So the digitech Bad Monkey prices went up.. Social Media / kdhguitartv / kdhguitartv Subscribe to support the channel :) -----------------------------------------------------------
I feel bad for Josh. He obviously loves pedals and every time he tries to share history or point out cool cheaper options, it blows up on him. People suck.
He knows what hes doing. When he releases limted run pedals they sell like hot cakes. People listening to him is wonderful for business. He might not be directly profiting from the bad monkey, it is proving how much he influences the sheep that havent spent decades hunting their own tone
@@Ottophil I don't think he wants the price hikes to be happening. I think he truly does want to show people awesome cheaper options. He would not have amassed the neurotic collection he did without a huge love for the hoby.
I'm betting it's "Hey look this as good and its cheap don't spent stupid money on a klon!" And instead the price of the cheap one jumped for no reason. Also anyone crying about it there are other 2 and 3 band tube screamers.
@@mrcoatsworth429 exactly, there are loads of good overdrive pedals out there. Most of them are identical circuits. But they're not boutique so gear snobs turn their nose up at them.
Frankly, as KDH points out, it’s really not flippers who are the origin of this problem. It’s stupid guitarists who chase the tone of people they respect through trying to acquire the exact same gear rather than, as Josh pointed out, “listening with their ears”. Without this guitarist stupidity there would be no market for flippers in the first place.
I worked at Digitech for years. Josh just pointed out what some already knew, at the expense of all the cork sniffing gear nuts. The design engineers and marketing folks there made some of the best equipment I've ever used... and it was all affordable. That being said, my personal favorite are the HardWire series pedals, which came and went very quickly. Now that Tom Cram and the original engineers are back with Digitech, I believe were about to be supplied with some more incredible sounding gear.
Man, Digitech was such a godsend for hobbyist guitarists. I still use my Screamin' Blues and Grunge more than just about any other pedals. Honestly, the only multi-hundred-dollar pedals I drool over these days are from GameChanger Audio, and that's more for their gimmick being genuinely cool.
I like the Berhinger stuff as well, which is another budget brand. They do a tube screamer that’s fecking awesome and the Hell Babe wah pedal they make is pretty versatile.
I just hope they can produce some really affordable gear. I would LOVE to try out new things but the prices of physical gear is just so out of reach for me not working due to disability (long term). I've actually had to resort to using software that I haven't acquired legally.... Which is not only unethical, but it sounds WAY worse than real gear in my opinion. Depressing in more ways that one... I loved using digitech stuff back in the mid-2000s when I started. Wish I would've kept all my gear from back then.
The Bad Monkey was my first pedal & I have held onto it / used it since 06' the smount of other guitarists & guitar player friends that turned their noses up to it was damn near 100%. I always defended it & seeing this whole thing play out is hilarious to me. Kind of an "I told you so" moment
It really is a lot better than people give it credit for. A friedman, it is not, but it is still a great damn pedal and will give you a nice tone if you know how to work it right.
Same here. I've been collecting Digitech/DOD pedals since the early 90's since I didn't really have access to other brands. Still my favorite and is the most used pedal I have. I think it's superior to most OD pedals because it has low and high knobs and not just a tone knob.
Oh but Rob will make it about himself. Introducing the Bad Chapper's Overhype pedal! Twice the noise at thrice the price! Coming soon to a Guitar Center near you!
I have no doubt that if Josh were to make a video claiming the Digitech Death Metal to be a god-tier distortion, people would start buying it for several hundreds of dollars.
as someone who’s left the guitar youtube sphere for a while and came back i just wanted to say thank you. Your content is one of the few channels which is no bs and just tells it like it is. No marketing gimmicks, you try to put your biases aside and give viewers the facts. Even when you state your opinion you never do so in an unfair or overly rude manner, you simply give facts and express how that makes you feel. All in all S tier channel, keep up the amazing work.
Here’s another thing to consider: potentiometer variance/tolerance. If you take two identical TS9’s, put all knobs at noon and switch between them, they’ll sound different. Guaranteed. Potentiometers aren’t perfect, and 12 o’clock on one pedal might be another’s 1 o’clock. Some pedals have less range on the effected parameters, so you’ll notice it less. Some have more. The reason a Klon and a Bad Monkey sound similar is because they’re a similar overdrive, and you can tweak the knobs on either to make it sound the same. I’m only saying this because Anderton’s is probably gonna do a video in the next week comparing a Klon to a Bad Monkey they pulled from the back, put all the knobs at noon and say “oh they’re not the same after all.” At the end of the day, I bet you could make a Klon and a TS9 sound the exact same, especially if you have an EQ pedal after the TS9. Tl;dr just go practice and be happy with the overdrive you have. Tweak the knobs a bit and find a sound you like. A Klon may be worth $5000, but practice and self-satisfaction is worth a lot more.
Well the thing is capacitors vary from their stated capacity, whether it be 1%, 5%, 10% or 20% tolerance. So unless in the factory where they make the pedals they measure the capacitance of each capacitor to make sure they are exactly the same, there will be some difference to the sound of the pedal.
You're seriously lacking in knowledge of electronic circuits. The Bad Monkey is just a TS with bass and treble controls, and, like a TS is a soft clipper, with the clipping diodes in the op-amp's feedback loop. The Klon circuit is a hard clipper, with the clipping diodes on the op-amp's output, and in that regard is more like a DOD 250 than a TS. Furthermore, it has several unique attributes- a charge pump chip that boosts the power supply voltage for more headroom, and a dual gang gain pot, with dual parallel circuit paths that keeps a fixed ratio of clean tone mixed in with the dirt tone, so, as you increase the gain, you are also increasing the parallel clean signal by the same amount. The Klon also has a unique buffer circuit on-board, and I'm pretty sure the Bd Monkey is un-buffered, with a true bypass design. Go back to school before you open your mouth next time.
Can confirm. Am a guitar player. Am stupid. But the JHS effect is crazy. I don't blame Josh at all. I love learning from that channel. People are just crazy.
The Digitech Distortion Factory went back to reasonable prices around a month after JHS did the video on that pedal and the Expression and Chorus Factories. I picked one up for $230.00 + $12.00 delivery
It's got to do with herd mentality and this situation puts that into context, specifically "influencers" (self-labeled or not). Musicians are a superstitious bunch. Before YT & modern social media, you had set consensus in a community on a forum, IRC, etc... before that, newsgroups & physical magazines along with bands and people naturally socializing. Jim Lill along with some others are doing some serious organic consensus cracking via empirical testing. I suppose JHS tried but it brought out the collector & scalper types it appears. People need to be told what is great, what sounds good instead of discovering it for themselves instead of worrying about writing interesting music. The ease of use of social media and the internet has us able to crack many old consensuses or it can help reinforce old ones & create new ones. Best general advice: as it was used to be said "shut up and play your guitar!" (but record, share, learn, etc)
Honestly, I knew the Bad Monkey was underrated when Phil X was talking about it in his demos years ago. I'm kind surprised there wasn't a bigger spike back then. Also, JHS is probably one of the best channels for pedals. They focus more on informing you about different pedals and their history instead of just shilling their own products. The video they did about the history of the ProCo Rat awhile ago was excellent, and the fact that they straight up debunked the myth of the older chips having some mythical secret sauce that made them sound better pissed off a lot of people who shelled out a lot of money for vintage Rat pedals.
I had forgotten where I heard it so often. Every single Phil X video for Fretted Americana back in the day used the Bad Monkey, it was his favourite pedal at the time and sounded amazing.
@@hitsonacousticguitar exactly. Complete idiots spend 5 grand on klon centaurs and yet can't tell the difference between them and a regular budget behringer or digitech pedal in a blind audio test. You can't even tell the difference when it's just the guitar on its own, let alone when it's in the mix. Also too many guitar players create their perfect tone over years and years, and then finally use them in a band situation and they sound completely shite in that context. Because what's good guitar tone for the mix is a completely different thing to good guitar tone on its own. The best tones ever, if you isolate the guitar and mute everything else, generally sound awful. But they sound amazing in the mix. Like, I normally dislike his whole channel really, but Music Is Win did do a good video about this where he played Randy Rhodes' tone on its own, isolated, on his songs with Ozzy, and the tone sounded like absolute dog shit. This is the same tone that's in every "top 10 guitar tones" list. So spending years trying to perfect your guitar tone by just playing on your own, is a waste of time. You've gotta get good at creating a tone within the context of a band. Make a drum track, record bass and guitar parts on it, mix them all together, and get better and better at mixing them over time. Then you'll be saving yourself a lot of hassle.
Yeah, I've had my Bad Monkey for over10 years. I bought it after listening to Phil X rave about it way back in his Fretted Americana videos.. I think it cost me 38 quid back then... I still use it today.. Imho it is indeed a great little pedal and certainly holds it own against the boutique stuff..
To be fair, back then you could have a popular TH-cam video on a bit of gear and it wouldn't cause a price spike. Now anyone selling the gear is looking for these kind of viral videos. All it takes is for a few people to inflate the price and suddenly they are all "worth" whatever the new price is.
I have this ancient Zoom multi-effects pedal that I must've bought 20 years ago and there's one particular lead distortion on it known simply as "B 1" and it sounds fucking awesome! When I was a teen I was embarrassed to use it and pretended I just had it for gigs as a tuner. It's mortifying to think I was such a sheep (still use it btw)
Nine Inch Nails' iconic "Broken" EP used Zoom effects. JHS should do a history lesson on those and all the hypebeasts will suddenly decide those crappy-but-awesome Zoom effects are essential classics worth thousands of dollars.
@@LukeChaos Tom Morello used the Zoom step/auto arpeggio effect at the end of the solo on "Show Me How to Live." I bought a Zoom 505 damn near 25 years ago and yeah, gear snobs looked down on it. But with some tweaking it could make incredible sounds regardless of the price.
Josh is the reason I first gave cheap Chinese manufacturers like Joyo the time of day in the first place. Now, the Joyo Aquarius delay is my absolute favourite delay pedal, and the Voodoo Octave fuzz pedal hasn't left my board since I got it a few years ago.
Josh quite often points out that there is very little that can make a `new' pedal stand out in the crowd. I've got a few joyo and nux pedals based simply on availability ,performance and ultimately price. I can play any 1 or a combination of my various overdrive pedals and get a satisfying result. I have the voodoo fuzz but didn't really find a use for it,the octave wasn't particularly obvious but I still have it
Thanks to Ryan from 60CycleHum I discovered the beauty of cheap pedals and, in the same way, how of an asshole can people be around a certain brand or model, how toxic is that way of thinking, instead of acknowledging the fact that those are gateway pedals that serve for experimentation and whatnot... Also the HotOne Dent, nice pedal.
@@cedarbay3994 joyo American is pride of place on my boards also. The most useful pedal purchases ( several) I have made,seems a little silly to some to put a fender voice to a fender but yes I run it with overdrive in front and delay/ reverb after the American,into both valve and solid state . Bought the California as well and I'm sure in context it would be as useful but the voice and gain range on the American pedal covers everything I need .$69 aus, what's not to like.
As a non-guitarist and someone who watches JHS frequently this whole situation is hilarious to me. Here's a brilliant idea for all guitarists: buy pedals based on whether you like how they sound. I know it sounds crazy but it might save you a few bucks
The problem is they really do think they like the sound, but due to preconceived bias. You could put two exact same circuits into different boxes, one being a Klon for example, and they would swear that one sounds better. It happens all the time with pedals, pickups, strings etc etc. Its human nature unfortunately and marketing companies play off it with many different products.
That's what I try to do, buy what works for me. We get caught up though in the hype of the "next big thing" or the new reissue that has new features, etc. It's a real rabbit hole sometimes. What I stay away from though, are over complicated pedals - those, I don't care how much hype is behind them, I'm not interested because I don't want to spend loads of time trying to figure out how to use it.
Thanks for this, KDH. With all due respect, every time Josh reviews a cheap pedal, everyone loses their mind and reveals how hypocrite some assholes are around pedal brands and being so snooty about it.
I didn’t use pedals for years and years, just a foot switch that came with my amp. When I finally decided to start using pedals, I just went with Boss because I like the shape and uniformity of their pedals. That’s it. It’s purely an OCD thing, but I love how they sound. I’ve got some non-Boss pedals for things Boss doesn’t make. I’ve mostly given up on chasing specific tones and focus on getting a tone I like. It fills me with joy to look down at my color-coded stomp boxes.
Ite true! Ive been playing bass for nearly 3 years and im being constantly harassed by Ivy League schools! Ive even had my family kidnapped before so I could be forced to go to one !
