Friend of mine (a talented hobby pedalbuilder) built a board with 26 handmade dead-accurate clones of sought after overdrive curcuits BUT he didn't name any of them. forcing his friends to just listen and see what works with their setup and what speaks to them while eliminating all hype, mysticism and marketing. i thought that was genius and really narrowed it down to "listen more, read less"
most dirt pedals are a handful of cheap parts. it's fascinating because they generally all do sound different, from subtle to dramatic. there are different clipping methods and frequency response and you can have a lot of entertainment tweaking and testing around. but there are also so many variables that it's pointless to compare. and a rare scavenged germanium transistor will absolutely not necessarily sound better than a 0.3c silicon one. most importantly none of them are going to change the most fundamental aspect.. how you play guitar. all the mojo stuff is fun but people get so silly with it.
@@johnvcougar one of the most powerful beliefs about hype is, that it's true ;-) i made a videoseries of those pedals but obviously no one cared because you can't look up prices on reverb lol
collectors value has it's own merrit, but collectors value ramping up because of "magical rare components" only guitarsts can come up with shit like this :D
All JHS proved with the Bad Monkey is that there's a sucker born every minute. It also shows how susceptible people are to marketing. I've owned a Bad Monkey and other TS clones, and the only thing Josh proved is how alike they all are, and how ridiculous people can be when they fool themselves into believing that throwing more money at their gear will somehow miraculously turn them into a guitar god. The smartest and most talented of guitarists are also the most frugal.
That is a bold assertion that the people with the most guitar talent are the same people who are frugal. I can't see how they're connected at all. But you do, and that's interesting to me. Do you think there's a cause and effect between the two? Or are they more correlated than caused?
I mean, the best guitar player I personnaly know has been playing for the last 15 years and during this time, he was playing a Marshall MG half of it and upgraded to a Marshall code for the second half which is not the craziest upgrade ever. Still, I was in a band with him and this dude outplays everyone I ever met while being the one that spent the less money on his rig. So I guess you have a point...
It depends on what you mean. If you’re trying to sound like Radiohead, a few pedals are necessary, but you definitely don’t need any crazy gear to learn awesome technique and to make great compositions. Put together a few people with great technique and you have a legendary band honestly, but if you’re doing everything by yourself gear can help, especially midi-based gear.
I too came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that "all guitar pedals sound the same" so instead of sound i started basing my decisions on which ever pedal looked the nicest to me. 😄 I'm obviously half joking with that but visuals do play a big part for me whether a pedal inspires me or not.
People got peed off at Josh for that video and allegedly raising the price, and I love his rebuttal. “You had 19 years to try and buy a Bad Monkey” AMEN LOL!!
@@lococomrade3488 and your reply misses the point entirely. The Bad Monkey is one of like a thousand overdrive pedals that get overlooked and looked down upon just because of guitar players following the crowd. If you didn't understand that the Bad Monkey was decent before this video, you weren't going to. But guess what; there are tons of other gems out there. Also, if we guitar players operated on any logic, what this should mean is that Klons should go *down* in price.
@Bryan Burns I totally agree with you, except that you entirely missed my points. Their flagrant comment is completely disrespectful and clearly tone-deaf to the financial struggles of the average guitarist. Not all of us are trust fund babies or business owners. Alot of players are teenagers. Again, their comment was asinine and disgusting.
@@lococomrade3488 let's be real. Literally no one was pinching pennies--not even the struggling guitarist (which I have been the majority of my life)--for a Bad Monkey. Literally no one. And while many may be having retroactive regret due to this video, let JHS's be one that inspires us to look for even cheaper videos and can get in Klon territory (of which there are). His comment didn't hurt my feelings. I didn't need a Bad Monkey. You don't need a Bad Monkey. No young and struggling guitarist needs one. But if that was the desire, plenty of other pedals will serve.
I gathered up a bunch of overdrive and distortion pedals in my collection and put them all on one board and began playing through each one. They all sounded almost exactly the same. Out of my 40 pedals, there are only about 5 that are distinct from the others. It opened my eyes and ended my pedal tone quest. I own the Bad Monkey (since around 2005 or so) and it has been my main pedal in front of my Bugera 1960 for almost all my tones from rhythm to lead. And really, any OD pedal will do the same thing.
Yeah, they're all basically an op-amp with two diodes in the feedback loop and/or to earth just after it. There's only so many ways to turn a sine wave into a square wave !
@@PedalPawn No point in getting rid of them really. Although the money is spent, I'd lose my ass on the resale. So I still have them if I want to mess around. Life changes this last year have forced me to be happy with what I have, and I'm all the better for it.
I've been a professional photographer for 12 years now, and am a hobbyist guitar player and pedal builder on the side. I've seen photographers do the same silly chase with gear, and on one hand it makes sense, and on the other, it's absolutely insane. I just bought a handful of different picks and spent 45 mins really listening to the difference in tone they all gave me. Cost me $10.. Anyways, here's a great quote about photography from 1927 that is still relevant today. "The fact is, is that very few photographers ever master their medium. Instead, they allow the medium to master them and go on and endless squirrel cage chase from new lens, to new paper, to new developer, to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it." -Edward Weston There's a local photographer who posts the most god awful photos shooting on a $20,000 camera, with $20,000 worth of lighting gear. And he'll never hesitate to go on a long winded diatribe as to how amazing the camera and lights are and how they're essential to his work.. but if you gave him a 15 year old, $500 camera and a couple $200 lights, his work would look the exact same... I think the same goes for a lot of guitar players.. they spend a lot of $$ on the gear but it does nothing to actually make them a better guitar player. If you're upset that this pedal that Josh was able to have a Klon match the sound of (saw a great comment saying how Josh got the Klon to sound like the BM, rather than the other way around) is now way up in price, and you don't own a real Klon to a/b against. I'd suggest just going on amazon and buying any one of the cheap-o Klon clones..
Agreed on all from a fellow photographer. 30 years ago I wanted a Sinar because Avedon used one but I could “only” afford a Toyo. Looking back the Toyo served me incredibly well.
Ditto - I hear you buddy! - Been doing it 30 years and always kept my kit to a minimum. There's a lot of pressure to compete with the photographer peacocks who mitigate lack of skill with look of skill. I visited a local photographic club and was sadly amused by the sneering hobbyists with all the gear and no idea. It's just the same with hobby guitarists earning their means elsewhere.
So true. And a lot of Brian May’s iconic sounds in the studio came from a small transistor amp the John Deacon found in a skip. I have been down the camera rabbit hole. Less so in the film days.
Exactly. There are the reliable Profoto but I have some Bowens that I could afford back in the day. To me there is no difference (the way I shoot) in the final result. Also I heard a story that Doisneau and some other big names were given one use point and shoot cameras and the pictures were brilliant. Actually... the gear they got famous with was way worse than what we take for granted today. Gear is just a tool, not the maker. Will I play better if I buy an American PRS? No, it will be a more reliable tool than my PRS SE, but the result won't be better. Gear has made us lazy.
Years back I used to own the behringer tubescreamer. I thought it sounded great, but remember reviews all over online calling them junk and saying they sound so harsh compared to a real one. Fast forward about a year and I managed to get a good deal on a TS9, brought it home and tried it out only to realize it sounded identical to my cheap clone. That was the day I realized there's no point buying gear on hype and that brand and price make basically no difference
@@BorkBorkDoggo I have The Behringer Blues Driver clone which I'm told sounds identical. Like you I mean to get the original Boss one or perhaps the JB-2 Angry Driver. I just like the sound so much, I want to pass the behringer on to a friend.
It's been a few years now that whenever I get "tired" of my pedals, I swap the speaker on my combo. Works like a charm. (I have got only three completely different voiced speakers - more than enough to be happy). Also, an inexpensive EQ pedal can be very helpful in "adjusting" overdrives and distortions.
One of the best "amateur" guitarists I ever knew played a Fender Mustang into a Silvertone amp with a broken bass knob. He sounded *amazing*. Eventually he upgraded to a Les Paul, Sunn Solaris, and an EHX LPB-1 pedal (the first edition that plugged directly into the input jack of the amp and had an on/off switch rather than a foot switch.) He spent countless hours working with his existing equipment to learn its full capabilities. Pedals can be a crutch.
There have been quite a few comparisons of these two pedals. One video is over 13 years old. What Josh did was present this to a larger audience. Kudos to him
Yep, Brett Kingman did one about that far back, and got exactly the same result, so there's nothing new about the JHS video. You're right in that Josh has brought it to a wider audience (and social media has made that task easier IMO).
Shnobel has been doing this on his channel for years. He has one where he puts a Tube Screamer mini up against a Centaur and another where he puts a Centaur vs a vintage Tube Screamer, and even one where he puts a Rat up against a KTR, and even the Rat, up to a certain level of gain (about 11:00), was almost indistinguishable from the KTR.
Andy Martin from ProGuitarShop did a similar thing to the DOD FX65 Chorus. Prices went through the roof when he espoused it’s virtues. They settled down eventually, but it’s no longer the budget pedal bargain that it was prior. Not enough people mentioning Phil X bringing the Bad Monkey to prominence, when he used it for the iconic Fretted Americana videos either, that’s why I have one, and I’m kicking myself for not buying a backup Bad Monkey before all this kicked off. Lastly, it’s worth noting that when Josh compared all those pedals to the Bad Monkey….was he dialling in the Monkey to replicate the pedals, or was he dialling in the other pedals to sound like the Bad Monkey? There’s a big difference. Anyway. The Bad Monkey is a brilliant workhorse pedal as an always-on overdrive in my rig, the Eq means it shines over tubescreamers as you can dial back in the bass that you typically lose, and thicken up the sound. My RC Booster does the same thing, but was three times the price.
