Guitar Gear

I’ve had this unit a few months, but actually didn’t start using it until a couple of weeks ago when I had holiday gigs at various venues where space was at a premium, and lugging my pedal board along with my PA was impractical. I wish I had started using it sooner… the on-board modulation effects combined with amp simulation provide a super-rich tone; equivalent to the quality of tone that I’ve come to expect. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

The first holiday gig I had was for the staff party at an assisted living facility. To get to the place I was to play, I’d have to park my car in a loading zone then carry my stuff through a couple of halls. Now normally, my load out would take two trips, but this wasn’t really an option. Conceivably, I could take my entire rig (pedalboard, gig bag, cord bag, and SoloAmp PA) in one trip, but the stuff is a bit unwieldy, and I’ve dropped my pedal board, actually ruining a couple of pedals once. So a single trip was in order.

While I was trying to figure out how to configure my rig, I remembered that I had the Play Electric unit that had everything that I needed on board. So the morning of the gig, I did a quick tweak of the guitar settings (setting them to global so they’d be the same for every vocal patch, which is a godsend of a feature, by the way), packed up my cord bag with the cords I needed plus the Play Electric, and set off to my gig.

I didn’t use the looping feature at that gig because after seeing another dude play with a VoiceLive 2 and the Switch-3 switching unit, I knew that was the way to go, and besides, I didn’t have the Switch-3 yet. But that was okay. It was only a two-hour gig, and I could do all my songs – even the ones where I normally loop – without a looper.

Setup was an absolutely breeze. I had the VoiceLive 2, so setting up wasn’t anything new. Once I was all set up, I remembered the RoomSense feature, which is an on-board mic that picks up the ambient sound in a room, and can be used to harmonize for instruments that don’t plug in; like a piano for instance…. The facility where I played had a beautiful Kawai baby grand, so I upped the sensitivity of the RoomSense mic, and tested it out. OMG!!!!! I wish I had used that with my VoiceLive 2 when I had it. I could’ve been doing harmony while playing piano all this time! Oh well… lesson learned, and where there was a piano at my holiday gigs, which was everywhere except for two places, I used the RoomSense to harmonize while playing piano.

Note that since the unit uses the same vocal processing algorithms found in all the high-end TC Helicon vocal processors, I won’t be covering harmony here, just the guitar stuff.

Packed with Features

I thought the VoiceLive 2 had tons of stuff packed into it, but the Play Electric has so much more. Here are the amp models that are offered in the unit:

Clean Brit, Cali Clean, UK Clean, Deep Clean, Bright Switch, Warm, Little Thing, Chicken Picker, Brit OD, AC Crunch, Chunky Brit, Lil Champion, Chime Drive, 2×12 Combo, 4×12 Crunch, Swamptone, Nasaltone, Brown, Scooped, Metallic, TC Electronic Dark Matter Pedal, OD Pedal, Dark OD Pedal, Distortion Pedal, Acoustic (Flat), Acoustic (Shaped/BodyRez)

On top of that, you have full EQ control in the unit to adjust the EQ settings for what every guitar you’re playing. One nice feature of the EQ is that you can “move” the midpoint frequency of the mids. This is something that you typically find on good PA boards, but I can see the sense in including a feature like that with the Play Electric. You could move it higher for a naturally warm-sounding guitar, or lower to take the edge off a bright guitar, then adjust the high, mid and low around the midpoint. Very cool feature.

On top of that, the same algorithms that power the TonePrint pedals are also in the unit. I use two of the pedals on my electric board: the Corona Chorus and Hall of Fame reverb. These are mainstays on my pedal board, and to have those pedals in the Play Electric is awesome. The delay and compression models are also quite nice. I totally dig the compressor, and even though it’s fairly simplistic, it’s adjustable enough to achieve a very rich tone.

How It Sounds

Sorry, I don’t have any sound clips to share at this time, but after using it several times, I can confidently say that both the vocal and guitar tones are awesome. But as with anything, it takes spending a bit of time dialing in the settings. Luckily this is not at all difficult with the Play Electric. The brightly lit LCD screen is super-easy to read, and frankly, you can adjust practically everything without having to refer to the manual (though admittedly, I had to refer to the manual to adjust amp EQ settings).

