Electro Harmonix Soul Food Reviews

One of the best overdrives I have heard.

Love this pedal.

Build quality is excellent, very sturdy housing, knobs and switch seem good quality.

The sound of this pedal is really great, you can get a wide range of settings, very mild overdrive, clean boost, screaming rock tones and everything in between. the pedal is very responsive and the tone reacts well to the way you pick or strum the guitar. Something that feels very natural and not a feature I have noticed in overdrive pedals of a similar price point.

Only three controls, level, tone and gain make it very easy to dial in sounds and not get lost off.

Overall a cracking pedal, easily the best overdrive I have heard for under £100 if not the next price range up.

Arrived promptly as part of a larger order. Well packaged and secure.

Great Pedal

Using with a Vox AC15C1 and it's able to get a great sound. It's versatile and lends itself to many different styles. I'm using it in conjunction with a big muff pi for soaring leads mainly but it's equally adept at adding a little bite to a clean sound and lots more. Great construction and a small footprint on the pedalboard, so I'd have to say I'm a satisfied customer.

Solid performer but not perfect

I chose to purchase the Soul Food pedal over other overdrives having listened to many online samples and reviews. I was particularly interested in this pedal for it's transparancy and solid clean boost sound with a crunch tone for lead. I'm not a heavy metal player so high gain overdrive was not a priority for me. Overall I was not disappointed with the sound. It gives a very nice fat crunch with nice sustain over lead riffs when needed, without interfering too much with my guitars tone. I play an Amercan standard strat with fat 50's pickups through a clean channel on a quilter 101 mini head. The pedal has enough tone control to roll back the highs when using the bridge pickup and tame the higher notes. The sound is warm and dynamic with a nice blend of harmonic overtones. As a clean boost it also works very well which makes it versatile in use if you are using a seperate pedal for distorsion on your board.

I have two negatives to add to this review based on my sample. One of these issues may be just a sample variation but it does point to poor quality control which is dissapointing. At first it was impossible to fit the battery. The PCB board inside is so close to the void where the battery is fitted that it was impossible to close the back with a battery inserted. It took numerous attempts to get the battery in and after approx 30 minutes and carefully routing the battery cable with a small screw driver I finally got the back to close! If you are a player that likes to use pedals on batteries then this could be a potential issue for you. I would not like to do this on a dark stage before a gig!

The footswitch button is also quite stiff and requires quite a lot of pressure to engage. It also makes a loud audible click when pressed and sometimes (not always) makes a pop through the amp when engaged! It's a shame EHX didn't use a quiter switch.

Since I now use a board with seperate power supply the battery issue is not a deal breaker for me. I'm getting more used to the switch with futher use. Overall I like the tone that this pedal can produce and enjoy using it with a little reverb added for lead tones. It will remain on my pedal board for now! The battery issue may well be a sample issue on my copy as I have not seen this mentioned on other reviews.

Lovely little pedal

Whilst a simple 3 knob pedal, it is surprisingly multi-functional. Works great as a clean boost in front of the amp, as a volume boost in the f/x loop, as an overdrive and even as a distortion when pushed hard.

No issues with it, really.

Great Value

For those that don't know, this pedal is the EHX take on a cult OD pedal which is famous for its clear highs & even higher prices.

I play across a range of styles and have far too many od pedals already but after reading some reviews I had to try the Soul Food.

PROS, great value, pedal doesn't run on batteries as its an 18v pedal so EHX supply a solid 9v adapter ( standard boss style). This is unheard of for a pedal at this price.

The sound is perfectly usable, lots of volume on tap so could be used as a boost, lots of treble on tap although the highs are a littel harsh for me,

CONS, at this price there are none,

Very versatile pedal for clean and crunch

The EHX Soul Food is one of my most used pedals. The application is very versatile: As a loop artist who works with only one guitar, it is important not only to have different sounds, but also to separate them in terms of frequency well. Otherwise there is mud. Therefore, it is the perfect opponent for EHX The Mole (truncates heights, enhances bass)!

