Barber Electronics Direct Drive

Very easy to get a great sound, love the simplicity. Mine is the new version with the OTT graphics ;-) and the bass trim pot. Haven't tried any internal adjustments yet as I'm thoroughly happy with the sounds I'm getting straight out of the box.

Using with Fender Stratocaster Elite (1983) with Kinman Woodstock plus pups, Barber Tone Press, Direct Drive to Roland Bolt 60 valve amp (2 6L6's). The sound is excellent, the Bolt has a great clean channel and with the DD I can get that beautiful full bluesy breakup sound I've been after. With the tone pulled I can get that smooth Jimi lead sound!! at last! Kick in the Tone Press with a touch of compression and mostly clean boost and lookout! Sustain forever!!

Very well made, solid. Barber makes quality pedals, nuf said.

Haven't had to use them, web site is well maintained and up to date.

This is a good match for the styles of music I play, blues, rock, fusion, progressive stuff. I live in Australia and would like to also mention how good the service was from Indoor Storm, Eddie is one of the best people I've ever dealt with for customer service!!. It's always difficult making a purchase like this when you live in another country, but Eddie made this purchase painless. So if you are like me and don't know who can purchase this pedal or other stuff from, I would thoroughly recommend Indoor Storm!! Also, congratulations to Harmony Central for making these user reviews available, would never have known about Barber Electronics if I hadn't read all the reviews posted here. It sure helps to get an overall feel for how good some of this gear really is. Yep, I like my Barber DD alot!! Even at OZZie dollar prices this pedal is terrific value. I don't like to give out 10's too freely but this is as good as it gets.

Anyone steals my gear WATCHOUT!!!! I'm gonna get ya when ya least expect it!!

The Direct Drive is a simple unit that any monkey could use?partly due to the fact that it sounds good on any setting. Simple controls, volume, tone (pull for fat harmonics) and drive. BUT?having opened mine on day one, I also found that mine contains a bass trimpot inside on the PCB. I spoke with David Barber about this, and he told me that mine is actually a collectable transition period unit incorporating the new innards with the old casing?sweet as a nut!!! Very simple to dial in a really great overdrive sound and between the tone pot and the bass trimpot I can tailor my EQ to perfection.

The direct drive is in a different league to the mass produced drive boxes (some of which are indeed great pedals in their own right). This is right up there with the best of the boutique drives. The quality is audible immediately with a good guitar and valve amp. It is a much more natural sounding overdrive, a very broad sound that acts like a drive channel on your amp rather than a pedal. Also, the true bypass is exceptional.
I am using the ?69 and ?72 thinline telecasters with a Vox AC30/tb, and the direct drive works better than any other overdrive I have tried with them, and I?ve tried them all!!!

I replaced my old TS-9 with the DD and now I use the tubescreamer for my lead boost. This works really really well due to the slight bump in the mids to make lead passages stand proud in the mix. The TS-9 doesn?t come close to the DD for general overdrive use though?as I said, different league!!! But the mix of the two for leads is a match made in heaven, a really beautiful texture that sits exactly where you want it in a live performance and studio mix.

I usually use my DD in fat harmonics mode with drive at about 12 or 1 o?clock?tone and volume are variable depending on the acoustics of the room.

I like to use the middle toggle position of my teles for my cleans and clean breakup sound (for which I use the Boss BD-2 with volume high and drive down to crank my tubes into jangley cleanish breakup)?BUT?I like to use the bridge position for full rhythm overdrive sounds, so the bass trimpot inside allows me to dial in enough bottom end so there is no dropout of bottom end EQ when I go back into the bridge position and hit the DD. It works like a dream, full punchy drive and still never muddy when used in the middle and neck positions?just even bigger and creamy as hell!!! Jesus I love this pedal!!! Best addition to my setup since the ac30.

Made to the highest standards. Built like a tank. No problems at all here!!! Inside is a work of art!!! I just love that famous JRC heart in there!!!

I think the service would be really good if you needed it, due to the way that David Barber himself will talk to you so readily. I hope I don?t have to find out if they can fix problems though!!!

A gem to have in your arsenal. Even if you have the big boutique names on your board it is well worth having a look at this. It is better than the fulltone stuff in my opinion, so if you?re a fulldrive user just have a gander at this. OF COURSE?I only have experience of the unit with the bass trimpot inside, so pick up one of the newer ones if you like what you hear in my review.
The pedal looks great, sounds amazing, has true bypass, tough as a house and all at that price ?what else is there??? Blows the competition out of the water. Try it yourself!!!

