BDH H1SQ Sim Racing Shifter Review

Danny Lee
Apr 17
9 min read

BDH H1SQ Sim Racing Shifter Video Review

This is the dual-purpose BDH H1SQ H Pattern and Sequential shifter. BDH Shifters have become an object of admiration, but why? Well, now I know. This shifter has carried me to a homecoming. As a UK citizen, I could stick-shift before I knew my alphabet, but I’ve spent so long focusing on paddle shift GT and Formula cars that I left behind that entire other half of sim racing where your hands and feet actually have to move. Thanks to this, I have reconnected with that part of me that went away when I sold my Mazda MX5 for a Honda Estate. I have formed spiritual bonds with cars that entered and left the public eye before I was ever even born, bathed in dreamlike states of driving bliss that are hard to achieve on simpler hardware, and boosted relationships with otherwise bland cars that I thought held little to offer. It is very, very good and by far the best shifter I’ve used, as expected because it’s by far the most expensive. Let’s look.

Many thanks to BDH for providing the shifter for review. As always with my hardware reviews, this is a review, not an ad. I’ll say what I think, and all words spoken are my own. Read the whole review before making a decision, but if you do proceed to buy, you’ll find partnered retailers listed below, some with discounts. Using those links to travel to stores helps support me at no added cost to you, and thank you for doing so.

Retailers Stocking the BDH Shifter

UK: Demon Tweeks

North America: Podium1 - 5% off with code DANNYLEE5

North America: Advanced Sim Racing

Full Retailer List

The cost of the BDH Shifter poses questions, but the backstory of where, how, and why it’s made provides the answer. It’s £1045 excluding tax, but it’s manufactured in the UK in York, and the engineering roots are clear and obvious to see. The shifter is almost entirely manufactured from billet aluminium and steel, with a turned nylon shift knob that has a great handfeel. The creator of the shifter and the driving force behind its technical evolution can be found on video talking to you about its inception and its improvements. It’s not often that you get that; I can’t name the actual, physical creator of any of my sim racing tools, except this one, and he’s called Dave. How much more British do you want to get? The heavy price will mean this is probably one for the more mature sim racer, but the spirit and essence that surrounds the product virtually assures it. I’d definitely urge all buyers to flick through BDH’s videos on their channel and listen to the story behind the shifter and all the development updates along the way. They’re worth a watch, and you will feel the tone of BDH. The overall point is this: they’re a small company that focuses on nothing but this shifter. It’s the only thing they make because it’s the only thing they’ve needed to make; demand is clearly high. It’s a product of pure enthusiast passion, and it’s hard not to absorb some of that when you have it in your hand.

So let’s get to it. Mounting the shifter is simple enough - it can be rotated within its clamps so you can top or side mount it to whatever aluminum profile you’re using, which gives you decent flexibility over the position relative to you. It has 8 gears, 6 are accessible through normal means, but you get 2 more if you heave the gearstick over to engage a lift collar which’ll give you 7th plus reverse. For easiest activation of those 2 extra gears, you ideally want to locate the shifter with the body away from you so that you can pull the stick towards you rather than having to push it away, but you don’t have to.

The above layout (tube towards me) worked fine for me; it just means that Reverse and 7th are trickier to engage. In short, if the type of sim racing you do means you know you’ll be needing reverse gear often, I advise you mount it with the tube away from you. It’s much easier to access that reverse gear. Just also be advised that if the tube is away from you, you might be obstructed by your upright posts unless you do what I’ve done to allow the shifter to move sideways a bit. It just depends on your rig; they’re all a smidge different.

The cable provided is nice and long, long enough for me to quickly route it around the back of my seat and down the other side. It isn’t pretty, but it isn’t permanent. I’ll tidy it up soon. You can replace this cable with a longer or shorter one if you wish, as it’s not a soldered wire or anything like that; it’s just capped in place.

As mentioned in the first sentence of this video, this is a dual-purpose shifter, covering traditional H-pattern gearboxes and sequential push-pull gearboxes. I can tell you it covers both very, very well and with a very quick mode switch between the two. It’s smart and easier to switch than Fanatec’s dual-mode shifter, just as an example. In both modes, the one and only variable you can adjust is the tension or stiffness of the gear shifts. This can range from lightweight, easy-going shifts all the way to very heavy gearboxes with stubborn gears, and it’s super quick to adjust without the need for tools. Just give the dial a whizz round until you’re happy.

So the all-important question: how does this shifter feel, and how will it make you feel using one? Is it worth the price, and to whom exactly?

Upon first contact, you’re going to think of one word, and it’s this - proper. I don’t mean proper as in butlers and arranging your cutlery correctly; I mean proper in the Yorkshire sense. This shifter does not feel frail, it does not feel feeble, it doesn’t feel like you can really damage it in any way by using it as intended, and it seems to want you to do that. I have my own expectations, just as you do, as to the impression an expensive shifter should give, and it gives it. When I drive manual gearbox cars, I am far more engaged and convinced by them now than I have been with previous shifters I’ve tried, and I have found myself able to sink deeper into that sense of genuine immersion than ever before.

