Harley Benton California TrueTone Reviews

Great pedal

In the past few years after getting into pedals again and to have fun during lockdown i have bought, played, and sold over 100 pedals, most of them boutique. I have also bought some cheap chinese pedals but most of them have let me down. This series of pedals however, are not only good as cheap pedals they are just great pedals. Just figure out how to properly set them up. The California has way huge amounts of bass, if you want a classic tone just dial the bass almost all the way off. Also, make sure to have a good isolated power supply and if you get noise switch up the order of pedals and it should solve it.

excellent

This drive is what i was looking for.

I play a HB. SC CUSTOM II P90s

And for hard rock like gnr , def leppard ,poison and stuff like social distortion, ramones this drive is perfect. The knobs are doing the job correctly .Built quality , price excellent , a lot better than some more expensive pedals. Perfect sound .....

I enjoy it every day

Let's Boogie!

All the True Tone pedals are great sounding complete with 3 tone controls. If you're on an extreme budget you can't go wrong with these pedals. And if your not on a budget you'd be crazy not to buy all of them! ....PS little known fact : These pedals also have some sort of speaker simulator in them so you can plug them directly into your DAW and the result is very passable indeed.

Very Nice Pedal

What a Pedal, sounds good in every plug. easy to use and very good quality sound.

Haven't found a good sound (yet).

First impression is good. The pedal looks and feels solid, in its metal casing. It is rather versatile in the variety of distortion sounds one can create using the voice dial. It's supposed to create Mesa Boogie-type sounds, but I'm not familiar enough with those amps to comment. I bought this pedal based on sound examples on You Tube. Having said that, I've tried it going into a valve pre-amp and into the power-amp, and I haven't really found a sound that I like. Some overdriven sounds are pretty decent, though. Maybe it's the amp modelling that makes it sound somewhat muffled and compressed... I'll keep trying, though!

Excellent value and sound

These truetone pedals sound awesome

You can get a very familiar sound very easily and it works perfectly in an ampless setup since it works nicely directly into an interface or monitors.

The EQ is also very nice and has a very wide range. The highs can get a bit screamy if you go too fast.

I bought one ... and another ..... and one more will come ...

You might consider to get it and slap it everywhere... with your favorite amp (to have an alternative distortion ) or your less fav amp ( it will make you like it more... probably) ... or directly to the sound card and the daw... or you can also decorate the living-room with it cause it is a nice 6 knobs metal brick that, let's be honest, for the price "we" like a lot and it shines too under direct light. ( although I prefer to use it to play).

Either ways ... in case ends up on the pedalboard enjoy it! I do :D

OK tones available but far from stunning

OK tones are on tap here but nothing that really blows me away, or even likely to be used by me. Not so good as the American, AC Tone or British from the same series.

Great amp simulation pedal

This is the second pedal I got from the TrueTone series.

It's simple to use, it works and sounds fantastic.

I mostly use these after a distortion/overdrive pedal, so I can stack some gain, and sounds really punchy, and warm, and even sounds good plugged directly into PC audio interface.

I love these pedals, for their dynamic range, versatility using the 3 band EQ, and voice knob, and you really can't beat it with this price.

great sounding pedal

I got this pedal for use while busking and on the studio.

It has great tones and is very versatile, specially when you use the voice knob. You can go from crystal cleans to full on metal.

It's very solid and feels like it can take a beating. I thought it was going to be made of plastic but it's aluminium, which is a nice surprise. The knobs feel solid too but the footswitch looks like it's cheap and might need replacing one day.

The eq is very sensitive so you don't need to move it much to get the changes in the sound that you need. If you use the super high gain settings it can get really noisy.

Even though the pedal has a simulated speaker output, you may want to try using it along with a cab impulse response while recording directly to your interface. The sound of the pedal is bright enought that you can get away with it and it just sounds su much better.

I completey recommend this pedal and I would like to get the other models to have all the sounds available.

Soaring Santana

As I put in another review, of the British version of this pedal - it amazes me how one pedal can perform pretty much like a full amp nowadays. This won't give you the headroom of certain California amps and it won't give you all the nuances - but then again, it doesn't cost a few thousand pounds and you can get an approximation of the sound in the comfort of your own living room. Without being served with a noise abatement order. 'Santana On A Stick' is how I'd describe this. One of the super-talented musicians who you can identify from just one note - this pedal will *not* make you super-talented, but by gum you'll get a lot closer to having the amp tone of the dude. For the price? Tremendous. For stadium gigs? Get yourself the real deal. For home and pub use? Save yourself the cost of a small car and buy this pedal. It's not noisy and it'll make your guitar sing. Amen.

california sound

a great guitar amp emulation pedal

Best for that price

Not only a distortion pedal, but an amp emulator analogically good :-) inexpensive. Only do not set to max the voice and the gain or you will have a big hum to support. Anyway. For that price it is the best I have found so far.

Totally amazed by this pedal.

I use this pedal as the last pedal on my board, and go straight into my audio interface and into my DAW for recording. I get really great tone this way. I would not be without this pedal now.

Quality isn't 100% but for the money it's decent. Pedal can be hard to work with , it can take a long time until you get the sound you want from it.

100 precent the sound for 1 percent the price

***Handling***

The Handling is fairly easy. You can either use this device as a normal overdrive or distortion pedal in front of your amp, plug it in directly to your Power Amp Section as a Preamp or you can also send the signal directly into a PA mixing board, since it emulates a guitar speaker.

***Features***

Six knobs: Low, Mid, High, Level, Voice and Drive. Input / Output and a connection for a power adaptor.

The Voice knob is the really interesting feature. It controls the shape of the mid frequencies. The more you dial in, the thicker the sound will get, ranging from early Mk II Sound to the super thick Hi Gain Sound of the latest Rectifier series.

***Sound***

This device is supposed to emulate guitar amps that are build in Petluma, California. And it does! I did an A / B comparison with a Dual Rectifier and it comes close, very close.

Like with the original amps, be careful with the amount of Bass you dial in. This pedal has LOTS of it.

The integrated speaker emulation cannot be turned off, although that is not a big deal, since you can compensate that with adding more High Frequencies.

When you dial in full Drive and full voice, it makes a very strange humming sound.

But in reality this is never a problem, because the pedal have tons of gain reserve, you actually do not need to turn it all the way up.

Therefore I tend to presume it's the Chinese sound for: Warning! Too much distortion.

***Quality***

From the outside this thing is built like a tank. The knobs are very easy to move, some will find it a bit too easy. The on/off switch is indeed positioned a bit close to the knobs, but that is no problem because it is elevated and you will not touch the knobs with your foot.

The only thing that is to criticize about this pedal is the battery compartment. The battery is to be clamped directly under the PCB circuit board. And that can't be a good thing.

Not really easy to find a great tone

I saw a couple of demos on youtube of the Joyo California sound (same box, just another brand) and thought it sounded great. When I got the pedal myself I really couldn't get a great tone out of it. Maybe I didn't have enough patience to tweak it or maybe I just get a better tone with other gear in my rig. Anyway, this ended up on my keyboard instead for really dirty overdriven organ tones instead.