EH SoulFood purchase

[philthis]

So I went in today at guitar center and picked up the soulfood. Some guy I see all the time working the counter says.....hey whats up with this pedal? I say...well it sounds great like a Klon Centar ripoff for much less but its not as smooth. Its got alittle more grit it seems.....So I offer to play my new pedal into somthing there so he can hear it. I have a Fender 68 custom twin reissue that I absolutley love but I demo'd this pedal through a super sonic 22 last time I was there and it sounded amazing through that amp with 6v6 tubes on the regular clean channel without the "fat switch" engaged.
I found a Fender 65 twin reissue and thought ok this is similar to mine why not plug it in to this thing-so I did. I pluged in the pedals power supply because I had no batteries to put in it. It just sounded weird and thin kinda, like it wanted to sound great but was choked off somehow. Useing it as a clean boost made the amp sound much better as that amp sounds sterile and bland but loud. I gotta tell you guys I hated it. It sucked no matter how I tried to dial it in useing a Fender Strat.
I took the pedal home and thought....how the hell did it sound so good with a super sonic but not a twin? So I plugged it into my 68 custom reissue. The clean boost of the pedal on the Twin side of this amp sounded cool and spanky but the distortion was-meh... just ok. Nothing outstanding I would say. So I thought well lets try the Bassman circuit side of my amp.
The distortion on this side was great. The amp is so touch sensitive and the dials on the amp make a huge differance. One level up on treble,middle, or bass can make a huge differance on the pedals tone with the amp. I left the bright switch on, and put the treble to 5, middle to 3, and bass to 5, with the volume at 4 and alittle reverb on 2 to open up the tone. There it was, that crazy singing lead distortion and crunchy chords. It realy sounded pretty good. I had the pedal volume up only 1/4 of the way and the gain on the pedal up all the way. I had the treble on the pedal near 3/4 up as it acts like a pressence. It sounded crazy cool with my own strat with my own amp.
Interesting to note though, I thought the bassman circuit sounded better without the clean boost of the pedal but the clean "twin" circuit on the other channel sounded good with it. The distortion of the pedal was just the opposite. It sounded better on the Bassman side of the amp then the Twin side of the amp.
You can also get a very cool fat just slightly breaking up tone on the Bassman side of the amp thats fat and punchy like ZZ Tops-Thunderbird song tone with a neck pickup. Its glorious and can be cleaned up by the guitars volume knob. This pedal will give you that tone rather easily.
I have yet to try it with my White Falcon as I got called into work on my part time job. I will update on here what I find out tomorrow when I get to play this combination.

guitar used-Fender Stratocaster with a maple neck and Texas Special pickups and for the bridge pickup... Fenders Twin Head Humbucker.
amps used-Fender 65 reissue Twin
-Fender 68 custom reissue Twin.

[TimmyPage]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

The big selling points of the pedal are the gigantic clean boost, and the transparency of the distortion. The clean boost works to really hit your amp, and if it's just on the edge of overdrive it'll send it over. As a clean boost, it can be nice for making your tone a bit boxier (which is a good thing, gives you a bit of clipping rather than too much sterile headroom). The drive on the pedal is.. transparent, and a tad Fender voiced. That's a blessing and a curse. It's become a secondary overdrive on my board, just because it would sound good some nights, and like trash some others, depending entirely on what I played it through.

I find it hates EL84s, any amp that sounds remotely boxy it sounds like you're playing through a toilet paper tube.

I'm tempted to get mine modded by JHS, it's supposed to add the option for the original Klon gain structure (with germanium clipping) and a bass knob. That'd fix most of my minor issues with it. I sound like I'm complaining, it is a great pedal just.. not all the time.

[philthis]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I agree with what you observed. It hates bland speakers but loves dynamic speakers. It loves 6v6 tubes but you have to crank the volume on the pedal to about half way to really drive them with the gain and treble up. With the Twin being already loud thats not as easy to do so you have to work the tone knobs of the twin a little harder to really get the pedal to shine. The Twin opens up around 4 on the volume and even in input 2 with the -6db its still loud with this pedal. My Twin has the Celestian V type speakers so it breaks up really nice. Clean wise the pedal works really cool for Jazz when your doing those little octave chords like Wes Montgomery becouse the high note is pronounced as well as the bass note. I am really looking forward to trying out my White Falcon with this pedal tomorrow. I too want to have it modded by JHS as a rolling bass knob on the left side of the pedal and the 3 position clipping options would really open it up and make it even more versatile.