Swapping to sequential mode is quick and easy to do, and somehow the sequential mode is just as convincing and mature as the H-pattern mode. Sequential mode is a recent addition that gives this shifter way more value for money, and it’s executed really nicely.

It is equally addictive to shift up through the gears individually as it is to do it sequentially - the iRacing Corvette is a firm old favorite of mine, and revisiting it with this shifter feels like they were made for each other. Even the Toyota GR, one of iRacing’s most wispy and paper-like cars, feels way more real to me with the addition of a solid and weighty sequential stick. I’ve even dipped my toe into AMS2 recently, and driving a Caterham around Cadwell Park put me into a very convincing state of mind; it tricked me into that dreamlike state of just driving at 90% and loving life, yet none of it’s connected to anything real. That’s the mark of good sim racing. Equally, I lost hours in Assetto Corsa just ripping through the big open world maps in vintage and classic race cars, simply enjoying the act of manual driving, feeling a sense of speed and connectedness with absolutely no lap deltas or personal bests in sight, just having a good time.

Moza’s HGP Shifter feels soulless and hollow compared to the BDH; Fanatec’s shifter feels clumsy and crude compared to this. Obviously, that’s going to be the case; they’re both considerably cheaper units, but I’m conveying my thoughts because I’ll bet a portion of you buying one of these will currently have one of those, and you want to know what you’re going to get.

This BDH dual-mode shifter feels like all the things the Fanatec dual-mode shifter functionally does, but done much better, much sturdier, and with much more satisfaction and pride. You feel as though there is actually a linkage at play here and not just a box with springs. If you’re addicted to shifting hundreds, if not thousands, of times per sim racing session, you will appreciate the difference wholeheartedly, and it will become a very important part of your experience. This is to those sim racers what a proper chef’s knife is to a food enthusiast; it’s your pride and joy, and it elevates your enjoyment doing what you enjoy.

I haven’t even remarked much about how it looks; it is a big statement on your rig. It feels like a serious bit of kit when you’re using it and not looking at it, but when you catch a glance of it in between stints, messing about with it between menus and screens, you sort of go ‘oh yeah, blimey, it’s quite special, this.’ I’ve gotta say, a lot of that is down to its overall shape and form as well, because despite their name, gearboxes rarely take the form of a box; they’re usually much more of a cylinder. In some small way, the elongated format makes this more believable to see and to behold, even if you don’t consciously realize it.

Negatives

So, are there any reasons someone might not buy this? The one important factor to consider before buying is the noise. This is not a quiet shifter; then again, not many of them are quiet. It will be the noisiest thing on your rig by some margin, and that increases with the tension and speed applied. If your rig is in earshot of any living areas, or you’re in an apartment block with downstairs neighbors, everyone will hate you - consider this a victory for those banished to the garage because you’ll be alright. Here’s a commentary-free selection of clips to demonstrate the sound.

It’s worth noting that whilst the BDH shifter is a fine thing, it is not the most technologically advanced shifter available. Like most shifters, there is nothing to physically prevent you from putting it into gear in scenarios where a real car wouldn’t physically let it happen, and in the same vein, there are no forms of feedback to tell you if it was a clean shift or not. There are some leaps in progress elsewhere in the shifter world which must be considered if you seek that kind of tech, especially in the price range we’re playing with here. Pro-sim’s shifter is around the same price as this, built in collaboration with Quaife, but also has the option for a few hundred quid more to add a lockout mechanism which prevents or alters the way you get the stick into gear if you want to simulate a synchromesh or dog box system. But at the time of recording, both shifter and lockout add-on are out of stock for the next 3 months, and the total cost of shifter and lockout add-on is much more than the BDH. The Bash Pro from MVH has similar technology to that and is expensive, but it’s a bit rough and ready to look at, nowhere near as refined in appearance. Moza’s new active shifter is also one to know about, though from what I can see, it is probably one for the truckers. None of those are tested by me, so there could be a lot more to it than just what they can technically do on paper, such as refinement and feel. For me, the BDH delivers a wonderfully mature and convincing physical shifting feel that paints the picture of realism and weight, and that’s the most important thing above all else. However, I will add one piece of advice. If you buy this, I implore you to also buy a buttkicker. The engine vibration effects generated by this thing are transmitted throughout the shifter very well, and it adds a huge new dimension of immersion to your drive.

In conclusion, I come back to my original one-word review: Proper. If you buy this, you’re buying a great feeling shifter that can do both H and sequential shifting, and that covers basically all manual cars very well. Those who are already fans of manual gearbox sim racing will find this to be a much more mature, serious, and satisfying shifter than any they’re likely to have owned before, and will in turn make cars feel more real than they have before. Whilst it doesn’t reinvent shifting with new technologies nor will it blow you away with a fundamentally different experience, it just does an excellent job of what it does do, and thanks to the new sequential mode, it does a lot. BDH rightly has fans across the globe, such as Podium1 in the US, who love this shifter so much they have invested in their very own black and red variant. I often review things when they’ve already been out and built a reputation; my role is a verifier of hype rather than a generator of it. In this instance, I consider the BDH to be exactly what it seems to be, a superb, satisfying, and solid shifter that manual drivers will thoroughly enjoy, and it deserves the reputation.