All three controllers have a high efficiency. And particularly noteworthy for the price: A power supply is added (even if it is not used - as a replacement always OK), and inside there is a buffer option.

I make positive experiences with little higher settings on the soul food's treble and drive values. Volume and tone on the guitar's pot are turned a little down - for. So I have a good base (clean tone and frequency offset) with a reserve upwards, that I can easily set free with the guitar controls. Very versatile setup.

Versatile and Clear

I generally use it for clean boost for funky solo partitions and get a rich bass sound from my Blofeld Synthesizer. If you are looking for a versatile and clear booster or a soft overdrive you can go for Soul Food.

Soul Food

This took the place of my trusted Tubes creamer and its doing the job just fine next to my fuzz pedal. Gives the whole sound a bit more bite, clean or dirty.

Great pedal, sounds great

Very impressed with this pedal, very cheap but sounds amazing. Never used a Klon Centaur but you'd be crazy to pay the moment when this pedal is as good as it is. Can't recommend highly enough, and ridiculous value. I've used this with a Fender Princeton & the Avid Eleven Rack and is brilliant with both.

Love it!

Looked at this pedal as a second option against a Mythical Overdrive (Klon Centaur rip-off), decided to give it a try given the price difference. definitely worth buying, an extremely underpriced pedal for the sound it holds.

Although it lacks a little on the mid-range for me at lower gain settings I only use the Soul Food as a very high gain distortion over my clean tone to completely drive it into distortion so it doesn't make a difference.

My settings are:

Volume: 10:00

Treble: 9:00

Drive: 4:00

10/10 not even considering replacing this pedal at all, fits perfectly in my set up and sounds exactly how an overdrive/distortion pedal should do. Fits in live, in studio and at home seamlessly.

Even if you think you don't need one, buy it.

Good Quality Clone of a Much Sought After Pedal

The EHX Soul Food is a clone of a Klon Centaur, a pedal that goes for ridiculous sums of money nowadays. This is buttons in comparison. It is a nice transparent overdrive which can go from clean boost to light overdrive to moderate distortion. It is a versatile pedal that will suit a professional pedalboard, at a beginner's price.

This pedal can get quite hissy at higher volume, or gain settings, even using an isolated power supply, or its own plug (supplied)

I went from a Tubescreamer circuit pedal to this one and overall I'm pleased with the change. I'm not sure if it's better, or worse, it's just a different sound. I place this after a fuzz in my chain, and with both engaged, it is a fantastic yet controlled sound.

Overall, I would certainly recommend this pedal. For the price it is, you really can't go wrong. It is a sought after circuit, done well, for a good price,in a pedalboard friendly enclosure. I think the EHX Soul Food would make a wonderful first overdrive pedal for anyone looking to start in pedals.

EHX Soul Food review

Bought this product a while ago because I was in need for a transparant overdrive. The delivery upon this purchase was quick and well executed, as always. A lot of people compare this pedal to the legendary Klon Centaur which costs around €1000 on Ebay these days. I can't make this comparison but the EHX Soul Food surely delivers a very clean overdrive. It houses only three control buttons which are pretty straightforward so you don't have to fiddle hours upon hours to get a good sound of it. The first control is a level control which allows boosting or cutting back the overdriven sound level. The second control is a treble switch, and the third is a basic gain control. I would recommend this pedal to everyone looking for a cheap transparant overdrive with boosting option.

Love this pedal!

I use this pedal to provide a bit of analogue goodness at the front end of a digital modeller. It adds warmth and a more natural dynamic for pick attack and guitar volume control. It has improved my sound a lot for a very very small price. It's a no-brainer at this price

Nice overdrive pedal

I've been using it for three months now. My old Ibanez tube screamer (Soundtank from the 80's) finally broke down so I replaced it with this. Maybe it lacks something that my old pedal had. Maybe a little bit more overdrive would be nice. But it does sound great when playing bluesy songs and it's made to last.

Food for the soul alright!

