Joyo JF-02 Ultimate Drive

I use the JF-02 with Fender tube combos, Silvertone tube head and a Marshall 18 watt combo. Battery is easy to change. I have tried this pedal with my 1962 Strat and Epi-Dot. I don't know how power hungry it is yet. I do intend to try it at 18 volts. I expect that it will increase headroom even though it already does the clean boost thing superbly. At 9 volts and the drive control at minimum, clean tones and the guitar's character really comes through. At about 9 o'clock a little dirt starts showing up. (with Texas Special single coils at about 6.25 K ohms). Between 9 and 12 o'clock you get slight to medium overdrive. The touch sensitivity is on par with more expensive boutique ODs. Still the guitar's true character is heard. Past 12 o'clock is dominated by moderate distortion. Throughout the range of the drive control you can clean up your tone by rolling back the guitar's volume a little bit. The tone and level controls are musical and effective. Bottom line- this thing is outstanding regardless of price! I love to modify amps and effects but will be leaving this one alone.

The JOYO Ultimate Drive is a pedal made in China, with all the standard amenities. It can be run with a 9v battery or an external AC adaptor. The housing and metal stompswitch seems rugged, although the devil/demon/Darth Maul graphic might scare off potential customers (it's pretty cheesy too). I thought that the LED placement, off to the side of the stompswitch instead of directly noon of it was a neat creative touch.

As far as this review goes on the JOYO Ultimate Drive pedal is concerned, my rating of a 10 is relative to the price - these can be found for $35 brand new from various websites. The pedal is certainly no Klon or Ethos, but it does the outboard gain trick very nicely for a mere pittance in comparison. It can goose up an amp's signal to provide gritty breakup or smooth saturation. If this pedal was in the $200 range like most boutiques start, I'd still give it a 7 or 8 rating overall in its stock configuration.

Circuit-wise, the Ultimate Drive is of a similar topology to a Fulltone OCD circuit. The controls are volume, gain, tone, and a low-boost switch. It saturates very nicely, giving a round, even bloom to the notes. With a Fender Stratocaster plugged into it, I could get somewhat convincing Tubescreamer-type sounds, and even into D-style territory. With a Les Paul, the sustain was seemingly infinite, allowing notes to bloom into perfectly controllable feedback - very cool! It can get a bit hairy, with a hint of harshness, but that is easily dialed out with the tone control.

The tone is not as detailed as the more expensive pedals I mentioned, but for the budget-minded and wallet-conscious, it is fantastic. And for the technically inclined, very simple and cheap modifications can be made for less than $5 to make this unit compete with the uber-expensive boutique pedals out there, giving the pedal even more value. 10 out of 10.

distortion pedal, the features are pretty basic

UTILIZATION

simple configuration, drive, tone, level
some pedals are modified to allow an increment of a bit more gentle drive is quite useful ..
This is the sound with a low drive is still already "dirty" .. do not expect to have clarity of OCD Fulltone

SOUND QUALITY

yes it works, it's true that for the price it's unbeatable, but it is not done in the finesse, the definition of the notes is completely absent

OVERALL OPINION

I finally bought an OCD and was therefore able to repeatedly compare the two. without making repetition, everything is a budget history
on very limited budgets, I think it's a good compromise.