Electro-Harmonix Holy Stain

Once you hook up an expression pedal (I use a Moog EP2) it becomes easier to get good sounds from the pitch shifter in particular, which I'll speak more about later. Not having to bend down in order to adjust the amount for that effect is beneficial. Other than that it's fairly straight forward, it's just a case of deciding how you want it to sound from what's on offer and tweaking both sides until you find what you want.

I've so far only played this pedal through an Orange rocker 30. The first time I was using a Telecaster - made in Japan - but it was on it's last legs in terms of the strings and the fretboard and has recently been put in for a service. So I was slightly disheartened with the sounds I was getting. However, I then invested in an expression pedal and used my own guitar (a crafter sa-tmvs) and got some lovely, lovely sounds out of it. The reverbs sound great - I've even used a microphone and got a bit of a Simon and Garfunkel, 'sound of silence' vibe from the room reverb and the hall reverb has an odd haunting delay at certain intensities. That's great because I already have a Holy grail so this offers something different.

That's how I can best describe the holy stain - as something different. It's great for playing around with on your own - I often use it with a #1 echo delay and that introduces some really interesting combinations and a nice marriage of analogue and digital.It's also great for being able to recreate sounds which remind me of early Pink Floyd and even 70s motown. If you stabilise the pitch shift to a 4th below it sounds like a chorusy effect - I also have a small clone - but this is definitely something different.

The pitch shift is a revelation but not what I bought the pedal for. It's crazy - in a good way but also can be reined in to produced a glass slide kind of sound with the pitch shift all the way up and just gently rocking the expression pedal - still need to get the hang of that!

The fuzz sound is great - not a standard distortion so I bought a proco rat II but something useable for a lower-fi sound. The overdrive - as mentioned by others is sort of like a diet fuzz but again - useable - it's like an adjustable fuzz rather than a fuzz and an over drive. And you can modify the sound further with the Dark, bright and warm settings. The tone setting takes the adjustments further.

So it IS adjustable just not like a standard dedicated fuzz - which is not what I was looking for from the stain - I just wanted something a little bit different - which is what it has.

The tremolo I haven't looked at using but it has a noticable trem which I assume makes it useful but I'd probably pick a speed and not mess with it because that can sound a little wrong. Who knows though - with the stain there are more possibilites than you might think - it's about getting creative though!

I think it's reliable. Looks strong. The only thing I would say is that some of the knobs looked a little wonky in that the indicators were slightly skewiff - which for me is a sign of poor craftsmanship basically down to high production rates and low quality control. It can be rectified with a hand made sticker, which might add to the charm of the Holy Stain but might make me look like a nob. We'll have to see...

Never had to speak to anyone yet!

I'm going to need to spend more time with it but I can't see myself using it that often for anything besides the reverb. The other sounds are useful but you'll kill them if you use them too much - and kill your sound! Unless your sound is psychedelic rock - which mine isn't

The music we write in my band we do without using pedals but plug-ins instead - we then generally buy the pedals that can make those sounds live. So we may have 10 pedals on our board but we'll only use each one twice or three times in a set. Not pedal overkill just pedal preperation!

It's quite strait-forward, even with it's all knobs and stuff.
Ehx manuals are more than informative, as usual

I bought it intending to use as a tremolo unit.
In which it is no fun. You can't really control the shape of the wave and it's deepness, only speed. The last one you can control with the expression pedal, which is quite cool, but then again you need to have one...
Pitch shifter is rather limited, reverbs are nice, but so is my Holy Grail reverb. Distortions are usual, and (again) you don't really have any control over them except for the volume knob.

So for me it was kinda "okay...", but nothing spectacular, really. Which is what I usually expect when I buy stuff from Ehx.

I believe it is indestructible (as the other XO-series pedals), unless you throw it under a road roller, or something...

Never dealt with them

I think it's more of a failure than success (especially comparing to the other XO pedals). Ehx tried to make a multi-effect, but it has quite limited controls over it's sounds. If you like how it sounds out of the box - I'm happy for you. However, "All I wanted was a" tremolo, so I ended up selling this unit several weeks after I've bought it.

Very intuitive, don't need a manual to figure it out. No patches but I knew that going in..

