Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 Nano Linear Power Booster Reviews

Turns my Bassman 100 into a crunchy overdriven fun box. Tightens up a distorted amp. Put it in various positions in your signal chain and discover the possibilities.

This is awesome and it's the pedal everyone else tries to replicate in their version of a clean boost pedal. Get one because it really is awesome.

I bought this booster hoping that it might make my Blackstar 6L6 amp a little more "Tube-y" or fuller sounding.
(In fairness, the pups on my new fender Stratocaster sent to me were set so low initially, that it might have been a factor in the thin sound).

When I hit that pedal button for the first time, I couldn't believe how much the sound was transformed, so much more fuller, robust and cohesive. I'm building up a pedal setup again and having the lpb-1 at the beginning of the chain will make future decisions so much easier.

I couldn't be happier with this purchase. Can't wait to put it after an OD; I'm sure it will sound awesome. I highly recommend this pedal and I don't think I've ever recommended or wrote a review for a pedal before.

Would like to thank Lee. For all his help great person to talk to and good information about the pedal

Like to thank Lee for all his help in ordering my new pedal.

I had one of these boxes back in the late 70's or early 80's. It was perfect if you had a amp that did not have a master volume or a master volume footswitch. I used it for years. Recently I added it to my pedal board just to have an extra boost if needed. Inexpensive and simple to use.

Sounds nice for how cheap it is and if you're looking for cheap distortion this is it. Bought and tried it in store and sounded awesome

I have the roland/boss street cube 2 modeling style amp. Tho this new Boss model doesnt have the older roland street cube modeling options it does have clean/crunch/lead and gain control..I mainly play with friends and family and dont gig but wanted a bit of boost for times I do jump in with lead part or even when I play along with a backing track and then jump into a solo and want an extra kick...I wasnt sure what to expect due to the solid state modeling style amp and planned to run this straight with a volume pedal as my only effects type pedal if possible...I set boost volume full on but as kind of expected the boost pedal didnt do much to the internal crunch/lead channels volume or sound, although sustain did increase a bit, so I was afraid it would be worthless..but then I went to clean channel and left the amp gain dimed and clicked on the full volume boost and it gave me a thick smooth overdrive/distortion vibe, while not killing off individual strings...if I play amp alone on clean with gain up it is still cleaner then I want so this boost puts the sound I was hoping for in the amps higher volume channel while also adding the smooth thick overdrive type sound...I no longer feel the need to have a distortion pedal or use the amps crunch/lead channels since this gives me exactly a tone I had hoped for thru the clean with gain channel...I like the tone enough that I may just use this for my sound and just use the volume pedal to jump in for solo or an extra kick.... I run humbuckers straight to the jack, so not having tone pots help keep the treble strong also...I love that this pedal has built in 9v battery option so i dont always have to run extra electrical cord plug which is also why I have the Roland/boss street cube, so I can run off battery power...and since the pedal only draws about 25ah then a basic 170ah 9v should give few hours of playing for the times I play in area with no electrical outlets.

Overall I was second guessing this purchase with my modeling amp and had expected to have to return it , but I am definitely keeping it now...

I primarily lead worship on an acoustic guitar or octave mandolin. Neither of my instruments' pickups send enough signal to drive my pedals (chorus, delay, etc...) This is always on in my board and boosts my signal so I can use all my other effects.

I'm not much of a pedal user but I got this to boost my signal going from the control room to the live room in the studio. It work just like I wanted without adding much color to my sound. If I dime the boost it will give the guitar a lot of punch with very little tone change. This is an excellent value for a time proven pedal.

I use a tube amp with a preamp gain and master volume. This is the best pedal I have found to overdrive the preamp tube into further saturation without altering the guitar or amp tone. I have tried a number of overdrive circuits and I don't like how they cut high and low frequencies, muffle the tone, or how they mix your dry and distorted signal. This pedal has no EQ and forces no particular playing style like other pedals. It works well with single coils and humbuckers. This is a must have for every player regardless of style.

I play passive basses & every now & then I need a bit more gain. This is exactly what I get with this pedal. Simple with no other bells or whistles...just gain & no noise. Very pleased with this pedal & recommend it. The modest cost is an added bonus.

Why turn it off?

This Pedal is a must have for your guitar tone. It adds thickness, sustain and grit. Dirties up a clean LP beautifully and takes your already dirty tone into a beautiful fully saturated state. For $... this pedal is a no brainer.

