DigiTech Bad Monkey

Easy to dial in. Lots of bass and treble gain available. The gain control is quite nice - from subtle dirt to warm grind.

I echo what many others have said - the Bad Monkey is a fantastic sounding pedal. It works well with other pedals. It's quiet and transparent. Really a wonderful overdrive that competes with high-end overdrives. Most of us want an overdrive that adds a little girth without destroying your already-dialed-in clean sound. The Bad Monkey does it for $40.

p.s. Certainly do try the "mixer" out into your amp as well as the "amp" out. You just might like the slight punch from the mixer out. I find it adds a tiny bit of clarity to the signal.

Strat Plus
Spectraflex and George L cables
Boss CS3
Bad Monkey
Marshall BB2
Dunlop 535Q
Boss DD6
Amp (Crate Power Block or Yamaha DG80)

A solid pedal. Well designed from the bottom up.

We guitarists are a finicky bunch, so I'm not going to say everyone should get this pedal, but I was blown away by the Bad Monkey. If you are looking for a nice sounding OD/Boost type pedal, then at least check one of these out. If you like it, you can spend the other $100 you'd have spent on a boutique pedal on other gear. I have owned those pricey OD pedals before, and the Bad Monkey makes me feel a little silly for having spent so much on them.

Hats off to Digitech for a job well done.

Well covered by others on HC, so I'll skip this section.

I discovered a GREAT trick on this wonderful pedal: you can make the EQ curve on it almost completely FLAT, which means no annoying tubescreamer-like midrange hump and no bass loss. It is too simple ??? just turn the low and high controls up all the way up and turn the gain down a bit to compensate. If you want to bring back some or all of the tubescreamer midrange, back off the low and high controls and bring up the gain. I was able to nearly match my bypass tone by doing this with the gain knob almost all the way down. So if you want your amp???s sound plus a little hair, this pedal can do it really well.

I have owned a Fulldrive II, and it was a great pedal and didn???t lose bass, but I think it would benefit from a 2-knob tone control setup like the Bad Monkey has (are you listening Mike?). If Digitech put out a 2-channel version of this similar to the Fulldrive???s layout, they would have the perfect cheap overdrive pedal. Then again, 2 of these pedals only cost $80. Hmmm???maybe I???ll buy another one.

I bought this as a cheap backup in case my Line 6 AM4 dies mid-gig. The AM4 is a wonderful and truly underrated sleeper of a pedal. Line 6 amp modeling, but designed specifically to go in front of a tube amp, so it is the best of both worlds. Read the reviews on it here at HC. Line 6 stopped making it (why?!!!), and it can be picked up for less than $100 on eBay. It???s only fault is that it flies through batteries in a few hours, so that is why I got the Bad Monkey.

If Digitech ever stops making this pedal, I would bet its value would go way up on the used market. Definitely destined for legendary status.

8 Months Later...

OK...I have been spankin' my Epiphone Valve Jr. 5 watt Tube with the Monkey for the last 8 months & I can't get a bad sound out of it...it LOVES tubes & single coil Pickups fer sure..I own 6 Danelectro's which all have a different character to them & they all sound great thru the Monkey for Blues & beyond (aka AC/DC "crunch")...I bought a Snarling Dog's Blue Doo & although its tru-bypass it fails miserably as a blues pedal-too buzzy (great 6v6 tube emulation-that's it)...I also bought the Digitech Screamin Blues & it was WAY harsh & I sold it...the Bad Monkey represents VERY WELL what an OVERDRIVE pedal should sound like...both the Blue Doo & Screamin Blues (also Blues Driver etc) are very much Distortion Pedals...if your looking for a true BLUES tone look no further..."buy the monkey"
I reviewed this when I first bought it & I was not thrilled with the compression but I have found that the minor compression tends to even out & warm up the tone nicely & delivers a nice break up on my Class A amp. Also I recently bought a 1959 Silvertone Christmas Special (made by Dano) & its bright razor edge can only be tamed by adding just O' tad of the monkey...
I have found this pedal works great also as a booster in front of my Fuzz pedal & helps to get a more even Fuzz with much less noise & it also Fattens up a good Fuzz if you dial in more bass on the Monkey...
Finally just as a pre-amp pedal this will take a thin single coil tone & add some nice Mids & Lows to the Freq...

