Electro-Harmonix Bass Soul Food User Manual

1

BASS SOUL FOOD

WARNING: Your Bass Soul Food comes equipped with an Electro-Harmonix 9.6DC-200

power supply (same as used by Boss® & Ibanez®: 9.6 Volts DC 200mA). The Bass Soul
Food requires 22mA at 9VDC with a center negative plug. Using the wrong adapter may
damage your unit and void the warranty. The Bass Soul Food also accepts 9V batteries, we
recommend alkaline.

Overdrive

Congratulations on your purchase of the Bass Soul Food, an exquisite bass
overdrive and clean boost from Electro-Harmonix, designed for the tone-concious
player who wants to retain the essential character of his or her instrument. The
Bass Soul Food delivers a wide range of sounds, including a pure clean boost, a
colored clean boost, a mild amount of dirt, and full-on overdrive.

The capability to blend your pure bass signal into the overdrive circuit assures an
articulate, full tone with no low-end loss. The Bass Soul Food also has plenty of
volume available to assert your place in the mix. Whatever your style or setup,
the Bass Soul Food can give your tone a lift in all the right places without
compromising it.

DRIVE Knob – Controls the amount of input gain. As you turn DRIVE clockwise,
the overdrive ranges from a colored clean boost in the fully counter-clockwise
position, to full distortion in the fully clockwise setting. There are many great
sounds found within the full range of the DRIVE knob; we recommend
experimenting with different positions in both halves of the DRIVE knob to find
just the right amount of grit for your needs.

TREBLE Knob – Acts as a tone control. When set to 12 o’clock (50%), the tone
is neutral. As you turn TREBLE clockwise from the 12 o’clock setting, the treble
gain increases making your overall sound brighter. As you turn TREBLE counter­clockwise from the 12 o’clock setting, the high end is reduced giving you a
bassier sound.

BLEND Knob – Sets the mix between your clean bass signal and the Bass Soul
Food effect. When set fully counterclockwise (0%), the output signal is your dry

- CONTROLS -

2

bass sound. The DRIVE and TREBLE knobs do not affect the signal in this
setting. When BLEND is set fully clockwise (100%), the output signal is the Bass
Soul Food’s overdrive signal. Set the knob at 12 o’clock (50%) for a 50/50 blend
of the dry and overdrive signals.

Tip: experiment using the BLEND control with various settings of DRIVE. When

DRIVE is set low, the BLEND can control the color of the Bass Soul Food’s clean

boost, ranging from a completely dry (BLEND at 0%) to a fully colored (BLEND at
100%) clean tone.

VOL Knob – Sets the master output level of the Bass Soul Food. As VOL is
turned clockwise, the output volume increases. This control affects your signal
level after the BLEND control.

PAD Switch (-10dB/0dB) – Sets the initial input level of your bass signal. Set
the switch down for no attenuation, and set it up to engage -10dB of
attenuation. Active basses and some very high-output passive basses may need
this switch to be set to -10dB to avoid overloading the Bass Soul Food circuit.
Putting the Bass Soul Food in a pedal chain after high-output pedals may also
necessitate setting this switch to -10dB. Overload most commonly occurs when
the DRIVE knob is set low and the TREBLE knob is set high.

FOOTSWITCH and LED – The Footswitch selects whether the Bass Soul Food
is engaged or in bypass mode. When the effect is engaged, the LED is lit. An
internal Bypass Mode switch is included to select between True Bypass and
Buffered Bypass. See below for more information on the internal switch.

INPUT Jack – This ¼” jack is the audio input for the Bass Soul Food. The input
impedance is 1M.

AMP Jack – This ¼” jack is the audio output from the Bass Soul Food. The
output impedance ranges from 650 to 3.3k.

Internal Bypass Mode Switch – If you remove the Bass Soul Food’s bottom
cover, you will see the bat of a small switch sticking out of the board that holds
the footswitch. This is located in the bottom right area of the pedal, below the
AMP jack. The right side of the footswitch board has the following text:

When the switch is set to True, its upper position, bypass will be True Bypass.
When the switch is set to Buffer, its lower position, bypass will be Buffered
Bypass. The switch is normally set to “True” in the factory.

In True Bypass mode, when the Bass Soul Food is set to bypass, the INPUT jack
is connected directly to the AMP jack and nothing else. In Buffered Bypass mode,
the bypass signal passes through a high quality buffer circuit before it is output
from the AMP jack. The buffer circuit requires power to hear your instrument in
bypass mode.

Buffer  True