Electro Harmonix Soul Food

This is the thing I was looking for. Absolutely amazing drive. I use it as a boost for east river drive and these two things work together the same as BBQ and Beer or Hookah and black tea.
This pedal itself is a multipurpose drive which you can use as a clean boost or overdrive or even a distortion, when cranked fully. But be careful, this thing fully cranked screams like Plexi on steroids... Well maybe not so much, but you get the point, right? If you need good overdrive/boost pedal, don?t hesitate and get this one. It sounds almost the same as KLON KTR, but you don?t need to rob a bank to get one.
The only con on this pedal is, that when you have the drive knob maxed, the volume knob is really sensitive, and I mean REALLY sensitive, but it also ads additional gain and compression, so maybe you might need a volume pedal and turn it on when disengaging this pedal to balance out the volume difference.

First time I was little bit sceptical, because I tried a lot of "Klon Centaur" clones, but this Soul Food is "the Food" and fill up my soul. This magic little box offer you everything what you expect from these types of overdrive pedals.. from bright tight clean to transparency crunch up to dirty overdrive and turn your tube amp to a monster... Now its my favorit and find very quickly place in my pedalboard.
Thanks Thomann for good price and fast free shipping...
Pros:
-great sound,
- easy tone settings,
-small size,
-free adapter,
-low price

Cons:
- NONE

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.

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.