There are so many examples that reveal we live in a world of followers. Most pedals have infinite crossover, and always comes down to talent. Talent can make anything or nothing sound great. Prince used all Boss pedals for decades, many recording are straight into the board. Pedals are just a very inexpensive tool that can color you tone to varying degrees. Bad Monkey always had a good reputation from what I recall even 12 or so years ago, people were talking about them on forums.
I bought a Bad Monkey new for like $35.00. It was out for about 6 months. Loved it thru a amp but after a move, a DS 1 is what i use most. It's a great pedal.
I used to rock a Bad Monkey back in the day (when they first came out) - worked really well with my Orange Tiny Terror. Sold it because it couldn't get bright enough for me with my other amps - took out the high end sparkle.
I have one, I got it for, probably $60.00 or less (years ago). I used it for a while. I saw the JHS video, and I got it out and played it a bit. There's nothing wrong with those, they do the deal. I tried to sell it (cheap) a few years ago, and nobody wanted it. I guess I'll hang on to it. I usually don't use pedals, just Strat., cord, Super Reverb turned up to the sweet spot. But I just like playin' the blues.
It was very entertaining....it shows where the pedals overlap but a fairer comparison would be to see what sounds you can get out of the individual pedals that the BM can't. I have a Humboldt Silver linings because there's a sound on that I like that I haven't found on any other pedal and while I'm sure the BM could copy a lot of the sounds it does it wouldn't do"that" sound.
Amen! Josh is right, I always liked the Bad Monkey pedal. I bet you can get close to Klon tones with a BOSS Turbo Overdrive or Ibanez TS9DX or Keeley Red Dirt if you're willing to take the time and listen! Great video, thanks for sharing. Gary Moore Forever!!
My long-term girlfriend bought me a bad monkey a while ago and I’ve been trying to get anyone I come in contact with to purchase one, the tone controls alone are amazing. I’ve been a fan of digi since I first bought pedals in high school because that’s what I could afford. Then over the years I realized how awesome the company is, and now people have finally caught on. Pedal snobs look over some amazing pedals, while putting insane hype over average pedals or above average pedals that still don’t deserve the hype machine. Josh is the JhS effect for sure like Rogan. If I wasn’t so happy with my bad monkey and didn’t have it on at all times mostly I’d be thanking him and selling it.
Funny how much people are finding Digitech to have been a pretty rad and forward thinking company. Shame they went under. The Sdrum-JamMan combo is unlike anything else and gets so much use I wish everyone could experience it. They made some special products.
It should be noted that Josh was using the klon with the gain all the way up and most people don’t use it that way. If they were both set up as a cleaner boost I think you would hear more of a difference. Just my 2 cents
I think this started about a year ago when Josh did a comparison of the Digitech Distortion Factory and the seven pedals it emulates, showing that there was no difference in sound. Before that you could easily pick one up on Reverb for under $100 - and after prices shot way up into the stratosphere. It’s back down to +/- $200, so your Bad Monkey will be worth more for a while. (BTW - I’ve had a Distortion Factory since they were first released, and it is an amazing pedal).
After getting and loving the Sdrum Jam Man and Trio+ and seeing the other cool pedals Digitech made its a shame the went down. They were making some cool ass shit. Use my sdrum every single time I play there is truly nothing else like it.
What’s crazy is they did an AB test with a $25 mosky (I think) Centaur clone like a few months ago. The price on that didn’t go crazy. I bought one a few weeks later for almost nothing.
At the end of the day if you have a decent amp and a few pedals to get enough variety your pretty much set! Most people spend more than they need on pedals instead of spending the time practising and dialing in the pedals they already have.
Pedals are EXPENSIVE. I've got fuzzes, distortions, an overdrive, a chorus, and a looper. 99% of the time I'm playing the fuzz with the looper. The other 1% of the time I'm checking out an idea with my other pedals, only to be reminded that I prefer the fuzz and should focus on playing.
I remember Phil X in the late 2000s/early 2010s pushing his Tonemaster combo amp into the sickest overdrive sounds TH-cam has ever heard up to that point and since... with his DigiTech Bad Monkey. I was immediately sold on it. (Guitar forums then disuaded me from getting what my ears and dozens of Phil X videos sold me on...)
@@soofitnsexy and vintage guitars, too! yet he wasn't using a klon or a vintage pedal or an expensive one for that matter, the bad monkey was doing the job! It was also present in most of his live videos from back then when he played the LTD Viper with the stickers and a marshall amp made by a friend of his.
Good enough for Phil X and Gary Moore, good enough for me. I have two, never gig without it, mainly because it has both amp and mixer outputs. Plus it's indestructible.
I use to use an OCD for my drive sound, with a Bad Monkey jumping the OCD. That combo worked great with an Egnator Teeaker, a SAMAMP VAC 40, an import Bogner combo, and a Fuchs 20 watt head. Got great resorts that were never boring with each.
I have a Bad Monkey and a TS-9 next to each other on a pedal board and they are utterly interchangeable to me. But if Josh is pimping the Monkey I might have to box mine back up (just like Josh, I have the box) and cash out on eBay.
I'm a newbie with all the tech stuff, but I run a Dunlop fuzzface into a boss ds-1 and then into a wah. It gives that sharp bright tone while still being heavy crunch fuzz. It is a bit cumbersome though...
Isn't it a question of: if you aren't using a pedal for it's uniqueness, you can dial things in that sound the same as other pedals. I think it's more often going to be a drive and gain sector issue than you might see in devices that are modulation & filters. As an example because the suggested videos are full of this one at the moment, the beetronics sea bee seems like you could dial in normal modulation, but what it really is there for is something that has more of a flavor of its own to it, and gets pretty out there. it's very much a how you dial for what you're looking for, and that GAS isn't always going to be what gets you what you're looking for. Even if it's great to have all sorts of options.
Context question - Josh did a video about a month back with Tom Cram about the impending return of Digitech. Is this him creating some hype to help out a mate looking to reestablish his business?
Josh has long professed his love of DOD/Digitech pedals. He owns virtually every pedal ever made, so if he says something is good you can take his word for it. And he’s honest. In the same video he compared the Bad Monkey to his own $200 JHS Morning Glory, and guess what - they sounded just alike. I’m a little sad because I bought a Morning Glory (kidding because I really do love that pedal!).
There are slight differences between the TS-808, TS-9, and TS-10, but if you want what a Tube Screamer does, they will all do it, and so will a lot of other pedals, and some of them will add additional options that sound even better.
I bought a PRS Horsemeat when it was first released and it has replaced 15 years of different pedals I used on my board. Now the only one I ever use other than the Horsemeat is a stock ds1. The Horsemeat can't get quite as distorted as the ds1 but besides that, it can replace everything. Paul knows tone better than most so I highly recommend checking out any pedals or amps PRS makes when you are looking for something different.
I have had the bad monkey (a long with a lot of other pedals) in my reverb saved search for a long time. I’m always trying out random stuff. They were always like $55-70 ish dollars used. Now they’re like $180+ lol thanks Josh! (All joking aside, Josh is the man and he knows it’s all about sound and knowing your gear and how to use it. Good work).
If you can play you'll sounds good through a shoebox and a broom. Pedals are a fun rabbit hole to jump down and having a nice rig is great but the fact is, spending less time in gear forums and more time in the woodshed, or jammin' with your mates is the best way to sound better.
Please notice It´s an OVERDIVE not a distortion pedal. It needs an amp set to the edge of breakup. If you set your amp clean It sounds like garbage. Listen the cleanishn sound at 7:00 before he kicks the pedal. That´s the "edge of breakup" sound I´m talking about. When you kick the pedal, It boosts the signal enough to "Overdrive" the amp with clever eq, shaving lows, some highs and boosting the mids in the 700hz range. If you have an amp that´s clean all the way to 50 watt I recomend the Nobels ODR-1, It´s realtive cheap (150 bucks) It´s called overdrive but It´s not. I sold my tube screamer and a TS clon and bought one. What a great pedal. The gain control goes from pure clean sound to almost fuzz. and the secret weapon is the spectrum control in place of the tone control. a great design from 1992 ,Germany. It´s solid as a rock (It weigths 1 pound). Solid input and output connectors and pots. Not a single bit of hum, hiss, noise. nothing. Just your guitar´s hum if it´s single coil or using cheap cables. Oh It´s a reissue so It´s brand new. It´s better than the old ones, It has a bass cut switch. There is a Mini version for 70 bucks,It´s brand nuw so if you buy It and don´t like It you can change It for another one or a refund (select a reputable dealer), that sounds great, don´t need to spend a fortune to get a good overdrive/distorion effect. That´s what GHS proved with his video. A real eye opener. Now prices of the bad monkey is about 100 bucks, still expensive but not crazy. Be patient or use whatever you have.
I remember liking the Bad Monkey in a store, but I bought the Digitech Blues Screamer, which got me a lot of compliments the one time I played it out (guess I should play it out more). I'd intended to get the Monkey sooner or later, then wanted a modded one, then forgot about it. I always thought it was supposed to be a re-creation of a Tube Screamer rather than a Klon, and I have several lower end Tube Screamers and copies. I did get a $20 Mosky Golden Horse. I don't know if it sounds like a $2000 Klon, but I like it a lot!
It’s like the when the internet discovered that QOTSA used a terrible Peavey solid state amp (in conjunction with other very expensive studio equipment) to get their unique sound. Instead of taking the lesson that you can get a lot of inspiration from almost any equipment if you’re creative with what you use and how you use it, people just started buying the shitty amp at crazy prices because they thought it was sprinkled with magic dust.
