great and natural sounding. I also bought a jekyll/hyde ultimate overdrive which can get a bad monkeyish sound and a lot more, but something about the bad monkey and its more limited range of tones strikes me as more inspiring.

I'm sort of skeptical of all the me-too faddishness of OD pedals, especially when you consider that they will all sound radically different depending on your amp and axe and there's somewhere between a bit and a bunch of difference from one unit to the next anyway. OD stomps are all pretty much the same in concept; it's just the small stuff like diode and cap choice that make most of the difference. Remember the stupid Snarling Dogs OD line that was breathlessly pitched as simulating different tube types? They were all the same except for the paintjobs and the tone caps. :roll:

That said, the Bad Monkey seems about as good as any OD I've heard and better than most in terms of keeping its definition and not muddying-up chords. It's OK. I've read of a few failures, though.

It does my heart good to see that people are getting excited by a unit with cheap Behringer/Danelectro-grade SMT circuitry. Spend a couple of bucks more on a durable non-plastic case and consumers will bite! Go DigiTech!

Bueller..... Bueller.... chirp... chirp...

The Bad Monkey was the first drive pedal I owned that I really liked. It got a ton of use until I got a Fulltone Fulldrive 2 Mosfet. The first thing I did was compare those 2 pedals. The difference was night and day. The Fulltone had much better dynamic response and with the Boost switch, added some nice midrange. The Bad Monkey is still on the pedalboard, but more for looks than anything at this point. Like has been said, play a few side by side, and you will see the difference

I've been looking into the very prevalent net claim that the Bad Monkey is nothing but an SMT conversion of the DOD FX51 "Juice Box" [Google for examples (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bad+monkey%22+%22juice+box&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a)].

I can't find much to support this assertion from the descriptions of what these respective pedals actually do, though the DigiTech stomp line does indeed contain many straight DOD conversions.

Anyone know for sure?

Maybe it's just the lovely color. :wink:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/96012758_01b75b7e46.jpg?v=0

I have a Bad Monkey and it's just too smooth for my taste.I prefer asymmetrical clipping as opposed to the TS style symmetrical clipping.To my ears it sounds more natural.

I used a Monkey for quite awhile until I got my Fulldrive 2. I like the FD2 so much more, the BM got taken off the board, I just didn't need two od's, especially since the FD2 has a boost.

That said, the BM is a fantastic pedal for 40ish bucks, and probably the best digitech pedal out there. But yes, there are better ones.

I like mine a lot. I really use it for only one sound, but I'm sure if I wanted to I could get much more out of it.

I have the bass up on it and then double compress it. It push out a high gain Mesa sound. Really nice.