Harley Benton American TrueTone 5-stars Reviews

Amazing pedal for very low price

This pedal offers so many possibilites for so little money ; it's a no brainer !

(Does feel a little cheap and light, but who cares for 30¤)

Outstanding for the price

I bought it as a back-up for jams, and it has proved to perform beyond expectations. For 30 ¤ you get a good preamp/overdrive, with a very usable cab simulator.

Excellent tweakability allow you to get a very wide range of distortion/overdrives, from mild blues to classic rock (not metal).

I dont see any cons. I would have rated it good or very good if it costed 100¤, for 30¤ is outstanding.

Gem

Amazingly versatile pedal and incredible tone, not just for the price but against many other more boutique offerings. Sounds incredible in my Julia chorus.

Surprised at this!

For 30 euros, this is a steal. I use it as a preamp for clean tones. Works spectacular. Really surprised.

Only issue I found was the power adapter connection. It has loosy feeling, every once in while after carrying my pedalboard or some other movemnts plug comes out the socket a bit and enough to lose connection. But really it's not an issue. have played shows, everything went well.

Also sounds kinda ok going direct with this.

Excellent at any price

I bought this on a whim and have been very impressed. I use it to add a little extra to clean sounds and "heat" them up. The drive can be subtle or you can dial in a bit of Neil Young fried amp distortion so the range of sounds and flexibility of the pedal has been the most surprising. Does it make my rig sound like an "American Amp" played all out - not sure but is sounds great and pretty much like I think it should. At the price I can't recommend this highly enough.

Very Good Sound

Bought this pedal and some more stuff because I had some vouchers. This pedal is one of the main drive pedals on my board. Using it live and in the studio.

The sound is a wide range of fender type sounds, even some Hendrix vibe. With my rig which is a fully analog chain - Jet City JCA20HV into a 2x12 closed cab loaded w/ Jensen C12Q-16 speakers - some great SRV and Clapton tones can be dialed in.

This pedal can also be an "always on" type of pedal for example as your basic rhythm tone.

Pros.: The 3 band EQ is a huge extra. Tone is a bit too harsh just roll off the Highs. Need more oomph turn up the lows. You get the idea. The "voice" knob is where the variety of tones is. You can go from clean Deluxe Reverb type sounds to some cranked Tweed style. Keep in mind that all the knobs incl the ones on your tube amp react to each other. You can really dig in.

Cons.: There's some hiss at higher settings, but I don't think it's a problem. It gets lost in the music.

Harmonica straight to PA

I use this to go straight into the PA with my harmonica and its fab. It works great with my tube amp as well but if you're tired of hauling a big amp to rehearsal or gigs then this is super. Tone and Gain controls allow me to dial in a "Tube Amp" sound. Plenty of volume as well

If you like those vintage fender amps you will love this pedal.

This pedal is modelled from the Black-Face amplifiers which include the Deluxe Reverb all the way through to Tweed Fender amps.

You can get those clean and dirty, tube saturated tones made famous by the classic fender amplifiers.

It can be used in front of an amplifier or direct to a PA system.

If you use it in front of a solid state amplifier, this pedal can make your overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals sound much better if you put it after them in the effects chain.

This pedal is really amazing!

Excellent value for money

It is an very good pedal and excellent value for money.

I have tested it on both an beginner, single coil telecaster style guitar and full American Gibson Les Paul and it does very well with both.

The construction is very sturdy and the feel of the switch and knobs is great. It does have quite a number of possibilities and it's not always easy to remember what combination will give what sound.

It also tames a distortion or overdrive pedal put in front of it, making it sound smoother.

Overall for the price, there is little I cannot like about it.

Great bargain for anyone

I have to point out my situation before we go into the discussion: I'm not rating this pedal on its abilities to be a great overdrive pedal. I wasn't looking for an overdrive pedal at all.

I'm a professional guitar player, I do this for a living and I play with solid state amps due to too many trips to be able to afford bringing around my tube amps. Now in my situation I was looking for a pedal that could take an already really good sounding solid state amp (DV Mark Micro50) and make it even better. This pedal did the trick.

My intention was to use this pedal as a "preamp" pedal, putting it in front of my amp to simulate a preamp stage on an amp. Even though this pedal has somewhat too much drive for me (hence the 4 star rating in the "features" section) it soes the job amazingly. The EQ really sounds sweet, the voice knob gives you the correct midrange frequency that you want and it just sweetens up your amp.

