Dirt Box testing this weekend!

thecornman

thecornman

BREAUX
I have been kind of collecting cheap used dirt pedals lately and starting to get a good pile of them! I decided to give them a good test run against each other and see which ones work best when stacking with others. I play through a single channel tube amp so use pedals to give me different options. I like to have three to four different dirt pedals on my board at a time so narrowing it down is not always easy, because I like a lot of these pedals for different reasons. Here is a pic of ten of them for the first round! I have a few more I will be subbing in through out the weekend.

 
Well I have somewhat narrowed it down to four of them!

The Bad Monkey which I have had forever and always have a hard time taking of my board! Love it for boasting other pedals, because it plays so well with everything I try it with.

The Boss OD-3! Also plays well with others and has it own distinct sound I really like.

The Marshall Jackhammer! I only use the overdrive channel on this one. The distortion side is not very useable, but the overdrive side sound amazing. This pedal truly does sound like a Marshall in a box to me.

Last up is the Maritime Analog Valve Pusher! Love this one. When pushed by something else in front of it I get an almost fuzz sound from it. It also seems to be very transparent on its own.

I am sure I will be mixing it up once in a while with some of the other ones, but for now I am going with these.
 
I've never played with a Bad Monkey but folks who have them seem to love them quite a bit.
 
Ya I think a lot of people don't even bother giving the Bad Monkey a try, because it is looked at as a cheap starter pedal. I just find it very good myself. Liked it more then the Tube Screamer I used to have which is why I got rid of it. Less of a mid hump and better eq.
 
Really cool! I don't remember that boss duel od. I know the original, and I have the turbo model, but don't remember that one. Those are the only boss pedals that reuse the same color over and over I think.
 
Grave Bomber said:
Really cool! I don't remember that boss duel od. I know the original, and I have the turbo model, but don't remember that one. Those are the only boss pedals that reuse the same color over and over I think.
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Ya i really dig the Boss Dual od! It is one that will be making its way on the board once in a while for sure. It has a green channel and a red channel. The green channel is more of a regular overdrive and the red one is much closer to a distortion. The red channel is the one I use more when I am using the pedal. They are discontinued now, but can still be found for resonible prices on ebay now and again.
 
Every time I did head-to-heads of my dirt pedals, the Jackhammer came out on top. It does the "clean distortion" thing really well -- that natural sound where you get harmonics and sustain without being overly compressed and fuzzed-out.

Apparently, the OD circuit is based on the Shredmaster. I have both the Shredmaster and the Jackhammer and prefer the Jackhammer. The pots seem to have more usable range and the smaller footprint is nice.

Unfortunately, Marshall tricked out the pedal too much with the distortion mode and the contour. Getting a good sound is not intuitive from the controls and there are way too many "meh" sounds. Put it on OD, roll the contour off, and it's a really nice pedal.

I ought to try running my Bad Monkey into the Jackhammer. Don't know why I never thought of that until seeing this thread.
 
USian Pie said:
Every time I did head-to-heads of my dirt pedals, the Jackhammer came out on top. It does the "clean distortion" thing really well -- that natural sound where you get harmonics and sustain without being overly compressed and fuzzed-out.

Apparently, the OD circuit is based on the Shredmaster. I have both the Shredmaster and the Jackhammer and prefer the Jackhammer. The pots seem to have more usable range and the smaller footprint is nice.

Unfortunately, Marshall tricked out the pedal too much with the distortion mode and the contour. Getting a good sound is not intuitive from the controls and there are way too many "meh" sounds. Put it on OD, roll the contour off, and it's a really nice pedal.

I ought to try running my Bad Monkey into the Jackhammer. Don't know why I never thought of that until seeing this thread.
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It is a really great sounding pedal in overdrive mod! I think the reason it doesn't get steller reveiws might be from people buying it for the high gain channel instead of the overdrive. I only use it for the overdrive channel and it is worth it for just that alone. I only paid 30 bucks for the thing used which I think is a hell of a good price.

The Bad Monkey with very little gain pushing it works very well for a boast.
 
I don't know much about most of your dirt pedals but wanted to chime in on the Bad Monkey. It was my first pedal, followed by a Boss DS-1, that most people on forums hate. a buddy of mine showed me that if I put the Monkey down stream of the DS-1, at low gain levels, and turned both on, it created a gorgeous, fat rock sound. Really smoothed out that DS-1. He told me a bunch of stuff about square waves from the DS-1 being smoothed out by the Monkey, and I can't really remember all that. But it works! Also, as you say, at low levels, it is a really nice boost that also adds a touch of warmth, whether in combination with other pedals, or by itself.
 
I watched a video yesterday of an OCD chained with a TS9. It sounded really really awesome. Both were turned way down and created a very nice drive.
 
thecornman said:
It is a really great sounding pedal in overdrive mod! I think the reason it doesn't get steller reveiws might be from people buying it for the high gain channel instead of the overdrive. I only use it for the overdrive channel and it is worth it for just that alone. I only paid 30 bucks for the thing used which I think is a hell of a good price.

The Bad Monkey with very little gain pushing it works very well for a boast.
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I got around to trying this tonight. I set the Jackhammer for a solid AC/DC crunch sound and boosted it with the Bad Monkey -- Level at 3:embarrassed:0, Bass at about 2:embarrassed:0, Treble at Noon, and Gain at 9:embarrassed:0. The result was a really smooth, articulate, singing tone. Lots of harmonic sensitivity without being harsh. It was a little too mid-rangey with the humbucker but great with the Tele.

Since I was already messing around, I also tried the Bad Monkey into my old big-box Rat. With a humbucker, it was really punchy and thick. It balanced out some of the Rat's harshness. Very nice.

Kind of cool to discover new uses for the Bad Monkey.
 
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