The takeaway from the JHS video should have been that the expensive pedals are overpriced rather than the Bad Monkey is underpriced.

everybody is giving Josh credit about the bad monkey, but Phil X used only a bad monkey on his live rig for years. Somebody needs to reach out to him and ask him. I bought my mint condition. Bad monkey about six years ago after watching a video where Phil X talked about how good it was. I got rid of my tube screamer as soon as I bought the Monkey and I still have it today. Thx Phil!

The funniest thing is about the whole JHS video is that a pedal builder is basically telling you that you don’t have to keep buying a bunch of pedals trying to get a sound. And he’s right. As far as overdrive pedals go they all are pretty much the same. Especially when one has a bass and treble control.

So I thought the same as you guys did about the Bad Monkey video. I think you both know gear well enough to get the point that Josh was actually trying to put across. And some less informed individuals misunderstood it as proof that the bad monkey is a holy grail pedal, meanwhile sellers as always knew that there would be a rise in demand for any pedal in the immediate days after it is featured on the JHS show and they took advantage because capitalism. That always happens. I think the JHS show has just become so popular and this is the first time in a long time they really focused all attention on one particular, discontinued pedal. But I was not at all surprised by their results because I've done similar tests myself and have realized that any dirt pedal will have some common denominator tone with any other dirt pedals, despite the circuits not being similar. You can match a Klon to a Rat on the right setting. But that doesn't mean the knobs will do the same things, or that the overall sound of the pedal will be the same. But simply that one particular sound that pedal A can do can overlap with one particular sound that pedal B can do. A pedal like the Kernom Ridge for instance does not work the way any other pedal does. But I think it was designed to have as many common denominators as possible with as many other pedals as possible, via A/B testing and tweaking.

It’s time for Digitech to reissue the Bad Monkey pedal!

What you said at around 25:00, I noticed that too and totally agree. On the "what's on your pedalboard" video with Sweetwater, Josh said that he makes all drive pedals sound the same. Kudos to Josh.

Josh and his team always do a great job. I would like to hear someone else do the same shoot-out and see if they can recreate the JHS results.

Josh set the Klon’s gain high because that’s the way he likes to set the Klon, he’s stated this on numerous occasions.

As a bassist who isn’t that much into pedals but basically needed to set a board up to cover things I’m doing now, I wasn’t wrapped up in confirmation bias like many guitar players are as I really didn’t know much about pedals or their makers and history. I bought what sounded good to my ear. Most are just inexpensive EHX or MRX pedals that sound great to me and apparently to those paying me. I did spend money on a good compressor and the synth pedal though - Empress and Source Audio C4 respectively. But I will say over 50 years of playing as a studio and touring bassist, it’s always amazed me at how guitar and bass players both just obsess over differences that aren’t really there or simply are too subtle to matter or be noticed by anyone listening - especially when it comes to playing live. I’ve played a P and Jazz pretty flat my entire career and never had a complaint. It’s the player and not the gear. An example - on my own little KZfaq channel that did for fun, I recorded a number of covers of some of the great vintage bass lines. I got so many comments about how great my sound was and players wanting to know how I got it. I recorded directly into my desktop - no interface or any real EQ on my part - right into garage band. Nothing fancy.

Also, all JHS clips go through the same coloured preamps and a kemper profiler, encoders etc, so there is some tone homogenisation of differing pedals in their shoot-outs that strip away more audible differences one might hear in person.

i have a $30.00 tube screamer and a $100.00 klone. both sound great.

I was playing a lot of bass guitar in a band years ago. Went to a friend's gig where he used a modded Bad Monkey on his bass for the song "Getting Away With Murder" - it sounded great! Looked online and found one cheap, found a guy in a town over that modded pedals and he modded by adding a switch that let me use the pedal for guitar like normal on one side and for bass when flipped the other. Still like the chime my TS808 gets, but this Bad Monkey lives on my pedal board since I don't have to ever swap it out if I'm playing guitar or bass.

