Behringer HB01

Very easy to hook up. It went downhill from there.

Les Paul Junior into HB01 into Crate GT500H.
Noisy on all settings. On initial engagement there is an audible pop/click noise. All foot pedal movements are clearly heard through the amp.

Definitely would not depend on this unit nor would I consider using it on a gig.

Will not be needing customer support. This unit will be returned tomorrow.

I play metal and blues. This unit is not suitable for either one. If it was stolen I bet it would be returned. I was hoping this pedal would work out but I should have known better by the price tag. Do not waste your money on this pedal. Save your sheckles and buy something good.

Paid $45.00 Fairly Easy to use optical eye so no pots, ythe only thing I did not like was the pedal does not stay in position which I used to like to do with my cry baby in the early eighties other wise does what it needs to and if it holds up will be a gem of a deal. I bought a Soundstage by Divinci and returned it it was analog but the pedal squeeked gosh awful. The pedal is no biggie on the Hell Babe as I think I may be able to adjust it.Oh and the boost kicks very well!

Peavey predator, roland cube 15, various pedals, not much noise as you can fine tune it.

I have not had it for long so I cannot say!

They were quick on the response with the registration confirmation, some Roland sucked at as I get their(rolands) emails but no free mags,
or registration confirm.

very easy to use (just like any other wah), very flexible range, boost, tone, etc. manual not needed at all.

i use an various les pauls to various amps. i like that it's switchles and the flexibility it has; but here's the bad part: the effect range is weak! the wah effect should be more prominent and more trebley in toe down position, in other words more vocal. On the other hand, it sounds great with distortion. i brought it as a back, but after using it i might have to use it as a last resort wah and just buy another backup. With the exception of the sweep tone and range, everything else is ok.

it seems pretty sturdy and reliable, bult like any other wah, like i said it's my last resort wah, maybe a travel wah with my pandora or pactice amps.

Behringer is a great company with good products at a great price, but it's have to get good maintenence service from them. since they're in Germany, no one here can really work on their products unless they're an official behringer dealer and repair, with the ones in the U.S. are backed up so you'd have to ship to Germany and you don't know how long and how much that's gonna be. Called them about the GDI21 about where to get a power supply that works and they told me exactly what i already know about the product then told me that i'd find what i need at radio shack. took it there and nothing!!! so I guess I have a love/hate relationship with behringer!

i play all kinds of music and have several amps, guitars, and effects. Been playing for 15 years. I have a hendrix wah (on my pedal board), a crybaby standard, a morley pdw wah (doesn't work), even a crybaby 95q (it's my dad, but i use it from time to time); the behringer doesn't come close to any of them and the morley was crap when it was working. what i like about the HB01 is that it's flexible and hate its lack of vocal range. If it was stolen i wouldn't get another one i'd just get another crybaby. It's still a usable wah but not a good one and that's better than nothing i guess. a good wah will scream and this one doesn't so I wonder why they call it the "HellBabe"? Sorry Behringer, you guys are great, but it's back to the drawing room.

Here's my honeymoon review. Just received it 2 days ago. It's on my board now and it will be used with electric guitar in a three piece band, and also used for bass in another band. It's being powered by a Visual Sound 1-Spot.

Have only used it with electric guitar. Excellent for dirty lead work.

Just got it, will have to report back. It worked right out of the packaging, no issues with optics or the pedal moving side-to-side as someone previously mentioned. It's heavy and seems sturdy. I don't anticipate having any problems with it, especially since I took off the bottom feet and now it's velcro'd to my pedal board, so it's not going to be banged around a lot.

I've owned Behringer gear before and have never had a problem with it, so haven't needed to contact them.

So far it sounds great. For the money it's a ridiculous deal. Now for my sermon: Quit worrying about what brand of equipment you use. If it works and it's inexpensive use it. Nobody you're going to be playing in front of is going to give a ratsass, except for the guys in the crowd who spend more time fixing their hair and picking out their wardrobe than they do playing guitar. And if those are the people you want to impress you might have some other issues you need to deal with first.

This is easy to use and really Behringer put in some good innovations. When you tilt the pedal it works. Take your foot off and it returns to base position and the unit is off. Optical switch works fine. Adjustments are easy to make, large range knob on the side, smaller on the other side.

Actually the wah sound is really good. You can adjust a lot to your liking and it appears to work well and smooth. The relatively small pedal displacement does not bother me, it is not a problem.

However there is TONESUCK, enough to be heard. You loose some brightness. So some minus points for this.

Option is to put in a hard bypass switch option.

