EHX Spruce Goose Overdrive | 2023’s best new Bluesbreaker pedal?! Review & Demo | Electro-Harmonix

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This is the Electro-Harmonix Spruce Goose overdrive pedal: a new take on the iconic Marshall Bluesbreaker circuit from Mike Matthews and team at EHX!

At Thomann:
At Sweetwater:

Famed for its sparkling transparent overdrive tones and its punchy clarity for low and medium gain drive sounds, the Bluesbreaker circuit has inspired a legion of homages over the years. In fact, I think pretty much every pedal company makes at least one, and I already own more than a few of them! But when the Spruce Goose appeared, my GAS kicked in, and here we are.

It's a fairly standard Bluesbreaker for the most part, with Volume, Gain, Bass and Treble controls. On top of that, however, you get a Lift switch. This three-way switch gives you three levels of drive and saturation. When down, the switch adds nothing to the signal. When you switch it to the middle setting, though, it boosts your input signal into the pedal by 9dB – and you can flick the switch up to the top for true liftoff and a boost of 21dB.

This is a typical EHX pedal, so made in the USA, and it’ll set you back around $129/€139 – so you’re getting a fair amount of pedal for your money. It feels solidly built and looks great too, which is always a plus!

But of course the key consideration is: how good does it sound? Is this a great Bluesbreaker in the vein of the original Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal, the Analogman King Of Tone, the JHS Morning Glory, the Wampler Pantheon, and so on? That’s what we’re going to find out!

Here, I put the Spruce Goose to the test in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, blues, punk, and more. I use my Fender Telecaster for single coil tones, and my Epiphone Les Paul for humbucking sounds. There’s even a couple of loops where we really twist the knobs of the pedal to see how versatile it is.

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:17 Introduction to the Spruce Goose
01:49 Pedal controls and features
03:40 Today’s rig and plan

Pushed Clean Tones
04:51 Clean reference tones and turning on the Spruce Goose
05:57 Country ballad arpeggios
06:11 Country lead sound
06:24 Blues progression
06:46 Funk rhythm chords
06:59 Southern rock picked arpeggios
07:19 Ascending droning indie chords

Light & Medium Overdrive Sounds
07:32 Upbeat indie barre chords
07:56 Indie octave chords
08:25 Garage rock riff
08:41 Choppy barre chords
08:59 Kings Of Leon inspired riff
09:11 Fat indie rhythm chords
09:41 Indie rock octaves
10:07 Edgy indie barre chords
10:20 Droning indie chords
10:32 Classic rock riff
10:44 Hendrix inspired riff
11:00 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
11:18 Groovy classic rock riff
11:35 Quacky classic rock riff
11:44 Driving rock riff
11:59 Airbourne inspired rock riff

Heavy Overdrive Sounds
12:20 Hard rock riff
12:37 Hard rock melodic lead
12:59 ZZ Top inspired riff
13:20 80s rock riff
13:41 Alternative rock riff
14:04 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
14:32 Pop Punk melodic lead
14:48 Punk rock power chords
15:01 Less Than Jake inspired punk riff
15:24 Modern rock palm-muted power chords (Drop D tuning)
15:48 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D)
16:04 Metal chugging riff (Drop D)

16:38 Spruce Goose as boost into an overdriven amp

18:18 Fender Telecaster indie rock loop
22:08 Epiphone Les Paul classic rock loop

26:26 My thoughts
26:50 Things I like: sounds and versatility
28:30 The Bass and Treble controls
29:15 Build quality, looks, price
29:48 What I don’t like
31:05 Too much gain with humbuckers?
32:09 What other similar pedals are out there?
33:51 My conclusions on the Spruce Goose and why you should buy it

My setup was as follows: I ran the Spruce Goose straight into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head. That went from the amp’s Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my Boss RC-10R to play the loops.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:

Boss RC-10R Rhythm Loop Station at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:

Focusrite 4i4 (the new 2i4) at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#ElectroHarmonix #EHX #SpruceGoose #SpruceMoose #OverdrivePedal #TransparentOverdrive #RichWordsMusic

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