Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb

Easy enough to use...but that's not why I'm writing this review.

Sound quality?....you're kidding me, right? Noise like you couldn't believe and a real high pitch whine in the background. Through a power conditioner, plugged straight...where ever and whenever this crap pile is plugged in, it sucks. And the flerb setting? WTF is that? BUT WE'RE STILL NOT TO THE POINT OF WHY I WROTE THIS REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HERE IT IS!!! It worked (I'm sorry..."powered on" would be a better term) for 2 weeks and died....forever....dead. SO I retruned it thinking I got a bunk unit. Nope. Same horrific noise and whine and lasted EXACTLY 13 DAYS JUST LIKE THE LAST UNIT!!!!

I will never buy a product from EH ever in my life. What crap. Furthermore, I will tell every guitarist I know the same thing.

Contrats EH, you put out a crap product and now it's gonna cost you, becasue I'm going to tell everyone I know what total garbage you make. Guess you probably shouldn't have cut all of those corners to make a quick profit, because in the end, you are the one's who end up losing.

DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT. IT IS THE WORST OF THE WORST!!!

Garbage. Noisy beyond words when it does work, which seems to be only 13 days. Don't buy this product...let me repeat....DO NOT BUY THIS REVERB. GARBAGE GARBAGE GARBAGE GARBAGE GARBAGE GARBAGE GARBAGE!!! The absolute sorst I have seen in my 25 years of playing.

The unit is very easy to use in fact it could not be simpler (it only has one knob on it) turn it up you get more reverb, turn it down you get less. If you can't figure this baby out you better go back to kindergarten.

There is also a 3 way switch for SPRING, HALL, or FLERB settings. The Spring and Hall are both useable I usually prefer the Hall setting. The FLERB to me is unusable but if you are just looking for some wierd trippy sound effects than I suppose you could find a use for it.

The reverb sounds very very good. I play guitar through several verieties of Fender tube amps and a nice Peavy (yes Peavy) tube amp. I am able to dial in nice long or short reverbs with this unit on all of the amps. I play alot of music that reqires clean guitar like Jazz or acoustic stuff but I also play satrianiesque rock. I find that for the cleaner styles it's much more important to have a really transparent reverb unit than with the higher gain music. Nice sounding reverb!!!!!!!!

ONE BIG DRAWBACK!!!!!!! NOISE!!!!!!! There is a high pitched whine that comes in evertime I switch this thing on.. The unit is still useable because the noise is much softer than the music but It's still a big drawback in my opinion. I am looking for something else to replace it.

I'm really geting into recording these days and I want silence in between the artful noise. so because of the noise I am giving the grail a 5.

Well it works but noisily.

Its under warranty i should call EH but haven't yet

Nice sounding reverb for the price. Would be nice to have more than one knob for control but I can actually get good Hall or spring reverb sounds with this thing and a decent amount of control with just the one knob.

I would love to give this thing an 8 or a 9 but I CAN'T BECAUSE OF THE NOPISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It couldn't be easier to use. Switch for the three types of reverb and a knob.

I play rock/classic rock/jam through a '70 Fender Bassman. Mostly clean sounding. This reverb pedal sounds GREAT!! I don't use the "Flerb" setting much, but the spring and hall are great sounding reverbs. Some people complain about noise, but I have no noise at all. Very rich and lush reverb sounds!

I just got it, and have used it at a gig, no problems.

I play classic rock and jam music. My amp has no reverb, so I needed a good reverb pedal, and this takes the cake! I've read some reviews, and this isn't a pedal for metal-heads and shredders with their mesa boogies and other high-gain amps. Its for players who want that classic vintage reverb sound for the price. Overall, a 10.

Very Easy to use. Plug and play, flip a switch dial it in...

Way too noisy. The one I have was ok at first, then over the course of a month or so it developed this siren like hum and was totally unusable. I sent it back to the manufacturer. It came back and was ok for a bit, but within a couple of hours of use it was unusable again. However, it's now very quiet. Unfortunately, that's because it died.

You're better off pointing your amp into a tiled bathroom for reverb than to depend on this piece of shit.

They did fix it for free once, but you get what you pay for.

Total waste of money.

Easy to set up, input-output. You have to use EHs own power-adaptor and it does not take batteries. One knob for "Reverb" (mix) and a three way switch to selesct one of the three settings.
It makes very much noise (I'll come back to this later) and the only way for me to use it was through the FX-loop.
Like one other stated in a review; If you need a manuak for this thing, you really should consider not playing at all!! Easy...

