Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire

First off, I do not work for, or affiliated with Creation Audio, just a very satisfied customer. I have had my Holy Fire for about a week now, and am so blown away by this pedal that I ordered another one. One for myself, and one for my son. The minute I plugged into this pedal, I knew it was something special! It takes a couple of minutes to figure out the knobs, I had to look at the manual, but it is easy to use, and the 4 controls(gain, OD, distortion, tone, or high cut) are very interactive.

I am using a variety of guitars with single coils, P-90's, humbuckers, and mini-humbuckers. One of my current favs is my Don Grosh Electrajet, what a great sounding guitar, especially for blues/rock! My current pedal setup is: Bad Horsie 2, Strobostomp 2, BBE Oraange Squash, RC Booster, Holy Fire, Greer Ghetto Stomp(another killer pedal), Analogman Clone Chorus, BBE Two Timer Delay into a Allen Brown Sugar 1x12 combo, and a Category 5 Andrew 2x10, and a Fender 65 Deluxe RI. This pedal does it all, it goes from a clean boost, to singing OD, and then dial in some smooth distortion, amazing! It works great in combination with other pedals too. It is quiet, no noise. I have owned and tried probably 40-50 pedals in the last 6-7 years, including the revered KLON, Zendrive, Lovepedal Eternity(Super 6,Tchula, 8823), Analogman KOT, Fulltone OCD, etc. The Holy Fire is IMHO, more versatile than all the others I have tried. It is like a clean boost, OD, and distortion all in one cool package, and will maintain your original tone. I really like how it lights up, and the LED changes color with pick attack, very cool!!

I have only had this pedal a short time, but it looks solid, and I believe it will hold up. If not, I'm sure Creation will stand behind their product.

I have spoke to them on the phone a couple of times and found them to be very knowledgeable and helpful. All e-mails were answered quickly, Great customer service!!!

Overall the best pedal I have tried in the last few years. I play Blues/Rock ie Tommy Castro and Tab Benoit. This pedal works awesome for the tones I am trying to achieve, and more. Buy one, you will not be sorry!!

It is all right there in front of you.

I love it. Thick, meaty tone. Sold my Zen Drive immediately after borrowing a friend's Holy Fire in order to purchase my own!

This thing is built solid. I have used it on gigs with no backup.

The guys at Creation are the nicest, most helpful guys you will ever deal with. They love what they do and they want to help.

By far the favorite pedal on my board. I am now selling off other pedals of the sort.

First up: I pre-ordered this pedal since I was very happy with my MK4.23 pedal and their customer service. Needless to say I didn't know too much more other than what they told me via phone and emails. I was certainly surprised to see this mega power cord adapter, especially with a distortion pedal. It is not a regular 9VDC, it has this bulky 2 piece wall wart thing that you MUST use passing 48VDC. I was pretty unhappy since I use a pedal power and I like to keep things tight and clean on my pedal board. I wished they would have posted this power need, but if they did I would not have purchased it. I hate wall warts, sorry.

I plugged in the pedal and after reading the 2 page manual it was pretty easy to understand. Read the manual, it is necessary to understand that G-gain is really volume control and is last in the chain. O - Overdrive is first, then D- Distortion, which is highly interactive with the Overdrive. This is not how the pedal is laid out; instead it is laid out as G O D - pretty cool in a stealth way. This middle knob is Hi Cut control - pretty straight forward, cuts highs or lets it all out. It is pretty easy to understand even though 2 of the knobs are highly interactive (O & D). The high cut is more like a tone control and the G is your volume level. This is nice as I don't like pedals where a handful of knobs are all interactive. Simple is always better if the pedal sounds good. I have to knock some points off for this crazy wall wart thing - the 2 piece chord does afford a regular plug on one end like a One Spot does - I guess it could be worse.

