🍌 I see the Bad Monkey risin' 🐒

I can't speak to the current crop of behringer pencils since they moved all manufacturing to behringer city china. Older behringer mics were just rebadged chinese mics from the factory that made studio projects and mxl among other brands. They were pretty hard on the ears, particularly into budget interface preamps. The current large diaphragm condenser sounds substantially better than the pre-city version so I'm guessing that they've improved their small diaphragms too. I wouldn't put a microphone in this price range other than an oktava on a lead vocal, but it may prove to be fine for instruments.

Speaking of oktava, I forgot to mention that the mc02 pencil is a world class small diaphragm condenser for peanuts compared to a Neumann. It compares very favorably to the km184. In fact I kinda like it better.

I guess the Behringer ones would probably be fine, actually both the condenser mic and the dynamic mic I have are from budget brands and are fine, as is most of my gear.

Strangely enough, I only got my current condenser mic because it came with a frame for mounting it to my desk, and I bought it for the frame (the mic and the frame together were even cheaper than just buying a frame from any other brand locally). The brand was "Yenkee", after some research I've found it is a Czech-based electronics company. Anyway, my previous condenser mic was an Audio-Technica, but the dirt-cheap Yenkee one was actually better quality, especially for recording vocals! I have no idea if it was just a fluke or not though.

Also I'm checking out Oktava, looks good! Very few within my price range, but will consider that too

The audio technica 2020 I'm sure you're referring to is a fine mic for the money. I've never used it for vocals apart from the usb version just to demo acoustic guitar and voice on the go... or to do a zoom meeting. It's got a very forward top end like the 4040 but not as pleasant. It's a very solid mic for the money and if you managed to find better for less money I'm surprised.

Edit: I googled your czech mic, it's an electret and that's why it's cheaper. I like electret condensers despite their bad rep, but depending on the quality of the piezo material on the backplate it could lose charge and slowly lose output from the capsule vs a true condenser that charges the backplate with wires from the phantom line that powers the internal amplifier when plugged in. It's probably fine though. Even cheap electret capsules are good these days. It used to be just shure, sony and CAD equiteks that got electret right.

Yeah it's the Audio Technica 2020, and it was very good for the price, and could capture all the overtones in vocals and instruments very well! The thing the Czech one seems to do better is filter out the pops from the vocals without me having to keep it at a distance from me, or sing in a way where I need to drop certain letters. Also, for some reason it reacts better to compressors on the vocals. Though the Audio Technica may be better at capturing instrument sounds, I'm not sure as I haven't compared the two for instruments (only vocals)

Regarding electret losing charge and eventually output, does that mean its working life would be significantly shorter than the Audio Technica? (I bought the Czech one 1 and 1/2 years ago, I can't remember when we got the Audio Technica though)

Pop filter. You can make one from a stocking and a hangar to save money. But 6 inches is a minimum distance for any condenser on vocal. There are no rules but unless you're whispering further away will produce a more natural sound due to the pronounced proximity effect of cardioid patterns and the excellent bandwidth of condensers.

You have decades before you have to worry about a cheap electret losing charge. It might not ever happen. High quality piezoelectric material has become a lot more affordable. I was just sharing information.

Bad monkey.

Ok thanks :D actually with the Czech one they also included a pop filter, as well as the mic and mounting frame, so that was a great help with that problem. I tried the filter with both, and with the Czech one I was capable of going louder without it popping. At the time I tested them I used to go up close to the mic, but nowadays I do keep a larger distance from the mic when recording (for a different reason, to make the vocals sound more "distant", and have some natural reverb).

Necro post, but this reverb listing for bad monkey packaging is cracking me up!

I've debated selling my monkey and getting a Wampler Triumph which pairs Bad Monkey and SD-1 circuits together. I always kinda wished I'd gone SD-1 over BM but I like my BM too so the Triumph seems like the perfect compromise. Josh's video helped me accept that my Monkey's perfectly fine - I don't need no upgrade!

The od1 and sd1 are my favorite soft clip style overdrives. But I play mostly British amps. If you're using a british amp it's a wise change up. If you're getting a boutique that does both camps then it's a win/win.

Weirdly, I have an issue now with the Triumph in that someone pointed out how closely the typeface matches "Trump" and now I can't unsee it!

Don't discount the mxr custom badass. Bad name but it's got sd1 asymmetrical clipping diodes and a switchable mid boost with a different and very effective 2 band tone stack. The bad monkey is a true baxandall which is an elegant active shelving circuit whereas the badass retains the typical ts9/sd1 treble bleed tone control but adds an active wein-bridge peaking filter like on mixer with sweepable mids fixed at 100hz. Those 3 controls together have made it a desert island pedal f oi r me as it can be matched to most amps while retaining the classic grit of that whole family of drives.

