Harley Benton Vintage Overdrive 4-stars Reviews

Good for hardrock

overall good pedal which i recommend to buy, but some problems i'd mention here. pedal has a slightly whistling noise when volume knob is in 10.

Sounds different

Sounds different from what it’s copying but by no means in a bad way.

Weather you want to tame the gain, dime the level and send your tube amp into hell! Or just add some dirty sauce to a clean amp this will do it

Surprisingly good

Bought it to give the tubescreamer hype a try. Sounds actually very nice. The knobs are a little hard to keep in position, but nothing some gaffa can't prevent. For the price, no reason to spend 4x the amount for the same thing with a brand printed on it.

I always hated tubescreamers pedals

and I stil hate them! But if you like a TS pedal in front of your amp and can't afford a Green Rhino (e.g.) this is the deal!

True bypass for those of you who care about; old style housing with the 9V adaptor socket on top and a nice/cheap look.

It should be made with thru hole components (so you can mod it) if I have seen correctly.

30€ is less than what you could spend for a DIY kit.

It's a timeless classic, sort of a 'must have', so......buy it and hate it as I do!!!

As expected

Cons:

Could use a bit more gain and the tone knob does not do much.Also very sensitive to dc adapters,can get noisy fast,

Pros:

Good transparent sound,Price.

On my copy, tone knob hisses when maxed out

Phenomenal sounding pedal, spot-on TS-9 clone. Built like a tank. Cheap. The only issue I have with it is that turning the tone knob past 3 o'clock introduces a high pitched hiss to the sound. I rarely if ever want to run it in that position anyway, but it still shouldn't happen. Not a lot of people are complaining about this so it's more indicative of poor quality control than poor engineering.

Great OD pedal on a budget

35 years of gigging, recording and playing has taught me one thing.

"Tone-hound" snobbery is rubbish. You can spend little money and still get a great sound, I think this is a re-badged Joyo OD and like many things in China now is better made than you may have imagined and has a great sound. I used this on my gigging board as a step boost for another OD worth $300 TBH it sometimes sounded better.

very nice sound for the price

i was looking for an overdrive with harmonic singing distortion, normally i would have bought the Ibanez Tube Screamer which was on my wish list for a long time, but i tried this one and i like the sound very much. I am using single coils with it and i have to put the drive dial almost to the max. to get some overdrive and it still sounds comparatively clean, i wasn't trying with humbuckers yet. It would be nice if there was a little more headroom.

The build quality is good and solid yet very simple. The circuit board is installed a bit skewed, making it hard to change the battery, its so tight that the battery body gets scratches when i put it in.

Overall i like the pedal considering its price tag.

Great First Overdrive

Really like the tones i get when plugging it to my Vox tube amp and for a very sensible price. Have not used it for anything but living room playing but I have been pleased. No need to spend over 100€ when getting your first overdrive pedal because this one does the job and does it well.

Opening the box however i was a little bit dissatisfied to see that it doesn't come with a power cable.

Harley Benton Vintage Overdrive

The Harley Benton pedals are well-built, small and cheap. So for the price, they are all good buys. With regard to the sound, this is more a question of personal taste. From the three Harley Benton pedals I have, this is the one I like the most; it has a nice crunch sound. Maybe it misses a bit of nuance, meaning that the "drive" knob goes from just loud to suddenly too dirty very quick. Still, although I cannot compare it with other over drive pedals, I would say that for the non-audiophile this one gives you a similar result for a fraction of the price. Quality-wise, I have never had an issue with it; I press and press and press and the pedal holds; it doesn't fall apart. The "click" is not subtle, but it doesn't disturb me.

Great little pedal

I was looking for a pedal to give me an occasional signal boost. As it was for home use only I wasn't looking to spend too much money.

After reading several review i opted to go with this, and i'm really glad i did.

Out of the box the build quality feels sturdy, for me it will be more than adequate for my use. I would say its solid enough to gig with.

The sound though, really impressed me. As I said I was looking for this to be more of a boost than anything but I?m really liking some of the overdriven tones I?ve got from it after a few days of playing around.

I intended it to give my signal a kick while on my amps crunch channel for lead work, but I?ve found some great tones on the clean channel as well.I have also got a few stinkers, but a bit of playing around does find the sweet spots

I have tried this little green baby side by side with my tube screamer, and next to each other you can tell the difference. The TS is far more versatile, the tone control has a far superior range. However its four times the price; but not four times as good.