This LPB-1 will never leave my pedal board, at least not while I'm playing my passive-pickups bass. I've got EMG passive pickups on my bass and I was always having to boost the signal a lot at my cheap mixing board, enough so that I started to hear noise. Also I have an envelope filter that wasn't getting triggered properly due to the low gain signal from the bass.

Placing this LPB-1 booster at the start of the signal chain, just after my tuner pedal, has transformed what I can do with the bass and effects. I don't have to dig in as hard to get the dynamics and tone that I want, I can easily trigger the envelope filter, and I can dial back the mixer gain so the noise fades away.

With the LPB-1 in place, playing my bass has become really enjoyable. So glad I gave this a try.

Perfect pedal,simple as it gets ,

Can't go wrong for $40!

Along with being a solid clean boost, it can really help you drive your amp and get your guitar to interact with your signal chain in different ways.

First one I ever own. I was really impress when I users it on a gig. Wow.

GREAT PEDAL I LOVE IT IN THE EFFECTS LOOP ON MY AMP
JUST GET ONE ITS A GREAT BUY and DOES WAY MORE THAN JUST BOOST IT CAN CONTROL OUTPUT OF OTHER PEDALS

Best $40 I've spent .. I wouldn't have been disappointed if this cost more $$$.. this is a very versatile pedal.. placed in front of my Twin or any of my smaller combo amps gives me a thick bluesy lead tone..
I currently use it in my effects loop of my main gigging amp for a lead/volume boost, which simply adds volume without coloring my tone like other pedals I've tried, or if it does, it's just the upper mids, which is what I want anyway .. it sounds better than using an EQ pedal which added way too much noise..
Like I said, do yourself a favor and get this pedal if you need an inexpensive way to give yourself a fat sounding lead/volume boost..

The LPB-1 is a killer and affordable volume booster. For the price, players really go wrong with this pedal as it can be used in a variety of ways.

For a clean boost, simply plug into the effects loop of your amp, and it merely spikes the amps volume without altering its tone. Looking to give your solos something extra? Plug it into the front of your amp and it will not only add volume, but a little overdrive, as well as boost your bass and lower mids. It takes the rhythm channel of my 6505+ and adds enough gain to make it sound like my lead channel. It's also a great buffer between tone-sucking pedals.

This is the most affordable signal boosting pedal that I've seen on the market, and has become the secret weapon on my pedal board.

I bought this used and I use it in front of my Bugera 333XL. I was blown away by the fatness and sustain I obtained for lead parts with this pedal, this was exactly what I was looking for. Works well for anemic signals when you want that extra push for your tube amp. Good quality and shurely I`ll buy more EH products in the near future.

I got this because it's difficult to get a heavy distortion sound out of my Blues Deluxe without cranking it all the way up, which I obviously can't do all the time. Putting it in front of the amp on its 'Drive' channel, it's like a second gain knob! As a volume boost for clean pickers, it may not be so great, because that's not what it's for. "Linear" means that a linear pot is used for the control, so that dialing it at 12:00 gives you exactly half-power. That's why there's a volume jump just past 9:00, because the ear perceives sound logarithmically. A linear power boost is useful for compensating for signal loss from a long effects chain, or (the way I use it) fine-tuning front-end gain depending on the guitar pickups, being careful to get just enough of the amp's natural overdrive tone that I want, without losing definition (which can happen if you just crank it all the way with powerful pickups). Simple, rugged, and affordable...and made in the USA!

Tired of OD's with a pronounced mid-hump or those that are just distortion boxes in disguise. The LPB-1 is perhaps the first real overdrive effect. It doesn't colour the sound in any discernible way but it does boost the signal easily pushing those pre-amp tubes into their warm happy place without getting the cops called for huge volumes. It's easy to think of this as just for getting a bump of volume for a solo but on my board this is a real overdrive that easily layers itself with amp gain or, in my case a classic fuzz like a Big Muff. Makes the Morley wah an even more dramatic effect as well

I got this pedal to help get a strat better situated in a mix. With a different EQ than my other boost pedals this worked as intended.

Did a perfect job as a lead volume boost - surprisingly good battery life as well - possibly due to the portrait of Mike Matthews on the battery!

