The Hotone Soul Press II - Wah, Volume, and Expression Made Easy!

This is a full review of the Hotone Soul Press II (2) Pedal. This is a mid-sized wah, volume, and express pedal designed for guitarists.

The Hotone Soul Press 2 can be used as a dedicated wah pedal and sounds very familiar to the legendary Dunlop Wah. The Soul Press II can also be used as a dedicated volume pedal that allows you to sweep and swell the volume with ease. Thirdly, the Soulpress can be used with a multi-effects pedal or any rack unit amplifier simulation that requires an expression pedal. The build quality on the Hotone Soul Press II is fantastic and a massive thank you to Hotone for sending this out for this review and for sponsoring this video.

0:00 - About & Disclaimer (Sponsored)
0:22 - Jam Track
2:31 - Hotone Soul Press II Overview
4:47 - Volume Mode
6:52 - Wah Pedal Mode (classic mode)
7:49 - Wah Pedal (warm mode)
8:36 - Clean Wah Pedal “Q Frequency”
10:43 - Always-on Mode (Wah & Volume)
11:32 - My Hotone Soulpress II Review

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#guitar #intheblues #hotone @HotoneAudio

[reneotten]

Great review. I already have 6 wah pedals so I need this one too.

[wolfbear]

I always wonder why the market has very few wah/vol pedal. I mean this kind of thing is needed. Glad to see companies like Hotone are putting out some effort. Sounds great as well.

[jfinester]

I’ve used a volume pedal since the mid ‘70s, wah for longer than that. To save space on the floor, I prefer to have both functions in one pedal switchable by foot. I used Morley volume/wah pedals for a while, but they were big and clunky, and they used little automotive bulbs for power, that were hard to get and burned out fairly often. They also point down in toe position, and in the days when I could stand up to play for 4-5 hours a night, that worked OK. These days I’m in a wheelchair, and that angled pedal isn’t comfortable for me sitting down! So for the last 20 years or so I’ve used Dunlop volume pedals—they work well, but they don’t do wah, and I don’t want to use a second pedal, so I’ve gone without wah for years, and I miss it! This Hotone pedal looks pretty cool—I may just have to get one!

[SantiLawson]

I've been lookin' for this. And I've been hummin in it my head or when no ones around. Thank you for the sound test, sound test is the most important. Thanks.

[claytronico]

Great review. Clarification, Q is for band width and height of the filter spike, not freq. Higher Q is narrower peak band with higher peak, lower Q is flatter up to cut off, then gentle roll off without as much spike.

[calbrockocat]

Definitely looks built for the road and the sounds you can access add a lot of options to your repertoire. Those volume sweeps really gives Shane's playing even more expression. Easy sell when you hear it.

[intheblues]

The Hotone Soul Press II is a Wah, Expression, and Volume pedal in one. This thing is built like a tank! It's a very nice upgrade over the original Soul Press and the larger pedal size feels great under the foot. Thanks for watching! Timestamps and links below.
0:00 - About & Disclaimer (Sponsored)
0:22 - Jam Track
2:31 - Hotone Soul Press II Overview
4:47 - Volume Mode
6:52 - Wah Pedal Mode (classic mode)
7:49 - Wah Pedal (warm mode)
8:36 - Clean Wah Pedal “Q Frequency”
10:43 - Always-on Mode (Wah & Volume)
11:32 - My Hotone Soulpress II Review

[Stinger]

Old review but caught my. While watching and agreeing on his favorite settings I went back to my studio and pealed mine off my pedalboard to check and you setting "Q" at 2 o'clock. 👍

[AintS]

I like the warm setting... Sounds perfect for fuzz that usually goes too brittle on the top and where guitar resides in the mix.
I usually have to trim off the top so I like that.

[djkolcun]

I have/use this pedal and also can’t say enough about it. Very useable, versatile multipurpose compact wah pedal 🤘🏻

[teacher]

Rocks and rolls of voices, and blues music feels, two kind of sounds pedals ....great

[wfm]

Always impressed with your knowledge another great review, thanks so much.

[fredmuloin]

I have the first version and i love it. But now i need the new one. 🤷‍♂️
Hello from Quebec ✌️

[DennisJPolson]

A very interesting pedal. That classic sound is SO 1970’s! Great playing as always, Shane.

[jcdable]

Great pedal but I wonder what the long term reliability will be like. I wish Shane would revisit some of the pedals to see how they held up long term. Lot of these chinese made pedals stop working after couple of months. PS. Shane, thanks for wearing shoes instead of being bare footed demoing the pedal :)

[teacher]

One hands of five, first hand 's of best ! Hotone wah pedals. Solids built .

[Stoffendous]

Always important for a footpedal to feel good in the hand.

