Digitech Screamin’ Blues – An Overlooked Late ‘90s Gem

Ain’t nothing more late-90s/early-2000s ‘tude than spelling a pedal name Screamin’ instead of Screaming.  From the name, to the whacky, cartoonish font, this thing just oozes 90's nostalgia. Today we’re diving into one of the often-overlooked pedals from exactly that era: the Digitech Screamin’ Blues.

The one I demoed recently is actually my original unit from back in the day. True to form, I picked it up at the tail end of its production run when the prices had dropped — always on the hunt for those budget bargains. At the time, I really bought into this run of Digitech pedals. Over the years I owned both the Bad Monkey and the Hot Head, and they always felt sturdier than the Behringer offerings of the time while costing less than the Boss alternatives. What I didn’t realise back then was that many of these weren’t just cheaper — in some ways, they were improvements on the circuits they were inspired by.

The secret weapon? That extra Low control.

The EQ Advantage

At a glance, the Screamin’ Blues looks like it’s ditched the traditional tone knob in favour of a simple two-band EQ. But this is where the magic lies.

The High control (in the way I see it, at least) acts much like a standard tone knob, letting you tame brightness or push it forward. The Low knob, however, is a “fatness” control that gives the pedal a ton of flexibility. Many classic circuits — including the ones these pedals were clearly based on — shave off some low end by default. That makes sense if you’re running chunky humbuckers and need to tighten up your sound for clarity, but it’s not always what you want with bright, jangly single coils.

With the Screamin’ Blues, you can dial that low end right back in, giving single-coil guitars more chunk and girth. Push it to extremes and you get a big, woofy bloom of bass, even that small-combo-speaker-struggling kind of sound if that’s your flavour. The EQ here makes the pedal far more versatile than many of the drives it was competing with at the time.

Two Runs, Subtle Differences

Here’s a fun bit of trivia: the Digitech line actually came in two distinct runs. On the surface they look identical, but there’s one key difference: weight.

The early versions feel like you’re trying to lift Mjolnir itself, while the later run is closer to the weight of a typical guitar pedal. Is there any tonal difference between the two? Hard to say without a proper A/B test — maybe that’s something I’ll do in a future video if enough people are interested. But it’s one of those quirks collectors and long-time users love to point out.

The Shadow of the Bad Monkey

Of course, we can’t talk about the Screamin’ Blues without mentioning its more famous sibling: the Bad Monkey. That pedal got a massive second life when Josh Scott of JHS Pedals did a video showing just how good it was. In that video, the Bad Monkey held its own against a whole range of drives, including — somewhat shockingly — an original Klon. The takeaway? Its powerful EQ made it ridiculously versatile.

The other pedals in the series got passing mentions, but the spotlight was firmly on the Bad Monkey. And if you’ve been paying attention to the gear market over the past decade, you’ll know what happens when Josh Scott shines a light on a forgotten pedal. Prices shoot up overnight, sometimes tenfold, and what was once a £10 bargain suddenly becomes a collector’s item.

We saw it happen with the plastic-housed Behringer pedals, we saw it with the Bad Monkey, and part of me is really hoping Josh never decides to do a feature on the Screamin’ Blues or the Hot Head. Some pedals are better left as affordable hidden gems rather than skyrocketing into “vintage collectible” territory. If he decides to, however, I may be sitting on a gold-mine...

Gone but not forgotten

The Screamin’ Blues might not have the meme-level fame of the Bad Monkey, but it has a lot going for it. With its two-band EQ, solid build, and late-‘90s charm, it’s one of those pedals that quietly punches above its weight. Whether you’re using it to add girth to single coils, tighten up humbuckers, or just push your amp into crunchy territory, it’s got more flexibility than most people give it credit for. With the recent leaks of the Badder Monkey, I'm quietly hoping to see a resurgence of this line - but for that, I guess only time will tell.

So my advice is, if you stumble across one in the wild at a decent price, grab it. Just don’t tell Josh Scott.