NPD: Bad Comrade

[Winston Psmith]

I really went and picked it up yesterday afternoon, when I got done with my morning catering job, but I was so brain-burnt by the time I got home, I didn't get to play with it at all. (Saturday night, I served a dinner party for 11, then first thing Sunday morning, I did a retirement lunch for 120+/-, two jobs within less than 24 hours.)

 

How to describe this thing? "It Slices, it Dices, it Fizzles & Sizzles!" The videos really do it justice. It sounds like fried tubes, burnt transistors, de-magged pickups, and punctured speaker cones, overheard via short-wave radio. No surprise, I love it . . .

 

There are no 'clean' tones to be had from this thing: Tone purists should not merely back away slowly, they should turn and run like hell.

 

The Distortion part of the box is the nastiest, buzzy, farty, fizzy, craptacular pile of noise I've ever heard from any pedal. The Glitch knob controls the internal Gating effect, which seems to do most of the Slicing & Dicing. The Delay effect acts somewhat like the short-lived DanElectro Shift Daddy. The Shift Daddy was a Delay effect, controlled by an Expression-style pedal: Rocking the pedal back and forth 'shifted' the Delay Time, creating wild swoops of Pitch. Adding an Expression Pedal to the Bad Comrade lets you sweep through the Delay Time, for 'dive-bomb' or 'barber-pole' sounds. Stutter dis-engages the Delay Trails. With Stutter ON, you can hear how aggressive the Gate effect is, chopping off sustained tones, and dropping you into dead silence. Playing staccato Rhythm Guitar into the Bad Comrade could be very interesting, with Stutter engaged.

 

I've had more than a few Crapulators, over time, and it's hard to compare them, because they're often so different, in terms of how they're made, and what they're supposed to do. Sonically, the closest thing I've heard is the WMD Geiger Counter Civilian Issue, but I find the Bad Comrade far more entertaining. Dialing through the limited Waveforms in the Geiger Counter CI, I didn't hear much that really interested me; I expect the full-size model is far more impressive. Plugging in the Bad Comrade gave me the grins, as soon as I heard the first notes.

 

I'm debating where to place it in the signal chain. For now, I'm thinking Moog MF Ring Mod -> Bad Comrade -> Prometheus Filter -> Quantum Drive -> Multiwave Distortion -> Moog MF Flanger -> Pigtronix QTM, then on to the line of Delays. If you don't hear from me for a while, don't worry, I'm adrift in a sea of sounds . . .

[Dannyalcatraz]

Cool!

 

 

[Danzilla]

Sounds G-G-G-G-R-R-R-R-EEEEEEEEAAAAAAA-A-A-A-TTTT-T-T-Tzzzzz

[Larryz]

Glad it's working for you Bro! Enjoy the honeymoon! I think you will know best when it comes to the signal chain placement!

[Caevan O’Shite]

Niiiiiiiice... Glad to hear it! The Bad Comrade MkII plus an expression-pedal sounds like a LOT of fun and mayhem. :smirk:

[Winston Psmith]

Thanks, everyone! Very happy working this new toy into the system.

 

The EV-5 seems to work with damned near anything: Roland got this one right. Having the EV-5 attached makes much more sense, as regards the Delay Time knob power-up; it allows for a full sweep through the Delay Time range. Not sure how it would affect the Bad Comrade's functions, otherwise, if there were no Expression Pedal connected?

 

The only way to be sure the Stutter effect is Off is to turn it Off before you power down. First time I powered up, Stutter was On: I turned it Off, powered down, and re-started, with no problem.

 

Setting the Glitch knob fully counter-clockwise sets the Gate to maximum clipping, so again, I can see why you'd want the Gate fully open when you power up the pedal. Setting the Glitch knob fully counter-clockwise will also cut off the sound of the Freeze control. It doesn't appear that the EV-5 does anything with the Glitch control; the one-page Manual says that the Expression Pedal controls the Delay Time, and that's all.

 

One very cool trick I've discovered; with the Time and Glitch knobs both set to 11 o'clock (no Exp Pedal attached), I get this sort of harmonized, doubled sound. Oh man, I'd pay money to hear someone trying to play the harmonized Guitar parts to Hotel California, or the outro to Free Bird on this thing!!!!!

 

Ring Mod -> Bad Comrade -> Prometheus is pretty damned close to a compact Modular Synth rig in terms of sound. Not to everyone's taste, I understand, but I'm more than impressed.

[Caevan O’Shite]