David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

For whatever reason I thought to pop open my Holy Grail today and look inside. I was pleased to see that it’s a 3dpt switch and that it looks nice inside. I was a little shocked for whatever reason at the number of surface mount parts. I’m not modding that pedal much!

What I did see that I felt was somewhat shocking however, was the PCB, which had, “Listen to Cookie Galore” written right in the middle of it.

I googled “Listen to Cookie Galore” and I couldn’t find that anyone else had noticed this on the PCB.

All i could find was Cookie Galore’s mp3 page.

I did a bit more searching to find a link between EH and cookie galore. I found this, on EH’s site, which is Cookie Galore’s soundclips using a Holier Grail.

Still, it’s odd that EH put this in one of their pedals.
I wonder what’s going to be in my Russian Green Big Muff when I open it in a few minutes…

UPDATE: John at EH got back in touch with me:

Hi Dave,

Thanks for noticing the Cookie Galore easter egg in
the Holy Grail. I work at EH and I’m in Cookie Galore
so that’s how the connection happened.

I designed all of the Grails including the new one:
the Holy Grail Plus which will start shipping
tomorrow.

What do you think of your Holy Grail? Did you have a
chance to listen to any of the Cookie Galore songs?

Thanks,
John

We continued on and had a conversation about his band, surface mount soldering/design (what most of the Holy Grail is), AES 2007, and tiny gain drop that can be induced when the pedal is activated.

I have an early model soniccord amp. I thought it was Serial #1, but it turns out that I was misreading a 4, since 0004 is written on the inside. So be it.

I took it apart today a bit to see what’s inside. I found a mystery knob under the front panel (some type of filter or other knob). I’ll post some more photos when it’s all back together. I nearly pulled out my back lifting the thing. I always figured it was the chasis or speaker that made it heavy, but nope- it’s the HUGE power transformers inside. Hammond ones. Not the best, not the worst, but they are huge.

It’s a weird sounding little amp. It works for me for now. I’d like to get an Orange Tiny Terror at some point, but this again… works for now.