EHX also has the affordable 'Soul Food'. Sounds exactly like a 'Klon'. Also makes the affordable 'East River Drive'. Sounds exactly like a 'Tubescreamer'. Also Makes the affordable 'Flatiron Fuzz'. This I don't know, but I hear people saying that it's exactly like a vintage 'Rat' of some sort. Also makes the affordable 'OD Glove'. Should sound pretty much like an 'OCD'. One doesn't need to pay that much money to get those tones.
Bought mine a decade ago for maybe £30 (off of Amazon IIRC). Mostly use it on bass, and it's been on and off my pedal board during that time. Kinda glad I've kept it TBH (lol) as it's probably worth a lot more now. That being said, I'm sure the hype will die down in a few days/weeks and actual "sold" prices will stabilise back to where they were before the JHS video.
Yeah that always nagged at me. It occurs to me that Any decent od with three way tuning should be able to sound like any other od. I have the Fender Santa Ana od and with that I never feel as if I'm missing anything. the simpler EH Soul Food od is great for what it is but it's definitely limited in comparison to even the bad monkey.
I have a TS-10 in perfect condition and a Bad Monkey plus Klon derivatives like the EHX Soul Food and Wampler Tumnus Deluxe and the BM has a pretty significant mid hump and I think based on that is not even close to sounding the same compared to a Klon. It seems my TS-10 is smoother sounding and seemingly less mids than the BM.
I think the idea of hoarding a pedal or amplifier before an expected price increase amounts to something akin to “insider trading” in the world of adults. Some people are so opinionated that they won’t “just try stuff” (as the guys at JHS say) because they are concerned with an image. I’ve always been on a budget, and have accumulated a lot of cheap but awesome gear, to the point that I’ve recently been able to build a pedalboard for my daughter far in excess of anything I was able to afford as a beginner. There’s a saying in old southern racing culture that you have to “run what you brung,” or to, put it simply, learn and work with what you have available, and it will help you get better overall. Now there’s a difference between that and having to struggle with your gear to eke out the tones you want. I think studio magic creates a false sense of what gear can do to your basic tone and technique. And TH-cam has only made the issue more complicated. I spent years chasing a specific tone, and somewhere along the line I forgot what made me like playing in the first place. Don’t be afraid to try stuff “the way wrong way,” and there’s something to be said with being happy with your situation and the joy you get from actually playing.
I'm not sure the insider trading type dudes are as adult as you think. They may actually be over 18, but most of em are 12 year olds in every other way.
@@sagittated that’s fair. There is an element of childish selfishness in the motivation. However, my comment was based on the idea that most non-musicians would think of pedals and other musical gear as “toys,” and you can’t deny the effect of branding and visuals on a lot of 12yo middle-aged guitarists. We can be a childish and self-centered lot. And I definitely do not exclude myself. I totally see your point, though. Case in point, I just told my son a joke this morning: “how many guitarists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 7, 1 to screw it in, and 6 to tell him how he could do it better or more accurately.” He didn’t get it. I laugh my ass off every time I think about it. But there again, I’m still a teenager mentally. I think it also telling that when I got divorced I sold a Marshall, an SG, and a fabulous DOD Ice Box chorus to pay my kid’s’ tuition, and I miss the gear more than the woman.
I was probably one of the first to post a video on the outcome of his video. I'm not popular enough to have gotten any credit for the media outrage, but my short was definitely more in jest than it comes off as. It is such a slippery slope to inform and empower people to look at things they probably overlooked before. I think the big issue is that by the time the Klon ( as just an example ) was popular, it was unaffordable or unobtainable, and Klone's were not real. But if you don't have the luxury of doing a blind A/B test with the real deal and a clone, how do you know you are sitting on a gold mine? So, if you had a Bad Monkey, or a Behringer T0800, you could never know how it sounded in comparison to the real deal unless you owned the real deal. For 99% of guitarists, you can't own a real Klon, and you can't get an original Bluesbreaker pedal at a reasonable price, so there is just no way to know that your $35 Caline will stack up. So, when Josh does a video as he does, exposing the reality of the pedal world, he just makes a regularly overlooked pedals, become another unobtanium device. It's not his fault, but it's his fault. While the intention is to show that what you have is good enough, you are judged by what you have on stage. You can blow Joe Satriani out of the water, but if you're rolling with a Behringer V-Amp and a Harbinger PA speaker as your guitar rig, you will get laughed out of teh room before you even make a note. Tomorrow, we find out the V-Amp is as good as a Fractal.... th-cam.com/users/shorts0Q02jS5N0v0
its price is going to go up a lot now, but the bottom line is that I always think, play and have fun with what you can have, my favorite pedals will always be, fuzz face, ts808, plexidrive and guvnor, the rest is a sound experience. 🎸🎶
I actually don't like the TS sound used as an overdrive. The crunch channel of my JCA22h is much better than using an amp's clean channel in combination with a TS or clone. But to tighten up the Distortion/Overdrive channel, man, it is THE tool. You can use an EQ pedal, sure, but once you switch guitar, you have to re-adjust. The TS magically has the rightly adjusted hi-pass, mid push for a variety of bridge humbuckers. Recently I went more into choosing the right pickup (not for metal, more for the clean, crunch sounds). A center single-coil can upgrade your sound so much that there is no need for fiddling around with pedals.
Josh has pushed DOD for years. The best Van Halen clone I ever met played a shredder into a stock Marshall. He played Eruption. He used a DOD compresser into the stock Marshall in the store and it sounded like a hotwired Marshall. He said to us a "DOD compressor into a midgain marshall is all you need"
Hey there. I used to own a music store and as a guitar player I would test and try out everything I sold. I knew back then, some 15 years plus ago the Bag Monkey pedal could take the fight up to any bluesy rock pedal on the market. But now there are so many better pedals. You just have to do your reseach. Boutique small manufacturers do so many killer pedals. The Clone was old tech then ( 15 years ago ). I tried to sell them at 59 dollars brand new against tubescreamers, boss overdrives, various blues pedals as a cheap alternative but was laughed at. Young musicians suffer from understanding that there's no substitute for experience. As for the escalating prices. Well Napoleon put it best when he said "the two levers that move men is greed and hunger" . So yeah. That aside and as a guitar player no single pedal will make you a good guitarist. Only many hours of hard work learning as much as possible. And then if your original, basically, you have a chance at making it. No guarantees ever! No pedal is going to make you right?.....Cheers from downunder.
The Bad Monkey was a really good pedal before the price hike . Josh knew this , Gary Moore knew this . Thing is a good/great pedal will never make a mediocre guitarist sound great . You CANNOT buy that . Like Mutt Lange said "There are no horrible guitar tones , it's the context in which they are used". If you don't have a Bad Monkey , you are not missing out . I know of a $30 OD tube drive pedal on Amazon that sounds killer . CONTEXT ! Some just want to own a pedal they bought cheap and has risen to ridiculous prices . It's about the MUSIC !!!
As an old man who has been doing this for a long time I can assure you this also applies to different guitars, amps, etc… it all sounds far more similar than different. Just play whatever you have, if it “sounds bad” it’s probably just that you’re not very good. Practice more.
Dude, I recorded so many songs with it as a booster or main overdrive along with Marshall GV-2 as heavier artillery. Having boutique pedals now, I still listen to the old shit and feel proud of what I did then rather than now))
Here is an important fact nobody is talking about. It is way more harder to difference sounds once they are recorded than when you are standing in front or next to your amp playing them live. Same happens with guitars and amps, if you are listening them once they are recorded you can hardly tell if it is a strat, ES335 or a Les Paul or if its a Marshall, Fender or Vox... I am a recording and mixing engineer and it is easy to record decent or even good sounds with gear that in a live situation sounds bad. I totally agree with Josh point of view, people should LISTEN and get their own conclusions and that there is a bunch of good gear out there that people consider them bad only because it is already a "Trend" to say that.
I use a Bad Monkey that I’ve had for about 15 years. After all these years, the people who scoffed at it are now trying to get their grubby hands on one. Precious. I have two pedalboards that I use for different gigs, Bad Monkey on one and a TS9 on the other. Those two pedals are genuinely interchangeable, but guitar players have been gaga over the TS for ages simply because SRV used one.
Thanks for this. Nice playing. I love watching these comparisons. Josh is awesome for doing what he does. I'm addicted to his channel. It is amazing that these cheap knock off pedals do sound so damn good and so close to the more expensive or exorbitant pedals out there. One thing that isn't usually talked about is reliability and quality of components. I'd love to see a comparison of the guts and likely longevity of a pedal. That begs the question, if the really good sounding cheap pedals crap out after a year or so, it seems likely to be cost effective just to replace it with a new one (bar reliability at a gig which is an issue). I find the foot switches go on me after 10 or so years of hard use and have to be replaced. My 30 year old BOSS pedals are still going strong though.
Bad Monkey is Bad Monkey. They’re great for what it is. This is my first pedal that I bought back in 2008/9, very happy with it until today. I still have the box tho!
Just bought an HX effects to go in combo with my analogue drives. Then I compared the drives with the Helix drives, Minotuar, etc and apart from one pedal with *a V8 with a valve I was gobsmacked!
I think this applies to all gear. I’ve looked up user reviews for every guitar, amp, and pedal that I have, and I’ve seen glowing reviews that it was the best thing ever and no need to look further, and reviews that claim that the same piece of gear is the worst thing they’ve ever used and returned it or resold it the same day.