Is out of plastic, however seems to be reasonably sturdy. Don't forget about the price - this unit is LOW COST. You can buy four for one Cry Baby.

NEver dealt with them.

I play in a rock coverband. If it had a hard bypass - yes I'd buy it again. I dislike the tonesuck, I like most of the rest especially for this price.

Spring loaded wah which is removeable.
Range, Q(frequency bandwidth), sensitivity, fine tune and boost controls
LED's to indicate power and sensor controlled bypass/engagement

It's a cinch to use

The range of play in the pedal is borderline useless!!!!

Sound is awesome but the controls are extremely lack luster. Other than the booster, the variation they give is so miniscule that that they may as well be there for appearance though they do make audible differences. The range of play in foot movement is literally less than a sewing machines foot pedal, it reminds me of the piano style foot pedal volume controls used with keyboard. I mean you LITERALLY have about HALF AN INCH of foot play!!
WTF WERE THE ENGINEERS AT BEHRINGER THINKGING?
OH WAIT, THEY WEREN'T THINKING!

I'm just absolutely disgusted by the limited play in this pedal, the engineer behind it was absolutely moronic in this phase of the design. The variety of Crybabys don't have much more but a Morley is about 3-4 times this, I can't believe these guys put this thing to market with such a miniscule range of foot movement, it's absolutely absurd.
I'd of given it a 10 for sound quality but this factor makes me want to give it a zero, I really doubt I'm going to keep this thing.

It's incredibly heavy and though it is plastic, it's solid. I could see one of these lasting possibly 10 years or more

The number below says it all

What else can I say, the range of play is moronic and that's putting it gently. Whoever said lets put it to market must not play much guitar. I'd say this wah has about 2/3 to 1/2 the range of a Crybaby and 1/4 that of a Morley, your foot gets about as much movement as it will stomping on those heavy duty stomp box switches, it's literally that bad.

At the same time, you're not going to get any of these features or this sound quality out of a wah anywhere in it's price range.

For a beginner, great choice, for a pro, no way. Even at $30 I can't really justify keeping it since I'm not exactly swimming in cash. The bottom line is I'm not the type of guitarist that should of had to pay for this, I should have demo'd the damn thing for Behringer so I could tell them what's wrong with it before it ended up on the market. I sent Behringer a pissy email about this huge fault in what could have and should have been an amazing piece of guitar equipment.

Not the easiest wah in the world, but it's still a wah - a simple pedal. The Range, Q, and Fine controls take a little tweaking to get the best sound. The optical switching is dead simple, when it works (more on that later). There is a trim-pot on the bottom to adjust how quickly it bypasses when you stop using it. If it's set too short, the wah will shut off if you rock it too slowly. If it's set too long, the wah will remain on after you're done using it, and shut off in the middle of your next phrase (very annoying).

But I found a way to get rid of the optical bypass and install a standard stomp switch (see "Overall Rating" below).

Here's where this pedal shines. The sound is very good. Not just "good for the price", but as good as many other wahs I've used (Morley, Dunlop, etc). The range control lets you select how much treble you get in the toe-down position - great for me, because I find most wahs too shrill and noisy at the end of the sweep.

I use it with a Fender Strat, Ibanez RG-220B, or Epiphone SG through either a vintage Fender Champ or Randall 4x10 amp.

There is no noticable tone-sucking when bypassed. It sounds great when clean or before distortion. Despite the plastic case, it doesn't add noise or pick up radio signals. Since there is no pot to wear out, I don't expect it to ever get scratchy like my old Crybaby did.

I'm not sure how to rate it in this category. It had a problem when it arrived. The optical sensor that controls the bypass got bent in shipping. THIS IS A SERIOUS DESIGN FLAW - the sensor isn't held securely. The only thing that keeps it in place are the 2 wires coming out of it to the circuit board. A good bump can throw it out of position - and the wah won't shut off.

So, with the help of someone named Justice on alt.guitar.effects, I learned how to bend the sensor back into place. But I didn't trust it. So I removed it and soldered in a heavy-duty stomp switch. Now it works fine.

Would I use it without a backup? Maybe. But I actually got it as a backup for the wah in my Pod XT Live. As such, I trust it.

So, before the modification, I'd give it a 3 for reliability. Now I'd give it an 8. Since the average is 5.5, I'll round it up to 6.

Don't know. It only cost $29, so I decided to experiment on it, rather than contact Behringer.

I play a lot of styles. I've been playing over 20 years. If it were lost or stolen, I might buy another one. Heck, I might buy another one just to tinker with it.

