Electro-Harmonix Soul Food vs Spruce Goose vs Crayon | Which is the best EHX transparent overdrive?

Today, we’re comparing three of the best – and most underrated – Electro-Harmonix overdrive pedals: the Soul Food, the Spruce Goose, and the Crayon!

-----
Get the Soul Food at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/329887?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/PyZZQQ

Spruce Goose at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/578011?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/Y9kO1r

Crayon at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/376576?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/m5BBK1
-----

These three pedals are all a little bit under the radar when it comes to the overdrive game, although the Soul Food has become a bit of a cult choice if you’re after a Klon Centaur on a budget. At under $100/€100 new, it’s a wonderful Klon clone – or Klone – and a top choice for players who are after that sparkly Klon clean boost effect for a great price. Simple and easy to dial in with its three controls – for Volume, Drive and Treble – the Soul Food has become a pedalboard mainstay for thousands of guitarists over the years, and for good reason.

The Spruce Goose is a newer EHX offering, and it’s the brand’s take on the iconic Marshall Bluesbreaker circuit. With the Volume, Gain, Bass and Treble knobs, it’s easy to dial in a range of low gain overdrive tones, and you can ‘goose’ the pedal by either 9dB or a whopping 21dB via the Lift switch. The Spruce Goose will set you back around $130/€130.

The most underrated of these three pedals, though – and the cheapest, coming in new at under $80/€80 – is the Crayon… or, to give it its full name, the Crayon 69 Full-Range Overdrive. This versatile drive is capable of a huge range of tones, from clean boosts to screaming, thick overdrive, and its Volume, Gain, Bass and Treble knobs make it easy to tweak to taste. The wise folks of the internet guitar forums suggest that the Crayon is based on the wonderful Xotic BB Preamp pedal (the BB stands for Bluesbreaker there) – whatever it is, it’s an excellent choice for anyone in the market for a new overdrive pedal option!

In this video, I run the three pedals through an indie rock loop played on the bridge single coil pickup of my Fender Telecaster, then a classic rock loop using the bridge humbucker of my Epiphone Les Paul. The pedals are running into my Hughes & Kettner AmpMan Classic on the clean channel, with no reverb. The goal is to see how similar they sound, and how different, and how well they stack together. Hopefully, by the end of it you’ll have found out which one might work best for you and your setup! Let me know which one you prefer in the comments 😊

Here are some links to the various parts of the video:

00:00 Introduction and what we’re doing today
00:21 Soul Food info
00:43 Spruce Goose info
01:25 Crayon info
02:11 Today’s rig and plan

02:57 Fender Telecaster indie rock loop
09:13 Epiphone Les Paul classic rock loop

15:38 My thoughts
16:03 Why the Soul Food?
16:26 Why the Spruce Goose?
17:12 Why the Crayon?
17:58 Which pedal is best, and which should you buy?

My setup was as follows: I ran the pedals into the front end of my Hughes & Kettner AmpMan Classic pedal amp, then went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That’s it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my Boss RC-10R to record and play the loops. Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

-----
AmpMan Classic at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/512777?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/q4vkVO

Boss RC-10R: https://thmn.to/thoprod/470055?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/daq4J2
-----

Enjoy!


-----
Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#ElectroHarmonix #EHX #OverdrivePedal #TransparentOverdrive #SoulFood #SpruceGoose

Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!

‪@EHX‬