Its a Digitech-they are built well...

If your looking for an OVERDRIVE pedal this is a Tubescreamer for the 21st century...forget the re-issue Ibanez's try this first...or try the Tone Driver also by Digitech it has a wider range...even the Screamin Blues which I personally found a bit harsh is worth a shot...this Digitech line is nice & analog too boot. If the you want more transparency spend a little more & buy a "Badder Monkey" on ebay that has been modified to sound more tru-bypasslike & has even more bottom end...If you feel like Boss just isnt cutting it for you try the Bad Monkey- you'll like its response & versatility...blows the SD-1 away...

very simple to good sound from

very smooth,suprisingly smooth for solid state.I am using it with a USA tele and hot rod deluxe.One problem with the deluxe is the 3rd channel has a huge volume jump,I use this to kick the second channel up a notch and its perfect,no change in sound,just more gain.

so far so good.

Thank You Digitech,great product!

Does everything it claims to do.Excellent product at a very reasonable price,I almost overlooked it thinking it was a kids pedal.This is a great product.I would definatly buy it again and would even recomend buying it if you cant try it out first,thats usually not a good idea but this is that good!

Great pedal easy operation tone controls very are great easy to dial in a good tone

Sounds terrific does everything from a nice punchy overdrive, to a warm rhythm tone i.e. ACDC, Danzig, Jet, which can be controlled very much with high tone knob, also does convincing texas blues tone SRV
Also does good lead boost like a tube screamer similar to old school Metallica leads

my pedal board looks like this
Badmonkey-Double Muff distortion-boss oc-2-mxr phase 90-crybaby wah
Works well with the big muff overdrives it well and blends tone characteristics well

haven't had it long enough to know

haven't dealt with them

I have been playing a for about 10 years and I like this pedal about as well as anything I have ever played through

very easy to use. just like any other pedal

wow, this thing is great. at first i didnt like it at all because i was running it through a behringer v-ampire head. now that i have upgraded to a b-52 at-100 all tube head, it is great. when i got my new amp i noticed it doesnt have as good as sustain as a solid state, so i was going to get a compressor, but then i pluged this thing up and no need. i dont use it as a pedal itself, i use it more as a booster. i keep it on all the time (even when clean, because i like tool and they just roll down the volume on guitar instead of switching channels so it gives me that kind of sound) and it sounds great. it adds clearity to my sound and gives me more sustain, and it sounds like my amp, not a pedal... o yah did i mention i got it for 30 bucks. i use my like this level-5 high-6 low-6 gain-0. it helps alot

made out of medal, seems very sturdy to me.

?

great pedal. i play tool to seether and it just add sustain and clearity. once you turn it off everything just sounds dull. i love it.

This pedal is realy easy to use. You don't need the manual. It's realy simple to get a nice sound out of it

The sound of the bad monkey is realy awesome. It's my main pedal. I use it alot.

I use a Fender Telecaster into a Digi Delay --> Bad Monkey --> Hot Head --> Grunge --> Cry baby --> Hughes & Kettner Tube amp.

It's the best. You can get the sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan out of it. It's fantastic for blues and rock.

What can i say. Build like a tank!

Never dealt with Digitech. I don't ever have to deal with digitech. I'm a big Digitech fan.

I play 2 years now and i play mostly Rock and blues. It's fantastic. It's the best you'll get.