I had this along with other digitech pedals that I recently donated to a music school about a year ago. No regrets, the young musicians will get years of love out of it. That’s worth more than the money to me. Personally, this pedal never sounded super special to my ears. Barber electronics overdrive pedals on the other hand, those sounded like gold! Haha
Innit? I give my old gear for free to newbie friends/friends who want to start playing guitar or charity, what surprises me is that people are THIS upset over a pedal going from 50 to 200 USD like... if you sold it a week ago and the price jumped like this, and you're THIS bitthurt over it... defo need to think your life over if 150 dollars causes this much ass hurt (unless you're like a teenager, then I understand)
If anything, your having donated it is the one of the best results, because who likes the school's kit? It's laaaaaaaame. But now, some kid will be like "Wait... isn't that on the storeroom shelf at school!?" ... and probably steal it, but they'll definitely USE it ;)
My good friend is a musician but knows nothing about guitar pedals. He got me a used Bad Monkey for my birthday maybe 3 years ago, and it is the only pedal I have ever gotten for free. I think he paid $30. It even came with the box and DigiTech’s old mini-booklet/catalog. Watching this situation unfold has given me the strangest sense of amusement.
After watching the JHS video, I went digging through my pedals and found I still have mine Bad Monkey (American version) that I picked up for $20 years ago with the box. I was also amused and was tempted to see what the prices immediately jumped.
Just checked, I still have the Bad Monkey I bought when I was working at Guitar Center in 2004-05! It sold brand new for $29.99 and it became a favorite around the store for how good it sounded next to pedals 5 times the price! Last time I used it, I had it as a bass overdrive
It's insane to realize how quickly shit got out of hand. I used to buy smokes in high school in the 90's for $1.25 to $2.25 ...if you had extra lunch money for Marlboro or Camels. Now... kids need to budget their lunch money multiple days to enjoy the social standing of a smoker! It's total BULLSH!T!
I've played and built guitars for nearly 40 years and you are 100% accurate!!! Another pedal I was recently told was 'Legendary' was that Nobel PoS - never heard of it and I've played everything. Oh and there was a JHS company making pedals and gear in the 80s and 90s. Great video! :o)
Prices will most likely come back down. Awhile back, JHS did an episode on the Digitech Distortion Factory and Expression Factory EX-7 pedals. Prices went haywire for awhile, but I recently bought an EX-7 for what it was going for before the Josh spike. I think the TS-10 is a different situation because of its affiliation with Mayer, who may only be second to Bonamassa in the deep-pocketed world of blues lawyers.
Maybe JM played too many different drives. If it was for the money, I should have sold my TS 10 a few years ago when they sold for 300+. Bought it for about 30 DM (15 EUR) more than 20 years ago. I swear it didn't sound as good back then as it does now though. It aged pretty well. Maybe my ears betray me, but I'm sure my TS 9 always sounded way smoother then the TS 10. Now I like both of them equally.
@@aldersmoke1 But a couple months before that video I bought two Distortion Factory pedals in mint condition with box (one of them was sealed NOS even) for about $60 each (including shipping and tax). So, yeah, $130 for a pedal isn't absurd, but it is 2x what it used to cost. Same with the CF-7, was around $50, now settling around $100. When Josh hypes these out-of-production budget (sub $75 price point) pedals they usually spike hard (upwards of $200) but then come back down and then eventually seem to settle around $100-$125- which depending on how cheap it was before is anywhere between a 33%-100% increase. You can see these trends among several pedals such as the DF-7, CF-7, and Boss BC-2 just off the top of my head but I'm sure there are more. I think KDH is probably right in that it will go back down to a "reasonable" level eventually, just not as cheap as it was a week and a half ago (about $125 after a few weeks and then maybe hovering around $100-$115 after about 6-8 months).
I actually remember that the Bad Monkey had a lot of hype around it shortly after it came out, but that's largely because it was a very inexpensive way to get a Tube Screamer-like pedal. It's silly to me that people are paying such high prices when the selling point amongst internet guitarists at the time was simply that it was cheaper than a branded Tube Screamer (albeit with high & low knobs instead of a tone knob). The lesson from the JHS video should be that you don't need to spend a whole lot to get great results. Never ended up buying a Bad Monkey, but I did spend $26 on a "Kokko Overdrive" (Tube Screamer clone), and it sounds great! Can't wait till they inevitably explode in price one day!
@@zerosoma33 That would have been such a great buy! I remember wanting to get one when they were at a decent price. Kinda funny - STL Tones Amphub (which is an amp sim that's updated monthly) just got an update that added a Bad Monkey pedal for free! I had to laugh at them capitalizing on the hype of the Bad Monkey. That said - they also have a Seymour Duncan 805 Drive which is a Tubescreamer with Bass, Treble & Mids knobs, so it basically takes the Bad Monkey a step further.
Man, I thought the takeaway from that video was that you don’t need flavor of the month pedal to get a good tone. It’s not so much that the bad monkey is just some chameleon pedal that has magical powers, it’s just a drive pedal with a good 2-band eq. An eq pedals is often considered boring, but it can get you in the ballpark of pretty much any overdrive archetype, just because most of the difference is in the eq curve.
You can make some guitars in records sound more distorted using the player eq. I do it sometimes boosting the high frequencies. If I can do it with a recorded song, i can do it with an amp.
True about the EQ pedal. I had a Switchblade tube amp years ago that sounded like a boring Marshall, but I loved the onboard effects feature and presets. Ran a Boss GE7 through the loop and BAM totally different amp.
Most importantly: most overdrive circuits are extremely simple and thus you can manufacture them at very low costs, especially when you make large volumes of them, like a lot of the cheaper brands do. Also manufacturing costs are not what determines prices of pedals (or most things, really), but at where the seller thinks they can get the most profit (supply/demand etc).
Are you saying that if I buy a good eq pedal and put it after my ts808 I can manage to get it to keep from coloring the sound of my amp? I don’t really believe that. It’s a good pedal for certain uses if you want to add color but if you just want a little past breakup and it diminishes the sound of the amp you need an overdrive made exactly with that in mind
Yeah, not only that, they don't recognise when they've been scammed. As a couple of people noticed, he made the other pedals sound like the Bad Monkey, not the other way round - they noticed the Bad Monkey settings never changed, whilst the other pedals had pretty radical settings.
I once played a demo for the best guitar player and studio engineer in our circle of musicians. When it got to a part where my guitar was highlighted, he flipped out over how good it sounded. Wow, what is that?!?!? He was fairly stunned when I told him it was a Boss SD-1 into a solid state Fender Deluxe 112. It’s all about your ear, not the gear.
@@nobodynoone2500 lol no it isn't. This is just one of those guitar things guitarists say. "Tone is in the fingers" "Bro the Tone wood" Just no. It's the gear. It doesn't have to be super fancy gear, just good sounding gear. I'm terms of amps and speakers. Speakers primarily. This isn't up for debate. It's literally an objective fact.
@PaulieMcCoy if you can record a video of you changing the tone of a guitar with your fingers I will send you all of my guitars. I will pay for a notary to finalize a contract saying that I have to actually give you them. Let's see an objective and tangible display of "tone fingers" lol.
@@kitten-whisperer You misunderstood what the OP was saying, I reckon. You're hung up on the semantics of the adage "tone is in the fingers" - this is not to be taken literally. It's just that practice and expertise allows one to transcend the particular ergonomic failings of a given instrument. Many great recordings were done on instruments (guitars) that... weren't that good or had particular problems. I believe ergonomics and feel are more important for me most of the time for guitar moreso than all the things guitar fudds have been sperging about for decades. There is also a psychological element to it. "The vibe" as children are saying these days. Feels like it sucks will be discouraging and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless you record all your practice sessions for posterity and to be able to analyze at any given time. Which is not a bad idea. Did you really think "tone is in the fingers first, speaker second..." was the OP saying that the actual physical composition of some people's hands are magic? It's about manipulation of the instrument for the desired result. Jim Lill and others have been demonstrating this, in the process killing the false myths the marketing industry has been planting into the minds of people for quite some time. Maybe we can finally get some good music as a result?
JHS: "You don't need expensive pedals to get good overdrive. Even a Bad Monkey is fine." Guitar Players: "Got it. We need to make Bad Monkeys expensive." JHS: "No. Any decent OD pedal is fine. Stop wasting money." Guitar Players: "Can I buy your Bad Monkey? Do you have the box? Which year is it? I heard the ones with a darker green paint are better."
"The heavier version sound better due to more matter of the enclosure that effects the overall tone through better grounding" "it's out of a solid chunk of metal, not some aluminium" 🤣
A similar situation happened to the Peavey Decade when Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age said in an interview it was his secret weapon amp. It went from $50 to $500 and is still being listed at around $200 a year later. Some loser is trying to sell one for $1000, discounted from $2000.
I think it was Eric Valentine who spoilered this. Josh usually does not want to reveal his secrets. He's still practicing the lost art of keeping a secret. Maybe I'm wrong, not sure.
IMO Phil X was the one that reintroduced the Bad Monkey to guitarists 14 years ago. Simple BM into the Magnatone Tonemaster (which was a long forgotten amp) and that dude could get a wild assortment of rock tones. I guess guitarists aren't necessarily stupid, they just have short memories.
I remember the Bad Monkey being the best sounding pedal of the bunch my local shop had out for demo use back in the day. Nice to see it getting some love.
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Josh made a good point, use what you have. Pretty sure that you can dial in a great tone if you figure out how to work within your chain. Another thing I wanna point out is that regardless of how much I love pedals, there is this one thing that guitar players can't seem to understand, that being is that it's not their pedal choice that's pushing them back, more so lack of skill.
I've never clicked on a video so fast! i knew exactly what this was gonna be about. guitar players ALWAYS strive to copy everyone else to the most minute detail regardless if they actually like it or thing it's good, ffs there are people still trying to get old, bad, or damaged guitars from the 50-60s cause they think are better somehow. i get that some people are collectors but that's different than saying "this IS better or SOUNDS better cause tradition magic"
Kudos to Josh! Sometimes we get sucked down the rabbit hole and forget that music comes from your fingers, not a mountain of gear, lol. A lot of great guitar players have used very simple pedalboards!
Josh knew what he was doing. And the Bad Monkey has been used in OD shootouts on TH-cam for years and the consensus has always been that it's just a fancy maybe improved Tube Screamer with a smoother bottom than most candidates. Truth is, that most all OD circuits including the almighty Klon are easily made at home with a kit or parts and the willingness to learn basic electronic skills. Even Josh and Mr Wampler will tell you that. I have not bought an OD or Fuzz pedal in decades, but I play through Catalinbread clones I built at home, good stuff. Save your money for nice delay and reverb like an El Capistan, build your own analog preamp, boost, fuzz and OD. Build a custom Big Muff or a Silicone TB and a King of Tone for your pedalboard. It's fun too, online pedal building community is ready to help you get started just like Josh did many years ago.
@@pacman_pol_pl_polska circuit analysis on elecrosmash. I literally sold and designed original pedals off very little knowledge. You don't really require it for drive pedals, since they are using components 'wrong' to produce distortion. If it was some digital-controlled thing, or more utilitarian function then you might need some electronic knowledge to design them. Ditto i use 3 homemade things, but i have bought tube/transformer drive pedals because i consider that they are probably worth the extra components/clever design.
Every pedal..is good. That's what Josh is showing.if you can play,and you have music in you.... Than any tool can be used in a great way that can make others jealous
Precisely! That’s like the entire point of his channel. If people are mad, they should be directing their fury at the sellers - or complaining to online sites like Reverb that they should be building safeguards into their site to prevent price manipulation and sudden massive jumps where they are not warranted. I can understand prices skyrocketing when an artist passes and their gear is only available in limited quantities. To allow sellers to outright price gouge old stuff that is abundantly available (and nobody famous has even died, so to speak) is within a site’s ability to make rules and systems that’ll prevent that sort of thing - where if enough people do it, it’ll like freeze the ability for those items to sell at those prices and trigger a human supervisor to review the situation. Same goes for new gear releases that people are trying to flip above the list price immediately after they sell out. There should be safeguards in place to prevent that from happening for x amount of time after it’s release - and to make sure there’s a slow rise in value and not a massive jump over time unless it’s truly something warranted like a major artist passing the the item being in limited supply - not when there’s bazillions of those items existing and for sale out in the wild. If enough guitarists complain to Reverb, eBay, and other sites, maybe they’ll actually do something to build these safeguards and policies into their sites. Because it’s not in their best interest to have hundreds of these Monkey pedals sittings on their site not selling and making them a profit because people won’t buy them for that insane amount of money. Better to have lots of them selling at fair values than a few selling to the stupid idiots dumb enough to buy into the hype and pay hundreds for it.