For the money this really is great, does what I need it to, and if push came to shove. It would work as a backup in my live board.

So the pros are, solid build, decent sound, ease of use (Only three knobs) and cheap

Cons, Mainly that the tone control could do a little more

First Harley Benton item I?ve bought, but if this is anything to go by; it won?t be the last.

Bottom line is while it?s not the greatest pedal and it wont conquer the world, it?s great value for the money and punches well above its weight.

I use this unit as a clean boost or overdrive. As a clean boost it really boosts the signal emphazising the Mids so you can stand out of the mix without adding too much distortion. As an overdrive it really gives you that warm 'green pedal' sound. Plus it works with batteries and it's really rock solid. Ah! And it is really cheap!

Great Cheap OD alternative

I play Metal/Metalcore - think Killswitch Engage basically.

I've recently got back into playing guitar after playing drums in bands for a number of years so i'm building my amp/pedal collection up.

I wanted to try out an Overdrive infront of a high gain amp, but didn't want to fork out £100 for a maxon 808 - which i'm sure is better than this pedal.

If you're looking these up for metal/metalcore you probably already know the score, set the drive to around 0, tone to your liking (but probably around 12/1 oclock and the volume pretty much dimed and it works as an overdrive.

For the price of this pedal, it does the job - chugs are clearer and i get way more sustain for solo's especially using a neck pickup.

I have tried it on the clean channel as a normal over drive with 'drive' actually set, and the drive is ok - but there's probably better pedals out there for this.

If you want to try out an overdrive pedal for boosting an amp, it's defintely worth the money.

Build quality is ok, the jack inputs are a bit stiff but the casing feels strong so i'd say itself is strong/metal so it's giggable not like the behringer pedals.

The foot switch is a bit stiff and not smooth, but then again what more to expect from a cheap pedal?

I'll probably upgrade to a maxon 808 in the future, but for now as part of a cheap home practice rig it's doing the job well!

You don't need to pay extra

I use it with my Blues Jr at home, and i am glad i bought it instead of original tubescreamer. Of course it's not the best in terms of sound and quality, but regarding the price, it cannot be beaten.

Gives a nice 60s type distortion, vol knob a little temperamental

I'm not quite old enough to remember what this type of distortion is supposed to sound like, although we fortunately have recordings to help us.

This sounds pretty cool through my valve amp and has a tearing yet slightly rounded tone.

The volume know seems a little temperamental and has been known to randomly switch to a lower volume, which is annoying, but I think it's dependent on the volume setting and so far hasn't let me down on stage.

decent TS sounds but noisy with PSU

Everything about the pedal is good and what you expect from any decent TS clone excluding 2 things. 1) poor artwork on the pedal , of little importance 2)its rather noisey with a psu that is fine with much higher gain drive. But with a battery 8 out of 10 sound wise, spot on. If you are on a tight budget, its a greatt choice, Although I would say an EHX east river drive is worth the extraa coin if you can afford a little more, but you cant go wrong at the price and it feels well built very solid. not bad at all does the intended job.

Pretty good. Maybe not for bass guitar.

I bought this to a achieve a dirty bass sound akin to early Stranglers bass sound. I find that I need to dial the fx level right down to (nearly) get this sort of sound. On this basis I wouldn't recommend the pedal for bass guitars (unless you are playing metal).

Playing a guitar through the unit is quite satisfying, it produces a dirty yet warm sounding distortion. So I would recommend it for guitarists.

The build quality of the until seems good. Solid metal housing with a positive bypass switch. Great colour combination to give it that Bad Monkey look.

For £25 I'm happy with my purchase, even if it doesn't produce the exact tone I was looking for - this is not a reflection on the quality of the unit, purely personal taste.

TS808

Very good clone. You never know what to expect for this kind of money, but HB/Joyo isn't bad. Build quality is actually good. I did end up returning the pedal. I wanted to use it as a lead boost, but somehow the pedal didn't match with my amp, and my other pedals.. Would recommend to annyone looking for a TubeScreamer.

Handles the tones quite well, however, I find it quite silent. If I dont crank up the volume knob, it doesnt stand out much. Maybe it is just mine but compared to the Ultimate Drive, I would not prefer this one. There is no bad in having them both on your pedalboard though.

Why not?

I use this in my coverband. We mostly play older rock´n´roll were it's working fine. Don't buy it, if your into hardrock or metal.