It's very easy to get a good sound out of it and very hard to get a bad sound. Every sound is completely useable. Plus, it comes with a manual of suggested settings.

I play an american strat with a jbjr in the bridge and a '72 custom tele reisue with a humbucker in the neck. They both go into a board consisting a vox way, EVH Phase 90, Boss CE-2 Chorus, TU-2 Tuner, and a DD-20 delay in the loop of my Marshall DSL 401 with mullaird tubes and a vintage 30 speaker.

I love the sound of my amp and the sound of my guitars, and it was important to me to preserve as much of that sound as possible. Although, there may be slight coloration, you'll never be wondering what your guitar your playing. The Direct Drive, a strat sounds like a strat and a humbucker like a humbucker, unlike some overdrives which sound like the your playing through the overdrive. Playing through the direct drive sounds, and feels like plugging straight in to a cranked tube amp. Warm, grit, sustain, touch responsive, very nice, all of that's here.

I set mine up this way; Volume 3:00, Tone maxed with the push pull in the up position, Drive 7:30-8:00. It's almost like a clean boost with just a little more oomph. When playing my clean channel on my amp with this on, it gives me a little more on the edge type blues tone, very, very musical sounding, and ballsy. When playing rythm on my drive channel of the amp, which is set at about 1:00 (on the amp)I kick on the Direct drive, and I get a great singing violin like sustainy lead tone that's also great for heavier chunky power chords as well. Like all effects that I use, I use them in moderation. Just adding to my tone without overtaking it. And this is a tremendous addition. It takes my tone and makes it nicer and more "real" sounding. Cranking up the gain gets you into more marshally heavy overdrive territory. I can dial it in to sound close to my amp, so if the amp ever poops out, I crank up the Direct drive and keep going. If your using a single channel amp, this would make a great second channel. It's very amp like in sound and touch responsiveness. A definite keeper.

I'm giving this a 10. Why? Because I've owned and used a fulltone fulldrive II, boss SD-1 (old, new, and modded), TS-9, TS-808, OD-9, OD-808, Tech 21 Double Drive, Analogman TS-9, Rats, Jekyll & Hyde, MXR Distortion, DOD 250 (grey model and yellow model), and a zoom pd-01, along with several other distortion boxes. All of these are good and usefull, and definetely get up there ratings. But the best sound wise to me is the barber. My second and third favorite is the Zoom PD-01 and Maxon OD-9, great for pushing an amp and really thickening up a strat, and the least expensive of the others I mentioned, but it lacks the musical mojo that the barber produces and I hate the ts-9 style switch on the maxon. So, I have no problems at all giving this a 10. All of the pedals I mentioned excell as a either a full on heavy overdrive, a simple boost, or a light overdrive. The barber does all three and does them well.

This has got to be reliable. Open one of these up and compare it any thing you own. Anything!! Incredibly well built.

Sent them an e-mail asking them a ton of questions concerning many of their products and they steered me towards a happy purchase. Very good support. Right up there with Robert Keeley, Analogman, and Indyguitarist. Three builders I've worked with that are all great to deal with.

I've been playing for twenty years. I play Rock, Blues, and pop punk. I'm in a cover band and need to cover a lot of territory. I also play at times in blues type settings. Great match for all that. I like it's simplicity in use and I like that it doesn't sound like I'm using a pedal. Also, not much added noise when using with other pedals or driven amps. And the price? C'mon what else are you going to get that close to perfection? Build quality, true bypass switching, excellent customer service, and tone for days, all under $100? Best bang for the buck, hands down.

Typical tubesreamer set up, volume, tone , gain and has added feature of pull tone pot for richer harmonics. Barbers website has tweaks so one can hone in the sound of the pedal. Got this pedal in a trade deal. Downloaded the manual, has some useful info on settings to get you started.

I use pedals that sound like a tube amp at full gain, first sign of fizz, flab, or kazoo like tones and they are off my board. I was using a Keeley modded TS-9 and a real tube 901 to get higher gain tones from a tube amp SET CLEAN. I tried the set the amp at near breakup and use the volume knob on the guitar and pedals to hit the preamp tubes harder, which gives a powerful tone BUT where did my shimmery clean tone go? For most venues I play I have to keep the volume down but still have tone and that is clean tone and overdriven tones and boosted tones for leads. The Barber Direct drive sounds like (or I should say a pinch better) than my amp cranked and I can lay the barber on a clean amp and I don't need any amp overdrive for it to work.

