The Ugly Truth About The Electro Harmonix Nano Holy Grail

The Holy Grail is another pedal by Electro Harmonix that takes one of their classic pedals and puts it is a smaller box. It retails all of the original features of the old Holy Grail. It has Three settings: spring, hall, and flerb. The last one being the addition of flang to the reverb trails. The one knob is a simple interface like the one on an amp with reverb built in. It is simple and straight forward. The pedal in EHX's standard aluminum box with a simple decal. The pedal is true bypass with a solid click when thrown. All in all, this is a pretty pleasing pedal to look at.

The Sounds.

I've played many amps with analog reverb units. Fender, Vox, and even some boutique jobs. I am not exactly the biggest fan of reverb. I will often run my amps reverb pegged at zero. I get my "big" sounds from adding delay, but I've played enough to know what a decent sounding reverb sounds like. I can also tell you that a good spring unit is a pretty sweet thing to have available to you. The spring setting on this pedal is very usable. I could see having this on my board if I needed to fatten up a section of a song. The Hall setting is also a usable sound that creates a different "space". The Flerb is interesting. I think that there are applications for this effect, but as I am not huge user of this effect, I can think of any off the top of my head. The Holy Grail has been around for a long time, and might have even pioneered the use of modulation on reverb. Many other makers have copied this in there reverbs, so there is something to be said for that.

The Ugly Truth

This pedal is rather iconic. If you forced a guitar player to list reverb pedals, this would be one of the ones that he/she might mention. Its popularity is not contested, but that doesn't mean that it is the best choice. There are lots of solid options for under $100. The VHT Melo-Verb is a solid choice and comes with a separate tremolo channel. Not to mention, that the VHT has Dwell, Tone, and Mix to control the reverb sound. Digitech Probably has the most solid option for verb under $100. Then there is the standard Boss RV-5 Digital Reverb. It is more expencive than the EHX but offers many more sounds.

Conclusion

The pedal makes some really nice sounds. It is synonyms with reverb, but the price tag on this unit might be its down fall. Although it has nice features and interesting settings, it doesn't offer a great deal more than some other pedals that are close enough in price to consider. There are even options that cost less and do more. This pedal has some unique sounds that might make it special enough to warrant the purchase, but if all you are looking for is a solid reverb pedal, then make sure to check all your options before deciding.