Electro Harmonix Holiest Grail Reverb

www.ProGuitarShop.com, The Holiest Grail is the most versatile reverb effect to date, by Electro Harmonix. With just about every parameter of natural sounding reverb at your fingertips, you can sculpt and store up to 8 presets of your favorite verb tones! With features like Stereo outputs, expression control, and MIDI in and outs, your reverb settings don't have to be stagnent anymore. Recall 2 favorite presets on the fly with the A and B stomp switches; perfect for live settings. You can also dial in the tone and feel with Damping and Difussion controls, for subtle changes in the wet sounds. Extreme Pre-Delay, as well as Feedback controls, turn this stereo reverb into a echo pedal. Finally, the Mixer section lets you dial in exactly how much Dry, Spring, and Reverb signals coming out of the EH Holiest Grail. Whew! That's the Holiest of the Holys!
The Holiest Grail is a digital stereo reverb pedal that features 8 effect parameters and 8 preset saves spots. top of the range reverb, offering control over many more aspects of the effect than the cheaper Holy pedals, and most if not all other manufacturers reverb pedals. The parameters available are delay time (length of time after which the reverb kicks in following the dry), feedback (loops the input and so thickens the tone), decay (length of reverb), dampening (a environment surrounding simulator) set at minimum the environment can be compared to carpeted walls, set at max, it's probably modelling some sort of mirror room like the one in Enter the Dragon), diffusion (very very subtle reverb complexity control), dry volume, spring tone simulator volume (this is not spring reverb, but an overtone the emulates the snap of springs), and reverb volume. The presets are accessible by two footswitches labelled A and B, which work in conjunction with a preset slide from which you select one of four banks. Only two presets can be saved and accessed per bank, which means that not all 8 presets can be activated by foot unless you have midi. Presets are very easy to save. Simply switch to preset mode, select the bank you want to save in, and hold down either the A or B switch (to save A or B spot respectively) and wait for the LED to stop blinking.
It's quite hard to make a bad sound with this pedal, but achieving the reverb sound in your head can be a bit tricky, given the level of control. If EHX had listed the "ingredients" for the preloaded presets in the manual, this may have shortened the learning curve for this unit. I'm still having trouble getting a spring sound I like. One day I like the spring tone set high, then the next it will sound very fake and unusual. I should plug the Holiest into a Fender Twin (or better yet next to a Fender outboard reverb unit) and set up a preset from the real thing. This goes to demonstrate why you want control over as much of the reverb as possible - everyone has their own tastes and EHX's spring tone and the one in my head couldn't be further apart.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Electro
• Harmonix
• Holiest
• Grail
• Reverb