Didn't take me long to get a good sound. I use it as a clean boost, basically giving me a third channel on my JCM 800.Manual was well laid out, easy to follow the instructions

I'm using this with a Les Paul standard into GCB-95 wah, monkey straight into front of amp with a Boss GT-6 in the loop of my split channel JCM 800. I was previously using a TS-9 which I had modded by aramat. Great pedal, great mod but I was never happy with the bottom end loss and the excessive mid boost it used to give. Same from the TS-808 re-issue I then bought, bottom end would disappear when I stomped on it. So I bought the Bad Monkey after reading all the rave reviews and figuring that ??34-00 was not a lot of money to waste if I didn't like it. I think it's a truly fabulous pedal, does everything I want as regards transparently pushing the front of my amp into higher gain territory for solos. No complaints at all.

Would rely on it 100%. I am gonna buy another one, well, at that price why not?

Never had to deal with Digitech so I can't comment. Is this a testament to their product reliability?

I play rock covers, for this genre of music the bad monkey fits the bill a treat! I've been playing for 25 years and have owned a lot of gear over the years but I will be keeping this bad boy!!! It has made me put my tube screamers into retirement, the monkey is king. I love the fact that I can dial back in my bottom end with the low control, and tailor the high end too, as opposed to one universal tone control a la TS-9/TS-808. I know it's 'horses for courses' in the world of overdrives, but this serves me good and proper. Give one a try, you won't regret it!!!

Very easy and very versatile.

Sounds great as long as you understand what it does and does not do. It is not a distortion box. Not noisy at all, the eq knobs really help a lot. I am using it with my Peavey Prowler tube amp. Sounds great. Sounds better than a lot of actual output tube distortion that I've heard.

Looks and feels very very solid. Very surprised at the quality of htis being a DigiTech. This will now make me look at other Digitech stuff for sure.

Never dealt with them

I play rock, mostly old school 70's. Been playing almost 40 years..was actually there in NYC when punk was real. (Unfortunately I was also there when disco was real too!)I think the good reviews are right on for this pedal..sounds great and is built like a tank. I bought it with an Epiphone Valve Junior Combo which I am returning, but this is a keeper for sure.

It is quite easy to use.
4 controls (gain, level, treble,bass). As easy to use as a 4 controls stompbox can be.
The manual is good enough.
Minus: changing the battery could be easier. It is not really difficult, but i have seen pedals where it is easier.
Therefor only 9.

The best overdrive i have heard so far. Better than many botique stomp boxes i have tested.
Asthe name "tube overdrive" sais it is no black-death-thrash-metal-distortion, no vintage fuzz or anything else. It is a tube overdrive, and a really amazing good one!
Maximum gain sounds good and adds a little compression, but that is what i expect from a tube amp or a tube overdrive pedal. At low gain settings it gives a clean amp a slight crunch, like a tube amp that starts to crunch a little. If you turn up gain, it behaves like a tube amp at which you turn up the gain control: more drive and at some point also a little compression (what gives nice sustain without losing dynamics).
If you put the bad monkeyinfront ofa tube amp that already delivers crunch, you have a nice extra lead sound with more gain and sustain.
Like infriont of clean amp it always sounds like tube, it never sounds like a transistor device.
Just great. As i wrote above: the tube overdrive pedal i know.
All in all it sounds neutral: it dows not make youramp sound likeadifferent amp, it just adds more gain to your, it is like a foot switch for an extra gainstage of your (tube) amp.
10 points clearly.

I have not long enough experience to judge about reliabity, but it looks and feels rock solid.

No idea, i did need support so far and assume i will never need.

Clearly a ten! Buy one!
It is quite cheap and it sounds amazing!
It you are looking for a tube overdrive pedal, test the bad monkey, and i am quite sure you won't look for another tube drive pedal anymore!
I paid 40 euros for it (new, NOT second hand), what is about 48 US$. Cheaper than any other pedal i own or owned, and better sounding than any otherpedal (marshall, ibanez, boss, boutique-stuff) i own or owned!