Been buying and selling a lot of guitar gear and working too much - not enough time for forums - sorry guys! Also have kept falling ill over the last few months, so not able to do much at all and not able to play with all this new gear.
I have acquired a Harley Benton American (also badged as Joyo and as Rocktronics depending where you buy). Sort of cheap clone of the Tech21 Blonde I think - not quite the same, but the right ballpark and less than 1/4 the price at £29 in the UK. I notice in an earlier thread DetroitBlues recommending the Joyo Ultimate Drive - given my experiences with the "American" pedal I can see why the recommendation was made.
There's a lot of variations to be had in sound from tone, drive and voice control. Here's a basic demo, with changes being made to the very important "Voice" knob. The drive knob is between 1 and 2 o'clock and the three tone controls neutral. Level knob adjusted to balance the increased volume of the voice knob as it's turned up. I thought it best to record direct into teh DAW so you're really only hearing the tones of teh pedal and not an amp.
The backing track on the demo is a 12 bar with 7 runs through the 12bar pattern. The first 6 times through sees the Voice knob at 7, 9, 11, 1, 3, and 5 o'clock. Furthest left the voice knob is based on earler Fender amps with a cleaner sound - the further right the more the drive and crunch kicks in. You will hear by 5 o'clock that the sound is pretty compresssed and overdriven even with the Drive knob between 1 and 2 o'clock - the DAW at this point shows a pretty solid block of sound - maybe too much for me at 5 o'clock. The last (seventh) part is dialled back to 12 o'clock voice and 12 o'clock Drive for a pretty clean sound. Quite a fun pedal for the price. I played the PRS SE (lightest weight guitar to help badly strained muscles) just through the pedal into the DAW - bit of reverb/delay added to sound to balance with the Backing Track.
Demo on Box.net
https://www.box.com/s/41a6njk73w3qxg1sl4qaBuild quality ... it feels solid enough and the casing gives it a reasonable weight ... but whether the switch / knobs will stand up to a lot of punishment and whether the componenets are of good quality or well put together I'm afraid I really don't know. It seemed to me when I was trawling around forums that the positive and negative comments about Joyos were probably a pretty similar mix to what you get for most brands.
The pedal is pretty noise free - certainly much less noise than a lot of budget pedals I've used when any drive settings are in play. It also sounds great as a front end on my Fender VibroChampXD with a clean voicing. Oh ... and there is a massive boost available using the level knob.
I have a Boss Fender Bassman FBM-1 Pedal. I would find it difficult to pick that as betetr than the American pedal - as the FBM-1 is 3 times the price I guess that's a big positive for the American - wonderful value for money.