Ever try a pedal out and it really grabbed your attention because of the amount of character it had? I love that but in this case I love how the Soul Food pedal doesn't seem to sound like a Soul Food. In other words when you hear a tube scream or a big muff you know what it is. This pedal just sounds like an extension of your amp. Your amp sounds more whole than it did without the pedal. As far as the overdrive goes, I love the overdrive. It sounds like a tube, the breakup is smooth and you don't hear that abrupt change from rich to dirty that you get with pedals like the BD-2. I've only had this for a few days and I can't imagine anything bumping it off my board.

This pedal never get's turned off!

I bought this pedal mainly because I needed a 9V power supply (which is included in the price) so I decided for a tiny bit extra I would get a free pedal!

It immediately replaced my Fulltone OCD on my pedalboard for this always-on, transparent touch-sensitive gain stage I wanted. Don't get me wrong, I really love the OCD but for completely different reason. I play a low-output single coils through Blackface-type amps and the Soul Foods just adds the extra mile with rolling of the bass to much (which TS-type drives are intended to do!).

This is not a versatile pedal. It does not sound good with the gain past 1 and it makes a big low thud-sound when I engage it for the first time after I plug it in. And I don't like the new graphics EHX has come up with. I want to go back to that industrial minimalism of old-school EHX pedals...

I really recommend this product! It cost next to nothing and for that Nels Cline-i, Geoff Farina, Lee Ranaldo type of mild touch sensitive lush gain thing.

Great Tone, Not so great build..........

This boost/gain pedal sounds fantastic with a single coil into a clean amp, giving the tone a nice thick boost without colouring your tone. The pedal has some gain on tap which is nice for adding some sustain to your blues licks but wont push your amp too hard. It should also be mentioned that I could here zero noise through the amp when the pedal was engaged.

The issue I have with it is that the battery does not fit into the cavity so that you can not replace the cover. This is not a deal breaker because it comes with a power adaptor but it should fit.

All in all though a very sweet sounding pedal that wont break the bank.

Great pedal for boost and overdrive

Can't believe how good this pedal is for the money. It has many uses. It has a substantial amount of distortion if turned right up but it gives great break up and crunch sounds too. Or you can forget about gain and use it as a clean boost. The treble knob can be helpful for cutting through when the solo begins. It's very transparent and keeps the tone of the guitar as when it's bypassed. The only issue I have with it, which seems to be common is the first time it's turned on each time it makes a pop sound. It's not a big deal as if I'm going to perform I would check all the pedals turned on. But it is a little strange.

Affordable 'Klone'

As some people may know, this is a 'Klone' of the famous pedal, (which are now impossible to get hold of and can sell for hundreds on the second hand market.)

It?s very transparent, and doesn?t colour the sound of the guitar/amp, so works very well for a clean boost, and doesn?t affect tone.

The overdrive works nicely, and you can turn through the dial and get some grit, then some real crunch with it all the way up. No real hard distortion, but some really nice classic rock tones.

It also stacks really well with other pedals. I've tried it with a Pharaoh Fuzz, and Digitech Hardwire Valve Distortion, also a RAT clone, and it sounds great with all of them.

It is definitely a 'keep it on' pedal, transparent but interacts with pedals well, also sounds good on the dirty channels on my amps (Orange TH30, Egnater Rebel 30, Peavey Valveking II)

Soul Food

I read a lot of reviews and watched a lot of videos before purchasing this pedal. All were very positive, so I took a chance and purchased one. I'm really happy I did, it's a really nice addition to my pedal collection.

I have been using it with a Gibson Les Paul, a Gibson Midtown, a Yamaha Pacifica 611 and a Blacktop Tele, going through a Fender Mustang IV.

I tend to use it mostly to give a clean boost when I'm soloing. It gives a transparent overdrive, boosts the volume and lifts you above the rhythm.

If you increase the 'Drive' you can also get a really nice crunch in your tone.

I'm really happy with the pedal, a few friends that have tried it also and all are impressed. It's really got it's own distinct style.