From Leo: All enthusiasts tend to make emotional responses. In Car racing, we would laugh that if a champion racer would say he adds a scoop of dog turd to the crankcase, many people would start following their dog around with a bag. I bought the first Tube Screamer in 1980 when they were just another pedal on the shelf. I like it. I also have a $30 generic green overdrive pedal, that sounds VERY similar. If I needed to replace my TS, I would not pay $1500 to replace it.
Enjoy what you have you have , I love my AD-2 adaptive distortion from boss, it creams all the jeans . Sounds good infront or in the loop of anything super slick pedal. Love it
The Bad Monkey sounds like a Klon when the Klon gain knob is dimed. The magic of the Klon/Klone circuits are with the gain either around 10 o'clock for clean boost or 2 o'clock with a nice grit. It's showing that gain sweep is important, not that the Bad Monkey is a Klon.
I can dig some JHS pedals but I don’t own any. I tend to go for either the actual pedals (there’s a reason some of them are renown) if I want the real deal and can afford it I’ll get it. But love their offerings for sure
The JHS Bender (Tone Bender clone) is simply unbelievable. I've done a video on it, if you click onto my channel icon you can find it if you like. Cheers!
Honestly the best overdrive is a dimed or near dimed low power valve amp, no pedal can match that. People should just stop using way overpowered amps and get real overdrive instead of trying to fake it.
I don't care what the pedal looks like, all I care about is the what it can do. I have a Digitech Element (99.99) that; when properly set up... sounds great. I also have an old Johnson J-Station (149.99) which sounds killer when plugged into the rear of the amp. I have a JOYO Chopper Z (54.00), also killer. A DOD Gunslinger(39.99) great for 80's rock, a Ibanez Tube Screamer(sadly in pieces). Each one bought at retail, and I didn't have to spend a fortune for one pedal like some others feel the need to do (holy grail ect ect) to get the sound I was going for. I think pedals that are ultra high priced, are not always necessary, although the Empress Heavy, the Solar CHUG, and the REVV G3 are still on my wish list. But any pedal higher than 400.00 retail... forget about it.
I like the John Mayer sound but I couldn’t afford the ridiculous prices for the pedals he uses so I researched what was affordable and it wasn’t difficult to land on the Bad Monkey. This video comparison just confirms I made the right choice. It’s sound that’s important not brand.
If you want to know where Gary Moore's tone came from, this video demonstrates that it was definitely _not_ just from his equipment! I too find that most overdrive pedals sound pretty much the same, regardless of their circuitry. Two things that _are_ different though, are a) the amount of background noise or hiss, and b) the amount of compression. I will not use a noisy pedal. Compression is useful as it allows the effect to be modified by playing style, but too much compression (as in the Boss OD-3) makes for a very sterile output, lacking in dynamics.
It's called 'Pump and Dump' - classic Wall Street technique. Get the press/pundits high on praise on a stock you own a lot of (and want to get rid of) to jack up the price of shares, so you can sell it at a high price. It also skirts into 'insider trading' of having inside knowledge of a company's problems that have not been made public, so you can sell before the drop you know will be coming.
The effect is called FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. People are missing out on the expensive Klon. Josh showed the Bad Monkey can sound like a Klon and stressed you COULD get them for about $50. Now everyone wants a Bad Monkey because it sounds like a Klon, so now everyone SELLING them wants Klon type prices for them. People will pay it because of FOMO. The answer. Josh needs to do a video showing how TONS of pedals can sound like Klons. If he does that he WILL kill the pedal industry because he will have proven what you said...all pedals sound alike. Or he can just put out a Klon Clone, flood the market with it and be done with it. OR he can put out his own JHS version of the Bad Monkey(The Bad Joshy?!? The Good Ape? The Not so bad Chimp?) Or as he said, people can calm the hell down, let the market cool off and get one when its a decent price again.
I think to an extent it's not about how it sounds, but how easy it is to get it to sound a certain way. UX and UI rather than the actual hardware yknow. That said, a lot of the easier to use pedals haven't been holy grail ones, I just feel like they're maybe more "accessible" because if you want so-and-so's Klon tone you can google the settings, but dialing it in on a different drive would be harder. I think maybe that's what people get frustrated with.
I’ve always loved the bad monkey pedal. I’ve had tons of them over the years. There’s a music store where I live that has all the NOS digitech pedals of that series for the original prices. They also have tons of 7 series of Ibanez pedals
In my experience, overdrive pedals can respond/sound different depending on the guitar/amp combo, but what Josh has exposed here is that price isn't always an indicator of tonal quality. I think with boutique pedals you have a much higher probability that they'll sounds great, whereas cheaper, mass-produced pedals may be a bit more of a lottery. That doesn't mean you can't find an awesome cheap pedal.
Josh really does cut through a lot of BS about gear on his channel. I mean, he used a Kemper for an entire year and no one even noticed. Now he's proven a cheap old Digitech pedal can be set to sound exactly like a Klon. You've probably seen the various blind shootouts on Anderton's, where they really can't tell the difference between the various clones. I bought one of the reissue Bluesbreaker pedals, but I realize there's a ton of clones of that pedal that all sound great and aren't so freakishly big. Thanks!
Always has. Pot variances make every TS sound different with tone knob at noon. So they sound the same after tweaking them. The best is to use an EQ pedal with your TS pedal and say fuck JHS pedals
If I were Digitech I would make a Bad Monkey Reissue as fast as possible. 😁And I think Josh is a great guy, who always respectfully talks about other brands and his reaction to all the critics is so right!! BTW, I had a Bad Monkey years ago, bought it new for about 35 Euro, but sold it long time ago. No regrets, it just didn't work for me.
Something you said illustrated the same or similar point that Josh made. 5:06 "It's (the TS-10) the 'holy grail' tubescreamer." 15-20 years ago the TS-10 was just another used pedal... kind of like the Bad Monkey. At some point it showed up on somebody's pedalboard and suddenly people are calling it a 'holy grail.' The pedal didn't magically change in all that time. It's all hype.
I have so many pedals I can't remember them all. I had one day planned on getting the Bad Monkey. I've been looking at them for $49 for a long time. I can wait if I ever even get one.
They have allready dropped to $100 average. Be patient, just remember pedals guitars and amps had gone up in prices way before Josh vid. A Standard Mexican Strat is almost 1k (NOS as discontinued Item), crazy that was the average price of a Made in usa Std strat in 2020 when I bought one. Now its 2k and more last time I checked.
Tube Screamers and their clones and many other overdrives as well all do a similar enough thing when they are used to push your amp that your playing and the amp itself have way more effect on your tone than which particular pedal you use. Take any of these overdrives and use the pedal itself for distortion (rather than actually overdriving the amp) and they all sound like a guitar in a beer commercial.
Josh is also driving a point here though he may not be aware of it - SOMETIMES DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE! Just because celebrities or influencers sing praises about a product does not mean you should get it too. But if you can afford it, then good. But more importantly - make the most of what you have. I have very cheap Klones and I use it in my gigs and I have no problem with it whatsoever.
Friend of mine (a talented hobby pedalbuilder) built a board with 26 handmade dead-accurate clones of sought after overdrive curcuits BUT he didn't name any of them. forcing his friends to just listen and see what works with their setup and what speaks to them while eliminating all hype, mysticism and marketing. i thought that was genius and really narrowed it down to "listen more, read less"
And stop the TH-cam GAS religion!?! 😊
most dirt pedals are a handful of cheap parts. it's fascinating because they generally all do sound different, from subtle to dramatic. there are different clipping methods and frequency response and you can have a lot of entertainment tweaking and testing around. but there are also so many variables that it's pointless to compare. and a rare scavenged germanium transistor will absolutely not necessarily sound better than a 0.3c silicon one. most importantly none of them are going to change the most fundamental aspect.. how you play guitar. all the mojo stuff is fun but people get so silly with it.
@@johnvcougar one of the most powerful beliefs about hype is, that it's true ;-) i made a videoseries of those pedals but obviously no one cared because you can't look up prices on reverb lol
collectors value has it's own merrit, but collectors value ramping up because of "magical rare components" only guitarsts can come up with shit like this :D
@@AbsalomsAxe Don't you believe it, there's always some cat on the take!
All JHS proved with the Bad Monkey is that there's a sucker born every minute.
It also shows how susceptible people are to marketing. I've owned a Bad Monkey and other TS clones, and the only thing Josh proved is how alike they all are, and how ridiculous people can be when they fool themselves into believing that throwing more money at their gear will somehow miraculously turn them into a guitar god. The smartest and most talented of guitarists are also the most frugal.
That is a bold assertion that the people with the most guitar talent are the same people who are frugal. I can't see how they're connected at all. But you do, and that's interesting to me. Do you think there's a cause and effect between the two? Or are they more correlated than caused?
Most overdrives are similar sounding - people just need to get an EQ pedal.
I mean, the best guitar player I personnaly know has been playing for the last 15 years and during this time, he was playing a Marshall MG half of it and upgraded to a Marshall code for the second half which is not the craziest upgrade ever. Still, I was in a band with him and this dude outplays everyone I ever met while being the one that spent the less money on his rig. So I guess you have a point...
It depends on what you mean. If you’re trying to sound like Radiohead, a few pedals are necessary, but you definitely don’t need any crazy gear to learn awesome technique and to make great compositions. Put together a few people with great technique and you have a legendary band honestly, but if you’re doing everything by yourself gear can help, especially midi-based gear.
People buying up these pedals now are NOT guitar players. They're dorks pretending to be.