I wanted an overdrive pedal for a solo boost. I didn't want to spend a lot of money because I only wanted to boost the volume and thicken the sound a bit for leads. I got the Dynarock by Xvive, I think it cost me £30 brand new, including shipping. It does a great job. It has more volume than I need and it has a mid boost which helps thicken the sound, which are the exact requirements I had. It has plenty of gain on it, although I keep the gain all they way down for solos. It has however been useful in recording situations, it sounds great when paired with a light crunch from the amp. Having taken a punt on a cheap pedal, I feel happy with the purchase. I've had the pedal for over a year now and I have nothing negative to say about it. The only 'negative' is that I don't get to show off a rare, hand wired Tube Screamer or some ridiculous boutique pedal that costs thousands to buy. But I don't care about that, it sounds good and that's the most important thing
The absolute number 1 best fuzz pedal I've ever owned, is a cheap £25 behringer super fuzz. I have some very very expensive fuzz pedals, I spent years buying all the highest recommended ones, EHX ones, Fuzz Face ones, etc. None of them were good enough, or at least close enough to what I heard in my head that I wanted. But the behringer fuzz had it. It sounds absolutely glorious. The mode on it I use is the 60s style fuzz and that just sounds so much better at that than every other 60s style fuzz I've tried. Although apparently most people buy the behringer one for the other mode, which is a 90s fuzz, it's an exact clone of the discontinued Boss Hyper Fuzz, basically. I don't like the sound of that mode at all but others say it's the best pedal for doing that. Similarly I spent years buying different tubescreamers. Eventually I bought a Robert Keeley one which I'd wanted for decades (he's the guy who started off as a pedal modder, much like JHS did, and he modded DS1s for Steve Vai and people like that, and his modded tubescreamer was said to be the best sounding one, and these days he doesn't mod anymore but he just has his own tubescreamer called the Red Dirt overdrive, that has the mod built in). The red dirt does sound incredible, and I do love it. But I eventually found my old behringer tubescreamer pedal I'd bought 10-15 years previously, and completely forgot that I even owned it. So I hooked both of them up, the behringer and the Keeley, and guess what? They sound identical. It's a bit ludicrous. That really opened my eyes to how much pedals are just snake oil. Guitar pedals are the musician form of something like psychic mediums, you have to be a gullible fool to fall for it. And I was a fool. I still am, I'm sure. But I at least have stopped salivating over the idea of saving up and buying stupidly expensive pedals. I have behringers that I've owned and used pretty much daily for well over a decade, now, and they've never broken, despite being plastic. Although TC electronics have the same exact pedals, just in metal enclosures, for an extra £10, because they bought behringer and so use all their circuits. I probably sound like a behringer shill lol, and I kinda am one 😂 but for free, voluntarily. Cos I love them. And I wanna tell every young guitar player to stop worrying about what equipment they have and to worry about practicing instead, cos that more than anything else (by a long long way) is what will make you sound good.
@@duffman18 In my experience, Behringer pedals are some of the best value pedals on the market. If you wanted to build a board comprising of a distortion, overdrive, chorus, delay, noise gate and an EQ, I would immediately recommend looking at Behringer. Admittedly, it’s not fun getting a battery inside one but it could be worse. With their cheap price, if one gets stolen or broken, it’s not a big deal. I think too much money gets spent on fancy pedals for the sake of it, when a pedal 1/3 of the price would probably do the same job
@@duffman18I'll see your Superfuzz and raise you a Fazy Cream. I recently bought a new les paul and and a 5 watt tube amp after years of going acoustic. When it came to effects, I decided to take a chance with cheap Amazon pedals and stumbled upon the Sonic Cake "Fazy Cream" $35 miniature big muff clone. That little black box is a gain beast. So glad now that I didn't shell out a bill for the real thing. Laughing all the way to the bank!
If it wasn't for Phil X nobody would ever even look at the Bad Monkey. As good as the pedal is, the guitar world was so snob that even hi-quality digital multifx would get flack for nOt BeInG aNaLoG. Even Boss - iT dOeSn'T hAvE tRuE bYpAsS iT's GoNnA dEGrAdE mY sIgNaL. So annoying, man. Well, I used to watch Phil X's videos around 2009, 2010, and the pedal was there, and I liked it a lot. A bass knob would do wonders in a ts-like pedal. But living in a country where the dollar conversion is too high meant even the Bad Monkey was expensive for me. I had to content myself with a chinese knockoff. xD
@@RomanBellicTaxi true bypass/"digital sucks" is definitely bs. And there's other TS pedals out there with bass knobs that'd probably be almost identical. I don't use overdrives tho so it doesn't really matter to me except that it's funny how high the prices will go just because of the JHS videos.
Josh's point wasn't that the bad monkey is so great itself it was more about the fact that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a good sound. There are lots of excellent pedals that do the job. Other than my Echoplex that I purchased in the 70's I have never spent more than $100 on a pedal.
I remember back in the day, Bad Monkey being THE overdrive/boost pedal for any metal guitarist here in Finland because they were cheap af even as new and did the job as well as any other pedal. I never owned one because I was stupid and had to get a Maxon OD808 just because that's what my favorite bands were using.
I've had the Bad Monkey on my board for the past decade until the other day I replaced it with a "Longsword" overdrive. It's really funny watching Josh affect the pedal market though lol - maybe your video will bring the prices back down and counter it
About 15 Years ago I got myself an Ibanez TS9 and a Bad Monkey and tested them side by side. They not just sound identical in a mix but with a single guitar as well. Actually the Bad Monkey was a little better because the TS9 had a little background noise which could be very annyoing on higher gain levels. The Bad Monkey was a perfectly fine pedal, which served me well until I got into VST and sold it.
All Josh did was show that you can make a Bad Monkey sound like a single tone you can achieve on the Klon, and a single tone you can achieve on the TS10 etc, within the context of a mix. Almost any overdrive can match a single tone you can achieve on a range of other overdrives within the context of a mix - there is absolutely nothing special about the Bad Monkey. Another way to look at it is that he just made the Klon, TS10 etc sound like specific tones a Bad Monkey can achieve. I really think he could make videos like this for every overdrive on the market.
The point is "you don't need to splurge 5 grand on a pedal, use what you have and you'll sound great." Whatever difference there is, you won't hear it in a mix. Use an EQ to shape whatever drive you have and you're golden.
To me, if you do a catchy riff or a memorable song with a certain piece of gear, even if it's relative junk, it will gain value. Gilmour's Black Strat? Just an off the wall Strat guitar with tons of dings and dents along with a lot of mods done to it. However, it was sold in auction for 4 million dollars because of the music it made. EVH's Frankentrat? Just a partscaster of factory reject parts but is highly revered in the guitar community because of the revolutionary things done with it. My point is, the JHS team made some decent jams with the pedal, and now, people are now desiring to have one because it sounds close to some expensive shit. In reality, when you put guitar gear in the context of a band mix, these minute differences between the overdrives used in the video vanish. Bottomline, any gear can be good if you know how to use it. An ancient warrior once said, don't use a sword that you don't know how to wield. You can have the best gear, but if you can't properly play a tune, it's all pointless.
Its like people who buy a 2k guitar and say it sounds shit.... when they just can't play. Like me I would never spend over £500 on a guitar unless I severely progressed... not worth it!
@@TheBanana93 what irks me is that some people I see online say someone devalued their vintage guitar because they changed some parts on it. Like bro, some guitars needs to get its potentiometers changed because it's crackling like crazy and is not sounding good. Same with pickups, you rewind/replace it when it is not working as it should. People, it's an old guitar, it needs repairs. Modding for better playability/experience is bound to happen at some point. Also, being old doesn't mean it is great, that's just vintage guitar corksniffers wanting to believe their collection is worth something when their playing is not worth paying for.
I got my Bad Monkey brand new as a Christmas gift roughly 15 years ago and to this day will still go back and forth between it and my Keely-modded Tube Screamer; it's a damn good and versatile overdrive. I was goofing around on Reverb the other day and was seeing them listed for $300+ and was wondering when the hell it increased in value by nearly 10 times it's original brand new price tag...this hobby is great and fucking awful at the same time, Jesus Christ lol
Small world man, I believe I bought mine around the same time as you did. It was actually my first ever pedal, and I still have it on my pedalboard to this day.
As a guitar player I cannot help but agree, we are stupid! I was looking through reverb the other day and noticed that there were a lot of "custom" guitars from small builders in either the S or T shape. These are usually priced at about 2000 dollars give or take 500 either way. Thinking to myself, this is just 2 pieces of wood and some very simple hardware and electronics, anybody could easily go to a guitar hardware retailer and get all the components (of excellent quality) for about 500 dollars and put something very very similar together themselves. So why are we paying 2000 or even more? It's all off the shelves hardware from a handful of known makers put together with a body made from some "exotic" material, such as a piece of their grandpas barn. Well, that piece of gramp's barn is costing you 1500 dollars or even more. And pedals are even worse. Put some old weird transistors into a fuzz face circuit and you are in business! "Come on man, everyone knows that the Bulgarian 70's BFD-17D(a) transistors are the BEST for a Jimi tone!". We are willingly getting ripped off here...
These words are so true... I love Joshes videos and as an intermediate guitarist I learned quite a lot from him. His videos are educational, funny, and (as far as I can tell) authentic.
I love what he does. He's tapped in to the compulsive, consumerist tendencies this modern society has and is shining a spotlight on its absurdities. I've felt like this for years, even before the days of the YT product pushers, laughing at the silliness of how many different ways an industry can rebox and reface the same effect, or amp, or guitar, etc, and people just clamour for it simply for the bragging rights of having the 'latest and greatest'. And if it gets celebrity power behind, its even worse. Josh is absolutely right, and the internet trolls hate being called out lol
What I find most amusing about boutique pedals is that people spend crazy money buying them to recreate tones that were originally recorded with Boss and MXR pedals in the first place. The price spikes for what were inexpensive pedals is basically the same thing. Grail status conferred on something that’s not rare because it’s boutique but only because nobody was buying them and they were discontinued. I actually did buy a Bad Monkey new for €30 and a used Sovtek bubble font EHX Big Muff for €50 back in the day. Worth a ton now but I like them so that means nothing really.
This video is a derivative work of a Henning P video featuring a highly adjustable tube screamer copy. Which is stupid for most people to buy unless they don’t have a tube screamer.
The truth that Josh uncovered is not that the Bad Monkey is "as good as a Klon" its really that virtually ALL overdrive pedals are "good enough". Of course Glenn should be along shortly to shout "what speakers was he using!?" ... which is probably a more important question.
Good point. A great speaker with some nice warm tubes behind it is magic at the flip of a switch. I have a nice DOD IceBox Chorus that I have learned to start off with 'and its not for sale' before people hear it because its just a great pedal. I got it with a few other pedals have about $20 in it
Us guitar players are like "OoOoOo new gear must buy". Our buddy will look at us and be like "bruh that's 5 grand" then we'll be like "a small sacrifice for tone" 😂
It literally happens whenever a youtube video comes out or a channel/influencer mentions a product thats discontinued. Ive had it happen with other electronics, lots of music equipment, video games. All "hidden gem" videos are time bombs for cheap prices
Thanks for this video. It shines a spotlight on the idiocy of we guitar players and our relentless "quest for tone." That quest, of course, does not include, generally, setting a rigorous practice schedule and adhering to it. It generally means buying more gear.
Or.... it means buying tons of stuff to try to duplicate an always changing "perfect tone" that is in your head, but probably changes in your head from year to year anyway. My "perfect tone" sort of adapted to that of my favorite guitar through most overdriven amps, and I guess I got lucky. But this mystical "quest for tone" seems to hit even the big gun guitar players. Look at Eddie Van Halen. He had the tone that guys still try to reproduce, decades later, that he got on VH1, yet he kept changing his guitars and gear afterwards in the "quest for tone". That's why I really admire Malcolm Young. Very little changes in equipment. He had his guitar altered a few times, but it usually was the same Gretsch bridge pickup into a Marshall Super Bass or Super Lead -- same basic amp configuration from 1974 when AC/DC started until his last tour with them in 2010. He knew what he wanted, got it, stuck with it.
In every commercial product class there are the products that are outliers when it comes to price. This is unavoidable and caused by the humans trying to stand out of others just by spending money without having to do so.
Spot-on with your assessment. I will add that a lot of people are just looking for an easy fix, or, in this case, a magic pedal that will make them sound great without putting any effort into practicing or actually learning the instrument. Don't get me wrong, I really dig pedals (and amps), but I'm not expecting any increase in social status with what I buy or not buy. In fact, I'm the guy that is more drawn to the things that are outcast and unwanted, like the TS-10 was for years and years. But, then again, I am not trying to be anybody else.
