Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4075
Location: Utah | "Minky? That's what I said."
Several threads recently have discussed boosting output volume during solos and someone asked about the Bad Monkey. It's a Digitech stomp box which is advertised as a tube distortion pedal. I've had the box for not even a week yet, but have used it for one church performance and have goofed off at home with it.
For electric guitar it works great. The tube sound is very very good. It compares very nicely to a real tube preamp driven to distortion. (The ART Tube MP is a $30 preamp with one 12AX7 tube that can be driven very clean or very distorted. It's a steal at $30).
The Bad Monkey can be set to low gain and high output, giving a clean boosted signal. There are tone controls for low and high freqs that do a good job. My rig is just a bit too hot to get a totally clean sound unless the volume is turned down before the Bad Monkey. My setup is the Hohner G3T guitar with DiMarzio humbuckers that are moderately hot, running into the Bad Monkey and then to the amp or PA.
Distortion can be dialed in to the boost as well. It sounds natural and uncolored. However, the sound is colored a little bit if the signal into it is already fuzzed up. Meaning, if you want to boost a signal during your solo, and the signal has already been processed and distorted before the Bad Monkey, the boosted signal will have the additional stage of distortion and thus will sound slightly different than the unboosted tone. The bypass signal is totally uncolored.
For acoustic, it does ok. The bypass sounds uncolored and normal. The boosted signal does color the sound a little bit, but the tone controls are very effective and so the coloration can be moderated. I found that cutting the lows and the highs a little bit worked well. The resulting tone does sound a bit like an electric guitar, and less like an acoustic. If you just boost for a lead riff it might be completely appropriate to sound a bit more like an electric.
With distortion cranked in it sounds like a tube amp driven to distortion by your acoustic guitar.
My 6778 Elite with OpPro does not drive it to distortion even with the volume up full on the OpPro. The Bad Monkey puts out a clean sound with the gain down to minimum and the volume up full, just colorized as described above. To get distortion out of the 6778, the Bad Monkey gain has to be cranked up a bit. So, it will boost clean or it will boost dirty, however you like it.
For $49.99 I'd say it's a very adequate solution if you just want to boost your signal during leads during live performance. It's also fine as a basic tube distortion stomp box. |
The Bad Monkey is OK