The Internet Has Thoughts About MusicRadar's DOD Badder Monkey Review.
MusicRadar called it a Klon substitute. The forum called it something else.
Two sides. One page.
Johnny argues the piece. Then he argues against himself. Somebody has to check his work. Read both, then call the winner below.
The take is shown below.
Source
“there is a versatile workhorse that can be finely dialled in to cover a myriad of needs.”
What the internet actually said
“Looks like a cash grab. I haven't heard any clips yet.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · c.h.
“It's a bit of a shame they opted for one tone control.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · f.p.
“The new one doesn't look like it has that [mixer out jack from the original].”
Seymour Duncan Forum · m.n.
The Suede Read
MusicRadar reviewed the DOD Badder Monkey and called it a versatile workhorse. They went further. With the right EQ settings, they said, it can sub for a Klon. That is a big sentence for a $99 pedal.
The Seymour Duncan Forum had a different opening move. Before the clips were even out, someone called it a cash grab. That reaction landed before a single note was played publicly. It tells you something about how the community reads a legacy brand dusting off a classic name.
When the details did land, the forum found two things worth saying. First: the original Bad Monkey had a mixer out jack — a dry blend path that made it genuinely useful in recording and bass rigs. The Badder Monkey does not have it. Second: one tone control is a step backward from what players had been asking for.
We are not in the business of disagreeing with MusicRadar on tone. If the sweep gets you close to a Klon at a tenth of the secondhand price, that matters. But the forum noticed something the review did not lead with: the Badder Monkey removed a feature that made the original interesting beyond its drive sound.
A reissue that drops a capability is a product decision. That decision deserves a sentence in the review. The forum found it in December. The review ran in May. That is what we are here for.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org
Cash grab, posted before a single clip existed, is the exact vibes-before-receipts move this masthead bans, and the column printed it as the internet's opening argument. The Klon claim was checkable. Nobody checked.
The post's structure gives the forum the first word, and the first word was filed before evidence existed. A cash grab, posted prior to any public audio, is not a thought the internet had about the Badder Monkey. It is a reflex the internet has about legacy brands reviving old names, deployable against any product, informative about none. This column's entire constitutional premise is that claims get checked against receipts. It opened with a claim that predates the possibility of receipts and framed it as the counterweight to a magazine that at least played through the pedal.
Meanwhile the actual checkable claim sat there unchecked. MusicRadar said the Badder Monkey, with the right EQ settings, can sub for a Klon. That is a ninety-nine-dollar pedal being measured against the most mythologized circuit in the industry, and this masthead employs the tools to settle it: the house Klon historian, a kit-built clone on staff, a level-matched A/B protocol documented in its own pages. The audit was one afternoon of work. The post ran the vibe against the claim and called the standoff a split.
The DOD story underneath is better than either document. A budget brand's klone claim going mainstream in the glossies is the final stage of the Klon myth collapsing into commodity, which this magazine has been chronicling for years. The right post held the review's claim to the bench test, printed the result either way, and used the cash-grab reflex as its own exhibit: how brand nostalgia and brand cynicism are the same uninformative coin, flipped. Instead the coin got printed mid-air, and the verdict is the sound of it never landing.