I, like many others I am sure, have experienced a financial crisis this year. As a result, I have had to sell off my cool stuff. A Princeton Reverb II (who needs a wimpy deluxe reverb anyway), a Custom Vibrolux (Hissy but highly under rated), an Eric Johnson Strat and all my effects. I built a Champ clone and am playing that through an 8" speaker in a Squire 15 case. I made a guitar from a Pacifica body, a Mitey Mite Tele V neck and some 69 custom shop pickups. I really haven't wanted to play much... I decided to get a reverb pedal because that is what I missed the most. I watched a U-tube demo of this pedal and decided to get it just based on that and because Musicians Friend had it on sale. I think the reverbs are really good. If you turn the Room settings down it gives some great slap echo. The hall can make your guitar sound like it is on Mars ie way out there. You can dial in whatever amount of reverb you want, it is just too easy. The best surprise is the clean setting on the OD side. Like other reviewers I couldn't get the Drive distortion to make anything musical, it was just mush. Think about the rig I had the Stain plugged into and I guess thats no big surprise. Like wise for the Fuzz. The Clean, on the other hand, has some real useful features. The volume essentially added the clean overdrive I needed on the Champ clone pre-amp. The Bright, Dark, Warm switch and the tone control really shaped the color of the guitar. More so than I would have ever expected. It was possible to make those Strat pickups twang like a Tele! On my minimal rig I went from ho hum, to cool (as cool as an 8" piece of crap speaker can sound) just with a single pedal. I think the Class A 6V6 amp made a huge difference in the tones I could get as compared to a SS amp. The guitar volume, the amp volume and the volume on the Stain all interacted beautifully. You could get it to sound pretty sterile with the guitar and amp turned down. Turning up the amp all the way, the guitar to half and then just dialing in the overdrive with the volume on the pedal worked best. I messed with the pitch shift a little but nothing grabbed me. The tremelo has great possibilities. I never considered surf music before I messed with the tremelo on the Stain. The tremelo on the Custom Vibroluxe wasn't as easy to get those tones. In fact, I played with the tremelo on the Vibroluxe when I first got it and then never used it. The Stain makes tremelo fun. Really pretty cool when you play tempo based on the rate. It was actually enough fun that I played around with that for about a half an hour by itself. Another great thing about this pedal is NO noise. This thing is quiet.

Don't know just got it. My Holy Grail ( try one and you will buy it, the best compressor in a pedal I've heard) never broke so I imagine this will last just as long.

?

If you have a crappy little solid state practice amp with a bunch of built in effects, don't bother with this pedal. If you are playing into a nice tube amp and need some reverb and great tone coloring this is a one stop shop. At $98 it is a steal.

Easy to set up and operate, No memory for edited F/X.

For me there were two or three great sounds that make this pedal great

I tried this with several guitars but really came to love it when using it with single coil guitars Tele's, Strats.The sinle coil did not seem to overdrive the pedal

Using either the room or hall reverbs with only the warm drive setting and playing with the volume of the guitar I could create the sound of an AC30 with plenty of dynamics.

I played thru' my 79' Hiwatt bulldog and a Tech 21 Power 60 and got the same result, a creamy, very versatile crunch thru to overdriven tone using the gain from the guitar

Left it running for 48 hours and did not get hot or start to hiss.

Have not needed them yet

As I mentioned earlier this a one trick pony, but a great one in my humble opinion. In the past I have usually resorted to playing full throttle on the guitar volume, but i really enjoyed the control over how crunchy the sound could get, the reverb was authentic and i would definitely replace it if it was stolen. one warnin, I could not get the same sound using a humbucker. For small gigs where one needs some edge or crunch this is a great option.

fairly standard and intuitive, but the pitch shifter takes some getting used to.

TBH I was just after a tremolo pedal with a real vintage vibe (ac30 style) instead of a sharp edged newer pedal and this does the job. Unless you're a tone arsehole and very nitpicky this doesn't really upset your rig and quite unexpectedly has some of the best reverbs i've heard. The pitch shifter is something to be desired but with some tinkering can have your guitar sounding like a 12 string or can be used as a simple chorus pedal. The fuzz on this thing is great and don't listen to anyone who says you can't alter it because you can just turn the volume down on your guitar and turn up the master on the amp.

sound as a pound! built like a ******** tank.

never had to deal with them.

I play mainly physcadelic rock and also some ambient stuff and this is perfect for those drowned out sounds and early vibes. if it were to be stolen i'd buy it again just for the tremolo.

Overall a very easy straightforward unit to use.

