Harley Benton Ultimate Drive Reviews

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11 years ago

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.

11 years ago

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.

11 years ago

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.

11 years ago

Excellent pedal easily comparable to its much more expensive peers

The Ultimate Drive can very much be thought of in the same league as the Fulltone OCD rather than a 'mid heavy' drive such as a Tubescreamer. It's certainly much more transparent than a TS type pedal allowing more low end through compared to the rather narrowly filtered mid freq response of a TS.

Where this pedal really excels is, possibly surprisingly, low gain sounds - another feature shared with the Fulltone OCD - and this is what I primarily use this for. My Fender Thinline into a vintage Fender amp via this pedal yields a wonderful break up which is easily controllable with the guitars controls.

The build quality of the unit is incredibly high on the whole and the switch feels like it will take many years of hard gigging! A pleasant surprise, especially if you are keen on pedal mods, is the use of through board components (i.e. not surface mount) which is very unusual for pedals in this price bracket. Reassuringly this also makes any potential repairs much easier although I can't really see much that can go wrong.

The only real negative to this pedal, in my eyes at least, is the artwork but this is entirely subjective!

If you're in the market for a reasonably transparent, non-TS style, drive then I would strongly suggest you try one of these out before dropping more money on a more expensive option.

11 years ago

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.

12 years ago

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)

12 years ago

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.

12 years ago

I absolutely love it. Out of all the Harley Benton pedals I have (vintage OD, American Sound, Digital Delay), this one crazy monster would be my favorite. It is very versatile. I can get a really thick distortion sound out of this. I also tried stacking it up with Vintage Overdrive pedal to boost its tone and it worked nicely. Definitely recommending it.

12 years ago

Beats many more expensive pedals for tone and durability

Sounds - There are two different ways of using this pedal - as a stand-alone dirt pedal or into an already driven valve amp to push it over the edge. It works really well for both applications. I prefer it pushing a valve amp and it sounds great into the top boost channel of my AC30. The tone control occupies a sensible range. The high/low toggle switch doesn't have a huge effect when practicing, but it is helpful when playing with a full band to help you ping out or sit back in the mix. The drive sound is generally a smooth classic rock OD, but can sound more modern at higher settings, especially with the EQ tweaked.

Looks - I'm not really sure about the tribal devil type character on the lid! He suggests that the pedal is intended for Metal, but this isn't really a high-gain, scooped type distortion at all - more of a classic rock overdrive. I'd prefer the pedal left plain. However, the white knobs are really clear against the black, so you can see where you are on stage.

Durability - I've not had the pedal long, but I can't see it coming to any harm - it seems incredibly sturdy!

12 years ago

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

12 years ago

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.

12 years ago

Rock, .... Hard !

The Harley Benton UD is IMHO a mixture between Overdrive and Distortion.

Sizewise quite similar to the Boss pedals, it has lots of gain on tap for you to rock out. But it is also very good with the "just on the edge of breakup" thing.

Where the UD truly shines, is in it's dynamics. Just like the Fulltone OCD pedal, with which it can't deny a certain genetic heritage soundwise as well.

And finally a little switch (High/Low) gives you additional tonal choices.

For me this pedal works best like this:

- look for the sweet spot with the Gain (in my case around 10:30 o clock)

- and do the rest with your guitars Volume pot

If you get it just right, you can switch between clean and distorted with just the guitar's Volume pot. Which is an incredible thing in it's own, and even more expensive pedals don't always fulfill this promise.

What I should mention on the con side is the fact that the range of the Gain Pot isn't that great. Which means that the usable range is from 7-12 o clock. Higher than 12 changes the tone not that much more.

But given the pricetag of this pedal, I can gladly overlook so small a fault.

12 years ago

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

12 years ago

Versatile pedal for mid gain and more

While I was searching for a more aggressive, modern distortion pedal to accompany my Digitech Bad Monkey, I ordered the Harley Benton Ultimate Drive and the Crunch Distortion. After a couple days of comparing the two Harley Benton pedals to each other, I decided to go with the Ultimate Drive, as it seemed to offer a wider variety of tones, due to the high/low switch. Furthermore, the tone knob of the Ultimate Drive covers a pretty wide range from darker, more vintage-y sounds to bright, aggressive sounds that have a british bite to it. With a humbucker equipped guitar, I usually don't set the gain higher than 12 o'clock, as the pedal is quite overgained in my opinion.

12 years ago

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.

12 years ago

Awesome drive!

Buy buy buy! :)

This pedal is just way to cheap! Kind of a mix between overdrive and distortion ala jtm-45! Not as good as a boutique drive but definitely worth checking it out!

13 years ago