Electro-Harmonix EHX Tortion

High-end Two-channel JFET Overdrive

By Phil O'Keefe

Electro-Harmonix has been on a roll as of late when it comes to the outstanding dirt boxes they've been releasing. Some, such as the Soul Food and East River Drive have been based on other well-known pedals, and some, such as the Hot Tubes, are reissues of their own coveted vintage designs. This time, we're going to take a look at something a bit different - the new EHX Tortion - a JFET overdrive / preamp that is all new, and the flagship of the Electro-Harmonix overdrive line.

What You Need To Know

• The EHX Tortion is a dual channel JFET based overdrive / preamp pedal with two modes of operation - Normal and Boost. You can easily switch between the two channels, or bypass them entirely. When the pedal is engaged and then bypassed, re-engaging the pedal brings you back to whichever channel was previously active.

• Two footswitches are provided - one for engaging or bypassing the pedal, and one for channel selection. The EHX Tortion uses a well-behaved buffered bypass, with a red LED illuminating to indicate when the pedal is active.

• Normal mode uses three JFET gain stages, and is optimized for low to medium gain overdrive tones. The Normal channel's individual Volume and Gain knobs, which are located in the top row of controls, allow you to dial up the amount of grit you want for the Normal channel. There is sufficient volume on tap for the Normal mode to serve as a clean boost if you want to dial it up that way, and enough grit for low to medium overdrive tones. Some very nice glassy clean tones are also possible with this mode with low settings on the Gain knob and higher Volume knob settings.

• Boost mode adds a fourth gain stage for more modern tones and considerably heavier amounts of drive and grit. When you click on the Boost footswitch, a blue LED illuminates to indicate you're in Boost mode. There are secondary Gain and Volume knobs located below the main / top row of controls that are dedicated to the Boost mode. The top row Volume and Gain controls are bypassed when in Boost mode, and the Boost mode Volume and Gain knobs are likewise bypassed when the pedal is in Normal mode.

• In addition to the two sets of Volume and Gain controls, the EHX Tortion includes a four position Pre-Gain rotary switch. This is a really cool feature, and it gives you even more control over the gain range, as well as the low end response. There are two lower-gain settings on the Pre-Gain knob, and two higher gain ones, with tight (T) and Full (F) settings for both. In the two low gain settings, the pedal is designed to provide vintage plexi type tones, while the high gain settings are crunchier and more modern sounding. The Full and Tight settings offer different bass response options, with Full having a bigger, fuller, and bassier tone and Tight giving the lows a much more controlled and tighter sound and feel.

• The EHX Tortion has a very extensive and effective tone stack for an overdrive pedal, consisting of individual Treble, Mid and Bass controls. These controls are active in both Normal and Boost modes, and offer much greater tonal adjustment capability than most dirt pedals.

• The EHX Tortion can be powered by a 9V battery or 9V DC adapter. The battery clip can be accessed by removing the bottom of the pedal. A power adapter is included with the pedal. It uses the industry standard 2.1mm center-negative plug. The power jack is located at the top of the pedal. The EHX Tortion draws 27mA at 9V DC. I had no issues using it with a battery, the provided power supply, or a 1 Spot power adapter with four other pedals on the same daisy chain.

• The 1/4" input and output jacks are side mounted. Input impedance is 1M Ohm, and output impedance varies depending on the position of the Volume knob, with a range of 250 Ohm to 25k Ohm.

• In addition to the input and output jacks, there are two other jacks on the EHX Tortion. On the right side of the pedal, located next to the input jack, you'll find a 1/4" Boost Sw(itch) jack for connecting a optional remote footswitch for kicking the Boost mode on and off. This should be a normally open, momentary-type switch such as the Boss FS-5U. Since the jack is wired in parallel with the onboard switch, when a remote switch is connected, you can still use the built-in Boost switch too if you want.

• The last jack is on the left side of the pedal next to the output jack. This one is a line level DI Output jack on a balanced XLR connector. This low impedance (600 Ohm) output is equipped with a very nice sounding all-analog amp/speaker emulator that is designed to emulate the sound of a 4x12 cabinet. The output level is controlled by whichever Volume knob is currently active. A cool bonus is that this jack remains active even when the pedal is bypassed - it routes your bypass signal through the simulator, which can be useful in some circumstances. 

Limitations

• There were a couple of times when I wished for just a bit more maximum gain from the Normal channel. While it's intended for low to medium gain tones, and does an excellent job of them, I ran into a couple of situations when I would have liked to have had the ability to dial up something a little heavier - especially when using a guitar equipped with lower-output single coil pickups. When using it with a 2014 Les Paul Standard with BurstBucker Pro humbuckers, this was not an issue. Regardless of that, I felt the sound of the pedal worked equally well with both humbuckers and single coil pickups.

Conclusions

The Normal mode on this pedal is very nice, with cool low to medium gain overdrive tones on tap. The Boost mode is fantastic - a real sonic treat that holds up against any overdrive I've ever used. It covers a wide range of distortion amounts and tones, and it sounds terrific doing all of them. Regardless of which mode / channel you're using, it's really hard to get a bad sound out of this pedal. The amount of EQ adjustment available from the three-band EQ section is also exemplary for a overdrive pedal - in fact, it's more analogous to what you'd expect to find on an amplifier, and that, along with the pre-gain control and the individual gain and volume controls for each channel are big reasons why I feel EHX is more than justified in referring to the EHX Tortion as an "overdrive / preamp." Add in the bonus features like the included power adapter, the balanced XLR recording / direct output, and remote switching capability and you have a well-equipped, top of the line overdrive / preamp pedal with a lot going for it. Electro-Harmonix says it's their flagship, and in my opinion it is well deserving of the honor  - the EHX Tortion rules!

Resources

Musician's Friend Electro-Harmonix EHX-tortion online catalog page ($238.56 MSRP, $178.95 "street")

Electro-Harmonix EHX-Tortion product web page

Phil O'Keefe is a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer / producer and the Senior Editor of Harmony Central. He has engineered, produced and performed on countless recording sessions in a diverse range of styles, with artists such as Alien Ant Farm, Jules Day, Voodoo Glow Skulls, John McGill, Michael Knott and Alexa's Wish. He is a former featured monthly columnist for EQ magazine, and his articles and product reviews have also appeared in Keyboard, Electronic Musician and Guitar Player magazines.