Harley Benton Ultimate Drive 4-stars Reviews

A solid distortion pedal

The only reason why I have 4* for the features is that more extensive EQ would make this pedal even greater.

I'm not saying that this is a one trick pony - pedal can go from a boost (ala TS) to ball to the walls distortion with adjustment of gain knob. Low and high freqs switch is a great addition as well, since it allows you to make better adjustments to your guitars.

Cheap but great pedal!

I ordered this pedal becuase i checked out some reviews and demos on youtube. And i must say its really a great sounding pedal. But it doesn't work great on every amp ofcourse.

It brings a little lowend mud to your sound which is easy to clean with an eq.

A great overdrive pedal.

This pedal is outstanding. It is a beautifully voiced over drive pedal that can be used for anything from mellow blues to metal leads. It is also extremely well built, made of metal with a rubber bottom (to prevent slippage)

Pros: A very versatile pedal, extremely well built, it's the best value for money in my opinion and I also like the "Oni" graphic.

Cons: The tone can get a little muddy when the gain is past 8 but this is true of the majority of overdrive pedals. The battery compartment it plastic (I don't use it so personally it will never affect me).

In summary: A great little pedal that reminds me of an "OCD" pedal and suits my home recording needs perfectly.

Harley Benton Ultimate Drive

This pedal is amazing good value for it's money! It's based on a rather famous white pedal and that worked out fine! I bought it because I needed a few small pedals for a tour in Portugal and I couldn't bring my pedalboard due to limitations of lugage on the plane. I used it together wih a Z-Vex SHO booster and had a great sound on a clean solid stateFender-amp that was arranged for me!

I now use it in a second and smaller board for small gigs. Just get one, they are good!!!! :)

good cheap version of OCD pedal

I bought this pedal convinced by various reviews on youtube. It is essentially a clone of the famous OCD overdrive pedal.

I cannot compare with the original OCD, as I have never tried it, but it does its job. It can provide a very neutral overdrive, useful if you want to drive a bit more your amp or another pedal after it, but by dialing the gain knob all the way up you can achieve some pretty heavy tones as well.

It's not the most sophisticated overdrive out there, so it might fit in some genres, as it might not in others. for me, I care more about the "push" that gives to my sound, than for the actual tone that it produces.

The switch between the two types of drive is quite nice, I always keep it up, as it gives the most aggressive tone.

The tone is a slightly dark, but the tone knob allows to adjust that to your needs.

It seems quite solid, I don't think it's going to break anytime soon.

PRO:

--great sound for the price, I have listened to horrible cheap pedals before (like digitech, some boss, behringer), but this can give you a really good sound

CONS:

---the AC connector is not really tight, and my cable was getting loose. A bit of tape solved that.

Versatile drive pedal.

I use this pedal to tighten the driven sound of my amplifier.

When setup with low gain and higher tone and volume it thickens the sound and makes it ideal for palm muting and heavier music in general.

When combined with a clean amp it works for anything from blues to rock.

The toggle between high and low peaks gives you a choice between smooth overdrive and more distortion like sounds.

Verry happy with this pedal, as it's a cheaper alternative to the popular OCD pedal and has many possible uses.

A dark horse!

I picked this up because of the good reviews it's been given on youtube and various forums that i use.

Build quality is good and i'd expect the pedal to withstand some knocks no problems.Nice clunk off of the footswitch when depressed so you know it's happening.

This is somewhere in between an overdrive and distortion and i'm using mine for a little bump in distortion.There is a little jump on the knobs when shifting up but i'm only looking for one setting so it doesn't bother me.

I was shocked at the quality of the Ultimate Drive as i bought it out of curiosity.It has now replaced my Boss distortion which cost me twice the price.

This is a rare beast in the fact that it's cheap and it's good!

Get one.

Good cheap versatile pedal

This pedal is straight up good, not just good for the money. It can go from blues to old school metal with minor tweaks.

OH, did I forget the uber cool Oni graphic?

Good

Not bad sounding pedal for the money.

I don't use this unit very often because I don't have a project where it fits right now. I have already used it in a hard-rock context and it sounds great. I have never used it as a boost, only as a drive. The overall construction is really great with the exception of the battery socket, making it hard to change batteries. In terms of sound, The 'high' switch is really bright making it unusable for me. The distortion is very compressed and can really sing. A bit lacking of versatility though

Great value and quality

It has a nice distortion sound, either with low and high gain. The tone knob gives you a good range of sounds, that you can change to adapt to different guitars, for example. Tha quality of these Harley Benton (Joyo) pedals is great and, come on... It's 30 freaking euros! Buy them! If you don't like them, you didn't loose a kidney :-D

The only thing I struggle with this pedal is that, as you increase the gain knob from zero, it reaches a point where the gain goes up a lot at once, so you need to be precise if you like to use it with a very soft drive.