I thought the main take away wasn't Josh saying the bad monkey had any secret sauce. As he said in a later video he used it because it had bass and treble, and these gave the bad monkey so much flexibility in the sound. In fact he could make the bad monkey sound like a particular klon setting with ease, but wouldn't have been able to make the klon sound like a particular bad monkey setting. You don't need a bad monkey, just put any reasonable cheap overdrive through and EQ pedal and you can make it sound like a klon or anything else

Isn’t it easier to make a higher quality pedal mimic the sound of a less expensive pedal than the other way around? If I was doing this video to prove a point, I would dial in each expensive drive to match a particular setting on the Bad Monkey, not the other way around, so are we really talking about the versatility of the higher end circuits, and not the incredible fidelity of the Bad Monkey?

If my voice sounded like Mason Marangella's, I would not invite people to investigate the finer points of tone.

The big "AHA" moment was that players who don't have the budget can get a great tone for what they can afford. Lusting after that "unobtanium" that few can afford to buy, doesn't have to be an impossible dream. Do the research and buy wisely, you will get the bang for your buck without spending a fortune. Josh just highlighted the gullibility and stupidity of people, who never have just trusted their ears and sensibility and I applaud him. I knew quite some years back that Gary Moore used the Monkey on his board, regardless of its inferior build quality there was something about it that he liked a lot. . .That's the whole point in question! . Who was going to tell him otherwise ?? Your ears should tell you if it's good or not ! not just because of the price, a name or logo.

Great chat guys. legends. Cheers!

Very interesting that the suggested “sweet spot” on the klon doesn’t even introduce the effect of the magic diodes.

Josh likes the Klon with higher gain. He’s said that many times in his other videos

Love your show, and you guys make really good points. The problem with guitarist is we get obsessed with a lot of minutia that it doesn’t make any difference, and I’ve never heard violinist talk so much about their equipment once of course they acquire their instrument.

Great podcast; I enjoy your intelligent conversation. I think people are enamored with the next best thing and/or the next trendiest piece of equipment and logic goes out the window with a lot of cash. I agree, I think the Bad Monkey will come down in price. I still love using pedals through my tube amps but I also use an Eleven Rack through my PA... I don't plan on using trendier new capturing or modeling processors as what I have still sounds great to me and leaves more time available for me to play my guitar rather than searching for the next best thing. Two pedals that I don't think get enough love is the SansAmp GT2 and the Matthews Effects Architect V3. The GT2 emulates 3 main guitar amps, has necessary eq capability and can also be used direct to a PA... talk about a small portable rig. The Architect is based on a Klon circuit, has both germanium and silicon choices at the flick of a switch and has a clean boost on its own circuit (2 foot switches on a compact pedal) and has full EQ as well.

I always thought the pedal didn’t sound good but I’m not surprised dialing it in you can get a close tone

I think Josh's point was that you don't need to spend a lot to get usable sounds. There might be things each pedal, whether $50 or $5k, does better than other pedals; but if you sit with what you have and play around, most people can get close enough. I have lots of overdrive and distortion and fuzz pedals. Some sounds do overlap, but everything has a unique sound of its own that I bought it for.

Thanks for a great discussion! I cannot believe the pure tone insanity surrounding JHS / Josh Scott EFFECTS on the market (pun intended). [I am still reeling -- otherwise known as "pissed"! -- from missing out on the limited edish JHS Germanium Boost selling out in 7 minutes,...and now they are $400-$500+ on Reverb!] Then again, watching JHS videos since circa 2017, is why the past six year tone chasing addiction has been so fun!

Honestly if I spent anywhere above $500 or even $1000 on a pedal, I would expect all the settings to be very usable. Maybe not the preferred way most would use it but, I better not find a bad sound in there! 😂 so the fact a bad monkey can even do a Klon inspired or like sound is enough to show me personally that I can find a lot of use out of even my cheapest pedals..