I too came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that "all guitar pedals sound the same" so instead of sound i started basing my decisions on which ever pedal looked the nicest to me. 😄 I'm obviously half joking with that but visuals do play a big part for me whether a pedal inspires me or not.
I only buy blue pedals now. It made my life easier, with less option paralysis.
Blurst is Beautiful but also sounds 👌
same. I was trying to find the perfect distortion and tried so many boutique drives, now I just use a stock ds 1
@@gooseabuse 🤣🤣🤣 that's great. I love it. 🤣🤣
@@gooseabuse Blue Pedals are Awesome !
People got peed off at Josh for that video and allegedly raising the price, and I love his rebuttal. “You had 19 years to try and buy a Bad Monkey” AMEN LOL!!
Not everyone is in their 40s.
Not everyone knew it existed.
That's a truly disgusting and asinine comment to make.
@@lococomrade3488 and your reply misses the point entirely. The Bad Monkey is one of like a thousand overdrive pedals that get overlooked and looked down upon just because of guitar players following the crowd. If you didn't understand that the Bad Monkey was decent before this video, you weren't going to. But guess what; there are tons of other gems out there.
Also, if we guitar players operated on any logic, what this should mean is that Klons should go *down* in price.
@Bryan Burns I totally agree with you, except that you entirely missed my points.
Their flagrant comment is completely disrespectful and clearly tone-deaf to the financial struggles of the average guitarist.
Not all of us are trust fund babies or business owners.
Alot of players are teenagers.
Again, their comment was asinine and disgusting.
@@lococomrade3488 let's be real. Literally no one was pinching pennies--not even the struggling guitarist (which I have been the majority of my life)--for a Bad Monkey. Literally no one. And while many may be having retroactive regret due to this video, let JHS's be one that inspires us to look for even cheaper videos and can get in Klon territory (of which there are).
His comment didn't hurt my feelings. I didn't need a Bad Monkey. You don't need a Bad Monkey. No young and struggling guitarist needs one. But if that was the desire, plenty of other pedals will serve.
@Bryan Burns Were you trying to be more asinine or was that unintentional?
I gathered up a bunch of overdrive and distortion pedals in my collection and put them all on one board and began playing through each one. They all sounded almost exactly the same. Out of my 40 pedals, there are only about 5 that are distinct from the others. It opened my eyes and ended my pedal tone quest. I own the Bad Monkey (since around 2005 or so) and it has been my main pedal in front of my Bugera 1960 for almost all my tones from rhythm to lead. And really, any OD pedal will do the same thing.
Yeah, they're all basically an op-amp with two diodes in the feedback loop and/or to earth just after it. There's only so many ways to turn a sine wave into a square wave !
That’s cool mate, us guitarists are insane though, you still have 40 and I still have 40 🤣🙌❤️
@@PedalPawn No point in getting rid of them really. Although the money is spent, I'd lose my ass on the resale. So I still have them if I want to mess around. Life changes this last year have forced me to be happy with what I have, and I'm all the better for it.
If used as a boost. And the bad monkey is as good as Tubescreamers or BOSS SD-1. But much cheaper. At least before. But I bought mine for 25 euros.
@@DropB I like that the Bad Monkey has a bit less gain than a tube screamer. The EQ is nice to have too.
I've been a professional photographer for 12 years now, and am a hobbyist guitar player and pedal builder on the side. I've seen photographers do the same silly chase with gear, and on one hand it makes sense, and on the other, it's absolutely insane.
I just bought a handful of different picks and spent 45 mins really listening to the difference in tone they all gave me. Cost me $10..
Anyways, here's a great quote about photography from 1927 that is still relevant today.
"The fact is, is that very few photographers ever master their medium. Instead, they allow the medium to master them and go on and endless squirrel cage chase from new lens, to new paper, to new developer, to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it." -Edward Weston
There's a local photographer who posts the most god awful photos shooting on a $20,000 camera, with $20,000 worth of lighting gear. And he'll never hesitate to go on a long winded diatribe as to how amazing the camera and lights are and how they're essential to his work.. but if you gave him a 15 year old, $500 camera and a couple $200 lights, his work would look the exact same... I think the same goes for a lot of guitar players.. they spend a lot of $$ on the gear but it does nothing to actually make them a better guitar player.
If you're upset that this pedal that Josh was able to have a Klon match the sound of (saw a great comment saying how Josh got the Klon to sound like the BM, rather than the other way around) is now way up in price, and you don't own a real Klon to a/b against. I'd suggest just going on amazon and buying any one of the cheap-o Klon clones..
Agreed on all from a fellow photographer. 30 years ago I wanted a Sinar because Avedon used one but I could “only” afford a Toyo. Looking back the Toyo served me incredibly well.
Ditto - I hear you buddy! - Been doing it 30 years and always kept my kit to a minimum. There's a lot of pressure to compete with the photographer peacocks who mitigate lack of skill with look of skill. I visited a local photographic club and was sadly amused by the sneering hobbyists with all the gear and no idea. It's just the same with hobby guitarists earning their means elsewhere.
So true. And a lot of Brian May’s iconic sounds in the studio came from a small transistor amp the John Deacon found in a skip.
I have been down the camera rabbit hole. Less so in the film days.
Exactly. There are the reliable Profoto but I have some Bowens that I could afford back in the day. To me there is no difference (the way I shoot) in the final result. Also I heard a story that Doisneau and some other big names were given one use point and shoot cameras and the pictures were brilliant. Actually... the gear they got famous with was way worse than what we take for granted today. Gear is just a tool, not the maker. Will I play better if I buy an American PRS? No, it will be a more reliable tool than my PRS SE, but the result won't be better. Gear has made us lazy.
As an aspiring photographer and electric violinist, I resemble this post. Except that I know that I suck and gear won’t save me.
Now compare it to the £15 Behringer Tubescreamer. Yep it's all bollocks. Great vids dude! 🤘
🤣🙌 thanks a lot for watching mate 🎸
Years back I used to own the behringer tubescreamer. I thought it sounded great, but remember reviews all over online calling them junk and saying they sound so harsh compared to a real one. Fast forward about a year and I managed to get a good deal on a TS9, brought it home and tried it out only to realize it sounded identical to my cheap clone. That was the day I realized there's no point buying gear on hype and that brand and price make basically no difference
@@BorkBorkDoggo I have The Behringer Blues Driver clone which I'm told sounds identical.
Like you I mean to get the original Boss one or perhaps the JB-2 Angry Driver. I just like the sound so much, I want to pass the behringer on to a friend.
It's been a few years now that whenever I get "tired" of my pedals, I swap the speaker on my combo. Works like a charm. (I have got only three completely different voiced speakers - more than enough to be happy). Also, an inexpensive EQ pedal can be very helpful in "adjusting" overdrives and distortions.
One of the best "amateur" guitarists I ever knew played a Fender Mustang into a Silvertone amp with a broken bass knob. He sounded *amazing*. Eventually he upgraded to a Les Paul, Sunn Solaris, and an EHX LPB-1 pedal (the first edition that plugged directly into the input jack of the amp and had an on/off switch rather than a foot switch.) He spent countless hours working with his existing equipment to learn its full capabilities. Pedals can be a crutch.
There have been quite a few comparisons of these two pedals. One video is over 13 years old.
What Josh did was present this to a larger audience.
Kudos to him
Yep, Brett Kingman did one about that far back, and got exactly the same result, so there's nothing new about the JHS video. You're right in that Josh has brought it to a wider audience (and social media has made that task easier IMO).
Shnobel has been doing this on his channel for years. He has one where he puts a Tube Screamer mini up against a Centaur and another where he puts a Centaur vs a vintage Tube Screamer, and even one where he puts a Rat up against a KTR, and even the Rat, up to a certain level of gain (about 11:00), was almost indistinguishable from the KTR.
Andy Martin from ProGuitarShop did a similar thing to the DOD FX65 Chorus. Prices went through the roof when he espoused it’s virtues. They settled down eventually, but it’s no longer the budget pedal bargain that it was prior. Not enough people mentioning Phil X bringing the Bad Monkey to prominence, when he used it for the iconic Fretted Americana videos either, that’s why I have one, and I’m kicking myself for not buying a backup Bad Monkey before all this kicked off. Lastly, it’s worth noting that when Josh compared all those pedals to the Bad Monkey….was he dialling in the Monkey to replicate the pedals, or was he dialling in the other pedals to sound like the Bad Monkey? There’s a big difference. Anyway. The Bad Monkey is a brilliant workhorse pedal as an always-on overdrive in my rig, the Eq means it shines over tubescreamers as you can dial back in the bass that you typically lose, and thicken up the sound. My RC Booster does the same thing, but was three times the price.
There are so many examples that reveal we live in a world of followers. Most pedals have infinite crossover, and always comes down to talent. Talent can make anything or nothing sound great. Prince used all Boss pedals for decades, many recording are straight into the board. Pedals are just a very inexpensive tool that can color you tone to varying degrees. Bad Monkey always had a good reputation from what I recall even 12 or so years ago, people were talking about them on forums.
You don’t need to spend a ton of money for a great tone. I use the BD2 and it sounds amazing
I have one of those - which cost ½ the current retail price back in 2013.
I totally agree, I have a BD2 as well and it sounds so great...
The bd2 here in Brazil costs the half of a minimum wage just because of hype
Actually, any pedal that isn't Chinese or some Brazilian made copy here it's expensive as heck
Bd2 and DS1 are my favorite.
I bought a Bad Monkey new for like $35.00. It was out for about 6 months.
Loved it thru a amp but after a move, a DS 1 is what i use most.
It's a great pedal.
