If size matters, then the bigger pedals would out-tone the little ones but we know that's not the case. Hotone pedals would easily fit into your palms & they pack a punch. Some serious punching, at that. Anyway, the Lift Up here is a boost unit, a clean boost. Something you'd employ to beef up your solos. The deal with many clean boosts is that they give you a higher serving of volume & that's it. The more adventurous booster pedals add some gain into the mix, making your signals break up like a tube amp set at upper volume levels.
My requirement- I want a boost that can do a clean volume push as well as add a little dirt when the need arises. It's gonna be difficult starting with a distortion unit or a very mild drive for that matter because it's about subtraction. One has to slowly & tactically remove the dirt amount from one's settings & it would be quite impossible to remove this entirely because one is dealing with a dirt-specialist so to speak. Clean is not an option. So this is the reason why I chose a clean boost. The idea is to bring the gain up a tad without causing too much clipping so I get to hear more of what I have without too much added flavour. I've tested some other clean boosts along the way & the Hotone Lift Up was my final pick due to that Warm function there. Besides giving the user some PAF type warmth in clean mode, this rounds up the midrange in drive mode so my tone won't end up sounding a little sharper than it should be. Done :-)
Rating: 85%
Hotone: Lift Up
Availability: SV Guitars
Price: $120
