Harley Benton Extreme Metal

I bought this pedal to use in front of a solid state amp for a death metal band. The amp i was using wasn't capable of high gain in the slightest and this pedal added more than enough to play death metal.

You have EQ, gain, volume and a boost. Weirdly, the boost seems to affect the tone, but as I always had the boost on for a little extra volume with the gain set around 50%, it wasn't really an issue for me but is something to consider if you plan on using the boost for solos - it will change your tone.

Everything feels nice and solid, it's got a metal housing, the knobs are chunky and solid and turn smoothly and the footswitches have a nice solid click to them. The only problem I encountered is that for some reason I can't quite fit a 9V battery through the battery door as the opening isn't quite big enough. Since the back plate has screws that can be undone I just removed that and swapped the battery out that way, but if you use a power supply its not an issue. All in all, a nice pedal.

Bought this on a whim to explore some more extreme gain territory in a way I could switch on with my feet. Very usable tones in general if you're not too fussy, and a great way to get a satisfying metal "chug"! The boost switch is probably better left ignored - it seems to send the pedal into unusable territory, so it's probably best not to buy this with the intent to use that function as a boost for solos - it just ends up hissy. Slight issues with the construction of mine - very sturdy casing, but occasionally the connection fails and needs to be switched on and off again a few times to make it work again. Probably an easy fix, but I haven't been too bothered - I mostly use it at home anyway!

This pedal is really for the extremists out there. If you want to play Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Even Black Metal, you might want to give this a try. I play Black Metal mostly, ergo I crank up the treble a lot and along with good tube amp, this can take you far. If you're looking for atmosphere in your music, using dissonant chords, with heavy distortion, Harley Benton have not forgotten you. The Feedback level of this pedal whilst quite high at points adds to the already powerful sustain. The Bass knob whilst very good, is that of a distortion pedal, so in that sense do not expect too much out of it unless you have a good amp. The Treble and mids at low levels, will give you a healthy blues overdrive sound, whilst at higher levels, will enable you to achieve a grungier, Thrashier or a more extreme sound. It is a very versatile pedal, and for its price, it is definetely worth trying out. Best piece of advice I can offer with this pedal, is a noise gate pedal as well, as the feedback unless controlled through the Boost and Drive knobs, can get pretty dirty at points, so combatting it with a good noise gate, is the way to go.

I bought this pedal because I was looking for a distortion pedal that gives me a modern and powerful distortion tone and doesn't cost too much. This pedal was perfect!

The tones that this distortion pedal can produce are just incredible. It took me about 5 minutes to find a tone that I loved and I've been using that same tone since.
But thats just my preference, this pedal can do much more than that.
This pedal can produce almost any tone, bright and crunchy for rock or dark and powerful for heavy metal...
The Boost switch is a frequency boost NOT A VOLUME BOOST!
It controls the frequency from 3.5kHz to 4.3kHz (according to the manual)
I use the Boost to get a more digital sounding tone because thats the only thing I found it useful for.

This pedal is made of metal so it should be able to survive almost anything.
Theres a nice little door-like thingy (I have no idea what it's actually called) for the battery so you dont need to have a screwdriver to change the battery. Or you can just use a 9v power supply.

Overall I think this pedal is good for producing almost any type of tone. The only bad thing I can say about it is that I would be nice if the Boost swich was a volume boost instead of a frequency boost.