And speaking of tinkering, here is the modification I did:

1. Desolder the sensor. This is the one closest to the front (toe end) of the pedal. Remove the screws holding the circuit board. Lift it out of the case. Using a heat sink (to avoid damaging the sensor) desolder and remove it. Keep it if you ever want to reverse the mod.

2. Solder 2 wires in it's place (aprox.10" lengths). Return the circuit board to the case and put the screws back.

3. Solder the wires to a heavy-duty SPST stomp switch.

4. Drill a hole in the case and mount the switch. Adjust the height of the switch to get it to work correctly. Extra rubber or felt pads allow the pedal to be depressed without accidentally clicking the switch. This step may take a little trial and error.

5. Adjust the trimpot that controls the bypass time all the way
to the right (instant shut-off).

There you go. You may want to remove the spring under the pedal, depending on what feels best to you.

The controls are quite obvious and instinctive!
Just select mode, boost, Q and sweep range.

The optical mechanism and "heel return" are brilliant ideas!!!

Not bad. It definitely isn't a Cry Baby nor a Morley, but it gets the job done.
The aditional parameters allow for a multitude of sounds, maybe more than you will ever need.

The boost parameter comes quite useful in order to level your "wet-vs-dry" sound volume.

Apart from the above mentioned failure when "switching off" the wah, I have nothing else to report.

The construction isn't the best: the pedal itself swings from side to side and the optical mechanism gets "confused" and "thinks" the pedal isn't at its zero position (heel down), thus, the wah does not switch off.
To solve this problem, shift the pedal towards the left.
This might get you into a rather delicate and unpleasent situation when playing live.

It is a quite good pedal, taking the price into account.
As far as I'm concerned, I have only bought it because a 535Q is WAY TOO expensive. I might exchange it for a 535Q when I have some money to waste on a wah pedal.

Easy once you get used to the controls.

Maybe the range of the pedal sweep isn't wide enough to get a better control over the wah.

Sounds nice, without harsh, popping or clipping in the majority of settings (unless you set the boost control to max).

To me, the vocal effect should be more evident.

Don't think it's a very reliable device. The first one I got from the store didn't work at all.

The pedal hasn't got a very good attachment to the structure and apart from the typical movement of a pedal it can be moved unintentionally from left to right a little bit, but enough for the bypass mechanism not to work properly (when this happens the sheet used to interfere with the optical mechanism a thus control the wah, goes to far from the led and it never changes to bypass mode)

So far I just give a 4 to reability... Time will say the last word

Ok, everything is a balance between quality and price.

PROS: The sound it's good. You can adjust many parameters and can even use it with a bass guitar. It's incredibly cheap, I can't afford a Crybaby with similar features.

CONs: It won't probably last long. But it's Ok if it lasts at least one or two years.

Very easy to use, if you are used to stomp boxes. It has is own specific options, but nothing very hard to understand at the end of 30 min operatin on it.
I'm not very interested in how to produce a Metallica or Jimmy or any other artist sound, so if that is your interest just put on the cd and try to copy it, but that is not the function of a manual, so I realy think that the manual is good enouph, it explains what the knobs do and for me that ok.

I use it with a Epiphone LP Bird's Eye, thrue a Fender Rock Pro 1000, with a few other effects, and it produces no noises even on switching.
Never heard no radio station etheir.
The effect sound ok, like a Wah tipe effect, and you have a variaty of options to shape your sound but it's like someone said before, it sounds diferent from other pedals, and i never heard a similar pedal from diferent brands sounding the same, and that's good because it enshures variaty, otherwise all guitar players would sound the same.

I have it new so in terms of durability, i realy can't tell.
It as a hard plastic shell and a bottom metal plate, it seems very robust and my only concern is the plastic knobs, that seems very fragyle, like in other behringer stomps I Own.
But if are not a real pro touring guitar player, it might last time enouph for the money you spent.

Never deal with them, but I heard they are very good.

I play a Electro/Indie/Blues kind of sound, and i use it for shaping sounds in different parts of the musics, nothing to hard (i'm the Singer to, so...). I also have a trem and a booster from behringer and a BD2 from boss. I realy like the shaping options, and the optical sistem along with the auto switch mode. the booster might come ok for some solos where you need that extra depth. The only thing I didn't like is that the hard screw that controls the hardness of the pedal doesn't realy work and you can't get that extra touch you need to control the sound a little more subtle.
And the thing i like the most is the price.
I Will give it a 7 because of the fragile plastic knobs, and plastic sheel, but that's ok for the price you pay.