Harley Benton FXL8 Pro Reviews

Great switcher for the price

Excellent value and features midi!

Great piece of kit!

I'm super happy with this piece of equipment! It generates no noise and has been 100% reliable. The only drawback is that if you accidently step on the same switch twice, it bypasses ALL the effects (and could lead to an embarrassing episode onstage). It's super-easy to program, solidly constructed, and reasonably compact. I highly recommend it!

Brilliant switcher, especially for the price

Very easy to navigate settings once you know the basics. There are loads of features that all work great. Great quality, transparent sound, can't say enough good things.

Great, flexible fx switcher

There's little point listing specs in these reviews as they're all available in the product page description.

I bought this as my first step into individual fx switching. Before this I had reverb/delay/chorus in the loop and drives into the front end of the amp.

I have since found it is absolutely ideal for what I want it for. I'm using it across three amps, Friedman Runt 50, Smallbox and BE100 Deluxe (plus a DV Mark Micro 50 as a backup).

Having two trigger outputs, which are either latching or momentary and that you can alt the polarity is ideal depending on what amp I'm using.

The Smallbox and Runt are two channel and the BE100D is three. The Smallbox has a different footswitch polarity to the Runt, but this works out well as I can run a twin mono to single TRS cable to the BE100D and have full functionality without changing anything.

It all works flawlessly, no audible pops when changing channels, buttons are solid, LEDs are bright but not too bright.

It's so good I bought a second one and made another board with some spare pedals I had and as a backup in case this main one ever breaks.

I have been successfully powering the switcher running power from either a TC Polytune or more recently a Boss Waza tuner, it doesn't seem to require much in the way of power to operate correctly.

My only real criticism is that it's quite tight between the send/return jacks, some pancake leads might not fit side by side. I use Boss DIY cables and they fit perfectly.

All in all, it's a great value, flexible switching solution. Having two separate loops is really useful, as is the ability to use it in across different amps.

I can see a need (for me) for a bigger version with maybe 12 loops, six on each side as at the moment I'm having to use a Line6 M5 connected to both loops to carry out different roles, flange in the loop, whammy in the front end etc.

I can't believe I managed to live without it for all those years!

Excellent!

I created my pedalboard and I needed a floor pedal to switch between the different effects. This pedal does an excellent job in this regard. You can mute all effects and go for the tuner. You can have stereo output. I recommend it 100%

Using the FXL8 Pro in band reharsals and a few gigs. Never let me down, super reliable and solid construction. Switches spaced right even for my big feet and the Led's inform very precisely where you are on the presets.

impedance problems

It is a good unit, especially for that price but... The impedance of the returns in the loops is 50k ohms - it doesn't work well with effects like FUZZ or WAH or some other vintage effects.

Most of your needs at a great price

It is of great quality. It runs on 9v. Sucks as much as a TC-electronic pedal. It has plenty of features, and it's quite intuitive to use. Doesn't suck tone, doesn't add noise. It only lacks the chance to jump from loop to loop without having to select a programme. But you can just run it on edit mode to do that. Awesome

Tons of versatile features in a super compact switcher.

A very affordable loop switcher with triggers and MIDI support. A great solution for medium to large pedal boards that need to be relatively compact.

However I wish the footswitches were the soft click type and the in/out jacks were a bit more solid. Also the user interface for programming the MIDI functions is terrible. It's workable after reading the manual carefully several times over. But it's still convoluted and confusing. Especially for a newcomer.

However for the price you're not going to beat it.

A easy unexpensive solution

Works as expected, for a very good price with quiet a lot of features! It really changed the way i can dial a lot of effect and do the job extremely well.

Great Looper for the price!

The quality and features of this looper are excellent, especially considering the price.

I explicity bought this for its MIDI functionality.

You can send up to two MIDI signals per A,B,C and D switch. And also differnet ones when turning them on or off.

Everytime you switch a preset you have to then select bank A,B,C or D.

So you have 4 preset banks per number (e.g. 1a,1b,1c,1d,2a,2b,2c...) this unfortunately means you cant switch from preset to preset with just one click.

Sturdy programmable looper

This rebranded Chinese (Joyo?) looper is extremely sturdy looking.