First of all... I received my Holy Grail two days ago. I tried it at home first, then i took it to a gig the same night. Only tried it twice.
On the gig I used it with my Budda Superdrive, together with 4-5 other pedals. My main problem; THIS PEDAL IS VERY VERY NOISY!! I was warned by a friend of mine that had tried the same pedal earlier, but I still wanted to try one. In front of the amp it is impossible to use this pedal, and I had to take it out of the chain after half a set. The I tried to put it in the FX-loop and it is much better, but still very noisy. I usually have delay and also chorus in the FX-loop, but nowadays I am much more comfortable with all having all my pedals in front of the amp.
I'll explain the noise to you: Imagine an old cheap Boss distortion pedal, set with volume and gain at 12 o clock. That is how much noise this little device makes.
Anyway, the reverb is great, very big. Can't belive the can make such a big sound ou of such a small pedal!! Problem is, I do not always want very big reverbs, and there's no way to change this!!

Had it for two day, then returned it.

I play quite much different music. I wanted to use this pedal for two different bands. One is a live cover band and the other is a kind of warm, country, pop kind of thing. The actual sound is gret for both (could use a "smaller" reverb though).
Have been playing for seven years and I own quite some equipment (even though music equipment is quite expensive in Nortway. Fender US strat is 1500$!!)
Today I tried the Boss RV-5, sounds good, no noise, and it has so much posibilities.

Give it a "time" knob and make the noise go away, it'll be a GREAT pedal!!!

Simple, simple, simple....select type, turn dial, on/off switch. Barney Fife might have a problem with this, but that's it....

Great in front of an amp, horrible for direct to board or any direct application. Tone sucker after you turn dial more than 50%, so it's good for about 50% of the time. Sounded good at the store, but......

...here's the problem. Guess I didn't notice it at the noisy guitar store. "Flerb" setting creeps into the "hall" reverb....almost like the switch is shot. Figures, I bought it used at a Music Go Round....I should have known better. Then after reading the multiple reviews of unreliability (after purchasing of course), I guess I really should have known better. Luckily, I can still return this heap to the junkyard known as Music Go Round.

None...but I have bought EH tubes before and they were crap too....burned out within a month (12ax7's)....rumour has it that the owner of this guitar buys inferior Sovtek leftovers, and rebrands them as EH. People are buying into an inferior name, but eventually this will catch up with them and they will go the way of the dodo. Musicians are gullible folk, but loyal to quality and spread the word fast in forums such as this....EH, get your act together and start producing something quality.

Very disappointing....back to the drawing board. YOu know...you really do get what you pay for...what a surprise eh?

dial in your tone.....easy! it's cool.....then you find out electro harmonix is pure dung!

going into a bassbreaker.......no noise, used it in the studio a few times...worked fine....................for about a month....when it broke i had it checked out...it checked out to be a piece of sh#t...i gave 'em my money and i'll never do it again......you'd be better off spending more money with analogman.com or something that is actually BUILT,,, not put together like a pile of crap....

do not depend on this thing.......lucky for me it died during a time that i did'nt really need it....in other words i was not recording or playing live. after i had this thing inspected by a professional....here is some advice....yes it sounds cool...for a while.....then it breaks....pile o sh@t....end of story....by the way the only reason i'm writing this review is b/c i've owned several of these and they all broke..i've also owned an electro-harmonix big muff...guess what.....sounded great...and IT BROKE! after losing so much money i just had to write.

they are really good at making a profit......anybody who can sell pure crap for top dollar.....gotta be doing good

very good before it broke........sounds like they are taking the fender route........sounds great......then it will break.....save your money and buy from someone else..........all in all they had a great idea....but in the end this company is bullshit and needs a new direction. if your money is important to you Don't BUY!!!

If you can exercise a decent amount of restraint and get over the amusement of adding way too much reverb it's pretty easy to get a good sound out of. There's three settings, one of which is a fairly niche setting (that would be "Flerb"; Flange and Reverb).

I didn't get a manual with it. I suspect if you need a manual for this then plugging it in would probably merit a pretty heavy challenge and thusly, actually using a computer to submit a review would be right well ouf of your intellectual capacity.

The danger is, of course, overuse.

If you need a reverb pedal you're generally in one of two camps:

-Bought a cheap amp that has no reverb and was done for the reason of keeping the costs down.
-Bought an expensive amp that's generally marketed to purists or appeals to the vintage crowd and rather than hear everyone complain about it the manufacturer didn't put a reverb in there.

This pedal will not make a cheap amp sound expensive. It will not make an expensive amp sound like a real spring reverb unit. There is no substitute for the real deal.

With that said the unit does a great job of replicating the sound. For most folks this will be more than adequate. For purists they're going to want to start hunting around for the old brown Fender reverb tanks.

I use this pedal on my Trace Elliot Velocette amp and when my stock Fender reverb tanks blow out (usually the result of an idiot move on someones part) on their respective amps (DRRI, Hot Rod Deluxe and a Blues Jr). My guitars are the typical Strats and Les Pauls. Nothing special but semi-vintage.

I've read alot of bad things about this pedal and after opening it up much of it makes sense. The main circuit board is barely held in place. The solder connections aren't especially beefy. The case is at least 4 times larger than it needs to be and almost none of it functions as a bracing area except for the jacks.