Love this topic! Especially the usefulness AND misleading nature of AB listening comparisons. I’ve learned that blind, level-matched, real-time AB tests is just a complete necessity for audio production stuff like comparing mics and preamps. Just like wines, of course our eyes betray us! Except it’s even more dramatic with music, I think.

Digitech pedals suck so bad. I switched from boss to digitech in the late 90s and they were okay at the time but strymon is top notch everything and dominates my boards now. For my $ the strymon sunset is just an amazing OD. I use the sunset for a soft OD for one side and a crunchy OD on the other but they can both be running with my marshal OD and sound killer. No pedal can beat Marshall OD with el34 tubes

He did this with the Behringer pedals, and their Boss and other equivalents, showing how one can get the same sounds, because they have the same circuits in them. What one saves on the pedals, could go to a pedal loop switcher, so the cheaply made Behringer doesn’t break. The Vibe was the main one he focused on that day, because Boss had just released the Waza VB-2. I don’t understand the hype for the VB-2, other than nostalgia, as there are just so many pedals that can do what it does, and more, nowadays.

It seems that many people cannot understand the difference between finding the respective settings of two pedals that result in a very similar tone and two pedals being identical

Early on I realized that as far as overdrive, you can get one to sound totally different just by manipulating controls. I’ve plugged my ODR-1 into a deluxe style amp as a low gain boost and got sparkly spanky nashville sounds, into a Marshall with the gain turned up and got some serious Soundgarden type growl. I bought my ODR-1 for $40 in ‘04 I think? I’ve had that, some sort of rat, and some sort of muff on my board for the last decade and a half. That gets me pretty much anywhere I need to be gainwise, and while I might get say a wren & cuff rams head vs an EHX, or a Jam rat instead of a proco, I know what I can get with all three of those gain stages, and I don’t feel I need to get the newest hype gain pedal. Chorus, Reverb, and Delay, however. I fall in to the trap. Every. Single. Time.

The Django glove does work, but nothing compares to putting your hand into a REAL fire to get the chops and the tone. I had a couple of gloves, sold both of them.

Heard a pedal worth of 30 bucks in KZfaq (in top quality 128kbps MP3 audio) thru laptop speakers sounding similar than plethora of other drive pedals in a certain setting. Must have one now! No matter how many thousands they cost! People are outrageously stupid. We guitarists especially 😂

Try taped strings, they're pretty much immune to everything from bodily fluids to alcoholic fluids, and also the ravages of time - once installed they seem to be pretty consistent/stable throughout their lifespan. I have some white gold tapes I'm testing on a bass and I am likely starting to transition at least some of my basses to that and if it keeps working well then I'll probably just standardize across the board and start optimizing my gear setups for any changes in timbre, if anything significant, from what I'm doing now.

Finally, someone else mentioned it- Mason, I agree about the Bad Monkey being a perennial "sleeper" mention. That was one thing about Josh's narrative that really bugged me. I remember pitched battles about it on the Harmony Central boards, then on TDPRI, then on the Gear Page, then I can point to KZfaq videos shooting it out against everything, including a Klon going back at least 13 years. This isn't a pedal "that everyone hated". It's a pedal that "cork sniffers" hated. Secondly, that's the thing about Josh's "persona" on KZfaq- he comes across as that precious commodity on this platform of being "relatable"-and, just like everyone on KZfaq that may or may not reflect who he really is. He's selling. It's not fair to compare who he was more than a decade ago, but that's the last time I had "one on one" dealings with him, and he wasn't so relatable, then. My point is that the cultivated persona sways opinions- and that's why I didn't hear the Bad Monkey as sounding as much like several of the other pedals as many did. Again, maybe he's really that way, now, it's not fair, but because I had the earlier interaction with the way he used to be, I buy it, less. However, I also agree about build being a factor- I've had several pedals that didn't get used that sounded great, and I dug the people making them, but I can't afford to screw up a gig on a failing pedal. Finally- context is king. I cannot care how great a given piece of gear sounds on your rig, it's gotta fit with my rig. ( Example- yes, I know Fuzz Faces are great- sound great on loads of people's gear, etc- but I have never found a Fuzz Face that works with me. Tonebenders, Muffs, & Zonks work for me.) So, nope, I don't use a Tube Screamer type- however, I have adopted a Wampler Triumph recently, which uses a Bad Monkey derived circuit for the lower gain- but I suspect that's because the dipswitch & 3 band eq can dial out the particularly offensive mids.....