Easily programmable, and it's easy to modify presets on-the-go.

The LEDs offer a good view of which loops are activated.

I haven't had any use yet for the triggers, MIDI out and tuner output, so I cannot judge those features.

My first looper, it's been a godsend while troubleshooting as I keep many pedals daisy chained.

Best in its price, essential for every guitar player

Not much to say: if you have a pedalboard and more than one sound, and don't want to be tapping all the way through dozens of pedals, that's the right tool for you. It's definitely the cheapest one out there (there are cheaper ones but without the added features of MIDI etc.) and does its job wonderfully so why not go for it?

It covers everything, can send two MIDI messages at once and is very versatile in general with MIDI, and with the possibility of sending two triggers (like amp channel switch and whatever you want), and with two independent channels for front and s/r.

Very small footprint is a plus for crowded boards.

Only small flaws: sometimes I found my MIDI settings to go off and I had to re-save them into the unit (just do a quick check before a gig and you're okay). The number of presets is 32 with 8 banks of 4, which may be not that much for some, plus I found that I would have benefited having a fifth preset at hand.

Does what it suppose to do

Thank you Harley Benton FXL8 Pro - no more dancing on the pedals!

Very nice Loop 1/2 feature, so you can connect 4 of your pedals in front of the amp, and other 4 in the amp FX loop.

Haven't tested the MIDI performance - have no need for that.

The only con for me - It's not so comfortable to use the mute/tuner button. I've got used to using a tuner pedal, when you press it once - you get muted too. With FXL8 Pro the first press activates your tuner, the second button press activates your tuner + mutes the sound. So if you're used to tuning muted - it could be a hard time getting used to press the button twice :)

Great!

I started looking at switchers because I wanted to quickly switch between my main distortion sound (distortion + tube screamer) to a clean sound with reverb and delay without having to press 5 buttons. I couldn't believe the amount of features this thing packs for the price. In summary:

Pros

- no noise or latency when switching between sounds

- easy to program (haven't tried MIDI yet)

- 32 presets

- can switch channels on my amp (2 triggers)

- 240 mA so you can plug it in your power supply (no additional cable or power supply)

- the price!

Cons

- footswitches are not the highest quality (I wish it would be momentary footswitches, but the price would then go up)

I've been using it for 6 months now, for practice, at home and live, no problems. Thank you Harley Benton!

Excellent switcher

Does exactly what i need. 8 loops plus midi and amp switching. great design and solid build, Great price

Best for its price

The only issue I have is a bit loose jack sockets. But over all best for the price!

Useful device - highly recommended

Since I built a few pedals to use with the amp, I felt the need to avoid the hassle of tap-dancing - solution was to buy a pedal switcher.

Had some prerequisites that the device had to satisfy:

- can connect good number of pedals

- can control amp channel switching

- has two effect loops, one to use in amps input, other for amps effects loop (for modulation effects)

- relatively small size

- not too expensive

After detailed investigation, I ordered FXL8 - and haven't looked back! This is perfect pedal looper. It is built well, switches are sturdy, can't find any hardware flaws. It is easy to program and use. Packed with features - it even has tuner output and dedicated switch which mutes the output and sends guitar signal to tuner. Has two switches for controlling external devices (e.g.. amp channel) as well as MIDI control which I haven't used yet.

I use it to toggle between 4 preset sounds (chorused clean, warm light overdrive, rhythm, boosted lead), each can be recalled with only one tap. Each preset uses one to three pedals.

If You are looking for inexpensive but practical and durable effects looper, I highly recommend this unit.

Best budget option for the switchers. I use it to control all my 7 pedals Tc Electronic Alter ego x4 and my Bluguitar Amp 1 via midi. The only cons for me that for each preset you can only send two midi program change command at the same time.

For the price, it's excellent!

I've gigged with this for over a year now it's showing signs that it will last forever! The features it has still amaze me for its price range and the build quality is top notch. Once you've played it a few times it's easy to work your way through all the setting and the LED's make it easy to read whats on/off when playing.

Pros: Price, build quality, features

Cons: need a big pedal board, would prefer silent buttons but no deal breakers