I used to rock a Bad Monkey back in the day (when they first came out) - worked really well with my Orange Tiny Terror. Sold it because it couldn't get bright enough for me with my other amps - took out the high end sparkle.
My same impression and was also a bit grainy
Samee broooo! So are you saying all pedals are not the same?
I have one, I got it for, probably $60.00 or less (years ago). I used it for a while. I saw the JHS video, and I got it out and played it a bit. There's nothing wrong with those, they do the deal. I tried to sell it (cheap) a few years ago, and nobody wanted it. I guess I'll hang on to it. I usually don't use pedals, just Strat., cord, Super Reverb turned up to the sweet spot. But I just like playin' the blues.
It was very entertaining....it shows where the pedals overlap but a fairer comparison would be to see what sounds you can get out of the individual pedals that the BM can't. I have a Humboldt Silver linings because there's a sound on that I like that I haven't found on any other pedal and while I'm sure the BM could copy a lot of the sounds it does it wouldn't do"that" sound.
Amen! Josh is right, I always liked the Bad Monkey pedal. I bet you can get close to Klon tones with a BOSS Turbo Overdrive or Ibanez TS9DX or Keeley Red Dirt if you're willing to take the time and listen! Great video, thanks for sharing. Gary Moore Forever!!
Shhhhhhhhhhut your mouth before they do listen.
My long-term girlfriend bought me a bad monkey a while ago and I’ve been trying to get anyone I come in contact with to purchase one, the tone controls alone are amazing. I’ve been a fan of digi since I first bought pedals in high school because that’s what I could afford. Then over the years I realized how awesome the company is, and now people have finally caught on. Pedal snobs look over some amazing pedals, while putting insane hype over average pedals or above average pedals that still don’t deserve the hype machine. Josh is the JhS effect for sure like Rogan. If I wasn’t so happy with my bad monkey and didn’t have it on at all times mostly I’d be thanking him and selling it.
Funny how much people are finding Digitech to have been a pretty rad and forward thinking company. Shame they went under. The Sdrum-JamMan combo is unlike anything else and gets so much use I wish everyone could experience it. They made some special products.
My favorite “distortion” is my Pignose turned up 3/4 and ran into one of my tube amps set to clean.
yeah but thats the best!!! amp natural overdriving!! in a pigish wayyyyyy
The best guitar player I know did the same thing with a Marshall head back in the '70s.
@@FuckPedophileBiden who?????
@@soofitnsexy Herb Watson.
It should be noted that Josh was using the klon with the gain all the way up and most people don’t use it that way. If they were both set up as a cleaner boost I think you would hear more of a difference. Just my 2 cents
I think this started about a year ago when Josh did a comparison of the Digitech Distortion Factory and the seven pedals it emulates, showing that there was no difference in sound. Before that you could easily pick one up on Reverb for under $100 - and after prices shot way up into the stratosphere. It’s back down to +/- $200, so your Bad Monkey will be worth more for a while. (BTW - I’ve had a Distortion Factory since they were first released, and it is an amazing pedal).
After getting and loving the Sdrum Jam Man and Trio+ and seeing the other cool pedals Digitech made its a shame the went down. They were making some cool ass shit. Use my sdrum every single time I play there is truly nothing else like it.
Bought one brand new years ago never used it. Still ln the box . I use the maxon od 808, and way huge green rhino for that type of pedal
What’s crazy is they did an AB test with a $25 mosky (I think) Centaur clone like a few months ago. The price on that didn’t go crazy. I bought one a few weeks later for almost nothing.
I like my Mosky Golden Horse… costs less than a pint of beer at an NHL hockey game arena.
At the end of the day if you have a decent amp and a few pedals to get enough variety your pretty much set! Most people spend more than they need on pedals instead of spending the time practising and dialing in the pedals they already have.
Pedals are EXPENSIVE. I've got fuzzes, distortions, an overdrive, a chorus, and a looper. 99% of the time I'm playing the fuzz with the looper. The other 1% of the time I'm checking out an idea with my other pedals, only to be reminded that I prefer the fuzz and should focus on playing.
I remember Phil X in the late 2000s/early 2010s pushing his Tonemaster combo amp into the sickest overdrive sounds TH-cam has ever heard up to that point and since... with his DigiTech Bad Monkey.
I was immediately sold on it.
(Guitar forums then disuaded me from getting what my ears and dozens of Phil X videos sold me on...)
i remember those Phil x vids legendary!!!! but he also used vintage vox and tonemaster amps
Those Phil X videos is what made me get a bad monkey 5 years ago for $35 dollars from reverb. I still have it and love it.
@@soofitnsexy and vintage guitars, too! yet he wasn't using a klon or a vintage pedal or an expensive one for that matter, the bad monkey was doing the job! It was also present in most of his live videos from back then when he played the LTD Viper with the stickers and a marshall amp made by a friend of his.
Good enough for Phil X and Gary Moore, good enough for me. I have two, never gig without it, mainly because it has both amp and mixer outputs. Plus it's indestructible.
I use to use an OCD for my drive sound, with a Bad Monkey jumping the OCD.
That combo worked great with an Egnator Teeaker, a SAMAMP VAC 40, an import Bogner combo, and a Fuchs 20 watt head. Got great resorts that were never boring with each.
I have a Bad Monkey and a TS-9 next to each other on a pedal board and they are utterly interchangeable to me. But if Josh is pimping the Monkey I might have to box mine back up (just like Josh, I have the box) and cash out on eBay.
I'm a newbie with all the tech stuff, but I run a Dunlop fuzzface into a boss ds-1 and then into a wah. It gives that sharp bright tone while still being heavy crunch fuzz. It is a bit cumbersome though...
I needed a backup diamond delay, but he inflated it but selling one at a ridiculous price on reverb, so he is to blame.
Isn't it a question of: if you aren't using a pedal for it's uniqueness, you can dial things in that sound the same as other pedals. I think it's more often going to be a drive and gain sector issue than you might see in devices that are modulation & filters. As an example because the suggested videos are full of this one at the moment, the beetronics sea bee seems like you could dial in normal modulation, but what it really is there for is something that has more of a flavor of its own to it, and gets pretty out there. it's very much a how you dial for what you're looking for, and that GAS isn't always going to be what gets you what you're looking for. Even if it's great to have all sorts of options.
Context question - Josh did a video about a month back with Tom Cram about the impending return of Digitech. Is this him creating some hype to help out a mate looking to reestablish his business?
Josh has long professed his love of DOD/Digitech pedals. He owns virtually every pedal ever made, so if he says something is good you can take his word for it. And he’s honest. In the same video he compared the Bad Monkey to his own $200 JHS Morning Glory, and guess what - they sounded just alike. I’m a little sad because I bought a Morning Glory (kidding because I really do love that pedal!).
There are slight differences between the TS-808, TS-9, and TS-10, but if you want what a Tube Screamer does, they will all do it, and so will a lot of other pedals, and some of them will add additional options that sound even better.
I bought a PRS Horsemeat when it was first released and it has replaced 15 years of different pedals I used on my board. Now the only one I ever use other than the Horsemeat is a stock ds1. The Horsemeat can't get quite as distorted as the ds1 but besides that, it can replace everything. Paul knows tone better than most so I highly recommend checking out any pedals or amps PRS makes when you are looking for something different.
I can hear Chris’s Strat shining through that LP… can’t hide that tone anywhere …
I have had the bad monkey (a long with a lot of other pedals) in my reverb saved search for a long time. I’m always trying out random stuff. They were always like $55-70 ish dollars used. Now they’re like $180+ lol thanks Josh! (All joking aside, Josh is the man and he knows it’s all about sound and knowing your gear and how to use it. Good work).
If you can play you'll sounds good through a shoebox and a broom. Pedals are a fun rabbit hole to jump down and having a nice rig is great but the fact is, spending less time in gear forums and more time in the woodshed, or jammin' with your mates is the best way to sound better.
Please notice It´s an OVERDIVE not a distortion pedal. It needs an amp set to the edge of breakup. If you set your amp clean It sounds like garbage. Listen the cleanishn sound at 7:00 before he kicks the pedal. That´s the "edge of breakup" sound I´m talking about. When you kick the pedal, It boosts the signal enough to "Overdrive" the amp with clever eq, shaving lows, some highs and boosting the mids in the 700hz range. If you have an amp that´s clean all the way to 50 watt I recomend the Nobels ODR-1, It´s realtive cheap (150 bucks) It´s called overdrive but It´s not. I sold my tube screamer and a TS clon and bought one. What a great pedal. The gain control goes from pure clean sound to almost fuzz. and the secret weapon is the spectrum control in place of the tone control. a great design from 1992 ,Germany. It´s solid as a rock (It weigths 1 pound). Solid input and output connectors and pots. Not a single bit of hum, hiss, noise. nothing. Just your guitar´s hum if it´s single coil or using cheap cables. Oh It´s a reissue so It´s brand new. It´s better than the old ones, It has a bass cut switch. There is a Mini version for 70 bucks,It´s brand nuw so if you buy It and don´t like It you can change It for another one or a refund (select a reputable dealer), that sounds great, don´t need to spend a fortune to get a good overdrive/distorion effect. That´s what GHS proved with his video. A real eye opener. Now prices of the bad monkey is about 100 bucks, still expensive but not crazy. Be patient or use whatever you have.
I remember liking the Bad Monkey in a store, but I bought the Digitech Blues Screamer, which got me a lot of compliments the one time I played it out (guess I should play it out more). I'd intended to get the Monkey sooner or later, then wanted a modded one, then forgot about it. I always thought it was supposed to be a re-creation of a Tube Screamer rather than a Klon, and I have several lower end Tube Screamers and copies. I did get a $20 Mosky Golden Horse. I don't know if it sounds like a $2000 Klon, but I like it a lot!
