David Wiese
Extreme WOW Factor
So after all the hype on this pedal I went for broke and bought one. I've owned dozens of overdrive units over the years and the Soul Food is the first pedal that has floored me with it's sound in years.
I own several Tubescreamers, variations of Tubescreamers, Fulltone pedals, and a Carl Martin Timmy clone. There's a variation of a Tubescreamer in every board I use. This is the first pedal to knock a Tubescreamer off my primary guitar board.
The best way to describe the sound is that it has a sweetness the other drive pedals can't seem to get. It's a low gain pedal that has that warm overdrive that can crunch, and can give you some gain for rock tones. Not harsh or noisy at all, and more transparent than anything I've ever used. This is my favorite pedal to use with a Tele, and works great with my Les Pauls too. This and my Friedman BE-OD are hands down my favorite guitar overdrive pedals (for bass, I'll stick to my modded TS9DX and Rat). Plus there's a switch inside that gives the option of running as true-bypass or buffered. When I got the box, I was surprised to see it comes with a power supply, which is cool. More and more pedals aren't taking batteries, which is fine by me; I haven't used a pedal with batreries in over 20 years.
Bottom line: This is what a boutique pedal should sound like at a workingman's price. Admittedly I've never owned the Klon that this is supposed to be a clone of, but I can't imagine a pedal doing what this does any better, and I won't spend the ~2K to find out. JHS does a modded version of this, but I can't imagine changing anything about this pedal. If I want more gain, I'll use a higher gain pedal, there are several that sound great out there.