As far as guitar tone is concerned, though I probably should’ve tested this with an electric guitar, the plain fact of the matter is that I would use this almost exclusively in my acoustic gigs (I’m actually in between bands right now). And for that, this unit produces incredible sound; so incredible, in fact, that I will be leaving my pedal board at home going forward. Here’s a little more discussion on the pedal models:

Though the unit includes TonePrint models, it’s not exclusively limited to those. Each model includes several other non-TonePrint models that you can use (I believe these are the same found on the VoiceLive 2), which have been traditionally pretty high-quality. Personally, I didn’t use them when I had the VoiceLive 2 because I had dedicated pedals that were much better than the on-board models. But with the TonePrint models, as these are my pedals of choice for modulation effects (specifically, chorus and reverb), using them is another no-brainer.

Corona Chorus

This is not nearly as adjustable as the standalone pedal; actually none of the models are, but it’s very easy to dial in the right level and speed to get a subtle (which I prefer) to a super-wet, drippy chorus tone.

Hall of Fame Reverb

When I got this pedal a couple of years back, it soon became my go-to reverb. The spring reverb is magnificent, but it’s the plate and hall reverbs where this pedal shines. I use the hall reverb to add a subtle expanse to my guitar tone without it sounding like I’m in a simulated all. It’s just a touch to “grease” as Doug Doppler says.

Delay

I don’t know if the Flashback model is used here, but the delay is quite nice on this unit. Again, I use it very subtly to provide just a touch of slapback, with a low mix level.

Compressor

This is actually my favorite “pedal” in the unit. There are five presets available that provide either more attack, sustain, pop or pump, and you can adjust the amount and makeup gain as necessary. I use the Subtle Sustain setting, and it works great with my acoustic.

Looping

As I mentioned, my only nit about the Play Electric is the short loop length, but after playing through several of the songs I play with looping, I found that for the most part, I can live with the short loop length because the sound that the Play Electric produces completely meets my needs; moreover, the prospect of carrying one less bag makes using this an absolute no-brainer.

Wrapping It Up

Getting to the point, I dig Play Electric. I wish it had longer looping, but to get that, plus a finer control over the guitar and vocal settings, I’d have to go to the VoiceLive 3 which is more than twice the price of this unit. Could it be worth it? Possibly… probably… but it’s not expense that I can make right now (especially since I’m saving up for a Gretsch Brian Setzer) 🙂 But for what the Play Electric provides besides looping, it’s a unit that will serve me well for a long time.

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At the end of May, I got contacted out of the blue by Declan Larkin, founder and builder of Deacci pickups. He asked me if I’d fancy a set of “the best humbuckers ever made.” He’d send me a set to review, and I could do with them as I pleased. I’m used to reviewing gear then eventually returning it after I’m done. As I’ve mentioned in my about page, I don’t like to be beholden to any manufacturer or appear that I’m doing a review because someone comped me some gear. So admittedly, I was a bit wary of this seemingly blind giveaway.

So I started doing a little research on Deacci. I found some forum posts in a couple of UK forums (Deacci is based in Norther Ireland) discussing the pickups, and I found some sound samples. The sound samples turned me on my ear! They sounded absolutely marvelous! Needless to say, I was intrigued. Plus, as an amusing aside, I found that the pickups are in a “Patent Applied For” state, and that Deacci pickups are PAF-style pickups, so PAF-PAF’s. 🙂

But seriously though, Declan also caught me at a good time, as I was considering swapping out the stock pickups in “Amber,” my ’58 Historic Les Paul. I was only using the bridge pickup on her because the neck pickup to me was just not clear enough. Even the neck didn’t have the “bite” that I was wanting. She had a gorgeous clean tone in the neck, but driven, the neck pickup was practically unusable; just way too muffled for my tastes. And having moved from a bluesy to a more straight-up rock sound, I needed brighter pickups.

