Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire

The Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire is an overdrive/distortion pedal first released in 2008 by Creation Audio Labs¹. What sets it apart from most gain pedals is how it makes its distortion: instead of pushing high gain into a clipping circuit, it uses proprietary analog wave-shaping circuitry to model the saturation and distortion waveforms produced by vacuum tubes, transformers or analog tape¹². The maker describes it as "like a tube preamp in a pedal, but without the bulky, fragile and expensive tubes and transformers"³.

The circuit runs at 48 volts, which is far above the 9V supply most pedals use, and Premier Guitar's reviewer found that those volts are put to real use, writing that "Those 48 volts are put to great use in creating a sound unlike most gain/overdrive/distortion pedals on the market"⁴. The pedal sits in the distortion family, but its tube-modeling approach puts it closer in spirit to a preamp pedal than to a conventional clipping overdrive.

What it does: tube-style saturation from a 48-volt circuit

Creation Audio Labs says the Holy Fire "introduces the world to analog wave-shaping technology to re-shape the waveform and achieve tube-like FX" without adding noise or heavy filters³. In the maker's words, the design "combines old school analog computing with state of the art analog circuitry" to model the way tubes, transformers and tape saturate¹. The Holy Fire 9 applies the same idea: "the Holy Fire 9 uses our proprietary analog wave-shaping circuitry to model all the vacuum tube crunch you could ever want" rather than relying on hard high-gain clipping alone².

The pedal responds to playing dynamics and instrument volume. Creation Audio Labs says you can "play with a softer attack and velocity for a cleaner sound, or dig in to get as much grit as you want"³. The maker also credits the design with an ultra-wide bandwidth, tube-like response without changing your core tone, and an extremely low noise floor⁷.

Both versions share a set of voicing features:

• Distortion mode uses hard edge clipping circuitry⁷⁸
• Hi-cut filter to shape the edges of the waveform for vintage speaker simulation³⁸
• Clean boost, on the Holy Fire 9, alongside overdrive and distortion²

On the Holy Fire 9, the "D" control is the distortion knob, and turning it up "begins to introduce hard clipping and compression"⁶.

Holy Fire Classic vs Holy Fire 9

The original Holy Fire Classic needs its 48 volts, so Creation Audio Labs includes a 48VDC universal power supply that accepts 90 to 260VAC mains input³⁷. That rules out running it from a standard 9V pedalboard supply. The Holy Fire 9 solves that: it carries a power circuit that steps up a standard 9VDC pedal power supply to the voltage the wave-shaping circuitry requires, a design Creation Audio Labs announced in 2014 alongside the Grizzly Bass⁹. The company's history page says this "power boosting circuit opened the door for a 9V version of the HOLY FIRE"¹.

Creation Audio Labs describes the Holy Fire 9's sound as "Transparent GAIN, dynamic smooth touch sensitive OVERDRIVE, thick rich DISTORTION"², and sums up the design as having "the heart of the Holy Fire Classic and the power of a Grizzly"⁶.

Build and what reviewers said

The Holy Fire comes in a heavy, brushed stainless steel box with lettering punched through the metal rather than painted or stenciled on, as Premier Guitar's reviewer noted⁴. The reviewer's verdict on the sound was positive on the point that matters most to many players: the pedal "always makes the sound bigger," and "there was never a loss of bass response with an increase of gain, overdrive or distortion"⁴. That low-end retention at high gain is a common weakness in conventional overdrive pedals, which often thin out as clipping increases.

Players

Lee Roy Parnell is quoted on Creation Audio Labs' artist page on his use of the pedal in the studio⁵:

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