To anyone who's looking for something to better shape an amp tone, THIS IS IT.

Great

Great purchase! It is possible to get out of it really good sounds, from the crystal clear sound of the Deluxe Reverb, to crunch of the Bassman at higher volumes? and much more. Definitely I recommend it.

sturdy and really sounds like my Fender amp,

For £25 I wasn't expecting this to be anything like as good quality as it is. The sound is perfect through my PA. I have tried it with my Gretsch 5122 and Fender Telecaster. I have a Turbosound IP1000 which has a very wide frequency range. I am using this with a Harley Benson Acoustic Simulator Pedal which spits the "acoustic" output to the mixer desk (then the PA) and then the Electric guitar signal goes into a Boss BD overdrive, into the Harley Benton American preamp and then out of this into an Electro Harmonix Electric Mistress (chorus flanger) a Joyo Delay and then into the mixer and into the PA. the settings on the mixer are effectively neutral.

I have had many effects set ups before and have had mixed (actually invariably terrible) results plugging a guitar straight into a PA. Partly due to poor monitoring but mainly because the sound has been horrible. The more complex the simulator the worse the sound. I bought a Line6 PodHD500 for the multieffects and amp sims. In the end I had to buy a Fender HotRod Deluxe III amp as I could NOT get a decent sound out of any preamp / amp sim. So believe me I wasn't expecting much from this one. But I am blown away by it. I am actually looking forward to gigging it.

I love this thing

My HB American Sound is by far the cheapest part of my rig but the always on core to my tone, it's gives loads of tweak-ability for pretty much any flavour of Fender amp tones and works well with all my guitars.

Check out the intheblues youtube demos of the Joyo badged version of this pedal.

Worth so much more

This is an unbelievable product for the money. This is a must have for any gigging guitarist to have as an amp backup. Sounds great.

Great sound - what's not to like ?

I've had this pedal a few weeks now and used it with both my strat and LP copies. Does it work ? Yes it does ! Does it sound good ? Yes again. A plethora of sounds are available here from one little box, easily tweakable to get the one(s) you really like.

I've used it through an amp (EQ set to 0 on the amp) and through an audio interface into my PC with very nice results indeed. The sounds it can produce range from clear and twangy through to crunchy depending on how you set the EQ on the pedal and most of all how you set the level, voice and gain controls. Using the delay / reverb / tremelo controls on the amp gives an even greater range of sounds. Really, everything is there in this little orange box and for ¤30 you can't possibly go wrong !

A very worthy investment and I'd reccommend one of these to anyone who plays a guitar from beginners to accomplished musicians

Excellent knock-off Fender Modeller

Great pedal for what it is, which is a SansAmp clone. This is designed to be plugged directly into a console and mimic the tone of a variety of Fender amps. In my case, I have a few of these (i.e., the British one) and use them on my pedalboard to get a variety of sounds, before going through FX and then into the return of my amp's FX loop. As such my only gripe would be that I can't get two channels with it, but this is a minor point. It's a fantastic pedal, and for the price you'd be a fool not to have a bag of these at home.

Excellent

This is amazing, really convincing Fender tones from clean Blackface to overdriven Bassman. There are a lot of youtube videos of this pedal. Nice that it is all analog components rather than digital for all the tone purists. Works well with a clean amp as a Fender coloured overdrive pedal. I have also used it for recording and it was great. Something nice about having a box with knobs on it rather than an onscreen menu, more tactile.

All metal, feels solid and the knobs have just the right amount of resistance for me.

For the price it is amazing.

Recommended.

Excellent starter

Great build quality

Great price, wanted bang for my buck as I begin experimenting with pedal and effects.

Also bought AC tru tone from harley benton, good combo imho

It's a tweed in a box

Similar or Inspired by TECH 21 - BLONDE pedal.

It's very easy to use and you can consider it as a "Tweed in a Box".

I was also surprised by use it straigth to an audio interface when recording. Great results even direct to a PA. It's cheap and for my humble opinion a "must have" pedal.

Will make any solid state amp sound better

This amp sim pedal sure made my solid state Kustom PH2012R amp sound much MUCH better. Joy to play and the build quality is fine. I cant compare it to the amps its to emulate because I never played those F amps but the sounds I get from it are very pleasing to me and I sure can use them.