Bad Monkey on Bass - describe the sound please

I've been having the pedal for quite a while now, and I'm really pleased with it. I'm not using it a lot as it's more for "fun" jams and covers, it does its job great for the price. I also own a guitar so I use it both with guitar and the Epi Thunderbird mostly.

The only downside (to me) is that when i use it I really need to drop the mids from the amp, like if the pedal boosted them a lot (it has no mid knob, in fact) so I have different amp EQs for when using the pedal.

 

Get a Hardwire CM-2 Overdrive instead of the Bad Monkey. It's a pedal in the same tonal family, but without all the stuff that makes the Bad Monkey suck.

 

Maybe you had a bad experience with a Bad Monkey once, but judging by the responses to this thread (which is 3 years old btw) there are quite a number of people who don't think that the Bad Monkey 'sucks'. If you're going to criticise it, at least list 'all of the stuff', and perhaps acknowledge that it's 'suckiness' is your opinion, based on the experience that you had with it. I have one and have never had any trouble with it, and I think it sounds great. No tone suck, no low end loss, no reliability issues.

...in my experience of course.

 

My Bad Monkey experience:
-tone suck
-low end loss
-poor non true bypass switch
-poor headroom on the input

It may be a fine pedal for those who have never tried anything else, but once you try a few nicer pedals you start to see why there are companies dedicated to making mods for it.

The Hardwire CM-2 is Digitech's 'boutique' version of this pedal that fixes all that stuff and can shockingly be had for around $60.

 

You must have had a duff one. Either that or you're confusing the Bad Monkey with something else.

 

Nope on both counts

It's probably a much nicer pedal once you spend the money to get it modded, but why bother? Why not just get a good pedal to begin with?

 

I don't understand why you have to be so damning about the pedal. You didn't like it? Fine. Come into the thread and say that you didn't like it, list the reasons that you didn't like it and then leave. Instead you come in talking about how it 'sucks' and 'may be fine for those who haven't tried anything else'.

I don't like Spectors, but I don't just find Spector threads and pop in and drop a post about how much every Spector I've played totally sucked and I hated. If I did chose to post in a thread asking opinions on Spectors, I would probably talk about how I personally didn't like them because I thought that they sounded sterile and brittle which is not the sort of sound that I like, and I didn't really like the neck shape but I get that other people might be into it, and maybe the Spectors that I've played were dodgy examples so give one a go before you write it off.

 

Proof that anything sounds like crap through a Bad Monkey.

John K. agrees with me, and needless to say...he knows a thing or two.
http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/Overdrive-Pedals.html

 

Not sure if that was meant to be a joke or not, but just for the record, I've never played a Spector through a Bad Monkey.

Oh, ok. I was wrong. My mistake. If John K says it then it must be true.

 

JohnK also isn't a fan of the Darkglass B3K , which I think is a kickass pedal that gets the grind of Billy Gould quite well(Billy Gould now endorses the B7K, its' big brother and I think "he knows a thing or two") )

Hey wait...don't you also like the B3K?

 

I have the Bad Monkey with the Scott Humphreys mod: the Baddest Bad Monkey. I wanted OD without getting into distortion territory, and this pedal gets it just right. The bass gets through and the output is pretty adjustable. It took me about six tries with different OD pedals before I found the Humphreys mod, and that was perfect for my taste.

What's more, when I had a problem with the pedal (bought used) they fixed it at no charge to me! That's FIRST CLASS customer service!

http://www.humphreyaudio.com/

 

I've tried a ton of overdrives in my time and I think the Humphrey modded Badder Monkey is great! Not tried the standard one or the CM-2 however. I replaced mine with a BB Preamp, mainly because it was smaller and true bypass, very similar tones though.

 

I've been A/B'ing these two pedals for a couple of days. I can't really tell any more tone suck from the Bad Monkey than from the CM-2. I've actually been using the Mixer output, too, which is a neat feature for such a cheap pedal. There is low end loss, but not a lot more than the CM-2. The switch is kind of crappy, but my CM-2 switch is actually worse. Neither one have very good headroom on the input.

In the Tube Screamer world it's not terrible on bass, and a lot probably depends on the rig and rest of the band. The CM-2 is more versatile and going really cheap these days on the used market, so maybe a better overall option if they are price comparable. I ended up modding the Bad Monkey, and it now has a more usable range than the CM-2 for low gain mid-humpy warmth. Won't be going on my main board, but it should pair well with my EB-0.

 

BTW, the only mod I ended up sticking with was the C11 cap swap...only I put in a .1uf instead of the more common 1uf. It's now quite a nice low gain tube drive. Lower gain than stock (MUCH lower gain than the 1uf version), and a bit more bass response.

 

I know it's been a year since the last post but I haven't seen this information anywhere else.

I am modding a bad monkey nowadays. I tried the transparency mod (c5 cap 0.047uf -> 0.1uf) and I didn't like it. It took too much personnality out of the pedal.
Then I tried the "bass boost" mod by replacing the c11 cap (0.22uf to 1uf)
It was a terrible mod IME. It took all the highs out of the picture as well as the 'real' lows and just ended up boosting the low-mids a lot and adding a lot of gain.
I was thinking to try a 0.47uf cap but then I stumbled upon your post. I think changing the value of C11 to 0.1uf seems very interesting.
My question is : Can you still get a decent amount of drive out of it after mounting a 0.1uf on C11 ?
Because although I use it 95% of the time as a low gain drive I kind of like it too with everything cranked up all the way (except the level of course). It gives a very nice fuzzy distortion sound with agressive low-mids.


By the way the stock pedal does suck a bit of low-end at unity level. The bass knob helps adding some low-mids but not lows per se. Not ideal in a band situation. If you want to keep the same level of low-end you need to keep the gain fairly low (under 11 o'clock) and to adjust the level a little higher.

 

Nevermind I couldn't wait for the reply and I started soldering right away haha

I tried it only 5 minutes but I can tell it's a killer mod. It reduced the amount of gain on tap a lot though. The pedal isn't able to go into fuzzy distortion territory anymore but I don't mind because it's now a better low gain warm tube sounding overdrive (which is what this pedal does best anyway). It can work as a clean boost as well. It surely gives the low end a better response. Also it seems the 'low' knob is now boosting lower frequencies as well but that could be my imagination too. Anyway much better than the transparency mod on bass in my opinion.

Thanks a lot !
Peace

 

Nice! The answer as you now know is yes, it does take out most of the gain, but glad I didn't respond in time to stop you. I quite like it now as a slightly dirty boost.

 

The digitech bad monkey is more or less a digitech version of the Ibanez tube screamer. the pedal itself does sound pretty cool on bass. it can easily give you an edgy sound. check out these clips.

Digitech bad monkey


Modded version

 

i like the name "bad monkey"

 

I'm glad I stumbled upon this resurrected thread. I've been wanting an OD again, have looked into several can't make up my mind due to so many that appeal.
Several years back before my ex wife stole my Squier P I had a Bad Monkey, used as an always on, been thinking about getting another... I noticed that sfx does a modded version... Is it the same mod as you guys are speaking of?