Someone would do well with a re-build kit for these things. Make it smaller, make some serious braces for the board and beef up the connections and you'd almost totally erase all the failures detailed here.

I'd be reluctant to gig without a backup. And then I'm not sure a backup would be another Holy Grail. It's a terrible design and while EH should be commended for keeping the price of such a great sounding unit down for another $20 they could have an indestructible and irreplaceable unit in alot of peoples arsenals.

The one I got had some "issues". I emailed EH and they got back to me withing 24 hours. Of course they wanted another $15 for the repair if it was out of warranty. For a $100 unit it begs alot of questions though; paying another quarter of the units retail cost more than once suddenly puts you in an area where digital units with higher reliability start to become an option and real-deal vintage units may start to show up.

But hey....they answered my email.

It's a good little unit with some very basic, simple and devastating flaws. For my Blues amps it's a perfect match of simplicity and cost. I see alot of people using them and the unit was the default answer from alot folks when I asked for a recommendation.

I'd be reluctant to buy anything from EH again after opening the unit up. While their tonal reputation is quite good the reliability isn't. I wouldn't let myself be a victim of that.

I don't debate that I got the unit for a good price. However had I paid retail for it I probably would of returned it and opted for something else.

very easy to use
single knob for reverb

impressive out of a cheap digital box!!!
very very much close to fender tube spring reverbs.

if you are using reverb 3 to 6 out of 10 in spring reverbs go for the grail. i use it 10 oclock in spring mode and it's enough reverb for me. however sound gets unnatural reverb if you go above 1 oclock on holygrail. if you use more this is not for you!!!

spring mode is best
plate is ok
forget about flerb mode (what the???)

i used to use boss RV5.
they sound totally digital, not even a comparison to holygrail.

big strong box
i opened it up and see that there is a small chipboard in it and a large space. i wish it were smaller.

it has reverse polarity DC adapter plug which causes a slight disturbing sound if you plug into different serial adaptor cable with other pedals. so you have to use its own adapter :(

no idea

been playing professionally for about 15 years
best sound for hundred bucks
good spring sound

Easy to use ,one switch and one knob , I like that , I just got mine today , there is a manuel but it's so simple the manuel is not needed , I'm not sure of the year but it is new stock .

I got this pedal to add reverb to a fender pro junior and a pignose G40-V and a original pignose practice amp , just to add some depth , it seems quiet and I use fender strats and most of the amps I own are all tube , the pedal sounds great to me and adds just what I was looking for , reverb , like any pedal if you crank it all the way up it is too much and the three settings all have their place , I prefer to play dry and direct most of the time but at home the reverb fills the room .

I have not had it long enough but it looks like it will hold up , even though it is made of sheet aluminum and not heavy cast metal like other pedals I have I still take care of all the equipment I own , if you stomp on any pedal enough times hard somethings going to give , besides it looks good and has a better switch than many case pedals with a tiny micro switch which by the way do break , it looks vintage .With reasonable care it should last a good long time .

I have'nt dealt with them so far , I only had a big muff and did not care for the sound of that fuzz or any fuzz for that matter .

I play blues guitar mainly and since I'm 54 I also go back to beatles and other groups from the sixties . I have been playing for over 40 years . I do own a TS-9 and a Boss blues driver and an old ibanez analog delay and a vox distortion and a dunlop cry baby wah and this holy grail . I first got the digitech X series , let me tell you , this pedal may be well made as a boss but there is just to much in the way of controls and six settings , after about an hour I used 2 out of the six and also if the gain on the dig is past noon the entire signal fades away , I thought there was something wrong but this is how they all are . and the people talking about the grail being poor in construction , how long do you suppose those 4 tiny knobs will hold up ? the spring had a odd blip at the end also , so I retrurned it and got the holy grail for the same price and get the sounds I need with one switch , sure the others have more control if you like to bend down and play with controls , I want to set it and play , that's all . I like the sound of the grail and any pedal will cost you a small amount of tone or volume , I also like the fact that it has the power adapter included , what good are batteries when they last less than an hour , effect pedals such as these reverbs all eat batteries in short order. The grail sounds real the others did not .I would not change a thing on this pedal . I would replace it if lost and I would get another of the same . One thing I would like to add is why do pedals need to be built like a tank , sure it's a more secure feeling but what good is a pedal built like a tank that sounds fake and digital ? This pedal does all I need it to do and it gives me a break to have reverb added to the mix when I;m in the mood for a change of pace , so it does help change the way I play certain styles of even blues and gives me the hendrix stage sound . I had my doubts reading all the reviews on this site with all the beginning issues of this pedal failing and this is why I choose the digitech first , I know I gave this product high ratings , but in all fairness it just sounds the best and is not over done like the others , last thing with a 3 position slide switch you can find the setting fast , the digitech has 6 settings on a rotory knob 1-6 and then tiny words that spell out the settings all in a row , who can see this , why not be able to bypass the ones you don't like 4 of them , if you like to play with knobs and I don't , the grail is not for you .