Optimal settings from manufacturers shouldn’t even be a factor since it’s completely up to the player to decide what sounds good with their rig.

I just posted a video (on my Wagner Sound Lab channel) where I attempt to replicate early Van Halen tone using all Joyo pedals that cost less than $100 each and I think I came pretty close. I certainly came up with a very passable tone. Let's face it, are you really going to put a $5000 Klon on your board and go gig with it? Most likely you'll opt for a good clone that is replaceable if it gets stolen. I love it when Josh stirs the pot a bit and brings light to a pedal most people have hated on over the years. Artists will do that as well. A good example is the TS 10. Nobody wanted them when they were new. The build quality on them is crap compared to the 808 and the 9 and yet John Mayer puts one on his board and they are now fetching hundreds of dollars used.

I want to add my two cents here. A couple of years ago I watched a 'shootout' video comparing a Friedman BE-OD and the JHS C. Brown or maybe it was the Angry Charlie. Anyway I could not tell any difference until they played harmonics. The JHS pedal definitely sounded more clear, and dynamic, what I would call 'amp like.' The BE-OD harmonics sounded filtered and Equed. I like harmonics to pop. Since both pedals are generally close to the the same price I would go with the JHS. That's all I got.

It's funny how the cheap pedal everyone laughs at because it's inexpensive can sometimes be the thing that studio musicians gravitate to. I don't know of any session musicians using the Bad Monkey in the studio as their secret sauce yet, but the ODR-1 has been a tool of the trade since the late 90's. Same with the Ibanez Mostortion. Many Boss pedals also, as a mid price option. Not every pedal used by session players are expensive boutique pedals. Truetone's Garagetone series flopped because people looked at the price and assumed they were garbage. When they created their V3 series, the Drive Train overdrive was modified and used in their VSXO. The other side is a modified version of the Open Road, which is ODR-1 based... Same circuit also went into the Route 66 and Jeckyl and Hyde circuits if I recall correctly.

I can’t imagine demolishing a set of strings after one practice. That is crazy.

Josh merely proved that a tone stack, an eq, can go a long way. Which, you know, should be a given considering that any timbre is the product of the proportional presence of specific frequencies. Harmonic synthesis anyone?..

Buying pedals and chasing tone has become more popular and common also an excuse to not practice and get better!I've fallen into the trap deeply too ...my Yamaha thr 10 and thr 30 literally sound as good as any boutique amps just play and have fun

Anyone scared by Josh playing a Kemper for like an entire year or whatever it is while we thought he playing an amp? What other tricks could he be playing on us??? 🤷‍♂️ Idk I’ve always been a skeptic any who

@30:01 does this mean that some of the players limitation cannot exploit the differences in the pedals to see the differences?

It's cool that there is a cab Sim out on the bad monkey.

Phil X was pimpin' out the Bad Monkey 13 years ago in the Fretted Americana videos here on KZfaq

A/B test Bad Monkey vs Wampler Triumph.

the best moment of this video is you guys arguing with a straight face that the best way to use a OD pedal that's handmade, rare and worth thousands of dollars is as a boost. "Oh the bad monkey sounded like the centaur because he was actually using it as an overdrive" come on lol

I just thought he was saying test the range of your overdrive.

My take away from the bad monkey video was that 'wow, a lot of pedals can sound very similar; buying more stuff isn't going to fix all my problems' ie.. Quit buying and start playing..

