Behringer Ultra Octaver UO300 3-Mode Effects Pedal

I’m not huge Behringer customer but of the items I’ve purchased, never had an issue and the sound quality is pretty much on par with all the more expensive items.This pedal is well built, fully featured for a wah pedal and sounds great once you dial in your preference, which is easy to do if you take your time and try the various combinations.The battery compartment is not an issue and is easy access and secure. I gotta question that one reviewers intelligence that they weren’t able to make it work. It’s just like most toddler’s toy that requires a 9V.It is a switchless wah so it activates as soon as you step into it and it deactivates if you take it back to its standard position. The reviewer complaining about that obvious hasn’t used a switchless wah or is just uncoordinated. Pretty easy to use and great for players who sit when they record, like I do.I’ve owned the Bad Horsie and the Dunlop switchless wah and they work and sounds great just like this one but for 2-3 times the price. For someone who doesn’t use the wah that much, likes to sit down and record with a wah and isn’t brand/status conscious, this is an awesome deal at $50.

Pleasantly surprised at how precise the tuner is whether used with the bypass or connected to the tuner output on my combination (monitor). Also, would recommend getting a 9VDC power adapter otherwise batteries may become a problem.

If you want a quick review of this pedal (the Behringer TM300) let's just say it might work for you but be prepared to send it back.I'm trying to sell a keyboard amplifier combo that has 65 W, with a 15 inch speaker and a horn tweeter (it's a Peavey KB-100). You can use it for keyboards, bass guitar, and vocals without changing anything about it. But because it's a solid-state amplifier from around 1990 it doesn't sound good with electric guitars. So I looked for a cheap pedal that would make the amplifier really howl.This Behringer pedal, like most Behringer pedals, is a clone of a more expensive pedal. I believe it's a copy of a Sans Amp GT-2, which costs typically close to $200. For around $25 it seems something that I should look into. It "changes" your amp into a Fender, Marshall, or Mesa Boogie. Since to get one of those amps would cost you probably over $1000, the $25 seemed reasonable.The controls on the Behringer pedal let you choose between the three makes of amplifier I mentioned above, and there is a mic position switch, and three varieties of drive. As well as this there's a volume control, bass and treble knobs, and a drive (distortion) knob, so you can dial in the exact sounds you like. I saw a YouTube demo of this pedal, and was very impressed.When I received this pedal I tried it out and the first thing I noticed was an intrusive hiss. There are several solutions to this, but I was worried that the prospective purchaser would find the hiss annoying, and of course I had no idea which instrument they wanted to use it with. So in the end I wrapped it up and UPS came with a label to send it back to Amazon for a full refund.I'd like to address some concerns that I see about Behringer pedals. The main criticism is that it costs too little "and it can't be any good." The electronics of today is different from those of yesterday. When you don't have any development costs to design circuits, and you already have market research from companies like Boss, pedals can be cheap.But the big cost saving in reproducing a pedal is modern assembly methods, particularly Surface Mount Technology (SMT). Because you don't need human hands to assemble circuits, components can be very small. Circuits are put together by machine from spools of components at the rate of tens of thousands parts an hour and automatically tested.Another issue with Behringer pedals is that "They're plastic, so they'll break." There is a video on YouTube of a guy trying to destroy his pedal by kicking it across the room, throwing it what looks like a metal statue, and standing with both legs on the pedal. It still works. Think about the remote control for your TV - you sit on it, then push it down into the couch, and your dog decides it is a new dog toy. But usually when it fails, it's not the case but the internal parts. I don't see anyone advocating metal cases.I was impressed by the thickness of the plastic of the pedal I had. I would use it to throw at the head of some dirty thief who stole my irreplaceable Squier Affinity Strat, and with the metal baseplate I'd use the pedal to hammer in nails. If you give it the slightest amount of respect it will last. If you're intent on apeing that bats*** guitarist and jump on it, remember he probably has a whole boxfull of pedals and a roadie to swap them.The only complain that affected me was installing the battery. Behringer uses this method in most of their stomp boxes, and it's not obvious how to do it. Where the pedal pivots on the case there are black lugs on either side. Use a ballpoint pen tip to push these in, one at a time, and when each one is completely pushed in you should use your third hand to push the foot switch cover up and away.Inside you can see the battery compartment with the connector for the nine-volt battery. Place the battery (that you supplied) into the compartment, connect it, and you're all set. This sounds worse than it actually is (especially if you have a third hand), but my advice is to get the Behringer power adapter. With the adapter you have the space in the pedal for the battery to hold whatever you want, and no indication that you have a secret compartment. Do you get my drift . . . drift . . . drift?I'm feeling a little guilty about returning this pedal - not because it was faulty (it was) but given a little more time and no prospective buyer to impress I might have been able to deal with the hiss. The amp I'm keeping is a solid-state Fender Princeton 65 (watts), and most people's verdict on this is that it's LOUD. I try to keep the volume down on it and also on my guitar. That means that the signal is not very loud, and so any extra noise from a pedal is noticeable.So, had I not been pressed for time, I should have experimented with volume levels, particularly with my guitar. Any pedal that hisses or hums is going to sound worse with a low signal. Another fix would have been a noise gate. That's a pedal that waits for a strong signal before it lets it on to your amp. Between songs your amp is silent, but when you play, a hiss or hum will sound from anything before the noise gate. Usually the guitar signal is so strong that it will drown out this extra noise.So this hasn't put me off Behringer pedals, and YouTube demos of the TM300 show it performs pretty well. If you're concerned about getting a clone, almost every company has produced a pedal based on the circuit of Ibanez's Tube Screamer under their own name. If you know exactly which make of amp you want to emulate you could use one of a range of Joyo pedals (JF-13 through 16) which reproduces the sound of one of the amps here (Fender, Marshall, Mesa Boogie, and on Joyo alone, Vox). These have only one company's sound but a greater range of controls, are made of metal (for what that's worth) and cost in the low end of the $30 range. Each of them has YouTube demos.But I guess I was spoiled by getting the $50ish Zoom G1oN Guitar Floor Multi-Effects Pedal, which has far more effects, many different amp sounds, and is completely silent. I think we'll see a Behringer competitor to the Zoom before too long, and I welcome the competition.