In the mid 1980's I built an overdrive from a kit. The kit cost all of $9. It sounds no better and no worse than any of the overdrive pedals on the market today. Why? Because sound hasn't changed.
Yeah...couldn't have said it better than Josh. One interesting story to that: Recently I got some great comments on my guitar sound (not on my channel) of a certain video on TH-cam (fat, juicy, etc.). And you know what it was? A cheap Marshall Jackhammer pedal (set on "overdrive") boosted with a Boss SD-1 going into the clean channel of a Hughes & Kettner Tube 20 (stock). Get the best out of your present equipment, pals!
A goodly number of people - especially bored middle aged people - savor the experience of purchasing things more than anything. Collector cars and golf equipment come to mind. The guitar market is pretty extreme, however, and driven in part by nostalgia and in part by a belief that history has a unique sound that can only be achieved with cash.
I love my Bad Monkey. Paid $35 for mine. It made me sell my Tube Screamer. My favorite overdrive pedal is the Radial ToneBone Classic. Another great analog Digitech overdrive pedal is the Digitech "Screamin' Blues"
My wife bought me a bad monkey about 10 years ago as a gift after looking on some website and just randomly seeing it. I still have it and don’t use it much. Won’t be parting ways with it either. I occasionally see the topic come up about how underrated this pedal is and just laugh that I have one just chillin.
Things I've learned since getting back into electric guitar 3 years ago: 1) anything affordable is junk, anything expensive is hype only for idiots, snobs, and sheep, apparently only lawyers can play "blooze", tube amps are overrated dinosaur hype (or they're awesome), modelers are awesome (or they suck) 2) Whatever gear the person typing plays is ALWAYS awesome and everyone else is an idiot, snob, lawyer, or sheep. The amount of gear available means there's something for everyone. The amount of vitriol and "gotcha" mentality directed at those that like things YOU don't like is childish and pathetic.
Imagine if Josh did a video on Digitech multiFX modellers. The reality is many of the items modelled (especially the Digitech products) sound just like the real thing and they were from the time when the market universally declared modelling sucks. The reality is some bands who were considered to have amazing tone were using these Digitech products until the Fractals and Kempers replaced them but the main reason for the upgrades are factors like reliability or connectivity not tone. The reality is these amazing MFX products sell for less than the price of a single mid range guitar pedal.
I've had one stuck to my board for 3 years 24/7/365. The independent bass & treble gets it closer to a Klon than most screamers, but 'transparent' it is far from.
It’s even more insane if you know anything about the schematics of overdrive pedals. They’re very simple and the components are not expensive at all. In addition, almost every overdrive pedal on the market is a repackaged clone of some other overdrive like a Klon, TS9, Hot tubes, whatever.. So before you spend $150 plus on that od pedal, just remember you’re not paying for a proprietary design or any special components. Basically anything over $100 you’re paying for the paint job. Even $100 is steep
oh man, I cannot agree more. Not being able (or indeed willing) to pay Klon/KOT prices I embarked on buying pedal kits for replicas of said pedals. First, they all sounded wonderful to my ears and second I had a lot of fun building them. Do they sound like Klons/KOTs? If I try and listen on youtube well, yes they do. Do they give me a sound that floats my boat? Absolutely. You have knobs on your guitar and knobs on your amp and knobs on the pedal....you have a huge range of sounds at your disposal. Then add a drummer, a bass player, maybe a keyboard, a big/little/noisy/quiet club/hall/theatre-if-you/re-lucky....keep the$5000 in your pocket, spray your Klon clone orange and lie through your teeth. No-one will know, I guarantee. Great channel, btw, thank you.
As a synth player, it shocks me how expensive some guitar pedals are - You could get a damn nice moog filter for cheaper. VST plugins forced the price of hardware synths to go down, it should have done the same for guitar pedals, but i guess guitarists think it's not metal to use a DAW or something
the funny thing is that many guitarist dont even understand the concept of "input" and "output". cant count how often me, as a drummer, had to help guitarist puting theyr rig together.... but they are not the only ones falling for hyped up gear.
I actually like using the bad monkey pedal as a straight front end lift to amplify the sound fairly cleanly before hitting the preamp stage of my tube amp, when done Right it drives the front end of the 12 ax7 preamp tubes into a beautiful cascading crunch, driving the final tubes into a rumbling gritty overdrive, in a very good way!
The fact that the Bad Monkey went up in after market value after the JHS video dropped shows that tons of people missed the point. The point wasn't that the Bad Monkey is a killer budget pedal that can emulate certain sounds from rare and boutique pedals at specific settings. The point was that ANY budget overdrive pedal potentially can. They're all just slightly different flavors of the same effect and most of them contain similar circuitry.
Those cheap “archetype” Digitech pedals were going for 30 Canadian, second hand where I live. Haven’t checked the prices recently, because everybody has so many of these around here.
Simple economics: Josh features a forgotten pedal on his platform, demand goes up, and price reflects that. Overinflated demand has been a problem in the industry
A Boss GT-8 is cheaper and on manual is at least as good as a pedal board. I've convinced tube heads asking about my "amp" till I pointed at it. It's all in your hands really. Excellent advice.
I actually sent Josh from JHS a pedal not too long ago... it was this custom thing with a cool pastel looking case. I could have sold it but thought he might dig it. I'm a big fan of his channel, so thought fuck it, send it over. I never heard a word back. Not even a quick thank you. They say altruism doesn't exist... and I would agree... I wanted at least a "thanks for the pedal man, glad you love the youtube channel". Nope, not one word... I want my pedal back LOL.
Nice work here. Like i responded to JHS, I bought mine when first released after seeing so many great comments here and at Amazon. At $35.00 new, I didn't even demo it. Heck, it sat for a week before i plugged it in. Happy with my gigged first gen Cyber Twin tones. Once i did, all in. Semi clean BF setting and played what ever i wanted. I used it almost all the time. Move forced headphones and use this amp and other and mostly a DS-1 but still love the Bad Monkey. And, yes, it weighs more than the Boss pedal.
I saw a PRS video in which he mentioned he loved the Hot Cake pedal. So I created eBay notifications for when it was posted. It stays around $300-$400+ range. I can't imagine paying more than like 70 bucks for that particular pedal just because of his mention, but for any other pedal I'd want to pay around 50 bucks. I've also been looking for Fran Tone ones. But those tend to be pricey too. Probably why I don't own any pedals.
When Twinkies were taken off the market there were people literally paying hundreds of dollars for a single Twinkie. I read that one person actually paid $5,000 for a single Twinkie.
I got one of these Bad Monkeys collecting dust somewhere in my garage that was modded to use for Bass Guitar. Had a non-modded one also at one point. I think I paid about $60 for it, but I was paying mostly for the mod. Sounds pretty good, but I don't know about it being a $600 pedal. I also want to add here that I'm convinced there's gotta be some type of TH-cam shenanigans going on to make these pedals sound EXACTLY the same. Why am I not buying the "your $10 pedal can sound exactly like this $200 pedal" thing? Because intermediate players like me hear an insanely dramatic difference in a live setting. I'm convinced some of these players either A) Can make every pedal sound the same with enough tweaking, or B) Are doing some type of recorded shenanigans I've done the A-B thing myself a couple years ago trying to decide which OD to keep and which to get rid of to thin out the collection a little. All I had (for guitar, not the bass) was a Bad Monkey, a TS808, whatever OD were in a Digitech RP200, and whatever is in a Boss GT-100. Wish I had a Klon Centaur to compare with, but oh well. What I found was that the TS808 was what I was looking for the most, the Bad Monkey sounded fine, but nothing special, the Boss GT-100 presets were hit and miss, but the RP200 was hilariously awful. I completely agree that there is a price point somewhere that just doesn't make sense to pay because you can get close enough one way or the other with so many similar pedals. I used to think the same thing about stock cheap Amazon guitars versus my 1994 PRS Custom 24... until I played them. Lol sometimes you get what you pay for, but you can only figure that out with experience. I'm a big believer using a pedal if using the amp's sounds either can't replicate it (ex. Tremolo) or it's just a pain in the butt (ex. Maybe you want a clean channel, a light OD channel, and a heavy distortion channel, but your amp only offers 2 channels). Chasing your personal soundscape is a fun journey full of wonder and frustration mixed with balancing your bank account. Lol keep on rocking!
>Learn to listen with your ears and not trends and you will be a much happier guitarist. Exactly this. When I went out looking for an overdrive pedal I found that the one I liked the sound of the most was a Mooer Green Mile, even though guitar shops kept trying to sell me much more expensive pedals. I tried them and I preferred the Green Mile, so that's what I bought. The pricetag and status of the gear doesn't matter, what matters is that the sound fits the type of music you play.
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I feel bad for Josh. He obviously loves pedals and every time he tries to share history or point out cool cheaper options, it blows up on him. People suck.
He knows what hes doing. When he releases limted run pedals they sell like hot cakes. People listening to him is wonderful for business. He might not be directly profiting from the bad monkey, it is proving how much he influences the sheep that havent spent decades hunting their own tone
@@Ottophil I don't think he wants the price hikes to be happening. I think he truly does want to show people awesome cheaper options. He would not have amassed the neurotic collection he did without a huge love for the hoby.
Agreed, the average person is either an ass, an idiot, or both.
I'm betting it's "Hey look this as good and its cheap don't spent stupid money on a klon!" And instead the price of the cheap one jumped for no reason.
Also anyone crying about it there are other 2 and 3 band tube screamers.
@@russellg1473It’ll always be funny when people still don’t listen or pay attention when it’s obviously a joke
Josh Scott: you can get a great overdrive tone without spending a ton of money
flippers: not anymore 😉
Well, you still can, obviously. Instead of the bad monkey, you can buy another affordable pedal that sounds exactly the same.
@@mrcoatsworth429 I bought a Wish Klone for 34$ last month, and it is great!
@@mrcoatsworth429 exactly, there are loads of good overdrive pedals out there. Most of them are identical circuits. But they're not boutique so gear snobs turn their nose up at them.
boss super overdrives are pretty cheap rn
don't tell Josh :v
Frankly, as KDH points out, it’s really not flippers who are the origin of this problem. It’s stupid guitarists who chase the tone of people they respect through trying to acquire the exact same gear rather than, as Josh pointed out, “listening with their ears”. Without this guitarist stupidity there would be no market for flippers in the first place.
Drummers aren’t stupid, they just hangout with Musicians
I prefer working with a drum machine, that way I only have to punch the rhythm in once.
you must be a drummer, "Hangout" is a place "Hang out" is what musicians do.
Hey watch it buddy' 🥁
@@stereoroid hit the drummer hard enough and achieve the same result 😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@stereoroid so true. Machines dont complain
I worked at Digitech for years. Josh just pointed out what some already knew, at the expense of all the cork sniffing gear nuts. The design engineers and marketing folks there made some of the best equipment I've ever used... and it was all affordable. That being said, my personal favorite are the HardWire series pedals, which came and went very quickly. Now that Tom Cram and the original engineers are back with Digitech, I believe were about to be supplied with some more incredible sounding gear.
Hardwire series, yes! Tom Cram and team returning. yes X 1000!
Man, Digitech was such a godsend for hobbyist guitarists. I still use my Screamin' Blues and Grunge more than just about any other pedals. Honestly, the only multi-hundred-dollar pedals I drool over these days are from GameChanger Audio, and that's more for their gimmick being genuinely cool.
I like the Berhinger stuff as well, which is another budget brand.
They do a tube screamer that’s fecking awesome and the Hell Babe wah pedal they make is pretty versatile.
I just hope they can produce some really affordable gear. I would LOVE to try out new things but the prices of physical gear is just so out of reach for me not working due to disability (long term). I've actually had to resort to using software that I haven't acquired legally.... Which is not only unethical, but it sounds WAY worse than real gear in my opinion. Depressing in more ways that one... I loved using digitech stuff back in the mid-2000s when I started. Wish I would've kept all my gear from back then.
@@Acheron666 I use Behringer reverb and it fulfill my needs.
The Bad Monkey was my first pedal & I have held onto it / used it since 06' the smount of other guitarists & guitar player friends that turned their noses up to it was damn near 100%. I always defended it & seeing this whole thing play out is hilarious to me. Kind of an "I told you so" moment
It really is a lot better than people give it credit for.
A friedman, it is not, but it is still a great damn pedal and will give you a nice tone if you know how to work it right.
Phil X a big studio guitar guy says his secret weapon is an old amp called a tone master and a bad monkey.