It’s like the when the internet discovered that QOTSA used a terrible Peavey solid state amp (in conjunction with other very expensive studio equipment) to get their unique sound.
Instead of taking the lesson that you can get a lot of inspiration from almost any equipment if you’re creative with what you use and how you use it, people just started buying the shitty amp at crazy prices because they thought it was sprinkled with magic dust.
That opening is smoking..GREAT playing
EHX also has the affordable 'Soul Food'. Sounds exactly like a 'Klon'.
Also makes the affordable 'East River Drive'. Sounds exactly like a 'Tubescreamer'.
Also Makes the affordable 'Flatiron Fuzz'. This I don't know, but I hear people saying that it's exactly like a vintage 'Rat' of some sort.
Also makes the affordable 'OD Glove'. Should sound pretty much like an 'OCD'.
One doesn't need to pay that much money to get those tones.
Bought mine a decade ago for maybe £30 (off of Amazon IIRC). Mostly use it on bass, and it's been on and off my pedal board during that time. Kinda glad I've kept it TBH (lol) as it's probably worth a lot more now. That being said, I'm sure the hype will die down in a few days/weeks and actual "sold" prices will stabilise back to where they were before the JHS video.
Yeah that always nagged at me. It occurs to me that Any decent od with three way tuning should be able to sound like any other od. I have the Fender Santa Ana od and with that I never feel as if I'm missing anything. the simpler EH Soul Food od is great for what it is but it's definitely limited in comparison to even the bad monkey.
I have a TS-10 in perfect condition and a Bad Monkey plus Klon derivatives like the EHX Soul Food and Wampler Tumnus Deluxe and the BM has a pretty significant mid hump and I think based on that is not even close to sounding the same compared to a Klon. It seems my TS-10 is smoother sounding and seemingly less mids than the BM.
I think the idea of hoarding a pedal or amplifier before an expected price increase amounts to something akin to “insider trading” in the world of adults. Some people are so opinionated that they won’t “just try stuff” (as the guys at JHS say) because they are concerned with an image. I’ve always been on a budget, and have accumulated a lot of cheap but awesome gear, to the point that I’ve recently been able to build a pedalboard for my daughter far in excess of anything I was able to afford as a beginner. There’s a saying in old southern racing culture that you have to “run what you brung,” or to, put it simply, learn and work with what you have available, and it will help you get better overall. Now there’s a difference between that and having to struggle with your gear to eke out the tones you want. I think studio magic creates a false sense of what gear can do to your basic tone and technique. And TH-cam has only made the issue more complicated. I spent years chasing a specific tone, and somewhere along the line I forgot what made me like playing in the first place. Don’t be afraid to try stuff “the way wrong way,” and there’s something to be said with being happy with your situation and the joy you get from actually playing.
I'm not sure the insider trading type dudes are as adult as you think. They may actually be over 18, but most of em are 12 year olds in every other way.
@@sagittated that’s fair. There is an element of childish selfishness in the motivation. However, my comment was based on the idea that most non-musicians would think of pedals and other musical gear as “toys,” and you can’t deny the effect of branding and visuals on a lot of 12yo middle-aged guitarists. We can be a childish and self-centered lot. And I definitely do not exclude myself. I totally see your point, though.
Case in point, I just told my son a joke this morning: “how many guitarists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 7, 1 to screw it in, and 6 to tell him how he could do it better or more accurately.” He didn’t get it. I laugh my ass off every time I think about it. But there again, I’m still a teenager mentally. I think it also telling that when I got divorced I sold a Marshall, an SG, and a fabulous DOD Ice Box chorus to pay my kid’s’ tuition, and I miss the gear more than the woman.
I was probably one of the first to post a video on the outcome of his video. I'm not popular enough to have gotten any credit for the media outrage, but my short was definitely more in jest than it comes off as. It is such a slippery slope to inform and empower people to look at things they probably overlooked before.
I think the big issue is that by the time the Klon ( as just an example ) was popular, it was unaffordable or unobtainable, and Klone's were not real. But if you don't have the luxury of doing a blind A/B test with the real deal and a clone, how do you know you are sitting on a gold mine? So, if you had a Bad Monkey, or a Behringer T0800, you could never know how it sounded in comparison to the real deal unless you owned the real deal. For 99% of guitarists, you can't own a real Klon, and you can't get an original Bluesbreaker pedal at a reasonable price, so there is just no way to know that your $35 Caline will stack up.
So, when Josh does a video as he does, exposing the reality of the pedal world, he just makes a regularly overlooked pedals, become another unobtanium device. It's not his fault, but it's his fault. While the intention is to show that what you have is good enough, you are judged by what you have on stage. You can blow Joe Satriani out of the water, but if you're rolling with a Behringer V-Amp and a Harbinger PA speaker as your guitar rig, you will get laughed out of teh room before you even make a note. Tomorrow, we find out the V-Amp is as good as a Fractal.... th-cam.com/users/shorts0Q02jS5N0v0
its price is going to go up a lot now, but the bottom line is that I always think, play and have fun with what you can have, my favorite pedals will always be, fuzz face, ts808, plexidrive and guvnor, the rest is a sound experience. 🎸🎶
I actually don't like the TS sound used as an overdrive. The crunch channel of my JCA22h is much better than using an amp's clean channel in combination with a TS or clone. But to tighten up the Distortion/Overdrive channel, man, it is THE tool. You can use an EQ pedal, sure, but once you switch guitar, you have to re-adjust. The TS magically has the rightly adjusted hi-pass, mid push for a variety of bridge humbuckers. Recently I went more into choosing the right pickup (not for metal, more for the clean, crunch sounds). A center single-coil can upgrade your sound so much that there is no need for fiddling around with pedals.
No pedal I have ever owned/used compares to my stock made in Japan TS-9 DX. It’s the only pedal I consistently use.
Josh has pushed DOD for years.
The best Van Halen clone I ever met played a shredder into a stock Marshall.
He played Eruption.
He used a DOD compresser into the stock Marshall in the store and it sounded like a hotwired Marshall.
He said to us a "DOD compressor into a midgain marshall is all you need"
Ive got the digitech hot head distortion pedal. I hope jhs makes a video about it so it becomes cool and valuable
how is that pedal?
@@soofitnsexy its a good distortion pedal. Makes good sounds and you could break a window with it haha
Hey there. I used to own a music store and as a guitar player I would test and try out everything I sold. I knew back then, some 15 years plus ago the Bag Monkey pedal could take the fight up to any bluesy rock pedal on the market. But now there are so many better pedals. You just have to do your reseach. Boutique small manufacturers do so many killer pedals. The Clone was old tech then ( 15 years ago ). I tried to sell them at 59 dollars brand new against tubescreamers, boss overdrives, various blues pedals as a cheap alternative but was laughed at. Young musicians suffer from understanding that there's no substitute for experience. As for the escalating prices. Well Napoleon put it best when he said "the two levers that move men is greed and hunger" . So yeah. That aside and as a guitar player no single pedal will make you a good guitarist. Only many hours of hard work learning as much as possible. And then if your original, basically, you have a chance at making it. No guarantees ever! No pedal is going to make you right?.....Cheers from downunder.
The Bad Monkey was a really good pedal before the price hike . Josh knew this , Gary Moore knew this . Thing is a good/great pedal will never make a mediocre guitarist sound great . You CANNOT buy that . Like Mutt Lange said "There are no horrible guitar tones , it's the context in which they are used". If you don't have a Bad Monkey , you are not missing out . I know of a $30 OD tube drive pedal on Amazon that sounds killer . CONTEXT ! Some just want to own a pedal they bought cheap and has risen to ridiculous prices . It's about the MUSIC !!!
As an old man who has been doing this for a long time I can assure you this also applies to different guitars, amps, etc… it all sounds far more similar than different. Just play whatever you have, if it “sounds bad” it’s probably just that you’re not very good. Practice more.
can you compare de klon centaur vs blues breaker ... and also gain stacking
Dude, I recorded so many songs with it as a booster or main overdrive along with Marshall GV-2 as heavier artillery. Having boutique pedals now, I still listen to the old shit and feel proud of what I did then rather than now))
Here is an important fact nobody is talking about. It is way more harder to difference sounds once they are recorded than when you are standing in front or next to your amp playing them live. Same happens with guitars and amps, if you are listening them once they are recorded you can hardly tell if it is a strat, ES335 or a Les Paul or if its a Marshall, Fender or Vox... I am a recording and mixing engineer and it is easy to record decent or even good sounds with gear that in a live situation sounds bad. I totally agree with Josh point of view, people should LISTEN and get their own conclusions and that there is a bunch of good gear out there that people consider them bad only because it is already a "Trend" to say that.
Josh was trolling to prove a point.
I use a Bad Monkey that I’ve had for about 15 years. After all these years, the people who scoffed at it are now trying to get their grubby hands on one. Precious.
I have two pedalboards that I use for different gigs, Bad Monkey on one and a TS9 on the other. Those two pedals are genuinely interchangeable, but guitar players have been gaga over the TS for ages simply because SRV used one.
Cool video. I love your playing. As you said, it's important to know that prices on Reverb are set by sellers, not genuine market selling prices.
