Harley Benton Dynamic Compressor

Of all of the Harley Benton Pedals that I've had time to play, this is probably the most impressive. This is a very impressive compressor. It handled the vintage pickups in my American Tele and the super high output hot-rails in my strat very well.

The sound is the classic sustainer type compression, the variable attack time being very useful to help shape picking dynamics. It's not the cleanest compression I've heard, but any colouration I could hear seemed warm and very complimentary to my single coil guitars. I've yet to try this pedal with my bass rig.

Build quality is very impressive, and not just for the price point. The enclosure is high quality die-cast aluminium and is well finished (though the graphics are a little cheesy). Having had a snoop inside I was pleased to find a quality 3PDT footswitch in a true bypass configuration. The pots are pretty decent too, as is the quality of the off board wiring. The construction quality of this pedal is easily the match of some boutique manufacturers.

Build - The metal housing of the product seems pretty solid. The knobs are chunky and bright, leaving nothing to the imagination. The only slight issue is the plastic bottom, which is unevenly seated to one side (I have removed the rubberised bottom to accommodate attachment to a pedal board) - no particularly a deal breaker though.

Use - I've only used this at home so far through a Peavey Bass combo, using several different basses (5 string & fretless). I foresee that it will be used continually in my new wave/glam/pop band.

Sound - I have spent a while finding the sweet spot and the results are very good. The bass is given a definite overall lift, the sound is tight and punchy, the slap sound produced is sound funky. When turning the unit off I realise quite how much it affects the sound and how much life it breaths in to my bass sound.

For around £25 I doubt that this can be beat in terms of sound and build.

For its price this little stomp is unmatched.
Its hard to really put into words what a comp-pedal does for your soundpicture, but all i can say is that this adds "more" of what makes your sound sweet.

Pedals in general usually adds both more good/bad at an even ratio, but since this little stompbox has (first) true bypass and (second) a very good effectbalance makes it in my ear feel like it adds what its supposed to do without amplifying unnecesary noise and ambient trash.
Simply put: its a bettermaker =)

The pricetag itself is an invitation to try it out and now with some extended workout i cannot do anything but recommend this sturdy little green pedal!

Get one!

Well it took me a long long time to figure out how to use these effect and it's very subtle but if you have noticed that a lot of guitarists say that this is the pedal that is always switched on, on their pedal board you will realise why after a short time of experimenting. To get this right I would say you need to experiment with a clean signal, set the level so that the volume doesn't change between effect on and off. Then set the attack and Sustain next, starting with the dials around 10 o clock. Works best on a clean signal but it can be used with overdrive too. It's subtle but now I have the pedal on almost all the time. An excellent introduction to compression sustainer pedals without spending way over 100 euros. Highly recommended.

I wasn't expecting anything amazing from this pedal, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. The first thing is that for the price you get an actual mechanical footswitch. You don't even get that from BOSS pedals these days, so that is a very nice feature. When you press it, you get a really bright red LED lighting up, which is definitely something that would be useful in a stage setting.
As far as the sound is concerned, it's perhaps not as geared towards bass as I wanted it to be. You definitely get more of a squeeze on the very low frequencies, which in turn makes it hard to make up enough gain with the level knob to get the rest of the frequencies heard if you turn the sustain knob up too high. But for what I paid for this piece I think it's excellent value for money.