@sukyumibowlz-fq7hx Clearly somebody doesn't own a Bad Monkey.
Same here. I've been collecting Digitech/DOD pedals since the early 90's since I didn't really have access to other brands. Still my favorite and is the most used pedal I have. I think it's superior to most OD pedals because it has low and high knobs and not just a tone knob.
Rob Chapman and Stevie T are both like..."Phew, thank God this isn't about us!"
Oh but Rob will make it about himself.
Introducing the Bad Chapper's Overhype pedal! Twice the noise at thrice the price! Coming soon to a Guitar Center near you!
Size comment
@Duderama 67 Bad Chappers really tickled me haha
He’s really not that bad lol chill
@@duderama6750 He has a lot of power. Don't forget!
The theme for "he has the box" played in my brain regardless because of this mind disease I have
Same
Oh, talking about your disease. What a... shame.less.plug.
@@wallacehoward2792 it seems I don't have that one?
@@possiblyneil4978 Can you even survive?
@@johanneschristopherstahle3395 na, it's terminal. I might only have 50 years left
I have no doubt that if Josh were to make a video claiming the Digitech Death Metal to be a god-tier distortion, people would start buying it for several hundreds of dollars.
I mean its fun to play with. I used one into a peavey combo as my main distortion in the 90’s
That pedal legit got me through a fair few black metal gigs while I was at uni. Sounded terrible, perma dined gain, ton of noise… I loved it.
But the Digitech Death metal is THE god tier pedal. Lol.
I use it on my bass solos. It's amazing with a chorus pedal.
@@wilky1189 fucking hell, I can't even begin to imagine...
as someone who’s left the guitar youtube sphere for a while and came back i just wanted to say thank you. Your content is one of the few channels which is no bs and just tells it like it is. No marketing gimmicks, you try to put your biases aside and give viewers the facts. Even when you state your opinion you never do so in an unfair or overly rude manner, you simply give facts and express how that makes you feel. All in all S tier channel, keep up the amazing work.
Here’s another thing to consider: potentiometer variance/tolerance. If you take two identical TS9’s, put all knobs at noon and switch between them, they’ll sound different. Guaranteed. Potentiometers aren’t perfect, and 12 o’clock on one pedal might be another’s 1 o’clock. Some pedals have less range on the effected parameters, so you’ll notice it less. Some have more. The reason a Klon and a Bad Monkey sound similar is because they’re a similar overdrive, and you can tweak the knobs on either to make it sound the same.
I’m only saying this because Anderton’s is probably gonna do a video in the next week comparing a Klon to a Bad Monkey they pulled from the back, put all the knobs at noon and say “oh they’re not the same after all.” At the end of the day, I bet you could make a Klon and a TS9 sound the exact same, especially if you have an EQ pedal after the TS9.
Tl;dr just go practice and be happy with the overdrive you have. Tweak the knobs a bit and find a sound you like. A Klon may be worth $5000, but practice and self-satisfaction is worth a lot more.
Does this make Morley pedals perfect? Most of their stuff doesn’t have pots.
Well the thing is capacitors vary from their stated capacity, whether it be 1%, 5%, 10% or 20% tolerance. So unless in the factory where they make the pedals they measure the capacitance of each capacitor to make sure they are exactly the same, there will be some difference to the sound of the pedal.
You're seriously lacking in knowledge of electronic circuits. The Bad Monkey is just a TS with bass and treble controls, and, like a TS is a soft clipper, with the clipping diodes in the op-amp's feedback loop. The Klon circuit is a hard clipper, with the clipping diodes on the op-amp's output, and in that regard is more like a DOD 250 than a TS. Furthermore, it has several unique attributes- a charge pump chip that boosts the power supply voltage for more headroom, and a dual gang gain pot, with dual parallel circuit paths that keeps a fixed ratio of clean tone mixed in with the dirt tone, so, as you increase the gain, you are also increasing the parallel clean signal by the same amount. The Klon also has a unique buffer circuit on-board, and I'm pretty sure the Bd Monkey is un-buffered, with a true bypass design. Go back to school before you open your mouth next time.
you made that up
A Klon is not worth $5000. The same hype that's surrounding the Bad Monkey and TS10 applies to the Klon.
Can confirm. Am a guitar player. Am stupid.
But the JHS effect is crazy. I don't blame Josh at all. I love learning from that channel. People are just crazy.
The Digitech Distortion Factory went back to reasonable prices around a month after JHS did the video on that pedal and the Expression and Chorus Factories.
I picked one up for $230.00 + $12.00 delivery
😂😂😂
@@DerSilvano He isn't. Guitar players got the wrong idea from the message that Josh was trying to send.
It's got to do with herd mentality and this situation puts that into context, specifically "influencers" (self-labeled or not). Musicians are a superstitious bunch.
Before YT & modern social media, you had set consensus in a community on a forum, IRC, etc... before that, newsgroups & physical magazines along with bands and people naturally socializing.
Jim Lill along with some others are doing some serious organic consensus cracking via empirical testing. I suppose JHS tried but it brought out the collector & scalper types it appears. People need to be told what is great, what sounds good instead of discovering it for themselves instead of worrying about writing interesting music.
The ease of use of social media and the internet has us able to crack many old consensuses or it can help reinforce old ones & create new ones.
Best general advice: as it was used to be said "shut up and play your guitar!" (but record, share, learn, etc)
Honestly, I knew the Bad Monkey was underrated when Phil X was talking about it in his demos years ago. I'm kind surprised there wasn't a bigger spike back then.
Also, JHS is probably one of the best channels for pedals. They focus more on informing you about different pedals and their history instead of just shilling their own products. The video they did about the history of the ProCo Rat awhile ago was excellent, and the fact that they straight up debunked the myth of the older chips having some mythical secret sauce that made them sound better pissed off a lot of people who shelled out a lot of money for vintage Rat pedals.
I had forgotten where I heard it so often. Every single Phil X video for Fretted Americana back in the day used the Bad Monkey, it was his favourite pedal at the time and sounded amazing.
Imho the point is not, that the Bad Monkey is underrated, but that the other pedals are overrated.
@@hitsonacousticguitar exactly. Complete idiots spend 5 grand on klon centaurs and yet can't tell the difference between them and a regular budget behringer or digitech pedal in a blind audio test. You can't even tell the difference when it's just the guitar on its own, let alone when it's in the mix.
Also too many guitar players create their perfect tone over years and years, and then finally use them in a band situation and they sound completely shite in that context. Because what's good guitar tone for the mix is a completely different thing to good guitar tone on its own. The best tones ever, if you isolate the guitar and mute everything else, generally sound awful. But they sound amazing in the mix. Like, I normally dislike his whole channel really, but Music Is Win did do a good video about this where he played Randy Rhodes' tone on its own, isolated, on his songs with Ozzy, and the tone sounded like absolute dog shit. This is the same tone that's in every "top 10 guitar tones" list.
So spending years trying to perfect your guitar tone by just playing on your own, is a waste of time. You've gotta get good at creating a tone within the context of a band. Make a drum track, record bass and guitar parts on it, mix them all together, and get better and better at mixing them over time. Then you'll be saving yourself a lot of hassle.
Yeah, I've had my Bad Monkey for over10 years. I bought it after listening to Phil X rave about it way back in his Fretted Americana videos.. I think it cost me 38 quid back then... I still use it today.. Imho it is indeed a great little pedal and certainly holds it own against the boutique stuff..
To be fair, back then you could have a popular TH-cam video on a bit of gear and it wouldn't cause a price spike.
Now anyone selling the gear is looking for these kind of viral videos. All it takes is for a few people to inflate the price and suddenly they are all "worth" whatever the new price is.
Josh is on a mission to make every pedal's price at least $150
And then sell his budget range for 99. He's playing chess 😂
@@Two_Seat_Pete_FatA55 4-D giga-Chad brain chess
@@Two_Seat_Pete_FatA55 Idk, I'm not paying $100 for some chinese clones.
I have this ancient Zoom multi-effects pedal that I must've bought 20 years ago and there's one particular lead distortion on it known simply as "B 1" and it sounds fucking awesome! When I was a teen I was embarrassed to use it and pretended I just had it for gigs as a tuner. It's mortifying to think I was such a sheep (still use it btw)
I had that one and I remember I also loved the "B1" :D Memories.. Also Boss' Micro Br had insanely cool effects too. (The one BR-80).
I have it!!!!! The Zoom 50511??
Same here I have a zoom g1n from a while ago and it sounds pretty much no different than any "real" pedals.
Nine Inch Nails' iconic "Broken" EP used Zoom effects. JHS should do a history lesson on those and all the hypebeasts will suddenly decide those crappy-but-awesome Zoom effects are essential classics worth thousands of dollars.
@@LukeChaos Tom Morello used the Zoom step/auto arpeggio effect at the end of the solo on "Show Me How to Live."
I bought a Zoom 505 damn near 25 years ago and yeah, gear snobs looked down on it. But with some tweaking it could make incredible sounds regardless of the price.
Josh is the reason I first gave cheap Chinese manufacturers like Joyo the time of day in the first place. Now, the Joyo Aquarius delay is my absolute favourite delay pedal, and the Voodoo Octave fuzz pedal hasn't left my board since I got it a few years ago.
Josh quite often points out that there is very little that can make a `new' pedal stand out in the crowd. I've got a few joyo and nux pedals based simply on availability ,performance and ultimately price. I can play any 1 or a combination of my various overdrive pedals and get a satisfying result. I have the voodoo fuzz but didn't really find a use for it,the octave wasn't particularly obvious but I still have it
Same same! He showed me that circuits are in fact just that CIRCUITS! and that a board loaded with Strymon pedals won't make you sound any better!
I’m not an Josh fan but I probably have 25 ODs and my favorite is the Joyo American Sound into ‘60 Deluxe.
Thanks to Ryan from 60CycleHum I discovered the beauty of cheap pedals and, in the same way, how of an asshole can people be around a certain brand or model, how toxic is that way of thinking, instead of acknowledging the fact that those are gateway pedals that serve for experimentation and whatnot... Also the HotOne Dent, nice pedal.
@@cedarbay3994 joyo American is pride of place on my boards also. The most useful pedal purchases ( several) I have made,seems a little silly to some to put a fender voice to a fender but yes I run it with overdrive in front and delay/ reverb after the American,into both valve and solid state . Bought the California as well and I'm sure in context it would be as useful but the voice and gain range on the American pedal covers everything I need .$69 aus, what's not to like.
As a non-guitarist and someone who watches JHS frequently this whole situation is hilarious to me. Here's a brilliant idea for all guitarists: buy pedals based on whether you like how they sound. I know it sounds crazy but it might save you a few bucks
The problem is they really do think they like the sound, but due to preconceived bias. You could put two exact same circuits into different boxes, one being a Klon for example, and they would swear that one sounds better. It happens all the time with pedals, pickups, strings etc etc. Its human nature unfortunately and marketing companies play off it with many different products.
That's what I try to do, buy what works for me. We get caught up though in the hype of the "next big thing" or the new reissue that has new features, etc. It's a real rabbit hole sometimes. What I stay away from though, are over complicated pedals - those, I don't care how much hype is behind them, I'm not interested because I don't want to spend loads of time trying to figure out how to use it.
as a guy who shits his pants often, i agree with you!
@@evenstephen9337 Lol
@@noggintube No two pedals are going to sound exactly the same either, electronics components aren't perfect and they have tolerances.
Thanks for this, KDH. With all due respect, every time Josh reviews a cheap pedal, everyone loses their mind and reveals how hypocrite some assholes are around pedal brands and being so snooty about it.
I didn’t use pedals for years and years, just a foot switch that came with my amp. When I finally decided to start using pedals, I just went with Boss because I like the shape and uniformity of their pedals. That’s it. It’s purely an OCD thing, but I love how they sound. I’ve got some non-Boss pedals for things Boss doesn’t make. I’ve mostly given up on chasing specific tones and focus on getting a tone I like.
It fills me with joy to look down at my color-coded stomp boxes.
The thing is, when it comes to guitar tone, it's not what you use, but how you use it and what you do with it that really counts.
Yep, used BOSS ME-70 is all the most would ever need
It's true. I switched to bass and immediately got accepted into Harvard. I didn't even apply.
Good one. Actually, Harvard isn’t smart, it’s gone Woke.
Janitors don’t need to apply.
Sorry, mate, only joking, but I couldn’t resist!
Ite true! Ive been playing bass for nearly 3 years and im being constantly harassed by Ivy League schools! Ive even had my family kidnapped before so I could be forced to go to one !
@lidbass
Beat me to it by 1-hour.