[blues]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I bought a SF and its ok and for 66 bucks I thought what the hell I will get one. I tried it with my amp cranked and used it as a boost in true bypass mode.

I used it with a Victoria Regal through a 4x10 cab with alnico speakers. I had a USA Tung Sol 5881 tube in the amp. It worked pretty good as a boost with the amp on 9. I left it on all the time and used the controls on my guitar to go from clean to mean. My guitar has one P-90.

Overall its worth the 66 bucks. What caught me was that the pedal is quiet. I did not care for it as an OD. Im not interested in the JHS mod. I did not have a problem with the treble knob not having enough low end. I get enough low end with my amp and I only liked as a boost. I found that because I used it always on,just turning the treble down on my amp worked well. I found for myself that the SF works best as a boost with my amp cranked, I think thats how the original Klon was meant to be used too.

I have a few other pedals and I prefer them to the SF. I dont have a pedal board. When I use a pedal,I only use one. I like the boost side of my Amp11 better than the SF. Im going to keep the SF. For the price I dont mind keeping it around. I have a fuzz pedal on the way,and I may try it as a boost with the fuzz. But im probably just going to run the fuzz on its own. Its going to have a little more mid range than most fuzzes to help me get a tone im looking for.

[philthis]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

tried it again with a deluxe reverb and it sounds really good with 6v6 tubes. it drives that tube amp hard with the gain and treble cranked. I too used the amps eq and turned down the treble. I think haveing the ability to just set the peddle at a certain setting and cranking it on would be a cool option and the bass mod would work well for that but your right, boosting it all the sudden would make for a mega volume jump-too much infact for going from one extreme of clean to sudden overdrive. I think your right in the fact that its a great clean boost and with the right amp you could drive it hard into a glorious gainy clip tone but for the twin I think I need somthing thats already got enough gain without driving the power tubes hard to get there.....maybe somthing like the FullTone OCD, or the JHS Charlie Brown, or even the Love Pedal Purple Plexi. Another pedal that sounds good with my twin at the "unity gain" setting is the Mad Scientist Golden Cello pedal. It sounds pretty good with my amp for a nice fuzz pedal. The White Falcon sounded really cool with the Soul Food however. It just gave it a really fat edge. I could also use the Soul Food to boost a distortion pedal and drive it harder. Some distortion pedals really sound fantastic this way. I will have to check the volume level though so I dont get some radical db increase doing it. My 68 custom twin sounds great but keeping the volume at a comfortable level is always somthing to be carefull about untill I jam with the gang.
I agree with you -blues-for now as a boost it works great adding a little punch for a volume jump with the ability to eq some extra tone with it. It works really well in this capacity with my amp.

[Matt42]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I agree that the Soul Food excels with 6v6 tubes. I use mine primarily with my 62 Champ.

[BrianS.]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I think your right in the fact that its a great clean boost and with the right amp you could drive it hard into a glorious gainy clip tone but for the twin I think I need somthing thats already got enough gain without driving the power tubes hard to get there.....maybe somthing like the FullTone OCD...

My primary amp is a Traynor YRM-1, which is a very clean, very loud 50 watt amp, and the OCD works great as an OD/boost/distortion pedal through this amp. I've had the OCD for a year or more now, and so far it's been my favorite drive pedal with the Traynor. I tried the Soul Food and didn't like it for several reasons. A/B'ing the OCD and Soul Food, I found that the OCD worked best with my loud, clean amp.

[philthis]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

Hey Brian thnx for the heads up, I'm gunna try this. I will run down to guitar center this week and demo one of those.

[BrianS.]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

Here's a link to a thread where I a/b the SF vs. the OCD. If you look at the pic, you can see how the controls are set for each pedal. The demo itself is kind of rambling, but I think it does highlight some of the differences and similarities between the pedals.

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/show...ight=soul+food

[Scott_F]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I use the SF on the vox Bruno 4x 6V6. Sounds great. Also like it on my 5F6ABassman I built. I don't like it on the Gibson 2X EL84.

[Securb]

Re: EH SoulFood purchase

I don't like it on the Gibson 2X EL84.

Why? I am curious what you are hearing that you don't like. I have avoided EHX effects for years because I find them noisy. Is this the case?