I wasn't able to get a very good sound from it with a Gretsch, but it's beautiful with a strat and a tele.

Really good, a bit dark sounding for my taste

I did a simple modification to make the sound a bit brighter (one capacitor change), after which it's just awesome. I don't know if the "original" pedal this mimics suffers from the same "darkness" or not. The pedal has been on and off my pedal board, but it's definately a keeper. And a one to return to when a musical sounding, mild to medium overdrive is needed.

It's not true bypass unfortunately.

Spot on

It's amazing that these pedals are so cheap. It's possible to order some and try them to see what the effect is like. If it doesn't work out you can just sell them on. They are what they are and probably sound better than boss pedals.

Harley Benton Ultimate Drive

Nice distortion pedal, for a very cheap price. I have used plenty of distortion pedals in my time, and this is one of my favourite 2 or 3. It sounds to me very similar to my original Marshall Guvnor, the only thing is the Guvnor has a 3 band EQ to allow scooping to the mid range, but this pedal is set well within the useable range for me. I've even used this to DI guitar into a desk, added a little compression and reverb to get a nice rough, raw guitar sound. I'd say it'd be most at home in heavier blues, rock and stoner metal. Nice rough texture to the sound.

Incredibly worth its price

Known to be an 'OCD' clone, which has become a classis amond drive pedals.

Never tried an OCD, so I bought that one in order to get an idea.

Quality seems great (metal box does a lot), even if the plastic knobs are looking cheap, the pedal isn't noisy and does a great job.

The overdrives are nice, the sound panel is quiet impressive, keeping a good personnality. Nice job also as clean boost ! The compression is a stronger than in my average overdrive pedals, which I think is really interesting.

+:

Metal enclosure

Silent

Great sound panel (clean boost to hi-low gain overdrives)

Respect of the instrument personality

Interesting compression

-:

Knob are turning a bit too easily, I'd prefer them to keep the settings a bit stronger, as the setup is quite sensitive (but seriously, that's nothing)

Excellent over drive for the price.

I have had this pedal for a while now. What can I say it does exactly what it should do. It produces a great distortion sound and the toggle switch between low and high does a great job of adding more punch to single coils if required. Although I use it on my guitar that has humbucker pickups as well. It produces distortion from crunch right up to a heavy distorted rhythm. For the cost it is a fantastic pedal.

Joyo pedall

A great pedal for a very reasonable price. I have had a lot off fun with this pedal it does not sound like a cheap drive pedal and plenty off settings on this pedal to get great sounds

Affordable OCD

I bought this Overdrive because I wanted to try an OCD Overdrive, but didn't have the money to buy the original.

The Harley Benton is very sturdy and can be played very dynamically. If you turn the volume of your guitar down, it cleans up very well.

It also works good as a clean boost your your tube amp

But you have to be carefull with the tone control. At about 8 it gets very harsh and not very good sounding.

If you can keep away from this section, you get a really nice and affordable overdrive pedal.

I didn't regret the buying.

Nice price but still improvable

bought this pedal because of lack of money. Overall a good pedal but still with room for improvement.

Setup 1:

Dist in front of clean tube amp.

-> low gain mode sounds a bit like the classic MXR distortion plus. nice but not my style. I use the high gain mode for a very fuzzy rythm tone. Sounds extremely fat with unfortunately much white noise and lacks mids.

Setup 2:

Dist in front of dirty tube amp.

-> i still use the high gain mode but with less gain (around 1 o'clock) and with the tone somewhere loeft from 12.

Pretty good attack with enough mids and a great sound for modern hard riffs.

Conclusion:

not the best pedal but still great regarding the price

A great drive for a bass

I use it on my bass and it is great. It can go from low gain overdrive to almost fuzz-like distortion. It works really good with my other dirt pedals (boss odb-3 and zoom b3), either driving them or being driven by them. I mostly use it as a low gain drive to give a more aggressive sound when required.

On the negative side: the "curve" of the gain and level knob is not very regular (not the same effect on the sound from 1 to 10). The EQ also varies when you push the gain knob: a slight low cut at low gain and they are boosted as you push the gain.

Still, definitely my best « bang for your buck » pedal.