Which Custom Badass do you mean? you say 3 controls so I guess it's the 78 Distortion you mean? I like it

I like the basic MXR pedal designs in general, however that other Custom Badass, the modified OD 77... My god it's an abomination! That gold finish has never looked classy to me since the 1970's and I can't help but be reminded of the old Benson & Hedges fag packets that my granny smoked! And those four shrunken control knobs positioned uncomfortably close to the side set my teeth on edge!

That's surely the visual equivalent of dragging fingernails down a chalk board for me!

Some people seem to not care a hoot about the appearance of their gear but for some reason it matters significantly to me. Even switching from my red mustang to the sunburst feels like a completely different instrument - I feel so much more laid back and chill playing the sunburst... It's not something I can remotely hope to explain.

I was not aware of the Baxandall audio circuit so that was something learned - memorable name too. Mr Baxandall was apparently born just a couple of miles along the Thames from where I live.

I had always thought Boss's asymmetrical clipping was patented and exclusive to the SD-1 so I've been a bit surprised to see the MXR and Wampler overdrives boasting of asymmetric distortion?

Which Custom Badass do you mean? you say 3 controls so I guess it's the 78 Distortion you mean? I like it

Nope, the ugly gold one. Does the business. If it offends you the green rhino mk2 or higher is the same thing with symmetrical clipping in the feedback loop. It's a very practical design. The 78 is a ds1

My granny smoked parliaments or as. P-funks as we call them in philly... so I can get past the gold paint. Plus I can always find it in the 'talent enhancer' drawer.

I had always thought Boss's asymmetrical clipping was patented and exclusive to the SD-1 so I've been a bit surprised to see the MXR and Wampler overdrives boasting of asymmetric distortion?

Mike Fuller skirted it by using mosfets configured as diodes with an additional germanium diode in series with one of them and I think someone else skirted it with 2 red LEDs and a germanium. Some time into the boutique explosion boss let the patent lapse. That's if there really was a US patent. I've never seen one. That's just the lore. I'm sure roland had a patent in Japan but that might be all they were referencing in the marketing material. Sometimes a lawyer sending a cease and desist letter citing a 'pending' patent that was never actually filed is enough to scare competitors off for decades. It's weird that in the od1 they innovated asymmetrical clipping as well as putting the diodes I the opamp feedback loop but only suppisedly patented the asymmetry... leading ibanez to rip them off with symmetrical diodes in the loop of a jrc4558 in ts808.

Mike fuller double lifted the OCD. Look up the video labs overdrive, not the sparkle drive, the straight od.

Ahh, I'm not so down on the fugly badass. That was the gin talking yesterday 🥴
I just like the look of the 78 better - it retains the classic lines I associate with MXR pedals.

Hell, the Bad Monkey ain't exactly pretty - Adrian Utley tapes over the one in his collection to hide the goofy script! - but I get by happily enough with it now since I usually just use it after a primary overdrive for a clean boost, hi/lo tone shaping and/or gain staging.

I'm trying to tell myself I'm done now for OD/distortion tone chasing 🤭 For the time being at least. Most of my wishlist 'interests' are spendy enough (Hudson Elec Broadcast ticks all my OD boxes: unique circuit? retro tech vibe) that I have more fun/practical priorities to invest in, like seeing gigs, festivals, music workshops and ultimately I suspect such experiences will bring more satisfaction than gathering more stuff and pedal juggling. (just speaking this out loud as a reminder)

I just looked up that schematic and the broadcast really is pretty close to your typical early transistor radio console input right down to a transformer coupled output (you don't need one on the input for guitar. It uses 1 IC in the power supply to step 9v up to 24v but unlike a lot if 60s and 70s studio gear it appears to be a unipolar supply, so it's about 12v peak to peak swing so it should gave half the headroom of say a 1073 mic preamp meaning it'll break up earlier. It uses germanium transistors like the earliest solid state mixers which are inherently less linear than silicon. I'll bet Hudson has to sort huge batches of those transistors to get ones that are in spec, germanium are notoriously inconsistent. I can't believe he's keeping the cost under 300 bucks.

Gaaahh! your techie talk gives you power over weak minds - stop making me want stuff!

umm... but actually I've just demoted the Broadcast from my wishlist. I do still like it but I just don't need it. I checked out a few Broadcast demos with my guitar on my knee and I'm finding that I can get equally pleasing dynamically ragged low/mid gain tones out of my new Boss fuzz. The Boss doesn't get quite as spitty but it seems to cover pretty much the same ground as I like the Broadcast for - I'm liking this fz-1w more and more. It's just such a great all round filth machine!

Sorry but I come from a school of sound engineering where we were passable electrical and acoustical engineers at least through experience. I know how stuff works, knowing less is uncivilized. A more practical buy would be a budget neve clone. Great mic pre, plug a DI in and you have low end for bass with the thru jack hitting a miced amp, put a guitar into a boost into the hi-Z jack and gun everything up and get revolution tones straight to your DI (a compressor and/or pad might be required too).