Electro-Harmonix LPB-1

The LPB1 is one of the simplest effects to operate. Just one knob and an on/off switch.

I use four guitars- a Gibson Firebird V, Gibson Custom Shop V, Ibanez Destroyer, Epiphone Olympic, into a Peavey VTM60 and an Orange 4x12 B cabinet.
I have two LPB1s- one with two female plugs and one with a male plug that plugs into the amp. Both sound awesome.
I have no need to get the sounds of my favorite artists. I'm more about sounding like me. Though some of my favorite guitarists are Glenn Phillips, Henry Kaiser, Curt Kirkwood, Paul Leary, Paul Gilbert.

Seems pretty solid and easy to repair.
I have a backup.

I play lots of stuff- psychedelic, prog, blues, straight up rock & roll, country.
I am a full time professional and have been playing 27 years.
I own lots of gear. Other effects include Fulltone Deja Vibe 2, Ibanez Classic Flanger, Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer (80s), Danelectro compressor, E/H Big Muff Pi, E/H Deluxe Memory Man, Peavey Valverb.
My favorite feature about the LPB1 is that the simple fact of owning one makes you cool. I have two.

Can not get much easier to use. One input, out output, one vol./gain knob and one batt. on/off switch. I do not think that Electro Harmonix ever put out a manual for this product at any time. If they did, it would have to be a very brief one indeed.

I think this is a very toneful, excellent signal booster. If used before effects (analog delay etc.) the white noise level is very low even when cranked. If plugged direct into the amp, the vol. knob should be set lower. My impression of this excellent product is, that it colors the signal very little. Some complain of "low freq. impact" etc. but I have not found that to be true. It lets the tone of the guitar stay the same, but just boosted. I run mine full out, but first in the signal chain to keep the noise down.

There is not a lot to go wrong with this excellent product. I did have one failure, but it was just the neg. wire from the battery. The neg. leg of the batt. is connected to the back of the pot. A few seconds with a soldering iron, and I was back in business.

The original NYC company is no longer in business. No customer support available.

This product is elegant in its simplicity. It is NOT a distortion box, but a near perfect signal booster. I like the LPB-1 so much, that I plan to buy two more for back up. I recommend this device with no reservations.

Has one knob, and one on/off switch for the battery. Very easy to adjust the proper amount of boost needed.

I found no major signal degradation with the LPB-1. If run before effects (delay etc.) it is not that noisy. If run direct into the amp, it has a certain amount of white noise when the gain is to max.

I really like this little booster. It does what it was designed to do, nothing more. Elegant in its simplicity, it is the perfect solution to the toneful but weak single coil problem. The general tone of the instrument remains about the same, but the signal is boosted. I recommend this retro device with no reservations.

Mile had the plugs reversed so I gould just hook it directly into my SG. Easy to use, easy to set up. Just dial in the amount of gain you want and flip the switch

I used mine with a Gibson SG and various amps. Traynors gave the best sound with the LPB-1, and I kept blowing speakers out of the Fenders when I used them. You could get a real nasty overdrive if you plugged 2 LPB-1s back to back then hit the amp with them, but you had best have very heavy duty speakers..... and if you turn the gain on the first one up too high you will fry the 2nd one....

I haven't had one since about '75, but I used mine every night we played. I went 5 years using the same one without a backup. they just worked...

By the time I needed service, they quit making the things.... I WANT ANOTHER ONE!!

I play (or played) hard electric blues & hard rock. I have been playing for 30 years, 10 of which I actually was classified as "professional". Currently I own 20 different guitars (various makes) a 1968 Traynor, a 1972 Peavey Classic, and an epiphone that I don't remember buying... If I could find an LPB1 again I would buy at least 2. I do wish it had some felt along the side with the male plug, to help protect the finish on whatever you plug them into.