The Bad: There are no banks to save patches to. This would put the pedal through the roof. But I guess that would be asking to much. No patches means that that settings have to be manually adjusted if you switch from reverb to vibrato or vibrato to pitch shift, etc. Control surface for the full/od lacks well... Control.

The Good: Control surface for the clean effects is fairly intuitive yet straightforward. Also an expression pedal can be used to adjust the amount knob on the clean effects which is kind of cool.

The Bad: The distortions suck. They might be better if you could control them but as such no control = sucky sound. The sound is also not transparent. If the clean effects are engaged then to is the preamp (clean/full/od) which includes a tone pot to muddy up your sound.

The Good: Although the preamp must be engaged its a good sounding pre so if you screw with the tone and volume you can get a pretty transparent sound. While there is some personal preference in the world of reverbs the reality is the hall and room verbs included with this pedal are very good. I also have a lexicon rack unit which has arguably the best verbs in the world and I would say that the verbs in this unit are fairly comparable. The room has a bit of a spring pop to it making it sound a little bit more like a real analog reverb. The hall is deep, lush, and clean. The vibrato is pretty good as well.

Seems as though its built well.

No experience

My biggest complaint is the lack of control. My second biggest complaint is you can't save patches. My third biggest complaint is that you can't mix clean effects. I was well aware of these three short comings before I purchased the pedal. Despite these short comings I am very happy with the sound and quality of the clean effects and till I can afford to drop 400 bucks on a vibrato unit and reverb tank it will suit me just fine.

REALLY easy to use straight off, a control to toggle between the four effects, and a bypass, an output jack for an expression pedal, that's it.
All the effects are really intuitive to use, the reverbs and the tremelo are outstanding. Pitch shift is almost unusable, either change the range and improve the tracking or drop it altogether EH!
The Drives are adjustable via the tone and colour controls, the amount of dirt is pre set.

Using a gretsch 6120 into a tech 21 trademark 60 (remember those?!) via a boss super overdrive (for leads), eq (for my main overdrive sound), and tuner (for tuning haha!)
The reverbs are excellent on this model, particularly the hall reverb - just shimmers woo!
The tremelo is fantastic, a little dirty and if you set it fast some reverb creeps in, it isn't one of those awful super clean digital ones and won't do "how soon is now" by the Smiths, but for authentic creepy garage/surf sounds, THIS is the one! I hear a slight modulation in the signal too which only adds to it's unpredictable and cool vibe.
The Pitch shift needs either to be turned into an octaver, and the tracking improved - or it just needs scrapping. If you set the pitch to be almost the same as the input pitch then you get a usable chorusing effect, but I'm just being kind - it sucks.
The pedal is super quiet apart from when using:
The overdrive and fuzz! the overdrive is just like a really weak version of the fuzz and I don't use it at all - but the fuzz is genuine Stephen Malkmus unhinged lead joy! I set it with the colour switch on warm and it's just MASSIVE! especially when combined with a short hall reverb or OTT tremelo sound, instant "what's the frequency kenneth?" haha!

It can withstand my doc martens, it can withstand my five year old son, it is therefore indestructible.
I don't need any backup on my pedalboard, this thing is built to last - and if it broke (god help me) I'd just get it replaced as the unit is so inexpensive.

I'd consider looking into getting the pitch shifts range moved, so it goes from regular to an octave below, but this would have to be done by an independent specialist.
I've had no dealing with EH.

I play surfy, gritty indie, rockabilly type music and this is just perfect for all that. I actually miss it when it's not switched on.
I grew up playing 70's rock (kiss and whatnot) and the fuzz is actually kind of perfect for all that, plus the aforementioned visits to pavement land.
Unlike some other reviews here I wouldn't like to make the fuzz adjustable - it's just that pitch shifting that needs looking at.
I've been playing since I was 9, I'm now 33, and this is easily the best and most useful pedal for my style of playing ever invented.

Very easy to use. The only complaint is that you can only have a single combination of effects (effect -> tone settings -> clean/drive) engaged at once. Pick what you want and hope you're happy because you won't get to use another unless the same settings happen to be perfect on another mode that you can tap to.

Impecable!! This thing is the cleanest pedal I've ever used. The reverbs sound amazing. Great sounding and simple to use EQ adjustments. The pitch shift has a sizable delay that makes it pretty un-usable (hence the 9 rating instead of the 10). The drive and overdrive settings are getting a bad rap on here. I don't think they're too bad at all. The only thing is that they're not adjustable. What you hear is what you get.

