Electro Harmonix Soul Food

I've tried half a dozen OD pedals over the last few months to match my Randall Diavlo, and it's not easy to find a match because most are just swamped by the gain in the amp. I needed a transparent boost/OD such as the TC Spark or a Fulltone FatBoost, but the Soul Food get such great reviews and at such a good price that I thought I'd try it first.

Delivery: fine, as expected from Thomann.

Product: it's a really well made product, with great features. It came well packaged and included a power supply (which very few at this price, or even twice the price, do). Plugged it in, no problems.

Sound: I tried it firstly with my SG which has a 498T pickup, quite a powerful pickup, and had the amp set a tad before breakup. The pedal offered huge tonal increases with regard to sound, gain and equalization. Rolling off the volume cleaned the pedal up very well, and the attack had a big affect on the pedal. The pedal worked as just a volume boost, an overdrive and also has plenty of distortion. I have a damazio DP103 in the neck and this also sounded great, but with less 'thump' as is the characteristic of that pickup. Next, I plugged in a Les Paul which has standard 8k or so pickups, a brighter guitar, and the Sould Food brought a powerful singing you'd expect of a Les Paul, but better than I've previously heard with this guitar - I was very pleasantly surprised because these are not expensive or high quality pickups, but they sound good. All the pickups had added punch, thickness, depth and clarity which only a really nice transparent overdrive can offer.

At this price, and I've heard no end of reviewers say the same: every guitarist should own one.

Five star, highly recommended.

I have had one EHX Soulfood for a few years and I bought it for its great quality as a low gain OD. In this role I use it as an “always on” pedal and it enhances the tone of my JTM 45 set at slight breakup greatly, rendering a fat base tone with loads of harmonics and nice sustain.
I have now bought this second Soulfood to use as a slightly dirty solo-boost after my other ODs just before the amp. And it excels in this role as well. Plenty of gain to push the Marshalls input-stage and the ability to add more grit and bite with the tone and drive knobs. 5 stars for sound and versatility.
And it’s cheap as chips!
Standard sturdy EHX construction have held up for the 4 years I have had the first one. I hope this new one does the same.
I have heard that this is EHXs take on the legendary Klon Centaur but I have never tried that one out. It doesn’t matter neither. This pedal sounds great!
If you’re after a low gain OD and/or boost look no further! Get some Soolfood!

Um einen Klon ähnlichen Sound zu bekommen, hab ich diesem Treter von EHX eine Chance gegeben.
Leider ist der Schaltkreis nicht zu 100% der des Klons, das merkt man vor allem an dünneren Bässen und vielen Höhen.
Doch die Basis stimmt, und so habe ich die "fehlenden" Bauteile kurzerhand eingelötet und komme nun näher an meinen Wunschsound heran.
Im Netz kursieren sehr gute Vergleiche und Modding-Anleitungen.

Für leicht gezerrten Rock wie AC/DC und Konsorten funktioniert der Sould Food hervorragend und auch als Volume Booster verwendbar. Bleibt sehr vielseitig, auch wenn man ihn nicht dauerhaft nutzen kann.

I play alot of funk, soul and some blues and I use fender guitars through a 1990's fender twin reverb and I gig alot. I was looking for an overdrive for soloing parts or sections where the guitar needed some extra texure and boost to help it to cut through the mix more but I did'nt want something that would breakup too much or add too much destrotion, the soul food is perfect for this. Set the drive dile any where before and up to one o clock & it adds just enough girth and texture for soloing & if you strum a chord it still sings true to your custom tone without over saturating it , although if you push the dials high you will get a much bigger overdriven sound, push it all the way, its a bit bright for me, so i keep it at one 'o' clock, therefore its pretty versitile. Yes, there are probably other overdrive pedals out there like the "king of tone" that have much more toneful nuances compared to this one but you will be spending alot more money (and maybe time even) getting one. The soul food is great quailty and an absolute bargain. I use pretty high end anologue gear normally but I researched this peadal allot on the web before I purchased it from thomann and Im glad I took a chance with the soul food, believe the hype, it's killer.

I own the EXH Soul Food for 3 months now and so I decided to do a little "review".
Much is already written about being a "ripoff" or a clone of the Original Klon Centaur. I've never played one before so I'm not going into this topic. Let's just say that the circuit seems to be really close to the "KTR"

But I wasn't searching vor KTR-Clone. I just wanted a Pedal to "enchant" my overall tone and I can tell you: The EXH Soul Food does that job really great and it works as my "allways ON Pedal"

I mostly play Blues(Rock) witch my Gibson R8 into a Egnater Tweaker 15 Set at the Edge of Breakup. The SF is Set:
Volume: 12:30
Drive: 8:30
Treble: 12:30

The SF really fattens the Sound, makes it more round and just "better", really hard to tell. I used a Xotic EP-Booster for this purpose before and the Soul Food just works great as well.
It also makes me use my Volume-Knobs on my Guitar more often because they are just so much more usable with the SF. With these Settings, I can get from soft clean to sreaming rock just with the Volume-Knobs.


+ great infront of a clean or dirty amp
+ super Clean boost but not as neutral as other (e.g. XOTIC EP Booster)
+ Great Tone-Enchanter
+ Works at home and live
+ great for stacking with other pedals
- Gain only usable till 11:00 (for me)

This this is definetly a keeper and you should totally check this thing out, especially fo this price