Mason you did the same thing to the hardwire reverb

5:13, 11K$ Bad Monkey on Reverb is the Gary Moore owned one, that was recently in promo, just 5K lol Great video, and I'm guilty, I judge pedals by the cover and sometimes just buy some of them (affordable ones of course) because the design is great, or because it has skull illustration on it... yeah stupid, I know....

I love y’all show

Speaking of sleeper pedals, I just got the vertex Nyle compressor, and if people were logical, then the Nyle would be a gold standard pedal board compressor, more features and cheaper then the Cali76… but people moreso buy into hype

Yo Mason. Can you expound on why you said the Nobels ODR-1 isn't well built and how that could possibly be so for the ODR-S and the Wample Belle?? Gracias!

I wish more talked about build quality. Circuits can be replicated or reproduced or be based or inspired by boutique pedals and amps. However, the quality of the switches or the components used or the enclosure: will they get the job done? I feel like I was burned recently by gear I bought and the switches on the unit I purchased is hot garbage. It sounds great but I feel like I'm on borrowed time with the budget gear I purchased based on KZfaq channels showcasing the sounds but they didn't speak to the build quality.

If Creation can keep up… Brian can do it!!

It also isn’t keeping myself personally from not buying another overdrive pedal. Hahaha. Also. I spend 98% of my time actually playing my guitar then messing with pedals. But that 2% of time is still a good amount. Haha.

I bought a Zvex Fat Fuzz factory for 211 euros. It Is made in Asia with horrible handcrafting and horrible materials. The pedal circuit and design are beautiful but in costruction terms a TC electronic smorgasbord 50 euros pedal is an iron value

Since Dod and Digitech are back in business the Bad Monkey is going to be reproduced later this year.

I never would have imagined the guy that made all those overdrives sound the same would only 2 weeks later tell you that different batteries have a vastly different sound. Sure he’s not just psyching you in? Entertaining though. 😊

Phil-X & Chappers at Andertons Part 1 shows Phil ask using the bad monkey.

The Monkey is a great pedal. Not good, great. Bought one years ago for my dad to do a single job: act as a clean direct input for an acoustic guitar. This it has done, beautifully and faithfully, for over a decade. Not bad for 49 bucks.

anyone that says their strings are dead in a 3hr practic sesh is lying.

The Bad Monkey cost me £35. It's a metal enclosure, it's the core of my sound (always-on, with a Marshall JMP) and hasn't missed a beat in 5yrs of being on my board. There's very little to not like. Paying more for the same sound because 'it's built better', doesn't make sense to me. A good overdrive never needed to be expensive, the boutique industry has just been manipulating a market of hobbyists who will satisfy the demand and will bear a high cost to have something that feels like an upgrade to what is offered to the mainstream.

I feel like the difference between cheap and expensive pedals is the width of sweet spot. I have “expensive” pedals on my live rig because I know that regardless of the room, I can get what I’m looking for in tone. I can’t always do the same with cheap gear. Sometimes I can, I’ve tried…but sometimes doesn’t cut it.

Believe your ears. If it sounds good, it sounds good. Accept it and move on.

I think everyone is missing the actual point here.......and that is not all buffers are created the same.🤣

This whole bad monkey thing is getting out of control and old. Still love your content though Mason!

Here's a question, I have a DigiTech Hardwire CM-2 Tube Overdrive, given the almost identical topology and the fact that they're both Digitech Overdrives, I've sort of assumed that they're if not identical, at least very similar (I'm assuming one of the modes on the CM-2 is basically a bad monkey). Is this accurate to your knowledge?

None of it matters all the time comes from the batteries anyway everyone knows that!

Is Vertex doing to make a bad monkey clone pedal?

The Green Monkey!the incredible kong

Both the cheapo Nux Drive Core and Mod Core are very awfully built with a matching price, but they sound great, so they're both on my board. They both sit right next to much more expensive companions like an ES-8, JHS Bonzai, and TC Electronic HOF Reverb. If it sounds good, I like it.

