Feature:
They should really have sold this with a power adapter; seeing as once it was on I found no reason for it to ever be off again.

Quality:
Solid construction all around, gold plated connectors are neat, but the battery compartment (cover, wires and all) falls off at the drop of a hat, leaving the battery and some internal circuitry exposed. I do not like the idea of my battery wire being torn (which I can forsee happening) so I am going to try and fix this. I do, however, love the two button operation. I hate pedals because I can never seem to stop them hard enough and always get the effect on half a second late. These buttons click on and off in a flash so the sound is never off.

Value:
For what you will pay for this here it is well worth the money. For as cheap as I paid here I would expect a lot less tone and a lot more wrong than just a battery compartment.

Desirability:
If only the input jacks were bigger I would dump my girlfriend and... never mind. Seriously though, this thing is hot. It's big and black and shiny with all kinds of jacks and knobs that you can tell just by looking at it that it is something amazing. Way bigger and better looking than any DI out there, yet refined enough to hang out comfortably with the other pedals. I don't know what else to say, big enough to command an awe inspiring presence on the stage, but small enough so as not to frighten little children or be an obstacle amongst your other pedal board goodies.

Sound:
Oh my the tone! To begin: I recently replaced the stock P pick up on my crumby squire P/J to a DiMarzio Split P, combine that with a sleek set of Rotosound 88's and I was pretty confident in the sound I could pull off. However as soon as this thing showed up, and after an entertaining hour and a half of turning all the various knobs up and down to test the extremes and finally settling in on the perfect sound thanks greatly to the shape circuitry I came to realize what I had been missing. The sound this little box churns out is amazing, like I said, my sound greatly improved with the upgrade from the stock pickups, but comparing my sound with the box on to my sound with the box off was seriously like the difference between my old pick ups and my new ones. I thought I had deep bass notes and crisp highs before, but with this it sounds like I have completely seperate amps individually tuned to my respective sounds. My low notes are even bassier and booming than before (without mudding up the highs) and my highs are even cripser and more trebly than before, again without killing the lows. This box also captures the nuances of both finger style and pick style better than I have ever heard before. I have not quite found a decent way to bring out a good slap sound, but I am confident that there is setting that will do the trick. Using this as a DI I can finally take control of my sound into my own hands instead of those of a sound guy who knows nothing about how to make a bass sound good. As a DI the tone does suffer some from having a flatline (i.e. un-eq'd sound) channel on the mixing board, but if I can convince my sound guy to let me back there I am sure I can fix that too. The reason for the nine is, as mentioned, my difficulting in finding an acceptable slap tone with this box, and the way the distortion unfortunately cops out at the lower frequencies (Great tube like sound on the highs though). All in all a VERY good item to own. I can almost assure you that running this box before and amp or mixing board will GREATLY improve your sound no matter how fine of a bass you have.

Ease of Use:
Pretty standard amp style equalizer. Easy to work with, knew exactly where to go for the sound I needed.

Support:
No rating because I have not needed any yet. The only thing I forsee going wrong is the battery and if that does go (which I hope to fix before it does)it should be an easy fix.

Overall:
Oh I suppose with more time and money I will seek to supplement this pedal, but I sincerely doubt I will ever get rid of it. Right now I am thinking that I could use a supplemental EQ pedal when running this as a DI, but that is about it. Aside from perhaps another EQ and the standard effects and toys this bad boy needs no add ons. Wear this out? Not likely, even if I get bored with the sound I get from it now this little box has plenty more that I have only scratched the surface of. This box comes close to my dreams for it as a DI, but surpasses my dreams for it as a pre amp. Like I have said as a DI it just needs a little more help, but as a pre amp/equalizer running into a power amp is knocks out everything else I have tried. If this were stolen, well someone would get hurt, and then I would buy a new one. Would be sad to be out the money because I am poor, but would spend it because I would NEED this pedal back.

Feature:
This thing has all the features you could want except for maybe a built-in tuner. Really!! It has a 9 volt power source and a battery source so you can supply the power either way. It has a ground lift, phantom power on/off, TRS out, XLR out and parallel outputs. The harmonics will blow you away!

Quality:
It appears to be built to last. I haven't had any problems at all with this thing. The pods are excellent quality, the input/outputs are tight and the stomp switches are solid. The case is well built and the pods are placed below the stomp switches so you can't do them any harm while in use.

Value:
I'll tell you. This thing is worth its weight in gold. I'd have paid a lot more for this pedal (after I tried it, that is). It is extremey rare to find a product of this quality at such a low price. Thank you sooooo much Hartke!

Desirability:
Nobody actually sees this thing and I'm not that into how a product looks. I'm all about the sound. But, this pedal is very nice looking and wonderfully designed.

Sound:
I'd say that this product is the best processor/direct box I've ever used. When I first started playing professionally, I used an old Fender Bassman amp. Then moved up to an Acoustic 360 with an 18" reflex and a folded horn. These amps especially the 360 were extremely heavy to drag around from gig to gig. With this Hartke I can get any sound I want and I doubt this thing ways a pound. I play a Fender Americian Jazz bass and an old Rickenbacker 4001 bass I love the fact that I don't need to use an amp at all anymore, I just plug the two bass guitars into an ABY box and the ABY box into the Hartke and the Hartke directly into the board.

Ease of Use:
This thing is so easy to use, all you have to do is plug in and start adjusting the dials. It even comes with a bunch of settings previously used by others. Now, I own a Hartke Kickback HS1200 120 watt bass amp. that I've been using for the past few years and a lot of the features are the same, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to operate this thing. Truly!

Support:
I have never had any problems with any of the Hartke equipment I own. That's why I didn't hesitate to buy the pedal.

Overall:
I expect to be using this pedal for rest of my career (in some way or another) or until they come out with one that has a built-in tuner. I doubt I'll ever ware this thing out. When you take into account an IMP-2 Direct Box will run you $40.00 and this pedal will only run you $70.00 (rounding up that is). It's a no brainer! This pedal is the best I've ever used. It meets all my needs and if it were ever lost I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one immeadatly. I only wish I new how good this pedal was before I bought it, I would have bought it a lot sooner. I like everything about it, except for the fact that it doesn't have a built-in tuner. But, that's just me.

Feature:
versatle and clean

Quality:
Solid and well designed

Sound:
Great clean and versitale bass tone shaper DI pedal. This will solve any bass recording issues of direct only or amp only. The active boost is a real plus for ricks or any other low ouput basses. Multi purpose use as a pre-amp or DI or both.

Support:
no need

Overall:
9 because it has no real usable distorsion but no compitition at 99 bucks either