I've only had it overnight so I don't know for sure. But it's all metal and solid. I'll have it on my board for my gig this Friday and won't worry about it at all.

As far as quality for price, I think this thing is great. Great sound quality. I was in the market for a delay pedal and a reverb pedal. Had the Holy Stain had a delay feature, I would have only bought this. I was so bummed when I saw that it didn't with all of the other quality. Switch out the useless pitch shift and put a delay on. Add one more button to run two effects at once, and give the drives some adjustability, and this thing is a near perfect basic multi-effects pedal.

Easy as heck to get good sounds right out of the box. But hard to get great sounds out of all settings. More on that later.

My opinion on this is it's a great pedal for some uses, good for others, and okay at best for the rest. As a "multi effects" box, which is how they marketed it, I think it fails pretty miserably. If the reverbs were always on and the other effects (fuzz, OD, pitch shift and tremolo) were variable, it would be killer. But they aren't. You get reverb/pitch/tremolo switching on one line and fuzz/od on the other. You can use the fuzz/od with either the Reverb, pitch or tremolo going. Point of this is: Don't get it for the overdrive or fuzz, although dialed in just right they're not bad really. But I'd rather use a fuzzface, a Big Muff or a Tubescreamer. The tried and true stuff. The pitch shift is an effect I never liked and wouldn't use anyway. No use for it. The tremolo is solid, not like the best but certainly not terrible. It does the job. BUT THE REVERBS! Killer, straight killer. I'm a Fender guy, all Fender amps and I actually prefer the room reverb you can get with the Holy Stain. You can really dial in the sweet amount, not too much, and then use the tone and volume knobs to bring out clarity and help drive your tubes. Trust me, a driven amp with this reverb and toned in just right friggin smokes. I was really floored by this. Adds a touch of noise, nothing serious though and the tone it brings out in the amp is sweet. Fender reverbs (not Blackface stuff here but the newer hot rod amps or the Blackface reissues like I use) have a dark dark reverb tone and really give you too much reverb dialed at like 2 (that may be taper pot problem in the design, not sure). I found that I liked the HOly Stain reverb and the way it drove my amp (not using OD or fuzz, just on clean) that I have added it to my rig. As a multi box, kind of a joke and not really designed in most functional way, although you could use it quite a bit in a studio situation. I'm speaking more to a live rig need. But buy the sucker for the reverb alone and just use it for that. I was really happy with it.

metal box. just don't drop it.

The reverb is great. The tremolo is good. The rest is unnecessary. They could have sold this in a smaller box just for the reverb with all the tone and volume options to help drive your amp and it would have been the best thing put out last year.

This is a multi effect unit, so It takes time to get comfortable with the controls. I think EH have put a lot of effort in giving us maximum amount of sounds with minimal knobs.

Once you get orientated it is really easy to get good sounds. The expression pedal option helps with changing settings on the fly. I am using a Moog exp pedal.

note: the Holy Stain requires an expression pedal with a Tip Ring Sleeve connector. (ie. a stereo one, not mono)

I am using the Holy Stain with an Orange Tiny Terror which has no reverb or trem. The sound quality is excellent my bandmate is completly digiphobe and he approved the sound. I will outline the various sounds.

Fuzz: decent....very abbrasive.

Drive: decent... more like distortion, think DS1.

Clean: excellent, but not transparent, you run through a tone circuit comprised of volume and tone control to roll of highs as well as a 3 position switch for Dark, Warm and Bright. you will need to experiment to see what works well with your guitar and amp. I leave mine on clean w either Warm or Bright selected.

Tremolo: excellent... with plenty of leslie-type coloring. This is not a clear dry trem. Also when you increase speed it adds reverb, you cant get a clean fast trem. When you use the exp pedal to increase speed, it ramps up to speed, very smooth.

Pitch Bend: kind of a bummer, good in a lo-fi way. I don't imagine people will be selling off their H3000's. As stated in a previous review, this is not very usable without an expression pedal. Pitch + Fuzz = insanity.

Room and/or Hall Reverb: excellent...the reason I bought it. Very natural sounding reverbs that you blend in with your dry signal. They range from subtle to cavernous to barfy.

Good quality switches and jacks. I use a Godlyke PowerAll to power it up. Batteries arent even an option, 9V supply only.

Buy from a dealer, they are your real customer support.