Dave Barber built it, the guy posts on a forum that I frequent and I'm sure he would make my pedal right if something was wrong. And as I said before he has tweaks on his website (I did the "open air tweak" and added a little more high end.

what I already said

I play rock thru a Dr Z MAZ 18 Jr w/2-10's and a Blues Jr.
I like to set my amp clean, my pedals shift the amp into distortion.
I run my guitar into a Teese RMC-2 -Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe - Fulltone 69 - Barber Direct Drive - Klon Centaur (set for clean boost) - Fulltone Supa Trem (which I set the mix knob down all the way and acts as a boost when not using trem) and the Dr Z or the Blues Jr. I have a boss DD-3 that I keep handy but normally dont use. Overall Rating For the Barber Direct Drive: I rate this pedal high because it works and cost's less than a lot of pedals that I bought that did'nt work. I can get my little Dr Z combo to scream like a plexi, or like a modded marshall, it works with the 69 fuzz to produce Hendrix sounds and set at lower gain it does some pretty good blues tones, and no fizzy decay, kazoo like tones, or farty bottom end, it is amplike.

Its been over a year now of every day use. I bought 3 of these pedals. And gave two away as gifts.

Been playing on the Pro level for 30 plus years, and I use a great amp, killer guitars, and only 1 pedal. I looked for ever to find the right OD pedal.....this is it. I like the LTD model as well for blues, and the SS model is better for Metal tones, but for my tastes this direct drive is the shit...I tend to like the Plexi style amps, and overdrive them into milkshake leads with articulation..this pedal does it great, and I can run it wide open on the gain, and it still is very musical. If there is a better OD pedal out there I have not found it, and I still try alot of em...Do yourself a big favour and buy one...out of all my stuff, this & a Demeter head stay by my side..

no trouble at all...many many gigs, and just works great..the battery last forever too...

Very easy to talk to. I bought 3 pedals of differnt types just to test them out..3 of the direct drives my friends bought do sound alittle different from each other, one had more balls, the other had more openess, and one was a tad bit under gained, but all sounded awesome just a little different..

In the future I want to buy his amp cause if his pedal is this killer, I bet the head is awesome. I really think this will be the last pedal I ever buy for OD...for $99 its just the best deal on earth..

3 knobs, push/pull pot, Hey ??

For the last 20 years I've tried so many ODs and this unit is by far the best sounding Overdrive I ever had. It can sound very similar to an old TS9 or 808 (gain and tone about 3). Pull the Tone-knob and you get a slight increase of mids. I am using this pedal with a Fender Deluxe Reverb, Twin Reverb and for clean boost with an Orange AD12. Didn't have any noise problems.

Looks very reliable. I would use it without a backup.

I don't know

I am playing Blues and Rock for 25 years now and I've owned so many OD pedals (Boss OD-1/SD-1, Banzai Fireball, Ibanez TS808/9/5, Vox Valvetone, Korg OVD-1, MEK TD-1/2). The sound of every OD is always a matter of taste. For me and my style of music the Barber DD is the best sounding and most usable OD I ever had. Much more Voulme than the standard Boss/Ibanez units.
The most thing I like about this pedal is that you can always hear the original sound of your guitar even with drive at max.
Maybe it would be nice to have a second swith instead of the push/pull pot but I am only using the Guitar-Volume so I don't care.
Gear: Strat/DD/TubeAmp (sometimes a little bit Delay after the DD)
...... bought my second DD yesterday ;)

I just had a suggestion for one of the previous reviewers who said this pedal was extremely noisy. Did you try it on another amp? I've been buying and selling pedals for a while now. I've seen tons of hate reviews on pedals for the amount of white noise they make. I've purchased pedals that were rated notorious for noise and worked fine on my tube amp without noise. I've had amps that the pedal sounded awesome on, but on another it would hiss and buzz. Another thing I realized was that another pedal from your current set up can cause the noise too. I've had some pedals leave a very low quiet fuzzy artifact after it which caused my other pedals to buzz and produce white noise and vice versa. So I was stuck with swapping pedals here and there for a while before I finished my dream pedal chain. You might have a kick ass setup that works fine without noise and such, but a new pedal can always be subject to problems fitting into your current setup. Some pedals are grounded and have noise filters, others dont. I have a tube amp where the distortion channel will pick up radio stations reguardless of my current power conditioner.

I noticed my new barber tonepress filters out that frequency. And since I leave it on all the time I don't have that noise issue. Again each pedal is built different and depends on the entire chain of effects.

Easy to use. Three knobs, Volume, Tone and Gain

I've used every overdrive pedal available. This overdrive is one of the best sounding overdrive pedals I've experienced. Very tube amp like. In my pedalboard I am also using a Vox Valvetone and a Maxon OD820. The Barber Direct Drive is very compatable with both of them. It hard to find and use multiple gain pedals that are compatable with one another. The Direct Drive has more tube character than any of the Tubescreamer products. That includes all the TS9 and 808 clones.