So I looked at the various models that Declan builds and found that the Green Faze pickups had the slightly lower impedance ratings that I felt would brighten up Amber just right. And it must’ve been kismet because as I was doing my research on Deacci, I was listening to “Oh well, ” so perhaps there was some subliminal stuff going on because I just love that song! In any case, I contacted Declan and asked if it would be okay to evaluate the Green Faze set, as I was sensitive to the fact that his was a brand-new company, and I didn’t want to take advantage. But he said it was all good, and he’d send them over once he’d wind up a new set. Frankly, I was blown away by this, and absolutely humbled. All Declan asked for was a honest review, and if I didn’t like them, I could return them.

Well they’re not going back. They’re staying in my guitar – forever! I’m not saying this because of the freebie, I’m saying this from the root of my heart. The sound my guitar now makes with the Green Faze pickups installed in it moves me practically beyond words.

What’s so special about them? I think a lot of that has to do with how they constructed and especially, how they’re wound. Declan uses a Fibonacci number to determine the number of winds of wire to apply to the pickups. He has also established what he says is a much more efficient and consistent way to hand wind the pickups as well. As far as the Fibonacci stuff is concerned, that could all be just techno-voodoo. But Fibonacci numbers are extremely important because they exist in nature. So applying them to a man-made artifact – at least to me – makes sense as the Fibonacci numbers represent balance.

How They Sound

I’m not going to spend much time singing the pickups’ praises. Suffice it to say that to me, these pickups sound so good, they leave me short of words to describe them. In lieu of that, I recorded several clips. All clips were recorded with my Aracom VRX22 into a custom Aracom 1 X 12 with a Jensen Jet Falcon speaker in it. I also recorded the clips at bedroom level by running my amp into the wonderful Aracom DRX attenuator. Note also that absolutely no EQ was added in production, and I turned off all compression. So what you’ll be hearing, save for the lead break for “The Hit” is the guitar’s natural tone as picked up by my microphone.

Bloom

I played my guitar clean in the shop and was taken by the gorgeous overtones the pickups were producing, so I couldn’t wait to get home to see if I could get that classic Les Paul bloom. For this clip, I played the neck pickup, with the tone control turned all the way down to get that “woman” tone. I’m just picking single notes in an Am pentatonic.

Slow Blues – Fingerpicked – Neck Pickup

Putting the Bloom to Work

The next clip uses the fingerpicked clip above with a simple lead using the woman tone. Oh my…

After recording that, I wanted to see what the guitar would sound like on one of my more engineered songs. This is the lead break from my song “The Hit.” The first half features the “woman” tone, then I switch over to the bridge pickup to finish the solo.

Crunchy Tones

Here I’m playing the same riff for all three positions. The volume knobs are dimed, and my amp is set at the edge of breakup. These pickups through a lot of signal at the front-end of the amp forcing my pre-amp tubes to compress. It’s most evident with the Neck pickup.

Neck

Middle

Bridge

Clean Funk

I just love the fast attack of these pickups. The clean tones are right in your face, but not off-putting at all.

Neck

Middle

Bridge

Clean – Fingerpicked

The overtones that the pickups produce combined with the natural sustain of a solid body Les Paul, make for a rich, complex tone that makes me want squeeze every bit of tonal goodness out of what I’m playing.

Neck

Middle

Bridge

Oh Well…

Of course, I couldn’t do a review of Peter Green-style pickups without doing at least one Peter Green riff. Here’s “Oh well” (at least as close to what my ham-handedness could produce):

Overall Impression

Need I say more? I love these pickups. It’s past midnight and I’ve been writing this review since 8pm. It has been a stop and go affair as I’ve taken breaks to play my guitar. 🙂 I don’t give 5 Tone Bones often. What I do give 5 Tone Bones are game-changers. The Deacci Green Faze pickups are game-changers for me without a doubt!

For more information on Deacci pickups, go to the Deacci site!

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I’ve had a harmonizer/vocal processor in my acoustic chain for over ten years. The difference that it has made in my solo performances has been immense; adding a dimension to my performances that make a pure solo performance seem bland in comparison. I originally started with the DigiTech Vocalist Live 4, but when that went south, I got the TC-Helicon VoiceLive Play GTX. Now THAT was a game-changer. The harmony algorithm made the voices so much more human-like than the Vocalist Live.

