Electro Harmonix XO Holy Grail Plus · Ground effect electric guitar

There's a reason Holy Grails are a staple of every post rock pedal board. There's no reason to spend any more than this.

As good as everyone says it is

The best reverb I have ever owned to date. The tone on it is so good, warm and true.BEWARE! BEWARE!THE REASON FOR THE FOUR STARS IS THAT THIS PEDAL ONLY WORKS ON EHX POWER-SUPPLY. NO OTHER POWER-SUPPLY WILL WORK. I USED TO DAISY CHAIN MINE USING DIAGO POWER-SUPPLY AND THE REVERB WOULD CUT OUT IF I PUT THE GAIN UP ON MY OVERDRIVE PEDAL AND STARTED TO PLAY REALLY HARD. THEN IT GOT TO THE POINT WHERE I COULDN'T EVEN TURN THE REVERB PEDAL ON WITHOUT PRESSING THE ON/OFF BUTTON ~5 TIMES THEN TURNING THE KNOBS RANDOMLY TO WAKE IT/ RESURRECT FROM ITS ETERNAL SLEEP. FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD AND SEEN ON FORUMS IT ALSO EVENTUALLY GIVES PROBLEMS ON VOODOO LABS, FUEL TANK... ETC.NOW PLEASE READ ON FOR THE REVIEWSpring and room sound exactly as one would expect them to sound. You can get all the surf and studio recording style ambiences from these two settings. Very good qualityBut I think the hall reverb on this pedal is one of the most underrated features of any EHX pedal. By using the blend and amount knobs wisely one can create, amazing norwegian fjord like soundscapes, or just lush sounding notes that really sing to the horizon. What I love about the hall reverb is its natural gradual decay time. It doesn't just die off all of a sudden, but it has this gradual fade away. Also it is a very smooth decay. By this I mean the hall setting produces proper reverberation, not echoes. i.e. you can't hear any individual repeats of the notes. This I found problematic with other pedals and their hall reverb settings, because they really sounded like a wet delay pedal; but not the holy grail plus. This is a smooth sounding hall reverb.It's hard for me to convey how much I love this setting. Let's put it this way I have been playing guitar for 10 years. I got this pedal 3 years ago. It totally changed my tone and view on the guitar as an instrument. To the point where my best sounding songs and tone are down to this pedal. I can't play certain stuff I write without this pedal because to me it sounds a "too dry". A good idea of what hall reverb sounds can come out of this pedal can be heard on "Bloodshake" and "1998" by Peace or "Inhaler" by Foals. I'm not sure if they used this pedal on those tracks (they probably didn't) but this reverb pedal can produce sounds just like it, and even more lush.The flerb is wacky, a bit limited in my opinion but very trippy

I just spent about forty minutes A/B testing the Holy Grail nano (the small box version of the basic EHX Holy Grail) and The Holy Grail plus. I was happy to pay the extra for the additional control and a lot of the time I spent comparing the two was to try to convince myself that the upgrade was necessary. I was disappointed.I love spring reverb and from YouTube videos I could tell that while the Holy Grail's spring setting doesn't sound exactly like a spring reverb, instead of trying to make a detailed copy, EHX, a company in love with guitar sounds, have produced a reverb that behaves in a similar way in terms of making your guitar sound more exciting. I don't know anyone who has the pedal and doesn't love the sound, which at the end of the day is more important than authenticity or analogue/mechanical construction. It just sounds great. I like the hall as a more elegant alternative and the flerb needs some thinking abut how to use compositionally but for me the Spring sound is paramount and the others a bonus.So, on to the Holy Grail plus. I tested them one at a time, in a chain through a clean valve amp with a telecaster and my biggest problem is that I couldn't replicate the full-bodied reverb of the Holy Grail using the controls on the HG plus. Maybe they should be thought of as different pedals but I needed to start from having the Holy Grail sound and then having options.To outline both pedals. The Holy Grail has three reverb types:Spring: A rock n roll guitar stapleRoom: A less coloured, more elegant reverb.Flerb: Reverb mixed in with some flange – probably not something to use everyday but a nice, unusual option.It has a switch to select the above options and a one knob which alters the proportion of your dry sound and the reverb. Turned right down, you hear no reverb, turned right up and your dry sound disappears which is GREAT and is something an amp spring reverb doesn't do.The Holy Grail plus has one additional reverb – Room, a nice tight, usable reverb, probably a more practical option then the flerb.It has three knobs, one replaces the switch on the Holy Grail and selects the type of reverb, the second is the 'Blend' which replaces the 'reverb' knob on the Holy Grail and dictates the dry/reverb proportion and 'amount' which makes the reverberations longer or shorter.In frustration I tried to be scientific.I matched the volume of my dry attack to the clean (no pedal) volume by rolling off the reverb until the volume was the same. At this point the sound was bathed in lovely rich springy reverb.I did the same with the Holy Grail Plus so that all three were the same attack volume (Off, Holy Grail, Holy Grail plus) and the Holy Grail plus sounded weak. I tried manipulating the 'amount' to get a similar sound but it just wouldn't happen.In hindsight maybe I could have swapped the order of the pedals in case there was a slight signal drop but I don' think that it was the case. Maybe I didn't persevere to get the parameters right but I put in more effort and time than you would want to in a rehearsal situation, never mind live. My guess is that you can't get the Holy Grail sound on the Holy Grail plus but would love to be proved wrong to see it happen.I left the shop satisfied but disappointed. Happy to have a great sounding pedal but disappointed because I couldn't see improvement (in fact heard a less satisfying sound) in the upgraded pedal.

Brilliant reverb pedal. Thanks 👍