Tag Archives: Sweet Honey

GEAR 403 • Joyo Sweet Baby Overdrive Pedal

Here is my review and demo of the Sweet Baby overdrive pedal from Joyo. An inexpensive clone of the Sweet Honey overdrive from Mad Professor, I prefer to evaluate this pedal on its own merits. The Sweet Baby specializes in low gain overdrive that is perfect for pushing a tube amp on the verge of breakup. The overdrive is mostly smooth and, well, sweet. Higher settings on the drive knob gave some mild grit – though this typical Fender characteristic could be coming from my amp in part. Maxing out the drive and volume gives you a sustaining lead tone, though chords are a bit fizzy. I’ve found the settings are better somewhere ‘in the middle,’ where you still get a smooth, sining lead tone and chords have a nice crunch. In general, I prefer buying pedals a step up in price point (especially used) as I find you get better build quality and (usually) better sound, but there’s no denying that some of these clone pedals sound surprisingly good for being in the rock bottom price point category.

This demo was recorded with a Fender MIM Strat (w/ Texas Special pickups, Fender Original Bullet pure nickel strings) and a Fender Champ II (Rivera) amp miked with a Sennheiser e906 dynamic microphone.