But alas, nothing works forever, and after around 500 or so gigs, my VoiceLive Play GTX finally went kaput a few weeks back. Due to finances, I couldn’t just go out and get a replacement. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave me some time to check out other harmony/vocal processor solutions, but more importantly, to re-evaluate what my needs actually were.

With the VocalistLive and VoiceLive units, I enjoyed a lot of fine-tuned control over vocal processing and harmony parameters. But to tell you the truth, I rarely set the parameters much different from their defaults. And there were definitely times where I just wanted something much more simple. So I took a good look at both the DigiTech Vocalist Live 3 and the harmony-G XT. Both units had simple, straight-forward setups. Both were absolutely easy to use. But knowing how great the audio quality was with the TC-Helicon stuff, it was a pretty easy decision to go with the harmony-G.

So I purchased it yesterday a couple of hours before I had to leave for my gig. When I got home, I opened up the box, hooked up the unit, then went through the quick start procedure in the manual (yes, I read the manuals). What amazed me was just how easy it was to dial in the settings I needed. Granted, the first preset was voiced just how I wanted it with respect to the harmony voicings, so all I had to do was get the level right. I played around with it for about 10-15 minutes, then packed everything up for my gig, where the real test would take place.

How did it perform? Well, it was like I had my VoiceLive Play back in my chain. The harmonies were excellent. But more importantly, the compression and presence really made my voice jump out. Having been without vocal processing for the past few weeks, I can tell you that just a little compression can make all the difference in the world. And amazingly enough, even though I don’t have fine control over the amount of compression, I’m actually not missing being able to set it. The harmony-G seems to be set at the sweet spot. EQ-wise with respect to vocals, I just set the EQ on my PA to flat, and let the harmony-G drive my EQ. My vocals last night were clear and present without being mid-rangy.

With a simpler solution, there are trade-offs. For instance, I don’t have the kinds of effects like chorus that I could apply to the vocals, and mid-song switching between the A and B settings of a preset has a bit of delay. But that’s just going to take some practice to overcome. But considering my basic needs, I’ve basically everything I need to take me through a solo gig. I couldn’t be happier!

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I’m going to just get this out of the way right now: The Soul Food is NOT a transparent overdrive, no matter how it’s touted. As an aside, I think this whole transparency thing in the gear world is a little overblown. Yeah, I know, I’ve been on the transparency wagon for a long time, but I’ve started reconsidering my whole notion of transparency. I’ve been working on an article that discusses this that I’ll release some time. But everything you add to your signal chain is going to alter your tone in some way. Granted, if you ONLY use the pedal as a boost, with neutral EQ, and zero gain, then I suppose you could call it transparent. But let’s be realistic; I don’t know of any overdrive pedal that I’d use where I didn’t adjust the EQ to fit the gear I’m playing and also add varying levels of grit. With respect to the Soul Food, it may not be transparent, but WHO CARES? 🙂

I’ll also say this: This pedal is the shit! I’ve never played a Klon, but if this pedal does anything near what the Klon does, then I’m not surprised why people are paying upwards of $1000 to $1500 for that pedal, but I’ll pay $62 all day! But that said, don’t mistake my enthusiasm for getting great tone for so cheap. I’m excited about the tone, period! If this pedal cost $200, I’d buy it for its wonderful sound.

I realize there are folks who say this sounds nothing like a Klon. I’ve viewed and listened to several demos head-to-head demos, and yes, there are differences; though I have to admit that the differences I observed were fairly subtle, at least recorded. But to me, based upon playing it for several hours over the last couple of days, I couldn’t care less how close or far away it is from a Klon. This pedal stands on its own as a great overdrive pedal.

EHX Is Classy

I mentioned this in my first impressions article, but EHX definitely went the extra mile with the Soul Food. Not only do you get the pedal, they include a 9V power supply as well! You might say ho-hum but to me it says a lot that a company would be willing to throw in some extra stuff for such an inexpensive pedal.

How It Sounds

In a word, awesome! I’m not excited about this pedal just because it cost me less than $70. That’s certainly something to be excited about. But to get the tone and performance that the Soul Food delivers at this price-point just blows me away. EHX has totally hit the ball out of the park with this pedal irrespective of it being a “klone.” Plain and simple, this is just a great overdrive pedal! Ancestry aside, the Soul Food stands on its own.

