Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
DOD finally releases its Badder Monkey Triple Parallel Blended Circuits Overdrive
Key Points
DOD's Badder Monkey Triple Parallel Blended Circuits Overdrive is a redesigned X‑Monkey, not a straight reissue. It adds three parallel, blendable circuits—Behaved, Bad, Badder—selectable via a 3‑way switch (Behaved Bad || BAD BADDER || BADDER BEHAVED) and a detented Barrel Blender to isolate circuits.
It keeps four core controls—Gain, Level and 2‑band EQ—with dual‑concentric highs (top) and lows (bottom). Controls: Bananas [GAIN], Curiosity [LEVEL], Barrel Blender; MOOD/EQ: Grunt (LOWS)/Screech (HIGHS).
It is available for $159; As of the article, the price was £129 on GuitarGuitar.
DOD is obviously a company that doesn’t do things by half - and rather than just a straight-up reissue cash-in on that JHS hype. Instead DOD went back to the drawing board and massively re-designed the circuit to make it even more powerful and versatile!
The original circuit controls were - Level, Low EQ, High EQ, Gain. And the new pedal ups the ante with 3 separate parallel blendable circuits - Behaved, Bad, and Badder - where the 3-way switch allows you to target 2 of those at a time - Behaved <> Bad || BAD <> BADDER || BADDER <> BEHAVED.
Both Old and New X-Monkey pedals have the same 4 core controls - sharing the Gain, Level, and 2-Band EQ - the new pedal has a dual-concentric control with Highs adjusted via the top layer, and Lows via the bottom half. While those 3 blendable parallel circuits (3-way switch) and the ’Barrel’ blend knob - are entirely new for the Badder Monkey.
Controls - Bananas [GAIN], Curiosity [LEVEL], Barrel Blender (detent notches to isolate circuits), Blend Mode : Behaved <> Bad || BAD <> BADDER || BADDER <> BEHAVED, MOOD / EQ : Grunt (LOWS) / Screech (HIGHS).
The Badder Monkey is available for $159 and equivalent quite widely now - I saw it for £129 on GuitarGuitar - and I will for sure look to pick one up after Christmas! I always take a pedal acquisition hiatus in December - there are different budget priorities for that month!
Props to DOD for doing a proper job on this Monkey and not taking the more obvious easy route of a straight up reissue! This looks like a fantastic evolution and improvement over the JHS-hyped original!
Demos
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