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

[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

 

[Rex_Rocker]

For reference, the more bass you have predistortion, the fuzzier your sound gets... the more treble the more rasp.

Agreed, but...

​

the more mids, the more tubelike;

​100% disagreed. For example, a Tube Screamer is all mids, and it's got to be one of the most blatantly pedal-sounding, least real-amp-sounding overdrive pedals I can think of. And I love Tube Screamers, BTW.

"Tube-like" is more than a matter of EQ, be it pre or post distortion.

FWIW, a Klon isn't all that Tube-like on its own to me either. But the way it interacts with tube input stages because of the way it's EQ'd, the way it blends the clean with the distorted signal, and the way it has TONS of output volume to really drive the input of an amp is very desirable, IMO. Especially for mid-gain applications.

 

[beaubrummels]

Klon was never intended to be tube-like on it's own. It's not an amp in a box. My understanding is it was created to give Fender singles the girth and level such that you could switch between a Les Paul and a Strat and not change your settings.

 

[Chistopher]

Agreed, but...

​
​100% disagreed. For example, a Tube Screamer is all mids, and it's got to be one of the most blatantly pedal-sounding, least real-amp-sounding overdrive pedals I can think of. And I love Tube Screamers, BTW.

"Tube-like" is more than a matter of EQ, be it pre or post distortion.

FWIW, a Klon isn't all that Tube-like on its own to me either. But the way it interacts with tube input stages because of the way it's EQ'd, the way it blends the clean with the distorted signal, and the way it has TONS of output volume to really drive the input of an amp is very desirable, IMO. Especially for mid-gain applications.

I agree it's not the onlything that makes a pedal tubelike, putting a midboost in front of a metal zone isn't magically going to make it sound like an amplifier, but it's the best description I have for that band. Tubes clip a lot of mids

 

[Mincer]

Klon was never intended to be tube-like on it's own. It's not an amp in a box. My understanding is it was created to give Fender singles the girth and level such that you could switch between a Les Paul and a Strat and not change your settings.

That is essentially how I use my Klone...it is always on.