I’ve created some clips, but as opposed to saving the discussion till after, I’ll discuss it now. When I first hooked up the pedal, I did the usual thing I do with overdrives and set the volume to unity gain (about 10am), zeroed out the drive, and placed the treble boost at neutral (noon) – all through a totally clean amp. The first thing I noticed when I switched it on was how the Soul Food brought out subtle harmonics and overtones. My tone was also a little fatter, but with the high-frequency artifacts, also had a little more top-end sparkle. That alone was simply yummy to me and it got even sweeter when I upped the gain on my amp to the edge of breakup, then added a bit of treble boost and drive to the pedal.

When I found the sweet spot of the Soul Food, the skies parted and a chorus of angelic host sang out in joy. Not really. But lots of great things happened. What you get is more sustain, great touch-sensitivity, incredible response to both attack and volume knob changes, wonderful grind, all while maintaining note separation. One would think that with the extra sustain the tone would be muddy and feel squished, but not so with the Soul Food. Again, if this comes close to a Klon, I can see why that pedal is so highly coveted. There’s definitely some tonal magic that’s happening with the Soul Food.

When I first get overdrive pedals, I try to be as skeptical as possible about them. They have to prove to me that they’re worth the money I’ve spent or if they live up to the hype. Within the first few minutes of getting the pedal, the Soul Food proved definitely its worth, and then some. The cool thing though was that it wasn’t EHX that was creating the hype. It was bloggers such as myself who were testing it out and writing positive reviews of the pedal. It just simply kicks ass!

I realize that there are those who pooh-pooh the Soul Food as a cheap imitation. But as I said above, this pedal can stand on its own, regardless of its supposed ancestry. For me, I’ve never had the opportunity to play a Klon, so I really don’t know for certain what it can do. If it does what the Soul Food does, but just better. That’s awesome. But I’m absolutely digging what the Soul Food is doing for my tone right now!

Okay… Time for clips!

This first clip is very short and demonstrates the sustain you get when the pedal is switch on. I’m playing my 59 Les Paul replica with the “woman tone” (volume cranked, tone to zero).

This next two clips demonstrate the clarity and definition that the Soul Food provides when switched on, making your sound just come alive. I suppose you could say that this is a demo of what the Treble Boost can do. Here I’ve got it set at 2pm. My replica is in the middle pickup position, with both volumes at about 6, and tones all the way up.

Did I mention that the Soul Food is incredibly responsive? In this clip, I’m just noodling. I start out with little blues riff in E major with the pedal off, then I switch it on and go from a light touch to greater attack. The pedal responds beautifully!

Finally, here clips from First Impressions article (I’ve just taken the whole excerpt so I don’t have to re-explain everything). All clips below were played on R8 Les Paul:

Testing the Treble Boost, from 0 to all the up

In this one, I have the drive set to noon, and the volume set to unity, so all the grit is coming from the pedal. Not really my favorite setting. But apparently, it’s the same with the Klon. It was best used with predominant boost against an amp on the edge of breakup, then add gain to taste.

This next one is with the pedal in its sweet spot for my R8: Volume at 12, gain at around 10am, and EQ at about 2pm.

Finally, I did a quick lead in the lead break of a song I wrote.

Overall Impression

Notice I didn’t do a “Fit and Finish” section as I normally do. EHX pedals are very well-constructed. I’ve never had a problem with one dying on me because of structural issues. Frankly though, the Soul Food isn’t going to win any beauty contests. It’s just a Hammond box with a sticker placed on the top. But who cares? It’s job isn’t to look good; it’s to sound good, and it does that in spades!

I always say that I’m done with overdrive pedals. And to be honest, once I got my Timmy, it was pretty much game over. The Timmy is truly what I’d consider a transparent overdrive. The Soul Food isn’t all that transparent, but it will surely be a great addition to my board, and I’m hoping a great stacker (haven’t played with that yet).

I’ll say it one last time: The Soul Food stands on its own as a great overdrive pedal. I don’t bandy about 5 Tone Bone ratings. There’s a reason this got my highest score: It sounds so good that it’s gone directly to my board and staying there!

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