The funniest part of this is a bassist getting a job
I had this along with other digitech pedals that I recently donated to a music school about a year ago. No regrets, the young musicians will get years of love out of it. That’s worth more than the money to me. Personally, this pedal never sounded super special to my ears. Barber electronics overdrive pedals on the other hand, those sounded like gold! Haha
Innit? I give my old gear for free to newbie friends/friends who want to start playing guitar or charity, what surprises me is that people are THIS upset over a pedal going from 50 to 200 USD like... if you sold it a week ago and the price jumped like this, and you're THIS bitthurt over it... defo need to think your life over if 150 dollars causes this much ass hurt (unless you're like a teenager, then I understand)
If anything, your having donated it is the one of the best results, because who likes the school's kit? It's laaaaaaaame. But now, some kid will be like "Wait... isn't that on the storeroom shelf at school!?" ... and probably steal it, but they'll definitely USE it ;)
My good friend is a musician but knows nothing about guitar pedals. He got me a used Bad Monkey for my birthday maybe 3 years ago, and it is the only pedal I have ever gotten for free. I think he paid $30. It even came with the box and DigiTech’s old mini-booklet/catalog. Watching this situation unfold has given me the strangest sense of amusement.
After watching the JHS video, I went digging through my pedals and found I still have mine Bad Monkey (American version) that I picked up for $20 years ago with the box. I was also amused and was tempted to see what the prices immediately jumped.
I’ve always thought the Bad Monkey was a seriously underrated pedal, and I’ve seen people comparing it to the Klon before.
Just checked, I still have the Bad Monkey I bought when I was working at Guitar Center in 2004-05! It sold brand new for $29.99 and it became a favorite around the store for how good it sounded next to pedals 5 times the price!
Last time I used it, I had it as a bass overdrive
Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer for best tone !
@@lucbos7516 amplifier OD is all I go with nowadays. And if I need more gain, a Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster pedal :)
@@lucbos7516 The bad monkey is a literal ts clone.
it is a god tier bass overdrive, cuz it has a dry output so it also works great as a split-point for a wet/dry or bright/thump rig.
It's insane to realize how quickly shit got out of hand.
I used to buy smokes in high school in the 90's for $1.25 to $2.25 ...if you had extra lunch money for Marlboro or Camels.
Now... kids need to budget their lunch money multiple days to enjoy the social standing of a smoker!
It's total BULLSH!T!
I've played and built guitars for nearly 40 years and you are 100% accurate!!!
Another pedal I was recently told was 'Legendary' was that Nobel PoS - never heard of it and I've played everything.
Oh and there was a JHS company making pedals and gear in the 80s and 90s.
Great video! :o)
no ur literally a child im looking at u rn
@@evenstephen9337 we got a comment section detective, keep up the good work
Prices will most likely come back down. Awhile back, JHS did an episode on the Digitech Distortion Factory and Expression Factory EX-7 pedals. Prices went haywire for awhile, but I recently bought an EX-7 for what it was going for before the Josh spike. I think the TS-10 is a different situation because of its affiliation with Mayer, who may only be second to Bonamassa in the deep-pocketed world of blues lawyers.
DF is still wild
@@hiroprotagonitis I'm seeing a couple for $130 on Reverb. Doesn't seem that crazy.
Maybe JM played too many different drives. If it was for the money, I should have sold my TS 10 a few years ago when they sold for 300+.
Bought it for about 30 DM (15 EUR) more than 20 years ago. I swear it didn't sound as good back then as it does now though. It aged pretty well. Maybe my ears betray me, but I'm sure my TS 9 always sounded way smoother then the TS 10. Now I like both of them equally.
@@aldersmoke1 But a couple months before that video I bought two Distortion Factory pedals in mint condition with box (one of them was sealed NOS even) for about $60 each (including shipping and tax). So, yeah, $130 for a pedal isn't absurd, but it is 2x what it used to cost. Same with the CF-7, was around $50, now settling around $100.
When Josh hypes these out-of-production budget (sub $75 price point) pedals they usually spike hard (upwards of $200) but then come back down and then eventually seem to settle around $100-$125- which depending on how cheap it was before is anywhere between a 33%-100% increase. You can see these trends among several pedals such as the DF-7, CF-7, and Boss BC-2 just off the top of my head but I'm sure there are more.
I think KDH is probably right in that it will go back down to a "reasonable" level eventually, just not as cheap as it was a week and a half ago (about $125 after a few weeks and then maybe hovering around $100-$115 after about 6-8 months).
I actually remember that the Bad Monkey had a lot of hype around it shortly after it came out, but that's largely because it was a very inexpensive way to get a Tube Screamer-like pedal. It's silly to me that people are paying such high prices when the selling point amongst internet guitarists at the time was simply that it was cheaper than a branded Tube Screamer (albeit with high & low knobs instead of a tone knob). The lesson from the JHS video should be that you don't need to spend a whole lot to get great results. Never ended up buying a Bad Monkey, but I did spend $26 on a "Kokko Overdrive" (Tube Screamer clone), and it sounds great! Can't wait till they inevitably explode in price one day!
This pedal was like $75 until pretty recently
I just remember it (Bad Monkey)being $29.95 new last time I checked. Must have been right before they got discontinued. Time flies.
@@zerosoma33 That would have been such a great buy! I remember wanting to get one when they were at a decent price. Kinda funny - STL Tones Amphub (which is an amp sim that's updated monthly) just got an update that added a Bad Monkey pedal for free! I had to laugh at them capitalizing on the hype of the Bad Monkey. That said - they also have a Seymour Duncan 805 Drive which is a Tubescreamer with Bass, Treble & Mids knobs, so it basically takes the Bad Monkey a step further.
Man, I thought the takeaway from that video was that you don’t need flavor of the month pedal to get a good tone.
It’s not so much that the bad monkey is just some chameleon pedal that has magical powers, it’s just a drive pedal with a good 2-band eq.
An eq pedals is often considered boring, but it can get you in the ballpark of pretty much any overdrive archetype, just because most of the difference is in the eq curve.
When driving my amp, I could almost get identical results with an EQ vs. my TS 10. There's often more than one solution for a given problem. 👍
You can make some guitars in records sound more distorted using the player eq. I do it sometimes boosting the high frequencies. If I can do it with a recorded song, i can do it with an amp.
True about the EQ pedal. I had a Switchblade tube amp years ago that sounded like a boring Marshall, but I loved the onboard effects feature and presets. Ran a Boss GE7 through the loop and BAM totally different amp.
Most importantly: most overdrive circuits are extremely simple and thus you can manufacture them at very low costs, especially when you make large volumes of them, like a lot of the cheaper brands do.
Also manufacturing costs are not what determines prices of pedals (or most things, really), but at where the seller thinks they can get the most profit (supply/demand etc).
Are you saying that if I buy a good eq pedal and put it after my ts808 I can manage to get it to keep from coloring the sound of my amp? I don’t really believe that. It’s a good pedal for certain uses if you want to add color but if you just want a little past breakup and it diminishes the sound of the amp you need an overdrive made exactly with that in mind
Yeah, not only that, they don't recognise when they've been scammed.
As a couple of people noticed, he made the other pedals sound like the Bad Monkey, not the other way round - they noticed the Bad Monkey settings never changed, whilst the other pedals had pretty radical settings.
Well spotted.
I once played a demo for the best guitar player and studio engineer in our circle of musicians. When it got to a part where my guitar was highlighted, he flipped out over how good it sounded. Wow, what is that?!?!? He was fairly stunned when I told him it was a Boss SD-1 into a solid state Fender Deluxe 112. It’s all about your ear, not the gear.
Tone is in the fingers first, speakers second, pedals third, amp forth, and guitar 5th.
@@nobodynoone2500 lol no it isn't. This is just one of those guitar things guitarists say.
"Tone is in the fingers"
"Bro the Tone wood"
Just no. It's the gear. It doesn't have to be super fancy gear, just good sounding gear. I'm terms of amps and speakers. Speakers primarily. This isn't up for debate. It's literally an objective fact.
@@kitten-whisperer Objective fact that I nor anyone else needs to practice? Neat, I guess.
@PaulieMcCoy if you can record a video of you changing the tone of a guitar with your fingers I will send you all of my guitars. I will pay for a notary to finalize a contract saying that I have to actually give you them. Let's see an objective and tangible display of "tone fingers" lol.
@@kitten-whisperer You misunderstood what the OP was saying, I reckon. You're hung up on the semantics of the adage "tone is in the fingers" - this is not to be taken literally. It's just that practice and expertise allows one to transcend the particular ergonomic failings of a given instrument. Many great recordings were done on instruments (guitars) that... weren't that good or had particular problems.
I believe ergonomics and feel are more important for me most of the time for guitar moreso than all the things guitar fudds have been sperging about for decades. There is also a psychological element to it. "The vibe" as children are saying these days. Feels like it sucks will be discouraging and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless you record all your practice sessions for posterity and to be able to analyze at any given time. Which is not a bad idea.
Did you really think "tone is in the fingers first, speaker second..." was the OP saying that the actual physical composition of some people's hands are magic? It's about manipulation of the instrument for the desired result.
Jim Lill and others have been demonstrating this, in the process killing the false myths the marketing industry has been planting into the minds of people for quite some time. Maybe we can finally get some good music as a result?
JHS: "You don't need expensive pedals to get good overdrive. Even a Bad Monkey is fine."
Guitar Players: "Got it. We need to make Bad Monkeys expensive."
JHS: "No. Any decent OD pedal is fine. Stop wasting money."
Guitar Players: "Can I buy your Bad Monkey? Do you have the box? Which year is it? I heard the ones with a darker green paint are better."
"The heavier version sound better due to more matter of the enclosure that effects the overall tone through better grounding" "it's out of a solid chunk of metal, not some aluminium" 🤣
A similar situation happened to the Peavey Decade when Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age said in an interview it was his secret weapon amp. It went from $50 to $500 and is still being listed at around $200 a year later. Some loser is trying to sell one for $1000, discounted from $2000.
I think it was Eric Valentine who spoilered this. Josh usually does not want to reveal his secrets. He's still practicing the lost art of keeping a secret. Maybe I'm wrong, not sure.
"I even have the box"
My brain* he has the..*
"Sadly I don't have a theme song"
I immediately died 🤣🤣🖤
I feel like this is the musical equivalent of fans of the Mandalorian driving up the prices of Bergmann pistols
IMO Phil X was the one that reintroduced the Bad Monkey to guitarists 14 years ago. Simple BM into the Magnatone Tonemaster (which was a long forgotten amp) and that dude could get a wild assortment of rock tones. I guess guitarists aren't necessarily stupid, they just have short memories.
You just brought back SO many memories of Fretted Americana 🥹 goood times
I wanted to say exactly that. Your memories are even more detailed!
I remember the Bad Monkey being the best sounding pedal of the bunch my local shop had out for demo use back in the day. Nice to see it getting some love.
Josh made a good point, use what you have.
Pretty sure that you can dial in a great tone if you figure out how to work within your chain.
Another thing I wanna point out is that regardless of how much I love pedals, there is this one thing that guitar players can't seem to understand, that being is that it's not their pedal choice that's pushing them back, more so lack of skill.
I've never clicked on a video so fast! i knew exactly what this was gonna be about. guitar players ALWAYS strive to copy everyone else to the most minute detail regardless if they actually like it or thing it's good, ffs there are people still trying to get old, bad, or damaged guitars from the 50-60s cause they think are better somehow. i get that some people are collectors but that's different than saying "this IS better or SOUNDS better cause tradition magic"
I can't trust Josh on this one with his "kemper experiment" because he's been known to have no qualms with pulling the wool over our eyes.
Kudos to Josh! Sometimes we get sucked down the rabbit hole and forget that music comes from your fingers, not a mountain of gear, lol. A lot of great guitar players have used very simple pedalboards!
Josh knew what he was doing. And the Bad Monkey has been used in OD shootouts on TH-cam for years and the consensus has always been that it's just a fancy maybe improved Tube Screamer with a smoother bottom than most candidates. Truth is, that most all OD circuits including the almighty Klon are easily made at home with a kit or parts and the willingness to learn basic electronic skills. Even Josh and Mr Wampler will tell you that. I have not bought an OD or Fuzz pedal in decades, but I play through Catalinbread clones I built at home, good stuff. Save your money for nice delay and reverb like an El Capistan, build your own analog preamp, boost, fuzz and OD. Build a custom Big Muff or a Silicone TB and a King of Tone for your pedalboard. It's fun too, online pedal building community is ready to help you get started just like Josh did many years ago.
