Harley Benton Vintage Overdrive

I didn't plan on buying this pedal, truthfully, I was hoping to one day get some kind of overdrive pedal (maybe a Maxon OD808) as a booster for my amp to record hard rock/metal guitar tracks for my own music.

I was shopping for some stuff on thomann and I came across this pedal, looked like a clone of the Maxon OD808 (sounded pretty close to one too), it was nice & cheap, and after looking at some reviews and demos of this pedal on YouTube and so on, I liked what I heard, and decided to throw it into the shopping cart. It seemed like an absolute steal considering how it sounded and how much it costs, and even if it didn't sound all that great, it wouldn't have been much of a loss.

After unboxing it and sticking in a 9v battery I tested this thing out on my valve amp, on a high gain setting of course |m| and I must say, I was really impressed with the sound of this pedal, it gave my amp a more tight and articulated sound, much better than how my amp sounds with no overdrive pedal to assist the tone. It does give a good 'tube-like' sound to your amp whether you're using it on a clean or a distorted setting, and you can use it for a light crunch or a full on overdrive.

In terms of build quality it feels pretty solid, all contained in a little green metal box, the knobs feel nice and sturdy, don't feel like they're gonna just fall off or anything. Could probably take a good stomping before it starts wearing down. I don't know how it'll fair in a live scenario, I've only been using this pedal for recording purposes, if you do takes this pedal out to gigs, do so at your own risk.

It's easy to work the controls on this pedal too, nothing complicated about it at all. Pretty much has the controls you'd expect from your average overdrive pedal. Similar to the OD808 it has a drive, tone and volume function, doesn't take a genius to figure out what those do.

Now, there are other pedals that are 'technically' better than this one, and may be more favourable than this one, but that does not mean it's no good, this pedal does hold it's ground against it's more expensive competitors. And for the price you absolutely cannot go wrong with this, for a £/?20-something pedal, it's pretty damn impressive.

If you have a little money to spend on a cheap but great sounding overdrive pedal, take a serious look into one of these.

It is nicely done, looks quality made and all the pots smoothly running. I bought that in order to boost my tube amp and it does the job nicely. As i use that with high gain only i can only tell that it works fine to give an extra punch to the amp but did not explore that with clean channel too much. My settings are: Drive - 9 o'clock, volume - maximum, tone - 12 o'clock (slightly vary on the guitar i use)

In regards of what is inside it is pretty much the clone of TS808/TS9. It is based on RC4558P chip, two c1815 gr 331 transistors, and pot knobs are 500K drive, 100K volume, 20K tone. There is a name "joyo jf-01" on the electronic board inside e.g. i guess it is Joyo who makes this pedal for Harley Benton/Thomann.

So, it is good clone of TS808/TS9 and definitely value for money!

I have used it on various amps (solid state, tube/valve, modelling) and it always sounded perfect to my ears !
I mostly play rock (from 70's to 90's). My usual settings are drive at 10:00, volume at 12:00 (or less on tube amp if playing home) and tone at 1:00 with a HSS Strat and a SH Tele.
I often use it with a Fender Mustang modelling amp and it is much better (warmer, more dynamic) that the Fender greenbox emulation.
Construction is good and knobs feel nice. I've been using it for a couple of months with the thomann recommended AC adaptor whithout any buzz issue.
Considering the price and the quality, I am seriously considering purchasing other Harley Benton pedals... next one might be the digital delay...