[motomarmot]

Thanks man. You convinced me to pull the trigger on one.

[masonschwalm]

I’ve always loved the classic, “throaty” sounding wah tones, à la Cream’s “White Room”, or Hendrix on Voodoo Child (Slight Return). I believe they used the Vox pedals.

I’ve never owned one of them myself, but I have played on them before. I started with a basic CryBaby, and then I had a really nice Morley Volume/Wah pedal that used the old plane dashboard lights for the optical sensor/shutter system. I loved that pedal and really regret parting with it.

I’m currently using a Behringer Hell-Babe, and while it sounds good, in practice I hate it, lol. My interest was piqued when I saw that it was basically a ripoff of the Crybaby From Hell, but at a fraction of what it costs for one of them these days, and from what I hear they unfortunately weren’t made to last. Lots of ppl reporting problems with those little side knobs.

On paper, the HB seems like it should be the one for all occasions (almost all, save for one detail). I really liked that it used an optical system just like my Morley had, there was a built in boost, and you could use the knobs to customize the tone to sound like any type of wah you want it to. What could go wrong, right? It sounds perfect. Another feature which grabbed my attention was its buttonless, motion activation.

That’s where we run into the first few problems. Now, except for not being able to play stuff with the wah “cocked” (just leaving it turned on in a certain position while playing but not using the foot-pedal, it’s basically as more of a convenient signal boost and/or EQ modulation, when needed) because if you stop using it for more than like 2 seconds it automatically switches back to “bypass”, and for certain songs that I play, not being able to do that is a big prob, (yes, I’ve tried the compressor/solo boost on my Boss ME-70, and even the boost on the wah itself to emulate it but the tone just isn’t the same and the one on the wah only works when the effect is on🤦🏻 plus when you do it with the pedal cocked, it’s nice to be able to just start using the wah on the fly, and I just realized that doing that also essentially makes buttonless activation pointless anyway because it’s already always on, lol!😂).

The final problem with it, is how it’s calibrated. The “default” position of the expression pedal on basically every wah pedal I’ve ever used was toe-down. Yeah, I’ve seen used some Morleys and Zoom pedals where it felt like the sweep was reversed, but with the Hell-Babe it has a spring that keeps it in the toe-up/heel-back position for the default. I’ve always been used to pushing down forward first to turn it on (or stepping on the side switch if it’s a Morley), and THEN pulling back to start the first sweep. Don’t get me wrong, it definitely saves time if your playing live and need to break right into a wah part and don’t want to tap dance to get to it, but it just feels like “backwards” and unintuitive to me . I’m also not saying that it’s necessarily a bad pedal either, rather that it just isn’t the best solution that’s suited for my needs/style of playing. Someone who doesn’t do all that stuff and has a more straightforward approach would probably be able to use it as their main “go-to” pedal, but as you can probably guess, seeing as how I’m in the comments section of a wah pedal review video, I’ve decided that it’s time to find something new that can fill that role. The main purpose of a second expression pedal is because even though the ME-70 has the multi-function pedal that includes wah, the problem is that if I want to use it as a whammy/pitch pedal, or delay rate control, etc. I have to pick one and pretty much am stuck with that for the rest of the song since it’s a pain on the ass to try and bend down to change settings while trying to play at the same time, unless you’re lucky and the song has a few rests or sections with breaks/less playing. So if I want to use both a pitch shift effect and then wah later on in the same song, it makes sense to just have a separate dedicated pedal for it. The volume feature is also a nice bonus since I can always use one with the other pedal on, since the default on the Boss is volume when it’s switch is off, and hey if I ever need both on at the same time I can just roll the knob on the guitar itself anyway.

PS- one last thing I’ll mention before I end this impromptu essay about my views on wah pedal features and functionality, is that based on some things I’ve read recently about Behringer pedals as a whole and how they do bypass, caused me to stop using it for the time being because I’m fairly certain that it was partly responsible for some of the signal issues I’d been having, which are already bad enough as it is since I’m using a vintage Peavey Stereo Chorus 212, which badly needs a “tune-up”, as it were. I know there’s a lot of Behringer-haters out there, and so I dunno for sure if it was truly 100% to blame for it. I mean, it’s possible a shoddy patch cord, improper adapter or any other number of things could’ve also contributed, and to be even more fair ti them, I didn’t read super deeply into the forum discussion that mentioned the bypass issues, but at the same time though, for what it’s worth, once I went back to just the multi-effect pedal straight from the guitar into the amp with nothing else in between, the problem did go away.

If I end up buying this pedal, I’ll reply to myself and leave a review of it.

[JaiHighVibes]

Cheers Mate! Those runners are as clean as your playing!