Behringer HM300 Heavy Metal Distortion Pedal

This pedal has good tone to it and is actually quite impressive for the price. But it definitely lacks in the build quality, it is made of plastic and has a small squeak every time you press it. But still a great pedal!

Gift for my grand daughter, I’m teaching her the guitar.

For the money, this pedal is what it says it is. I’m actually shocked. Yeah it’s housing and frame is made of plastic and it doesn’t FEEL all that great, but it’s still sturdy and can be stomped on a bit. For me, there’s no worries at all since I’m playing around with these Behringers on a pedal board experimenting with tones. I’m pleasantly surprised as to the quality of the pedal’s function – producing that Metal grinding distortion. It’s possible to make it chunky, it’s possible to go 80s hairband. Is the best? NO. But does it work and give you what you want? YES. Aside from the build quality, this pedal and so far, others like it from Behringer are 10 outa’ 10 for me. I have this guy specifically paired up against a Boss that I have, and it’s not only comparable, I actually like the HM300 over the Boss’s lower grades. It’s better than the Digi Punk I used to have. The output signals is so much more clear than I’d expected. The quality of the tone coming through the same up, in terms of my driver actually throwing the full frequency range, was a lot better with this cheap little guy. The Heavy Distortion pedal from Behringer specially matches up with a DS-1 and just out does the DS-1 in every way but build quality. These are not pedals to get for collecting, they’re pedals that give you what you asked for and in today’s economy? You couldn’t ask for much else.

Excellent pedal to get that Swedish buzzsaw! All gain.

First, should know what you’re getting into if you buy this thing. AFAIK it’s a very close clone of the infamous Boss HM-2 pedal from the 1980s. That was the first pedal I ever owned back in 2000 or so. It sounded unusably awful to me even then, when I could barely play a lick, and it really is terrible for most uses. At the time I just wanted a more normal reasonable distortion tone, so I sold the pedal, which I’ve always kind of regretted (especially after I started getting into more death metal stuff in the late 2000’s). Now the HM-2 has gotten rare and expensive, mostly because it was used by a lot of the Swedish death metal bands in the 90’s and 2000’s.

This Behringer really does seem to be pretty much the same thing though. It’s really cheap, but you should still only buy it if it’s what you really want. Don’t get it if you’re looking for a normal, versatile distortion pedal or something that sounds good in any conventional sense. The manual (somewhat hilarously) says you can get the “typical hard rock or heavy metal distortion sounds” from the pedal. That’s a lie. The sound here is like something in between a distortion and a fuzz, with a really distinctive, crusty midrange that reminds me a bit of a half-cocked wah pedal. It’s scratchy and farty and just completely terrible sounding, but in a way that’s potentially useful as a truly creepy/hilarious special effect tone.

Imagine you were to stumble on a huge, writhing ball of snakes breeding in a swamp somewhere. Imagine the thick swamp stink, the slurping and slapping of the snakes intertwining and slithering ind an out of the water, the filthy droplets gleaming brown on the scales. Now imagine waking up one night and finding that same thing in your bed with you. Then somehow translate that into a sound and stick it in your earhole. That’s kind of what this pedal is. It’s pretty sweet.

Good price this is the second time i purchased this peddle. I purchased this peddle to clone the Boss-HM2 because i can’t find one at a reasonable price. It has an vintage 80’s sound to it but its just not where it should be. I use a BC-Rich Warlock Bronze Series and a Marshal MG-15 and the set up sounds good but not “authentic” i guess you could say. Good peddle for your collection or like me don’t want to spend upwards of a hundred dollars for a beat to sh-crap HM-2.