Judging by their reputation and looking at the build of the piece, I don't expect any problems.

Never dealt with the company

This pedal is a great match for the guitarist that simply wants a great tube amp overdrive. Great for most styles of playing!. Vintage rock, Blues, Country, Modern Rock. A great addition to my pedalboard!
This is truely a great sounding pedal! Thanks Barber Electronics!

Very Easy to use. Vol,Tone,Drive, with a push/pull on the tone knob.

I use a '93 Hamer Special FM with Duncan '59/JB Pups > Barber DD > Dunlop Rotovibe > A/DA Flanger > EH QTron > DOD FX96 EchoFx Delay >
EH Holy Grail Reverb > '65 Vibro Champ.(My setup as of now) Have lots of other cool effects, Too many to name. Not a noisy pedal very nice sound all around, doesn't color my tone and gives me a wide array of
OD settings. My favorite setting is vol 11 o'clock, tone 12 o'clock(with the push/pull in up pos.) drive at 2 o'clock. I get the best sounding OD I have heard yet. Very natural sound amp OD. When I crank my Vibro Champ It kicks the amp into harmonic heaven. The key is to have the Tone knob pulled up, this gives you awesome harmonics not found on ANY other OD. I like it better than the Tubescreamers(which I do like, but compress my tone way too much) The DD does not do this, it just gives you a fat sounding OD. There is also a trim pot inside that I found out from Dave Barber is new to the unit and adjust the bass resonse, which I really love. You can get so many sounds from early Marshall to cranked Fenders to a uncompressed Tubescreamer, to subtle blues.

Very dependable, Barber makes only quality pedals and I could see this lasting me forever. Very neat wiring. Quality parts etc......

Dave Barber e-mailed back very quickly. I asked him about the trim pot inside and he told me I was the first person to ask about it on the newer units. Very Nice Dave. Great customer support. The only 10 I will give for this review, cause 10's are hard to give because nothing is perfect, except Barbers support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I play whatever comes to mind. I do not pigeonhole myself into one form of music. I am not a pro or touring musician, I just love the guitar and especially effects/amps and gadgets. I have been playing for 15 years and am always looking for cool effects that are made well, sound great, don't break easily and have great designers/builders who care about the people who buy their products. If it were stolen I would I would track down the bastard and beat him a slow death with a barbwire bat and shock him with a cattleprod.
All in all a great OD for a fantastic value built by a top notch builder/human being who cares about his customers. Great work. Dave!!!!!

On the surface, the DD is very simple to use. Plug it in and go. However, it will take some fine tweaking to get it to really sound good with your rig. The manual is a nice overview of the pedal, but it is notable that all the sample settings, except for one, show the Drive knob set very low. This is because if you crank past 1:00 you're into the land of noise...the only problem with this pedal.

PRS Standard 22 into a couple of pedals (Barber Comp, FT 69, MXR Noise Gate, EH Small Stone, Line6 EchoPark) into a Dr.Z MAZ38 1X12. The DD is VERY noisy! When the drive is cranked, the unit is virtually unusable. Which is really frustrating because otherwise the overall sound is SO good and full of harmonics. If you roll back the drive to like 10:00 or 8:00 and mess with the tone, you get a beautiful thick mellow over drive with no noise. It's a major tease though, because if you of course want to crank the drive, and it sounds frigg'n amazing...until you stop playing and are hit in the face with a wall of noise and feedback. All OD's and DS's are noisy, but you know when a good gate set to full-on can't squash the buzz and crackle, it's bad. So if you're looking for a sweet-spot mellow OD pedal, you've found one of the best. But, if you like a more heavy driven sound, forget it.

I've had mine for 6 months and it seems to be able to put up with general rock-abuse. However, I'm benching this pedal as of this writing, so I can't speak for the long term. Never felt like I needed a back up...seems very well made.

Never had to deal with them. However, I hear they're nice.

I've played heavy rock and blues for over 20 years. For my mellow tones, the DD was great but almost an afterthought because you can just set your amp to get that same tone and it naturally sounds better. So, I would say this pedal was not a "good match." Don't know who's running around stealing and losing all these pedals, but if it were lost or stolen, I wouldn't care or replace it. I've tried so many OD pedals over the years and this was by far one of the best. Which is why it really SUCKS that it is so noisy. Major design flaw! In the end, nothing beats the true sound of OD'd tubes.