Holy Fire

If memory serves, I think that a lot of people here enjoyed them, and the two primary downsides were:

a) price point (which I believe has reduced since they started self-distributing, and doing direct retail)

b) the bulky adapter it required because it ran at 48V.

 

I just returned mine.

I was looking for a light OD for just a bit of grit and growl for some of the more driving songs I play, and I made the purchase based mostly on the aesthetics of the pedal but also because of the rave reviews it got around here.

It's a beautiful clean boost, no noise, and the distortion tones it gets are very saturated and, as you mentioned, close to fuzzy, definitely no low end loss. Unfortunately I was looking for a dedicated overdrive, and it's just a little too honky in that role for me. This was into an SVT CL and 410, an amp/cab combination that really emphasizes the mids to begin with, so with a more even response setup, or maybe even a decidedly mid-scooped setup, you may not have the same complaint.

The tone knob was probably the biggest let down, as with just a little more control I may have been able to tame the honk, but all it is is a shelf with a freq sweep. If it had boost/cut treble and bass knobs instead, I can almost guarantee I would have kept it.

I a/b'd it against a TS9 and it was nothing short of heart breaking to have to choose that lime green mess over a glowing steel Castlevania power-up. If I had the technical know-how I would have transplanted the TS9 guts into the HF chassis, it's that cool.

Again, it's a great pedal if you're looking for a clean boost or a saturated distortion, I would definitely put it in the woolly and warm camp, but if you're after a dirty, gritty overdrive, you'll have to look somewhere else.

 

I think these boxes are ugly and the marketing subtext is distasteful.

 

The Holy Fire is my best overdrive. It does pretty good distortion too but for overdrive I have never found better after running through 15+ different OD's.
It's expensive, the customer service of the company is pretty weak, the power supply is a bit of a paint but tone wise nothing can touch it for a natural OD tone.

It can reproduce the warm tone of a tube amp just breaking up a bit. It takes nothing away from the low end and the pedals is capable of a huge gain.

bassfuzz.com has an entire video segment that is pretty realistic to what you would experience in real life.

I use it in front of an SVT-CL and a Markbass F500. Bass wise it plays very nice with my Fender P basses.