Its great for me, i have 3 of them bought for about £20 each hehe! Same thing happened with the blues breaker pedal. In the late 90s they were cheap
Thanks for this. Nice playing. I love watching these comparisons. Josh is awesome for doing what he does. I'm addicted to his channel. It is amazing that these cheap knock off pedals do sound so damn good and so close to the more expensive or exorbitant pedals out there. One thing that isn't usually talked about is reliability and quality of components. I'd love to see a comparison of the guts and likely longevity of a pedal. That begs the question, if the really good sounding cheap pedals crap out after a year or so, it seems likely to be cost effective just to replace it with a new one (bar reliability at a gig which is an issue). I find the foot switches go on me after 10 or so years of hard use and have to be replaced. My 30 year old BOSS pedals are still going strong though.
Bad Monkey is Bad Monkey. They’re great for what it is. This is my first pedal that I bought back in 2008/9, very happy with it until today. I still have the box tho!
Just bought an HX effects to go in combo with my analogue drives. Then I compared the drives with the Helix drives, Minotuar, etc and apart from one pedal with *a V8 with a valve I was gobsmacked!
I think this applies to all gear. I’ve looked up user reviews for every guitar, amp, and pedal that I have, and I’ve seen glowing reviews that it was the best thing ever and no need to look further, and reviews that claim that the same piece of gear is the worst thing they’ve ever used and returned it or resold it the same day.
From Leo: All enthusiasts tend to make emotional responses. In Car racing, we would laugh that if a champion racer would say he adds a scoop of dog turd to the crankcase, many people would start following their dog around with a bag. I bought the first Tube Screamer in 1980 when they were just another pedal on the shelf. I like it. I also have a $30 generic green overdrive pedal, that sounds VERY similar. If I needed to replace my TS, I would not pay $1500 to replace it.
Enjoy what you have you have , I love my AD-2 adaptive distortion from boss, it creams all the jeans . Sounds good infront or in the loop of anything super slick pedal. Love it
Hi, Isn´t the Boss AD-2 a preamp for acoustic guitar ? I just checked and says that, I will check it again tomorrow.
I think what you have is a Boss DA-2 not an AD-2, am I wright ? I will check it out,. thanks for the tip-
Well u have both pedal s what do u think ??? They are not. The same sound.
The Bad Monkey sounds like a Klon when the Klon gain knob is dimed. The magic of the Klon/Klone circuits are with the gain either around 10 o'clock for clean boost or 2 o'clock with a nice grit. It's showing that gain sweep is important, not that the Bad Monkey is a Klon.
I have my rockett Holdsworth, worth like $500+ and my Oddfellow Caveman V2 on my board, Seymour Duncan twin tube and that’s all folks!
I can dig some JHS pedals but I don’t own any. I tend to go for either the actual pedals (there’s a reason some of them are renown) if I want the real deal and can afford it I’ll get it. But love their offerings for sure
The JHS Bender (Tone Bender clone) is simply unbelievable. I've done a video on it, if you click onto my channel icon you can find it if you like. Cheers!
Honestly the best overdrive is a dimed or near dimed low power valve amp, no pedal can match that. People should just stop using way overpowered amps and get real overdrive instead of trying to fake it.
I don't care what the pedal looks like, all I care about is the what it can do. I have a Digitech Element (99.99) that; when properly set up... sounds great. I also have an old Johnson J-Station (149.99) which sounds killer when plugged into the rear of the amp. I have a JOYO Chopper Z (54.00), also killer. A DOD Gunslinger(39.99) great for 80's rock, a Ibanez Tube Screamer(sadly in pieces). Each one bought at retail, and I didn't have to spend a fortune for one pedal like some others feel the need to do (holy grail ect ect) to get the sound I was going for. I think pedals that are ultra high priced, are not always necessary, although the Empress Heavy, the Solar CHUG, and the REVV G3 are still on my wish list. But any pedal higher than 400.00 retail... forget about it.
I like the John Mayer sound but I couldn’t afford the ridiculous prices for the pedals he uses so I researched what was affordable and it wasn’t difficult to land on the Bad Monkey. This video comparison just confirms I made the right choice. It’s sound that’s important not brand.
If you want to know where Gary Moore's tone came from, this video demonstrates that it was definitely _not_ just from his equipment! I too find that most overdrive pedals sound pretty much the same, regardless of their circuitry. Two things that _are_ different though, are a) the amount of background noise or hiss, and b) the amount of compression. I will not use a noisy pedal. Compression is useful as it allows the effect to be modified by playing style, but too much compression (as in the Boss OD-3) makes for a very sterile output, lacking in dynamics.
sounds great , what else are you using
It's called 'Pump and Dump' - classic Wall Street technique. Get the press/pundits high on praise on a stock you own a lot of (and want to get rid of) to jack up the price of shares, so you can sell it at a high price. It also skirts into 'insider trading' of having inside knowledge of a company's problems that have not been made public, so you can sell before the drop you know will be coming.
Somewhere in my shed I have an old Bad Monkey (one of the heavy ones.) I may need to dig it out and rotate its tires.
The effect is called FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. People are missing out on the expensive Klon. Josh showed the Bad Monkey can sound like a Klon and stressed you COULD get them for about $50. Now everyone wants a Bad Monkey because it sounds like a Klon, so now everyone SELLING them wants Klon type prices for them. People will pay it because of FOMO.
The answer. Josh needs to do a video showing how TONS of pedals can sound like Klons. If he does that he WILL kill the pedal industry because he will have proven what you said...all pedals sound alike. Or he can just put out a Klon Clone, flood the market with it and be done with it. OR he can put out his own JHS version of the Bad Monkey(The Bad Joshy?!? The Good Ape? The Not so bad Chimp?)
Or as he said, people can calm the hell down, let the market cool off and get one when its a decent price again.
I think to an extent it's not about how it sounds, but how easy it is to get it to sound a certain way. UX and UI rather than the actual hardware yknow. That said, a lot of the easier to use pedals haven't been holy grail ones, I just feel like they're maybe more "accessible" because if you want so-and-so's Klon tone you can google the settings, but dialing it in on a different drive would be harder. I think maybe that's what people get frustrated with.
I’ve always loved the bad monkey pedal. I’ve had tons of them over the years. There’s a music store where I live that has all the NOS digitech pedals of that series for the original prices. They also have tons of 7 series of Ibanez pedals
In my experience, overdrive pedals can respond/sound different depending on the guitar/amp combo, but what Josh has exposed here is that price isn't always an indicator of tonal quality. I think with boutique pedals you have a much higher probability that they'll sounds great, whereas cheaper, mass-produced pedals may be a bit more of a lottery. That doesn't mean you can't find an awesome cheap pedal.
Josh really does cut through a lot of BS about gear on his channel. I mean, he used a Kemper for an entire year and no one even noticed. Now he's proven a cheap old Digitech pedal can be set to sound exactly like a Klon. You've probably seen the various blind shootouts on Anderton's, where they really can't tell the difference between the various clones. I bought one of the reissue Bluesbreaker pedals, but I realize there's a ton of clones of that pedal that all sound great and aren't so freakishly big. Thanks!
So does this prove that the EQ is what makes a Tubescreamer sound different?
Always has. Pot variances make every TS sound different with tone knob at noon. So they sound the same after tweaking them. The best is to use an EQ pedal with your TS pedal and say fuck JHS pedals
Your playing is so physical. It's insanely good! 🙌
Thanks so much mate 🎸
If I were Digitech I would make a Bad Monkey Reissue as fast as possible. 😁And I think Josh is a great guy, who always respectfully talks about other brands and his reaction to all the critics is so right!!
BTW, I had a Bad Monkey years ago, bought it new for about 35 Euro, but sold it long time ago. No regrets, it just didn't work for me.
I have one I bought when they first released that’s in mint condition with the box and candy what’s it worth nowadays ???
I think it depends on the guitar and the pickup that is being used.
The only thing the JHS Bad Monkey video got me to buy was a banana.
Something you said illustrated the same or similar point that Josh made. 5:06 "It's (the TS-10) the 'holy grail' tubescreamer."
15-20 years ago the TS-10 was just another used pedal... kind of like the Bad Monkey. At some point it showed up on somebody's pedalboard and suddenly people are calling it a 'holy grail.'
The pedal didn't magically change in all that time. It's all hype.
I have so many pedals I can't remember them all. I had one day planned on getting the Bad Monkey. I've been looking at them for $49 for a long time. I can wait if I ever even get one.
They have allready dropped to $100 average. Be patient, just remember pedals guitars and amps had gone up in prices way before Josh vid. A Standard Mexican Strat is almost 1k (NOS as discontinued Item), crazy that was the average price of a Made in usa Std strat in 2020 when I bought one. Now its 2k and more last time I checked.
Tube Screamers and their clones and many other overdrives as well all do a similar enough thing when they are used to push your amp that your playing and the amp itself have way more effect on your tone than which particular pedal you use.
Take any of these overdrives and use the pedal itself for distortion (rather than actually overdriving the amp) and they all sound like a guitar in a beer commercial.
Exactly. They are glorified EQ boosts like the old treble boosters
Bought one because of Phil X ten years ago it sounded great paid 20 bucks used
I bought a Mosky Silver Horse bc it won in a blind test against the Klon on the JHS channel. $40. Job done.
I'm still set with my Ibanez Tube Screamer. Overdrive is overdrive.
Josh is also driving a point here though he may not be aware of it - SOMETIMES DO NOT BELIEVE THE HYPE! Just because celebrities or influencers sing praises about a product does not mean you should get it too. But if you can afford it, then good. But more importantly - make the most of what you have. I have very cheap Klones and I use it in my gigs and I have no problem with it whatsoever.
Who would have ever thought that 2 overdrive pedals do the same thing? Amazing
Listeners really dont know, notice, or give a damn about your OD or Dist pedal. As long as it sounds "rock" or "metal" it's fine.