Well. I did order the ODB-3 two days after Josh Scott made that Bad Monkey video, but it was actually a day before that video reached me. Some hiccup in the universe? Maybe. I could not have ordered that pedal at a better time, though. Revisiting old pedals from the nineties that can be had for cheap seems the hot thing right now. The MXR Vintage Bass Octave also arrived this afternoon, but it was the ODB-3 I plugged in first.
Since it took a while to get here, I had ample time for mental practice. Hammer the Principle Of Charity deep into all level of consciousness I could find.
I went deep inside myself and managed to strangle the cork sniffing pedal snob into submission. I got into a space where I actually looked forward to a Bad Monkey scenario in which my newly acquired Boss pedal would easily hold its own against anything boutique I could throw at it.
So I overlooked the first haptic impressions. The 1/4" jacks of the patch cables slid into the pedals' well worn orifices like <insert the dirtiest and tastelessest 'your mom' joke you can stomach here>.
The knobs, of which there are four, but one is stacked, are a bit too small and offer a little too little friction when twisting. The Boss switch design is a love/hate/don't care thing. I personally hate them.
But apart from uncomfortable knobs, the foot switch and jacks that sit so loose you're afraid you might shake them out, the pedal is in a nice shade of yellow. I like yellow.
The cork sniffer in me was still dazed by my mental exercises, so I let all those impressions wash over me like a palm tree handles a storm. Bend with it, roll with the punches and stand tall again when it's over.
It's a simple affair. I won't judge with my fingers and I won't judge with my eyes. My earballs will be the only deciding factor.
For those not initiated into the ODB-3 circles, this pedal is named Bass Overdrive because it is a bass overdrive.
It has a knob for level, followed by a stacked knob that EQs highs and lows, followed by a dry/wet blend and finally there is the gain knob.
I set it by rule of thumb and experience: Level to what I judged would be unity, lows flat, highs slightly boosted, 100% wet and gain around 10 o'clock.
When I hit the switch, I always wonder about the lack of tactile feedback. You know you hit it by the sharp click when you step on a normal pedal. You know you hit it when you step on a soft touch foot switch, because it's depressed all the way and bottoms out with a metallic tap. With those Boss things, you kinda close a lid far enough to activate a flimsy little microswitch that provides no feedback whatsoever and there is that spring that creates the opposing force --- look at me rambling again!
You don't need any haptic feedback on this pedal. You don't need the red LED to come on, either. You can clearly and easily tell the exact moment it is activated by the noise alone.
It's easily one of the noisiest pedals I have heard in a long while. But have you heard the floor noise of a high gain guitar amp in the high gain channel? Right. Does not really matter because you're not meant to use a bass overdrive when you serenade the moon in a silent garden. You're meant to rock. The floor noise will be hidden with the drums and guitars and screaming fans and such.
Soldier on, find out what the knobs do.
Level is clear - you can use it to raise and lower the background noise to taste.
The EQ is also easy: The EQ is flat in 12 o'clock position. You can use the lower, outer ring to introduce low end rumble and mud into the soundscape by turning it to the right, and you can make your bass sound anemic by turning it to the left.
The upper, inner knob can be used to bring fret clank and string noise into the foreground when you turn it to the right (it does that surprisingly well!), or you can choke a little of the harsh top end when you twist it to the left.
The Blend is also one of those knobs that are surprisingly easy to set. I could not perceive any significant loss of low end in 100% wet position, but when you dial back on the knob you get that artificial feeling of detachment. The dirt voice and the clean voice will not merge, they separate. So I left it at fully wet and that's it.
The Gain will control the amount of dirt you get into your signal. It works like any gain knob on any dirt pedal.
Setting that pedal is a bit easier than anticipated since in my personal scenario, most of the knobs only work in a single position. All there is to play around with is the gain knob and left half of the treble knob's travel.
So how does it sound, you ask? With so much tension I created, there must be something awesome hidden in the range these one and a half knobs offer? Josh made the Bad Monkey sound like a Klon. What is the bass worlds version of the Klon?
Let me put it this way: The gain knob has a lot to offer. You start in that territory where your bass sounds clean until you dig in and when you are at around 2 o'clock you are at the equivalent of most low gain drive pedals maximum settings, yet you can push further still. When you found your setting, you can toy around by raising the gain slightly higher, but lowering the treble a bit to take the edge off, there is some variety here and a little twist of the knob can take you a long way.
I set the rest of my signal chain to accommodate the Boss as good as I could and then I let loose.
It won't really play nicely into the Jive, but it couples well with the Saturn VI if you play the Boss into the Spaceman.
On its own it sounds absolutely terrible. I hate it.
What comes to mind when trying to describe it is that playing through a well made overdrive is like sandblasting (or beadblasting) the fender of a car. You want a nice and even blast, with the grain size and amount of grain as even as possible. What the Boss does is best described as gravel blasting, with the odd chunk the size of your fist among said gravel. It is as subtle as a brick wall.
When the Spaceman's rich harmonic textures are fine dining, the Boss is a brick to the face (teeth included).
I'll not give up that easily, but I fear I do not have a Bad Monkey level experience here.
Plus they were just all around great people to deal with, I have only great things to say about them!
