JMI Music
GFS Pickups

T-shirts, etc.

Photographs

Books

Calendars

eBay

I had already head a bit about the Bad Monkey pedal from a few people that really loved it.

Some had even taken their Tubescreamers off their boards in favor of the Bad Monkey. In lieu of payment for working on a fiends guitar, I told him to just get one of these pedals instead.

I own a couple of TS-9's, so I was already familiar with what this thing was supposed to sound like. It is supposed to give you the sound of an overdriven tube amp, or in essence, emulate the Tubescreamer sound. Not being a fan of Digitech products, I was a bit skeptical.

Features
The pedal has quite a few features to it. Even some features the Tubescreamers are lacking. The controls are similar to the Tubescreamer, level, and distortion, but it also has two tone knobs that shape the low and high frequencies.

Another feature it has is amp simulator output. You are supposed to be able to run that to a mixer, or into your recording unit and bypass an amp or amp modeler. I personally did not find this feature to be that useful, but that does not mean it won't be to others.

Playing It
I always use more than one overdrive pedal in my chain anyway, so I pulled my Arion Tubulator out and put this one in it's place. The test of whether this would replace the Tubulator was to be seen.

My first test was to see if the Bad Monkey alone sounded digital. I've had this problem on other Digitech products. So I kicked it in and played a bit while tweaking the knobs. Nope. No detectable digital sound coming out of this thing.

Playing with the unit, it has a really nice, smooth tone to it, but with a bit of knob turning, you can get it to sound rude also. The two tone knobs really helped to shape the sound.

But the big question remained. Did it sound like a Tubescreamer. And the answer is... Nope. It can sound similar, but the Tubescreamer has a certain quality I just could not duplicate, no matter how I played with the knobs.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It does sound really good and is pretty usable no matter where you set the knobs. I found it to be a little more cutting, tone wise. And for some situations, it might even work better than a Tubescreamer.

It also sounded really good when you run the Bad Monkey into the Tubescreamer, or into my modified Boss DS-1. Driving either pedals, you get a real meaty, overdriven tone that sounds fantastic.

I'm not 100% sure, but I would assume that the Bad Monkey

is doing an analog to digital to analog conversion.

I could be wrong. But if this is the case, it could work out to be an advantage when you run a wah pedal through it.

Running a wah through the Bad Monkey seems to be ok. It behaves very well when you feed a wah into it. When I run my wah into my Tubescreamer, at times it can “get away from you”. Producing a bunch of tones that make you scrunch your face up. This is because the analog wah signals can react unpleasantly with the analog Tubescreamer signals.

Conclusion
I like the Bad Monkey a lot. Will it replace my Tubescreamer? I doubt it, but it has become a valuable asset on my pedal board. When used in the right situation, it can really take you over the top.

So did it win a permanent spot on my pedal board? YES! And now my poor Tubulator has become a paperweight.. For now, that is.

www.digitech.com
Stree Price: $39.95

• Telecaster Pen
• Gretsch Duo Jet
• EHX Small Clone
• Roland Microcube

• Vox AD15VT
• GFS Texas Pickups
• Thomas-Ginex Fret Refinishing Sytem
• Fender Mexico Factory
• Digitech Bad Monkey
• Interview: R. McDonald, VP Fender