This was a VERY big surprise, from someone who is very knit picky about tone, this thing actually seems to do what it says more or less.The tone this thing produces is unequivocal tube tone, no doubt about it. The downside, more or less, is that it is kind of hard to tweak right, and sounds a little brittle. That said, I'm optimistic because I've only used a Groove Tube 12ax7, but I have a few other tubes on the way in the see if they can smoothen out the tone a little more, but even now it's totally usable.Another massive plus to this thing, it really sounds BETTER than the freaking solid state pedals marketed today. I have deluxe reverb, and have struggled with overdrive since I purchased it, solid state or analog pedals just don't cut it, they always sound like pedals even the best of them. This is my conclusion after trying some of the top of the line pedals there are. So, even if this doesn't cut it in the long run, I'm very pleased with my initial observations.Now, as addressed by everyone, the stock tube is not an accurate representation of what this pedal is, I can't describe how terrible that stock tube sounded. You can throw a tampon in there and it will sound better than the stock tube, so just get rid of it if you plan on keeping this, it has no business inside a musical device.I'm also giving this 5 stars, not because it's the best sounding overdrive I've ever heard, but because it gives "enough" to where I'm genuinely impressed, and feel that there's potential given the right tube and tweaking, maybe even slight mods in the future. Definitely worth checking out.Edit: (How to get the most out of this pedal)Okay, so I've used this pedal for about a week now, and I just so happened to buy new tubes for my amp, which were all JJ. I popped on one of the JJ 12ax7's in the pedal and THAT made a massive difference versus the groove tube.The differences were a smoother tone, more articulate & clear tone with the JJ 12ax7, and the biggest difference believe it or not was that the pedal was able to clean up. I don't know how this was possible because before it was just impossible fizz that never cleaned up, the volume just lessened, but with the JJ it actually dramatically altered this and I'm able to get that "off-clean" to Marshall annihillation with just the volume knob! This wasn't without a special ingredient though, which is what I found to be...A ts808 before the vt999 and BAM! This thing goes from an awesome sounding metal-esque sounding pedal, to a hybrid overdriven-lead tone that's very tight and adjustable. I'm extremely pleased, I know the BK Butler is supposed to be a better version sounding tube pedal, but honestly, I don't feel the need. The fuzzy-fizzy quality that was initially had with this pedal has transformed into a pleasant, heavy-driven lead tone that's quite adjustable. It stacks well with other pedals, and to my ears doesn't suck tone. I'd say if you have a clean amp and are ripping your hair out, then with a little patience and experimentation you may find just what you're looking for in this pedal. I can sort of pull of a bluesy-off-clean tone, but I'd say this pedal does the Marshall "annihilation" overdrive much better than anything else. I'd highly recommend!