Watch It First
The transparent overdrive shelf on this site has gotten a bit ridiculous. We have already done the JHS Morning Glory, the Wampler Pantheon and the MXR Timmy.
At some point I promised myself I would stop. Then the Electro-Harmonix Soul Food kept showing up – in threads, in pedalboard photos, in used listings that vanish before you finish typing a reply.
So fine. Here it is. And the pitch is simple enough: this is the cheap Klon-flavoured one. Not the boutique one, not the endlessly tweakable one. The one that costs about as much as a nice set of strings and a takeaway, and still ends up on a lot of boards.
So What Is It, Exactly?
The Soul Food is Electro-Harmonix having a go at the Klon Centaur circuit. Three knobs – Volume, Drive and Treble – and that is genuinely the whole control set.
If you have somehow avoided the Klon discourse, congratulations. The short version: it is a gold box from the 90s that changed hands for stupid money, mostly because a handful of famous players kept one on all the time and nobody could buy a new one.
EHX looked at that and thought, right, we will just make one for the price of a pizza. Which is roughly what happened.
The Clean Blend Thing
The reason a Klon-style circuit sounds different to a Tube Screamer is the clean blend. Part of your dry signal runs straight through and gets mixed back in with the overdriven part.
The practical result is that your low end survives. Crank a TS9 and the bass gets politely shown the door. Crank the Soul Food and the guitar still sounds like the guitar, just angrier and louder.
That is the whole appeal. It is less of an effect and more of a mood adjustment.
How It Actually Sounds
With Drive down and Volume up, it works as a slightly coloured boost. Not truly transparent – there is a little bit of extra sparkle and a firmer low mid – but close enough that most people call it clean.
Push the Drive to around halfway and you get a light, springy crunch. It is grainier than the Timmy and less polished than the Pantheon, and honestly I like that about it.
All the way up you are still nowhere near distortion territory. This is an overdrive that knows what it is. If you want fuzz, go read about the Big Muff Pi instead.
The Treble Knob Is the Whole Pedal
Do not sleep on this one. The Treble control has a huge range and it is where the Soul Food either wins you over or annoys you.
Past about two o clock it gets brittle in a way that will hurt on a bright amp. Below noon it goes soft and slightly muffled. The good stuff lives in a fairly narrow window and you will spend a few minutes finding it.
Once you do, though, it stays put. FYI, this is a set-and-forget pedal in practice, whatever the knob count suggests.
Stacking It With Other Stuff
This is where it earns its keep. The Soul Food plays extremely well with other drives because it does not scoop your mids or squash your dynamics.
Put it after a Boss SD-1 and it turns a mid-heavy push into something wide and loud. Put it in front of an already-breaking-up amp and it just makes everything more of itself.
I ran it into the Orange Rocker 15 Terror for a while and it was almost unfair how good that combination was. Cheap pedal, expensive-sounding result.
The Bits I Am Not Wild About
The enclosure is fine but it is not small. On a crowded board that footprint is real estate you might rather give to something else.
The true bypass switching is a bit clicky. Not a dealbreaker, but you will hear it in a quiet room, and if you are recording direct it can sneak onto a take.
And – the honest one – it is not the last word in refinement. Next to a Timmy it sounds a touch coarse and a touch less controlled in the top end. That is genuinely the trade-off you are making, and at this price it is an easy trade.
One more niggle: no battery is included, and while battery operation is supported, you will want a proper supply. The current draw is low but the battery hatch is not something you want to be fighting mid-gig.
Who Should Actually Buy This
If you already own three transparent drives, you do not need this. You know that. I know that. Move along 😉
If you own none of them and you want to find out whether the whole Klon idea suits your playing before spending properly, this is the cheapest honest way to answer that question.
It is also a great first proper drive pedal. Three knobs, hard to make sound bad, works with almost any amp. Compare that to how long you can lose to a Line 6 HX Stomp menu and you will see the appeal.
The Specs
- Overdrive and clean boost for electric guitar
- Controls: Volume, Drive, Treble
- Klon-style circuit with clean blend
- True bypass switching
- Battery operation supported (battery not included)
- Includes a 9 V DC power supply (EU96 DC-200)
- Dimensions: 70 x 115 x 54 mm
- Thomann article number: 329887
Final Verdict
The Soul Food is not the best transparent overdrive I have played. It is, comfortably, the best one for the money, and those are very different statements.
What you get is a genuinely useful, genuinely Klon-ish drive that keeps your low end, stacks beautifully and takes about four minutes to dial in. What you give up is a little polish and a little top-end refinement.
IMO that is a fantastic deal. If the transparent overdrive thing has been nagging at you and you did not want to spend boutique money to scratch the itch, buy this one and stop reading reviews. Including mine.