BOUGHT SEVERAL PEDALS TRYING TO GET A GOOD LEAD BOOST
A VOLUME PEDAL ALTERED THE DRIVE/GAIN OF THE SOUND, EQ GAVE A GOOD BOOST, BUT CHANGED THE NATURAL SOUND OF THE SIGNAL, SPENT $170 ON OTHER THINGS WHEN ALL I NEEDED WHAT THIS $40 PEDAL, RECOMMEND IT. THE ON/OFF SWITCH I WISH WAS MORE LIKE THE BOSS TYPE, YOU KINDA GOTTA STUMP ON IT (THUS THE THE STUMP BOX)BUT STILL LOVE MY NEW SOUND (LES PAUL/MESA BOOGIE)

I don't play many guitar solos. But when I do, I want to be heard. And this pedal does the job. As an old classic rocker, on a budget, I figured I might as well go with a classic boost. That's the LPB1. Thanks Keaton. Now when my solos come up, my band members know they'll hear every note... clean or distorted. This little pedal make a lot of sense. And saved me some cents as well.

It does what it is supposed to.

I purchased this pedal to boost the signal of my Fretless Bass that does not have active pickups. My main basses have active and I wanted to keep the same level when switching between the two during a show.I had to crank the boost all the way up but it did the job nicely.

very nice boost pedal.

Does exactly what I need it to do. Great product, well build.

Good Pedal. I like what it does. I can not compare it to others of its type, but I like it and plan to keep it in my chain. I gives a nice drive to my effects loop and compensates for signal loose nicely and when turned up a little more adds a bit of saturation to the tone.

This is a great pedal that met my expectations. It is not a complicated holy grail kind of thing. This pedal can give you some(not much for me) overdrive saturation "crunch" when used to saturate your tubes much like having another volume pot, But the sound is LINEAR in terms of distortion and tone from the input to the output. So if you like that lower guitar knob volume and want to boost the signal without distorting it, this is for you. It has behaved differently in different situations, so I can see why some people find it unreliable. The lesson learned is that extra power does different things to different products and electrical systems within my rig. Used alone, enjoy a noticeable power boost that is LINEAR. I wasn't looking for "Crunch" anyway, so this made me happy. Its a great clean booster. It is like adding more power to your pickups. It also works great when placed correctly in your rig, depending on what you are using and what you want the boost to define, like a pog or envelope filter to define your tone. EHX makes awesome products, and for the price this one can't be beat. This is only $5 more new than to make it yourself from a pirate Do It Yourself pedal site. Built like a tank, it will surely give me years of use. No confusing knobs to screw up playing live, just a single easy to spot knob and tough foot switch. This pedal has been around since the 70's (LPB2 and LPB1), and beloved by many.

Let’s get something out in the open right away. This is NOT a good boost pedal. If you are looking for a “blown amp” sound, this pedal will achieve that sound with the dial at nine O’ clock. That’s only a quarter turn from the off position. Anything below that lowers you signal volume. This was nott what I was looking for. I tried the pedal in every position on my pedal board and still got the same result. I am using an Elite Epiphone Les Paul Gold top through a Peavey Classic 50 Tube 2x12 combo. HERE IS WHERE THIS REVIEW GETS POSITIVE! As a last resort I put this pedal through my FX Loop and it works great. It still doesn’t act like a traditional boost pedal where after about one O’ clock it starts to give you some overdrive. I use it simply as a signal boost for solos and it works perfect. It adds a nice fat clean boost. For 40 bucks…I think it’s worth it if used right.

I'm not gonna slam it cause it's conveniently inexpensive, but after a few gigs in my pedalboard, this little guy came back out. I think "linear" isn't quite the right name, cause there seems to be a spot (somewhere around 9-10 o clock on mine) that it just goes from being an unnoticeable difference to TOO LOUD! I've used several other boost pedals where the increase was more even accross the range, and if your foot accidentally brushed up against it and moved the knob a little, it wouldn't make such a HUGE difference. But on this one it does.

Everyone is always talking about how high gain amps sound amazing with a boost, so I pulled the trigger and got this. When boosted, both my PRE MT 15 and Engl Fireball 100 just get a ton of honky low-mid mud added to the mix and all the clarity is ruined. It made everything sound fat, in a bad way, not a larger than life heavy way. It makes the tone pretty much unusable. I realize I'm a total noob with using this pedal and maybe I'll figure out more in time, but honestly I received this pedal today and after a couple of hours trying to make it work, it's in its box put away on my shelf until I sell it for less than I bought it for. What a bummer.