Is there any particular source for this magic of basic electronics and not paying a lot of money for soldiering few basic components? :o
@@pacman_pol_pl_polska circuit analysis on elecrosmash. I literally sold and designed original pedals off very little knowledge. You don't really require it for drive pedals, since they are using components 'wrong' to produce distortion. If it was some digital-controlled thing, or more utilitarian function then you might need some electronic knowledge to design them. Ditto i use 3 homemade things, but i have bought tube/transformer drive pedals because i consider that they are probably worth the extra components/clever design.
Someday my boss metal zone will be 1000000 dollars.
Yep, right alongside that comic book where (gasp) superman dies!
hits the nail on the head ...next everthing is vintage junk we laugh at in the 80's but now big money
Every pedal..is good. That's what Josh is showing.if you can play,and you have music in you.... Than any tool can be used in a great way that can make others jealous
Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer for best tone !
Precisely! That’s like the entire point of his channel. If people are mad, they should be directing their fury at the sellers - or complaining to online sites like Reverb that they should be building safeguards into their site to prevent price manipulation and sudden massive jumps where they are not warranted. I can understand prices skyrocketing when an artist passes and their gear is only available in limited quantities. To allow sellers to outright price gouge old stuff that is abundantly available (and nobody famous has even died, so to speak) is within a site’s ability to make rules and systems that’ll prevent that sort of thing - where if enough people do it, it’ll like freeze the ability for those items to sell at those prices and trigger a human supervisor to review the situation.
Same goes for new gear releases that people are trying to flip above the list price immediately after they sell out. There should be safeguards in place to prevent that from happening for x amount of time after it’s release - and to make sure there’s a slow rise in value and not a massive jump over time unless it’s truly something warranted like a major artist passing the the item being in limited supply - not when there’s bazillions of those items existing and for sale out in the wild.
If enough guitarists complain to Reverb, eBay, and other sites, maybe they’ll actually do something to build these safeguards and policies into their sites. Because it’s not in their best interest to have hundreds of these Monkey pedals sittings on their site not selling and making them a profit because people won’t buy them for that insane amount of money. Better to have lots of them selling at fair values than a few selling to the stupid idiots dumb enough to buy into the hype and pay hundreds for it.
I wanted an overdrive pedal for a solo boost. I didn't want to spend a lot of money because I only wanted to boost the volume and thicken the sound a bit for leads. I got the Dynarock by Xvive, I think it cost me £30 brand new, including shipping.
It does a great job. It has more volume than I need and it has a mid boost which helps thicken the sound, which are the exact requirements I had.
It has plenty of gain on it, although I keep the gain all they way down for solos. It has however been useful in recording situations, it sounds great when paired with a light crunch from the amp.
Having taken a punt on a cheap pedal, I feel happy with the purchase. I've had the pedal for over a year now and I have nothing negative to say about it.
The only 'negative' is that I don't get to show off a rare, hand wired Tube Screamer or some ridiculous boutique pedal that costs thousands to buy. But I don't care about that, it sounds good and that's the most important thing
The absolute number 1 best fuzz pedal I've ever owned, is a cheap £25 behringer super fuzz. I have some very very expensive fuzz pedals, I spent years buying all the highest recommended ones, EHX ones, Fuzz Face ones, etc. None of them were good enough, or at least close enough to what I heard in my head that I wanted. But the behringer fuzz had it. It sounds absolutely glorious. The mode on it I use is the 60s style fuzz and that just sounds so much better at that than every other 60s style fuzz I've tried. Although apparently most people buy the behringer one for the other mode, which is a 90s fuzz, it's an exact clone of the discontinued Boss Hyper Fuzz, basically. I don't like the sound of that mode at all but others say it's the best pedal for doing that.
Similarly I spent years buying different tubescreamers. Eventually I bought a Robert Keeley one which I'd wanted for decades (he's the guy who started off as a pedal modder, much like JHS did, and he modded DS1s for Steve Vai and people like that, and his modded tubescreamer was said to be the best sounding one, and these days he doesn't mod anymore but he just has his own tubescreamer called the Red Dirt overdrive, that has the mod built in). The red dirt does sound incredible, and I do love it.
But I eventually found my old behringer tubescreamer pedal I'd bought 10-15 years previously, and completely forgot that I even owned it. So I hooked both of them up, the behringer and the Keeley, and guess what? They sound identical. It's a bit ludicrous. That really opened my eyes to how much pedals are just snake oil.
Guitar pedals are the musician form of something like psychic mediums, you have to be a gullible fool to fall for it. And I was a fool. I still am, I'm sure. But I at least have stopped salivating over the idea of saving up and buying stupidly expensive pedals.
I have behringers that I've owned and used pretty much daily for well over a decade, now, and they've never broken, despite being plastic.
Although TC electronics have the same exact pedals, just in metal enclosures, for an extra £10, because they bought behringer and so use all their circuits.
I probably sound like a behringer shill lol, and I kinda am one 😂 but for free, voluntarily. Cos I love them. And I wanna tell every young guitar player to stop worrying about what equipment they have and to worry about practicing instead, cos that more than anything else (by a long long way) is what will make you sound good.
@@duffman18 In my experience, Behringer pedals are some of the best value pedals on the market.
If you wanted to build a board comprising of a distortion, overdrive, chorus, delay, noise gate and an EQ, I would immediately recommend looking at Behringer.
Admittedly, it’s not fun getting a battery inside one but it could be worse.
With their cheap price, if one gets stolen or broken, it’s not a big deal.
I think too much money gets spent on fancy pedals for the sake of it, when a pedal 1/3 of the price would probably do the same job
@@duffman18I'll see your Superfuzz and raise you a Fazy Cream. I recently bought a new les paul and and a 5 watt tube amp after years of going acoustic. When it came to effects, I decided to take a chance with cheap Amazon pedals and stumbled upon the Sonic Cake "Fazy Cream" $35 miniature big muff clone. That little black box is a gain beast. So glad now that I didn't shell out a bill for the real thing. Laughing all the way to the bank!
I begin to see why Gibson thought selling guitar NFTs would be immensely profitable.
"The bad monkey is my secret weapon" - Phil X, price like $20-$50
"The bad monkey is basically a klon"
- Josh Scott, price increases like 1000%
If it wasn't for Phil X nobody would ever even look at the Bad Monkey. As good as the pedal is, the guitar world was so snob that even hi-quality digital multifx would get flack for nOt BeInG aNaLoG. Even Boss - iT dOeSn'T hAvE tRuE bYpAsS iT's GoNnA dEGrAdE mY sIgNaL. So annoying, man. Well, I used to watch Phil X's videos around 2009, 2010, and the pedal was there, and I liked it a lot. A bass knob would do wonders in a ts-like pedal. But living in a country where the dollar conversion is too high meant even the Bad Monkey was expensive for me. I had to content myself with a chinese knockoff. xD
@@RomanBellicTaxi true bypass/"digital sucks" is definitely bs. And there's other TS pedals out there with bass knobs that'd probably be almost identical. I don't use overdrives tho so it doesn't really matter to me except that it's funny how high the prices will go just because of the JHS videos.
Josh's point wasn't that the bad monkey is so great itself it was more about the fact that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a good sound. There are lots of excellent pedals that do the job. Other than my Echoplex that I purchased in the 70's I have never spent more than $100 on a pedal.
I can't remember a single video of Josh, where pedals sound good for my taste though. Literally everything turns into an awful fuzz in his hands.
imagine spending $500 just to get the same pedal that scott pilgrim uses
I remember back in the day, Bad Monkey being THE overdrive/boost pedal for any metal guitarist here in Finland because they were cheap af even as new and did the job as well as any other pedal. I never owned one because I was stupid and had to get a Maxon OD808 just because that's what my favorite bands were using.
I've had the Bad Monkey on my board for the past decade until the other day I replaced it with a "Longsword" overdrive. It's really funny watching Josh affect the pedal market though lol - maybe your video will bring the prices back down and counter it
Now's a good time to sell.
When you said you had the box I was immediately saddened by the lack of “he has the box” stinger
About 15 Years ago I got myself an Ibanez TS9 and a Bad Monkey and tested them side by side. They not just sound identical in a mix but with a single guitar as well. Actually the Bad Monkey was a little better because the TS9 had a little background noise which could be very annyoing on higher gain levels.
The Bad Monkey was a perfectly fine pedal, which served me well until I got into VST and sold it.
All Josh did was show that you can make a Bad Monkey sound like a single tone you can achieve on the Klon, and a single tone you can achieve on the TS10 etc, within the context of a mix.
Almost any overdrive can match a single tone you can achieve on a range of other overdrives within the context of a mix - there is absolutely nothing special about the Bad Monkey.
Another way to look at it is that he just made the Klon, TS10 etc sound like specific tones a Bad Monkey can achieve.
I really think he could make videos like this for every overdrive on the market.
The point is "you don't need to splurge 5 grand on a pedal, use what you have and you'll sound great."
Whatever difference there is, you won't hear it in a mix. Use an EQ to shape whatever drive you have and you're golden.
To me, if you do a catchy riff or a memorable song with a certain piece of gear, even if it's relative junk, it will gain value. Gilmour's Black Strat? Just an off the wall Strat guitar with tons of dings and dents along with a lot of mods done to it. However, it was sold in auction for 4 million dollars because of the music it made. EVH's Frankentrat? Just a partscaster of factory reject parts but is highly revered in the guitar community because of the revolutionary things done with it.
My point is, the JHS team made some decent jams with the pedal, and now, people are now desiring to have one because it sounds close to some expensive shit. In reality, when you put guitar gear in the context of a band mix, these minute differences between the overdrives used in the video vanish.
Bottomline, any gear can be good if you know how to use it. An ancient warrior once said, don't use a sword that you don't know how to wield. You can have the best gear, but if you can't properly play a tune, it's all pointless.
Its like people who buy a 2k guitar and say it sounds shit.... when they just can't play. Like me I would never spend over £500 on a guitar unless I severely progressed... not worth it!
Build a man a fire, he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life.
@@TheBanana93 what irks me is that some people I see online say someone devalued their vintage guitar because they changed some parts on it. Like bro, some guitars needs to get its potentiometers changed because it's crackling like crazy and is not sounding good. Same with pickups, you rewind/replace it when it is not working as it should.
People, it's an old guitar, it needs repairs. Modding for better playability/experience is bound to happen at some point. Also, being old doesn't mean it is great, that's just vintage guitar corksniffers wanting to believe their collection is worth something when their playing is not worth paying for.
The Frankenstrat was a piece of shit (if you really want to get down to it), but Eddie made it work and did great things with it.
I got my Bad Monkey brand new as a Christmas gift roughly 15 years ago and to this day will still go back and forth between it and my Keely-modded Tube Screamer; it's a damn good and versatile overdrive. I was goofing around on Reverb the other day and was seeing them listed for $300+ and was wondering when the hell it increased in value by nearly 10 times it's original brand new price tag...this hobby is great and fucking awful at the same time, Jesus Christ lol
Small world man, I believe I bought mine around the same time as you did. It was actually my first ever pedal, and I still have it on my pedalboard to this day.
As a guitar player I cannot help but agree, we are stupid!
I was looking through reverb the other day and noticed that there were a lot of "custom" guitars from small builders in either the S or T shape. These are usually priced at about 2000 dollars give or take 500 either way. Thinking to myself, this is just 2 pieces of wood and some very simple hardware and electronics, anybody could easily go to a guitar hardware retailer and get all the components (of excellent quality) for about 500 dollars and put something very very similar together themselves.
So why are we paying 2000 or even more? It's all off the shelves hardware from a handful of known makers put together with a body made from some "exotic" material, such as a piece of their grandpas barn. Well, that piece of gramp's barn is costing you 1500 dollars or even more.
And pedals are even worse. Put some old weird transistors into a fuzz face circuit and you are in business! "Come on man, everyone knows that the Bulgarian 70's BFD-17D(a) transistors are the BEST for a Jimi tone!".
We are willingly getting ripped off here...
I love how when in a jam or recording situation, the guitarist looks at the drummer as if he is off...so smart.
These words are so true... I love Joshes videos and as an intermediate guitarist I learned quite a lot from him. His videos are educational, funny, and (as far as I can tell) authentic.
Best tone = no pedals.
I love what he does. He's tapped in to the compulsive, consumerist tendencies this modern society has and is shining a spotlight on its absurdities. I've felt like this for years, even before the days of the YT product pushers, laughing at the silliness of how many different ways an industry can rebox and reface the same effect, or amp, or guitar, etc, and people just clamour for it simply for the bragging rights of having the 'latest and greatest'. And if it gets celebrity power behind, its even worse.
Josh is absolutely right, and the internet trolls hate being called out lol
Here's the uncomfortable truth guitarists aren't ready for: An overdrive is an overdrive is an overdrive. It does the thing.
