Can't Afford A KLON.........So I Bought An EHX Soul Food Pedal

[Chistopher]

I don't know about the Soul Food mods. It's a mostly SMT pedal, so there's only so many meaningful changes you can make to one.

[Butch Snyder]

I use my Soul Food as a clean boost for solos. Works great for that.

[Securb]

I use it with the gain dialed back so I can stack overdrive pedals with it. Foe me, it's always on with that particular rig.

That is what I ment by gain staging.

[Aceman]

Not a Klon guy at all. Mosky Golden Horse was enough for me.

[80's_Thrash_Metal]

I gave this NuX clone a try after watching a comparison video and it sounds pretty cool actually.
It's not my preferred OD of choice, but it is really nice when I need something a little different in the mix.
I think it was like 60 bucks or so.

[beaubrummels]

I don't know about the Soul Food mods. It's a mostly SMT pedal, so there's only so many meaningful changes you can make to one.

You should read up on mods for the Soul Food. The Meat/3 is a combination of several mods people were doing to it.

[ErikH]

The Soul Food was my first Klon clone. Not a bad one either. After selling that one I didn't find anything else I wanted to try for a while. Ended up with a Pedalmonsters Klone overdrive. A very good clone but their customer service is non-existent for anything. Had an issue with some squeal on one of the two I had and could not get any response from them (still haven't). Offloaded them and will never buy another product of theirs. The next came the Moskey Silver Horse. Same as the Golden Horse but with the diode clipping selection switch. Really like it. It lives at a rehearsal space on one of my boards. At the Dallas Guitar Show I picked up an Octonaut Overdrive by Intersteller Audio. Now this is what I've been looking for. Nothing fancy (other than the enclosure graphics), just a straight up clone. And it sounds fantastic. I've used it at the last 2 gigs and it's been excellent.

[jeremy]

heard very good things about the octonaut

[Aceman]

Said it before, I'll say it again;

Just to have: Mosky Golden Horsie

Budget use: Soulfood

Serious use: Wampler Tumnus


After that, you are in Archer's and stuff like that. If that is your thing. It isn't my thing, but this seems to be the pecking order...

[Mincer]

The Klon 'thing' doesn't seem to be as popular as it was a few years ago. They were everywhere- lots of stuff online, magazine articles, etc.

[Chistopher]

This has reminded me to compare my SF with my JHS Notaklon. They are both modestly priced Klones so it would make sense to do a head to head.

I'll do a more complete writeup later, but the Notaklon seems to be a good contender for best budget Klone, pending wait times dropping

[marcello252]

Owned an original klon back when it was just an expensive pedal, sold without gaining much because back then it wasn't still skyrocketing, I however have a soul food right now: believe me, it seems to me the sound it's the same, I bet noone, and I mean NO ONE, could ever hear a difference in a band situation, maybe side by side some differences could appear due to component tolerance and pot tapers, but the sound is there.

And, btw, the klon/soul food/archer/notaklon, whatever it is, it's NOT a transparent overdrive, it's middy, with a broader pushed mid freq band than our common Greeny pedal, , but it's middy, in a different way, still not transparent.

[Chistopher]

"transparent" doesn't refer to the EQ, but the fact that the distorted signal is added back to the clean signal through a summing opamp. How exactly you choose to filter frequencies pre-distortion is how you determine the character of the pedal. Different frequencies respond differently to differnt forms of distortion as well, so a perfectly flat EQ going into distortion will not usually come out flat on the other side. BUT if you add the clean signal back into it, you can still hear some of the original signal through the fog of distortion.

For reference, the more bass you have predistortion, the fuzzier your sound gets; the more mids, the more tubelike; the more treble the more rasp. An excess of lower frequencies dominates the sound more than an excess of higher frequencies.

[Securb]

Every time I see this thread, I think of this song. I also have this as the ringtone on my phone for my mortgage company. I know when they call they are looking to sell me more products and drain me dry

[marcello252]

"transparent" doesn't refer to the EQ, but the fact that the distorted signal is added back to the clean signal through a summing opamp

that's a technical point of view only you, me and a bunch of other people could know, and I do agree that way, but for the rest of the world trasnparent has a different meaning, I0'm debating about this meaning. A BD2 is much more transparent, a Timmy with no bass and treble cut is transparent, the Klon is not transparent in this regard