PRODUCT REVIEW
Holy Fire
CREation audio Labs
By STEvE oUIMETTE
Every once in a while, a product comes
around that brings something different to the
table. Sometimes, it’s a clever variation on
a common theme done in a way that seems
new. At other times, it’s a radical departure—something truly unique. In the case of
Creation Audio Labs’ Holy Fire overdrive/
distortion pedal, it’s a little of both.
The Look
The Holy Fire comes in a heavy, brushed stainless steel box with lettering that is punched
through rather than painted or stenciled on. This
lets the fire-orange light inside the pedal back-light the words, giving it an evil-meets-holy look.
(CAL even cleverly arranged the Gain, Overdrive
and Distortion labels to spell out “GOD” on the
top of the pedal.) They’ve branded the pedal
with “Holy” on the left and “Fire” on the right
side of the stomp switch. Much like a treble cut
control on an AC30, the Holy Fire features a
hi-cut knob, which is signified by a “~” symbol.
It does just what you’d think and backs off the
highs as you turn it up. It also runs on a 48V
power supply that comes with the pedal. Those
48 volts are put to great use in creating a sound
unlike most gain/overdrive/distortion pedals on
the market. Finally, a very cool feature of the
pedal, and one I haven’t seen before, is the dual-colored LED that switches from red to yellow as
you go from a clean signal to wave-shaped over-drive… kinda like having a useful but vibey lava
lamp built into the pedal.
The Voice of G.O.D.
I ran the Holy Fire through just about every
guitar and amp I own, and it did an outstanding
job with all of them. One thing that sets this
pedal apart from any other gain or overdrive
pedal I’ve used is that it always makes the
sound bigger. Along with that, there was never
a loss of bass response with an increase of
gain, overdrive or distortion. It’s a very different
experience to have a pedal do this, because
it doesn’t really sound like a pedal at all when
using just the Gain control. With a Strat and
Fender Cyber-Champ, it turned a rather anemic
sound into a bold, SRV-style tone that had a
depth and character the amp never could have
revealed on its own. I’m not sure what CAL’s
secret is, but the company says they use late-
’ 50 and early-‘60s analog computer technol-
ogy to reshape the waveform. They say that it
emulates a tube, but not in any traditional way
that we’re used to with pedals. Whatever it is,
it’s highly addictive. The way the Gain works is
slightly different from a normal pedal as well:
the counterclockwise position is off—as in no
volume at all. This comes in handy, since you
can dial in huge amounts of overdrive and dis-
tortion (more on that in a minute) and then pull
back the Gain so the volume is tailored to what-
ever level you desire. I found this helpful in set-
ting up a lead tone that was just slightly louder
than the pedal in bypass mode but still had all
the overdrive and distortion I needed.
PREMIER GUITAR APRIL 2010 167
The Overdrive and Distortion controlswork
together, and you can easily use one on top of