What I find most amusing about boutique pedals is that people spend crazy money buying them to recreate tones that were originally recorded with Boss and MXR pedals in the first place. The price spikes for what were inexpensive pedals is basically the same thing. Grail status conferred on something that’s not rare because it’s boutique but only because nobody was buying them and they were discontinued.
I actually did buy a Bad Monkey new for €30 and a used Sovtek bubble font EHX Big Muff for €50 back in the day. Worth a ton now but I like them so that means nothing really.
As someone who wanted one after that video, yes we are stupid
you disappoint me son, I expected more of you.(/s)
But you are more gear related so hey why not!
We truly are a stupid bunch.
This video is a derivative work of a Henning P video featuring a highly adjustable tube screamer copy.
Which is stupid for most people to buy unless they don’t have a tube screamer.
The truth that Josh uncovered is not that the Bad Monkey is "as good as a Klon" its really that virtually ALL overdrive pedals are "good enough". Of course Glenn should be along shortly to shout "what speakers was he using!?" ... which is probably a more important question.
Yes, but ultimately also the answer is "good enough".
Good point. A great speaker with some nice warm tubes behind it is magic at the flip of a switch. I have a nice DOD IceBox Chorus that I have learned to start off with 'and its not for sale' before people hear it because its just a great pedal. I got it with a few other pedals have about $20 in it
If he was using speakers at all? He pretty well just uses Kemper these days. It sits behind Addison.
Us guitar players are like "OoOoOo new gear must buy". Our buddy will look at us and be like "bruh that's 5 grand" then we'll be like "a small sacrifice for tone" 😂
It literally happens whenever a youtube video comes out or a channel/influencer mentions a product thats discontinued. Ive had it happen with other electronics, lots of music equipment, video games. All "hidden gem" videos are time bombs for cheap prices
Thanks for this video. It shines a spotlight on the idiocy of we guitar players and our relentless "quest for tone." That quest, of course, does not include, generally, setting a rigorous practice schedule and adhering to it. It generally means buying more gear.
Or.... it means buying tons of stuff to try to duplicate an always changing "perfect tone" that is in your head, but probably changes in your head from year to year anyway. My "perfect tone" sort of adapted to that of my favorite guitar through most overdriven amps, and I guess I got lucky. But this mystical "quest for tone" seems to hit even the big gun guitar players. Look at Eddie Van Halen. He had the tone that guys still try to reproduce, decades later, that he got on VH1, yet he kept changing his guitars and gear afterwards in the "quest for tone".
That's why I really admire Malcolm Young. Very little changes in equipment. He had his guitar altered a few times, but it usually was the same Gretsch bridge pickup into a Marshall Super Bass or Super Lead -- same basic amp configuration from 1974 when AC/DC started until his last tour with them in 2010. He knew what he wanted, got it, stuck with it.
In every commercial product class there are the products that are outliers when it comes to price. This is unavoidable and caused by the humans trying to stand out of others just by spending money without having to do so.
I like this video. I also like how the stripes on your jumper match the wall behind you.
Spot-on with your assessment. I will add that a lot of people are just looking for an easy fix, or, in this case, a magic pedal that will make them sound great without putting any effort into practicing or actually learning the instrument. Don't get me wrong, I really dig pedals (and amps), but I'm not expecting any increase in social status with what I buy or not buy. In fact, I'm the guy that is more drawn to the things that are outcast and unwanted, like the TS-10 was for years and years. But, then again, I am not trying to be anybody else.
In the mid 1980's I built an overdrive from a kit. The kit cost all of $9. It sounds no better and no worse than any of the overdrive pedals on the market today. Why? Because sound hasn't changed.
Yeah...couldn't have said it better than Josh. One interesting story to that: Recently I got some great comments on my guitar sound (not on my channel) of a certain video on TH-cam (fat, juicy, etc.). And you know what it was? A cheap Marshall Jackhammer pedal (set on "overdrive") boosted with a Boss SD-1 going into the clean channel of a Hughes & Kettner Tube 20 (stock). Get the best out of your present equipment, pals!
A goodly number of people - especially bored middle aged people - savor the experience of purchasing things more than anything. Collector cars and golf equipment come to mind. The guitar market is pretty extreme, however, and driven in part by nostalgia and in part by a belief that history has a unique sound that can only be achieved with cash.
I love my Bad Monkey. Paid $35 for mine. It made me sell my Tube Screamer. My favorite overdrive pedal is the Radial ToneBone Classic. Another great analog Digitech overdrive pedal is the Digitech "Screamin' Blues"
My wife bought me a bad monkey about 10 years ago as a gift after looking on some website and just randomly seeing it. I still have it and don’t use it much. Won’t be parting ways with it either. I occasionally see the topic come up about how underrated this pedal is and just laugh that I have one just chillin.
Things I've learned since getting back into electric guitar 3 years ago:
1) anything affordable is junk, anything expensive is hype only for idiots, snobs, and sheep, apparently only lawyers can play "blooze", tube amps are overrated dinosaur hype (or they're awesome), modelers are awesome (or they suck)
2) Whatever gear the person typing plays is ALWAYS awesome and everyone else is an idiot, snob, lawyer, or sheep.
The amount of gear available means there's something for everyone. The amount of vitriol and "gotcha" mentality directed at those that like things YOU don't like is childish and pathetic.
Imagine if Josh did a video on Digitech multiFX modellers. The reality is many of the items modelled (especially the Digitech products) sound just like the real thing and they were from the time when the market universally declared modelling sucks. The reality is some bands who were considered to have amazing tone were using these Digitech products until the Fractals and Kempers replaced them but the main reason for the upgrades are factors like reliability or connectivity not tone. The reality is these amazing MFX products sell for less than the price of a single mid range guitar pedal.
I've had one stuck to my board for 3 years 24/7/365.
The independent bass & treble gets it closer to a Klon than most screamers, but 'transparent' it is far from.
It’s even more insane if you know anything about the schematics of overdrive pedals. They’re very simple and the components are not expensive at all. In addition, almost every overdrive pedal on the market is a repackaged clone of some other overdrive like a Klon, TS9, Hot tubes, whatever.. So before you spend $150 plus on that od pedal, just remember you’re not paying for a proprietary design or any special components. Basically anything over $100 you’re paying for the paint job. Even $100 is steep
Wait til Josh demonstrates those Mooer entry level pedals up against the Strymon line. Ohhhh Jeeezus!!
oh man, I cannot agree more. Not being able (or indeed willing) to pay Klon/KOT prices I embarked on buying pedal kits for replicas of said pedals. First, they all sounded wonderful to my ears and second I had a lot of fun building them. Do they sound like Klons/KOTs? If I try and listen on youtube well, yes they do. Do they give me a sound that floats my boat? Absolutely. You have knobs on your guitar and knobs on your amp and knobs on the pedal....you have a huge range of sounds at your disposal. Then add a drummer, a bass player, maybe a keyboard, a big/little/noisy/quiet club/hall/theatre-if-you/re-lucky....keep the$5000 in your pocket, spray your Klon clone orange and lie through your teeth. No-one will know, I guarantee. Great channel, btw, thank you.
As a synth player, it shocks me how expensive some guitar pedals are - You could get a damn nice moog filter for cheaper. VST plugins forced the price of hardware synths to go down, it should have done the same for guitar pedals, but i guess guitarists think it's not metal to use a DAW or something
the funny thing is that many guitarist dont even understand the concept of "input" and "output". cant count how often me, as a drummer, had to help guitarist puting theyr rig together.... but they are not the only ones falling for hyped up gear.
It's so crazy, this pedal used to cost no more than €40 and now people are asking €200...
The most glaring thing in Josh's video is that the entire demo featured every pedal in a band mix only.
I'm willing to bet that most of those expensive pedals have less than $20 worth of materials on and in them.
I actually like using the bad monkey pedal as a straight front end lift to amplify the sound fairly cleanly before hitting the preamp stage of my tube amp, when done Right it drives the front end of the 12 ax7 preamp tubes into a beautiful cascading crunch, driving the final tubes into a rumbling gritty overdrive, in a very good way!
Josh did the ultimate trolling experiment.
The fact that the Bad Monkey went up in after market value after the JHS video dropped shows that tons of people missed the point. The point wasn't that the Bad Monkey is a killer budget pedal that can emulate certain sounds from rare and boutique pedals at specific settings. The point was that ANY budget overdrive pedal potentially can. They're all just slightly different flavors of the same effect and most of them contain similar circuitry.
Those cheap “archetype” Digitech pedals were going for 30 Canadian, second hand where I live.
Haven’t checked the prices recently, because everybody has so many of these around here.
Simple economics: Josh features a forgotten pedal on his platform, demand goes up, and price reflects that. Overinflated demand has been a problem in the industry
A Boss GT-8 is cheaper and on manual is at least as good as a pedal board. I've convinced tube heads asking about my "amp" till I pointed at it. It's all in your hands really. Excellent advice.
I actually sent Josh from JHS a pedal not too long ago... it was this custom thing with a cool pastel looking case. I could have sold it but thought he might dig it. I'm a big fan of his channel, so thought fuck it, send it over. I never heard a word back. Not even a quick thank you. They say altruism doesn't exist... and I would agree... I wanted at least a "thanks for the pedal man, glad you love the youtube channel". Nope, not one word... I want my pedal back LOL.
This is the most I've ever laughed at a thumbnail and title. Bravo sir.
Nice work here.
Like i responded to JHS, I bought mine when first released after seeing so many great comments here and at Amazon.
At $35.00 new, I didn't even demo it. Heck, it sat for a week before i plugged it in. Happy with my gigged first gen Cyber Twin tones.
Once i did, all in. Semi clean BF setting and played what ever i wanted. I used it almost all the time.
Move forced headphones and use this amp and other and mostly a DS-1 but still love the Bad Monkey.
And, yes, it weighs more than the Boss pedal.
I saw a PRS video in which he mentioned he loved the Hot Cake pedal. So I created eBay notifications for when it was posted. It stays around $300-$400+ range. I can't imagine paying more than like 70 bucks for that particular pedal just because of his mention, but for any other pedal I'd want to pay around 50 bucks.
I've also been looking for Fran Tone ones. But those tend to be pricey too.
Probably why I don't own any pedals.
When Twinkies were taken off the market there were people literally paying hundreds of dollars for a single Twinkie. I read that one person actually paid $5,000 for a single Twinkie.
I got one of these Bad Monkeys collecting dust somewhere in my garage that was modded to use for Bass Guitar. Had a non-modded one also at one point. I think I paid about $60 for it, but I was paying mostly for the mod. Sounds pretty good, but I don't know about it being a $600 pedal. I also want to add here that I'm convinced there's gotta be some type of TH-cam shenanigans going on to make these pedals sound EXACTLY the same. Why am I not buying the "your $10 pedal can sound exactly like this $200 pedal" thing? Because intermediate players like me hear an insanely dramatic difference in a live setting. I'm convinced some of these players either A) Can make every pedal sound the same with enough tweaking, or B) Are doing some type of recorded shenanigans
I've done the A-B thing myself a couple years ago trying to decide which OD to keep and which to get rid of to thin out the collection a little. All I had (for guitar, not the bass) was a Bad Monkey, a TS808, whatever OD were in a Digitech RP200, and whatever is in a Boss GT-100. Wish I had a Klon Centaur to compare with, but oh well. What I found was that the TS808 was what I was looking for the most, the Bad Monkey sounded fine, but nothing special, the Boss GT-100 presets were hit and miss, but the RP200 was hilariously awful. I completely agree that there is a price point somewhere that just doesn't make sense to pay because you can get close enough one way or the other with so many similar pedals. I used to think the same thing about stock cheap Amazon guitars versus my 1994 PRS Custom 24... until I played them. Lol sometimes you get what you pay for, but you can only figure that out with experience. I'm a big believer using a pedal if using the amp's sounds either can't replicate it (ex. Tremolo) or it's just a pain in the butt (ex. Maybe you want a clean channel, a light OD channel, and a heavy distortion channel, but your amp only offers 2 channels). Chasing your personal soundscape is a fun journey full of wonder and frustration mixed with balancing your bank account. Lol keep on rocking!
>Learn to listen with your ears and not trends and you will be a much happier guitarist.
Exactly this. When I went out looking for an overdrive pedal I found that the one I liked the sound of the most was a Mooer Green Mile, even though guitar shops kept trying to sell me much more expensive pedals. I tried them and I preferred the Green Mile, so that's what I bought. The pricetag and status of the gear doesn't matter, what matters is that the sound fits the type of music you play.