Well I was really prepared to send it back after plugging in the stupid wall wart and my initial sound was floppy. Of course I didn't read the manual right away and kept playing this $300 pedal with great discontent. I let my buddy play around as I began to read the manual and started messing with the knobs. We were playing an EJ start through a Twin Tweed and A Deluxe Reverb in order to get a real clean read on the pedal. After about 2 minutes, good things started to happen. The pedal was really really pure and transparent. I had the hi cut all the way counter clockwise initially and hence had serious mud coming out. I turned the hi cut to 3 O'Clock and got some nice sparkle. This pedal is advertised as using some old school 1940's analog computer technology that has never been used in OD pedals, which allows for a wide bandwidth - so they say. Well maybe that is why it uses 48VDC. I will say the one thing that annoys me with most OD pedals is how the bass gets lost and the potential coloration factor. Be prepared with this guy - the bass on this is ENORMOUS, almost too much depending what you're playing through. However, every thing is pretty even, no mid hump or blistering highs - just the guitar and amp with tube like distortion. It really is more like amp distortion than pedal distortion. I like blues and jazz tones and this pedal delivers that beautifully. You can dial down the O and D and use this as a boost pedal with just a hint or hair. Very touch sensitive, pick lightly and its just clean boost, dig in and there's the hair!! There is plenty of distortion in there if you want it for rock sounds. It's not a fuzzy pedal like my Keeley Rat or T Rex Mudhoney, it's more a transparent OD pedal with great versatility and very little compression. I have been through many OD pedals and currently have an Xotic BB, Barber Small Fry, & Clark Gainster. The Holy Fire is not like any of them, it's really in another league and I am being critical given the stupid wall wart and $300 price tag!! I think the pedal could use a lo cut knob as there is a lot of bass that comes through, but it has serious balls. After playing it hard for a week, it has knocked my BB from the thrown. I like the Barber, but it just doesn't hang in there with regards to transparency, versatility and overall preservation of guitar and amp tones. My 335 sounds like a 335 through it and I can hear all 5 pick-up positions distinctively on my Strat. Also, you can hear the 6th in the 13th and all the other color notes in more complex chords even with good distortion saturation. My favorite setting is with the hi cut at 4-5 O'clock (letting the highs out), O at noon and D almost off at about 8 O'clock. This is a great OD blues setting that is nearly clean boost with light attack and breaks up the amp when you dig in and bend. If anyone has a MK 4.23, it's like that but with OD ability. The MK makes you amp sound like it's on roids and the Holy Fire does the same but with grit and hair. There is alot of bass, but you can dial back you amp eq. I haven't heard an OD pedal with this much transparency. I want to give it a 9.5 due to the lack of lo cut knob, but I'll be generous today even though the wall wart feature sucks!

The pedal is beautifully constructed. Small, carved features spelling GOD & HOLY FIRE and 2 red LEDS that light up the HOLY FIRE when powered up. The primary LED light changes from RED (on) to Yellow when you attack your strings. Cosmetically, It's on fire baby !! I have the MK 4.23 and there isn't anything to worry about. Solid construction and a great company to work with who will support their product.

Read my review for the MK 4.23. I had an issue and they made it very right! Class A company regarding customer service and support.

TRY THEIR MK 4.23 - THE MOST USEFUL PEDAL THAT I OWN.....LEAVE ON ALL THE TIME !!!!

Did I mention I hate the wall wart?? Especially for an OD pedal.

Aside from that and wanting to send it back from the get go, I discovered another world of OD pedals. My pedal board consists of an Effectrode Tube Vibe (please read my review - Killer pedal and also has a wall wart!!), Barber Small Fry, T Rex Mudhoney, MK 4.23, Analogman Bi-Chorus, Keeley AD9. I only need half this stuff. With the Tube Vibe, MK 4.23, and Holy Fire, I'm pretty much done. The Holy Fire and TV combination is simply huge and tuboliscious!! I mean ABSOLUTELY HUGE!!! Like the TV, the Holy Fire gets into your tube amp and smacks it around and lights it up daddy!! I love my tube amps and the Holy Fire really feels like it gets into the those tubes and breaks them up. It doesn't sound like any OD pedal I have ever used, it's more transparent than any of the pedals I have listed and the others that I have sold. It is very quiet too, much more quiet than the Barber Small Fry. It's not a metal-head pedal or a fuzz pedal, but more of a clean boost to hard rock amp break up pedal. It has serious bottom end so you need to make sure your amp can handle that well. It sounds great through my Deluxe and AC30. Very wide bandwidth,,,the highs really cut through the mix. There's very little compression if any. Personally, this is what I like since it doesn't change my exiting guitar and amp tone / vibe. Toss in the Effectode Tube Vibe and an MK 4.23 and plug into a nice tube amp and enjoy. In the end, this turned out to be a unique OD pedal as advertised and mine is serial #7 - I'm on a mission from God!!

Take a point off for 2 piece wall wart and lack of knob for dialing off bass. $300 is REALLY steep for an OD pedal, but I figure it's cheaper than 2 OD pedals and has twice the sonic capability IMHO. It's always better to have a handful of excellent pedals than a big old boards full of mediocrity, right?