I have one of the first ones made and for being 20 plus years it rocks!I have gotten so used to it I have a hard time not using it, I push an Ampeg VL503 on the first and second channels and thats all I need ,for any setting its highly recomended,I play archtop jazz and some rockabilly and its worth the $50.00 I paid for it 10 years ago

I use a Yamaha SA2100 and a Gretsch Viking with an Ampeg VL503/it is very clean sounding/very strong signal it produces,always good,loud or light/my sounds range from Wes Montgomery to the Reverend Horton Heat/

It has never let me down in the 10 years i've had it.I trust it so much I only carry another 9 volt as a backup

N/A never had to repair it

I have been playing for 12 years,its a great addition for my rig/if it was ever stolen I would find another on ebay or a guitar show/I really like the clean boost it has without distortion/I use it daily either playing alone or in my band

Very easy to use. The male plug that goes into the amp may pose a problem wit tight amp input and cabinet edges.
Basic EH manual.

It boost my sinle coil equiped guitars nicely.
Somewhat noise int the extrem setting.
Mostly use with a low powered tube amps but i have used it with say a micro mini Marshall or a solod state Vox Cambridge Reverb.
It also works great with old tube gear designed for phonograph.
Great gain sound.

Yes you can depend on it.
Yes i would use it without a backup.

I could repair it myself.

This gadjet fits right in my setup. I would buy another one or build one from scratch. Ive been playing almost two decades.
I like it because its so tiny.

Depends on your definition of quality. To my ears, this device is a dist/overdrive preamp thing.....very simple. Boosts gain with a transisitor.

I seldon had a purpose for it, It followed me home from a gig in the 60's :)

This unit doesn't really do anything by itself per se. There's a single knob for volume and an on/off slider switch, that's all. What it does is simply boost you output from your guitar or boost the signal going into the amp, as if you had super high output pickups If you use two units you can set one with the volume all the way up and the secomd volume anywhere and the first one will overdrive the second creating a slight overdrive. If you run into a clean amp you will only get louder, if you use an overdriven amp you increase gain.

It is a tad bit noisy when the volume knob is all the way up but it's not any greater than an overdrive or distortion pedal. It's actually slightly less noisy than my Ibanez TS-9. I use my unit with a Jazzmaster or Tele into a Fender Blues Deluxe with the drive control maxed and the LPB volume all the way up and it turns the B.Dlx into a high gain amp. Probably very similar to what the Hot Rod Deluxe sounds like. I compared it directly with the TS-9 which has been modded to TS-808 specs with the gain all the way up on both and they sounded very similar. I am considering in fact getting the LPB-2 which is the pedal version and using it in place of the TS-9 since I can make the LPB have true bypass where with the TS-9 I cannot, and the TS-9 adds a bit of noise to my signal.

What's not to depend on? A single transistor, a couple of a caps, a few resistors, a switch, a pot and two jacks. It doesn't get simpler than that. And all the components are handwired without a circuit board. I'd probably take a few backups since their usually so cheap I can afford to buy a few more just to have them.

I emailed Sovtek asking to buy knobs for my Big Muff and they wouldn't sell them to me. The original EH went out of business in 84 but Sovtek claims they will repair the original effects if possible. The LPB is so cheap that it would be easier to buy a new one than to get it reapired by them.

I would buy it again, actually I probably will buy an LPB-2. Actually I traded an autographed Mudhoney flyer for it, and since I don't like Mudhoney all that much I'd say I made out pretty well. It even had the box with it. Pure simplicity but a great unit in my opinion.

There are only two controls on this thing, on/off switch and a gain knob.

At high gina levels, it gets noisy as it is a very simple preamp cirucit, no attempt was made to keep noise low.

The typical EH shbeet metal case means it can get banged around, but in general there is little to go wrong with it.

EH is long out of business.

The LPB-1 was sold a way to make your guitar "ten times louder". Well, what it really does is boost your signal going into your amp; that means more distortion, mostly. I've used it as a volume booster with instruments that have weak pickup output (Daneclectros, for instance). It's the first EH effect to be marketed and so has some historical significance but it's hardly a must-have effect.