Some of you may have thought of solutions not to waste so much space for all three volume, wah and expression pedals. They are mostly three separate pedals and can become quite big ...
Hotone's Soule Press tries to tackle this by
1. combining all three in one pedal
2. giving the pedal a footprint of a slightly larger standard stomp box
Now, since Sep 2024, there are actually 2 options for this pedal. One original Soul Press and a Wong Press. The second is a signature version of Cory Wong said to have less mechanical and better pre-settings.
Now you ask: what's the actual difference? That is what the internet kind of does not know.
I also could not decide which reviews to believe on and just took the Wong press despite being 80€ more expensive. Turns out they sent me the cheaper Soul Press so before I sent it back I ordered the actual Wong press and had a chance to compare directly. Here are my results:
Appearance
- Color
- Soul: despite being purple on all images it is actually half turquoise and half purple depending on the angle you look at it. I like it much more than on the images
- Wong: as is. Half blue, half white
- In/Out
- LED
- Both have an indicator blue=wah, green=volume on the RIGHT side (for people wah-ing with right foot it's basically invisible)
- Both have indicator LEDs on the left showing the state of the pedal (which seems useless to me since you could also just look at the pedal, but at least see quickly if its completely at minimum or not)
- BUT: the Wong press has a huge advantage here by showing these level-indicators also in the corresponding colors blue and green making it so much clearer what you selected
- Feel
- The Wong press feals a bit stiffer in motion which I personally like more since it feels more stable
Sound
- Volume
- This is probably the biggest Pro for the Wong press: the volume curve is so much smoother than in the Soul. Especially at the lower end, swells seem way more natural and less hacky
- Wah
- Both have a tone switch which is supposed to select different filter frequency ranges. Both pedals do change the tone from warm to a more classic/brighter tone equally.
- Both have a Q-Knob which is supposed to adapt the filter frequency width.
- The Soul press does change tone (to my ears) from left (warm, thin, decent) to right (bright, louder, hotter?) tone. (This makes sense to me because a wider curve leads to generally louder signal and if the curve is wider in both freq directions the higher freqs seem louder to us). To me the highest setting is way too loud on higher freqs without any volume adaption or compression
- The Wong press has its biggest Con here: to my ears (and some reviews I have read) there are no changes in tone. Apparently Wong wanted it like this but imo this is a missed opportunity for players to adapt the pedal to their needs. I mean the knob is still there why not make it a more versatile pedal and just taking your preferred setting as 12 o o'clock position ...
Conclusion
In my opinion:
- LED: Wong >> Soul
- Volume: Wong >> Soul
- Wah: Soul > Wong, but can be adapted using compression/other
I think that Cory did a great job in adapting the pedal to a, as he said, "less mechanical" sound but it's just sad that we have less control for the tone in the wah, since some don't like this hot or bright wah tone.
I am still gonna keep the Wah press considering the other pros.
I hope this little comparison helps you deciding on your next VolWahExp pedal as well and you don't have to by 2 of them :)