👍👍👍

He was trolling. You can make many drive pedals sound similar.

Mason says buy a pedal with your ears not your eyes. I remember watching Phil X demo amps and guitars doing Van Halen and wondering what kind of pedals he used. I found out he used this pedal. I'd buy one with his ears. actually for years I've been planning on getting one and now suddenly I'll never own one. oh well I have a huge collection of pedals I don't use but of those pedals two of my tube screamers sound glorious. I bought a ts-10 at a pawn shop in 1993. I couldn't believe how good it sounded I only paid $30 for it. thirty years later it's still my number one overdrive.

That bad monkey sounded pretty compressed in that video. It didnt even sound good

JHS saying you can make the bad monkey sound like everything.. is like saying becoz u can combine several boost/drive pedals to emulate high distortion, you are always better off just buying a metalzone. People just don’t understand the dynamic importance of high quality gain staging on a pedalboard. Look inside any amp and you will see how important it is.

It amazes me how the video was supposed to show you that you most likely have the pedals you need but instead of getting that point everyone went out and started paying these ridiculous prices for the cheap ass pedal. I think if the guy plugged the cable in his ass and said it would sound like a klon there’d be alot of cables out there that were stinky on one jack.

I believe the green bananas were chosen purposefully. The Bad Monkey is green so why not the bananas?

For you guys being sound men I am surprised you didn’t catch the bombing us of grants microphone, very annoying, really

Incredible music has been created with cheap or basic gear. The Beatles, jimmi Hendrix, white stripes, nirvana, and tons of others have written hit songs with basic gear. If you like collecting expensive gear, or want to mess around with effects that’s fine. But practice, and creativity is what’s going to make you a better guitarist not some magical pedal.

Electricity doesn’t care how much money you spent.

I love my bad monkey.

I just don't think there was any flaw in the Bad Monkey JHS video. I think a lot of people "misunderstood" what he was trying to say about the whole subject.

Hot take: this pedal is just a tube screamer clone. I mean it’s green. It uses a bass and treble control instead of tone. Nothing special. 🤷‍♂️

I've got a 42+ yr old Boss SD-1...it works with anything.

The controversy over this pedal is ridiculous lol yes it’s a good sounding pedal, but dear lord the crumb grabbing and scrambling to have “klon tone” is feebly hilarious. The idiots are the ones paying the delusional asking price, for a pedal everyone hated from day of announcement. Heaven forbid a superstitious guitar player just gets on with it, and practices; using the gear they have in front of them. None of my friends with a Klon ever got laid from their pedal selection, or maybe im just stupid lol TRY STUFF OUT. Just try. You’ll surprise yourself how much fun you can have and how much you can learn.

the Klon has wide range of voice and bad monkey just luckily got close a little on one of that. Still the Bad Monkey will never replace the Klon imho.

It’s a guitar pedal, might be time to get a life.

What is this talk about non optimal settings? The optimal settings are individual. That’s why I like Josh. He always wants to make the point that you should listen with your ears and not your eyes or listening to what other people say. In my opinion I think the Centaur sounds better with high gain also. So many times have I heard the centaur played in it’s “optimal settings” and I’ve found it boring.

what if there was no real switching going on and we were all duped by Josh? think of what you could do to the market and use it to your benefit if you had purchased a couple hundred bad monkeys before your supposedly real test?

I cant believe this is still a topic of discussion. Move on.

Biased opinion on other pedals' settings. A Klon drive structure does not shine through at low gain, you need to dial in some gain. This was already explained by Bryan Wampler and Josh Scott. Watch the video again. It was evident that the Bad Monkey will NOT respond the same as the higher end pedals. Additionally, there's no 'optimal' / 'subpar' settings or sounds, that's bollocks. All the pedals sounded good and it was crazy to see a cheap pedal sounding similar or the same as a pedal that costs an arm and a leg. THAT was the point.

Jhs >>>> dikfex