Digitech Whammy

Revision as of 08:07, 18 December 2009

A quarry

General Information

Original Author: Staffay

Weapon: Whammy pedal

Make: Digitech

Model: Whammy (v.IV with MIDI)

Price: 188€ (Thomann)

Introduction

The history of the Whammy goes back to 1991 when Digitech first made this product. It's fairly easy to understand that it is supposed to be a hardware-whammy to produce sounds similar to those made by a tremolo-arm. Originally the developers must had an idea to make this device directed to players with guitars without a trem. But the outcome is far beyond this, and they must really had a blast when they were constructing this piece of gear. It's really a one-of-a kind effect and can produce some really weird sounds as well as been used in a more traditional way. Amongst known players who uses this device are Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Joe Perry, John Scofield, Dimebag, Tom Morello and of course Muris Varajic.

Product description

This unit comes with a color like a Ferrari - candy-red. It has a steel-cabinet with a 9v AC-adapter and has two utputs, one dry and one "combined". It also can be controlled via MIDI and has just three controls to deal with. On/Off, preset setting and the rocker itself.

Sound

This unit basically has three modes. Whammy, Harmony and Detune. What differs this edition from the original is really that some presets like Divebomb, Drop-tune has been added as well as MIDI-control.

The Whammy presets:

These presets bends the incoming note in given intervals as following:

2 oct. up

1 oct. up

1 oct. down

2 Oct down

Dive Bomb

Drop tune

The first four presets is pretty much straight forward and does what it says. It can be used for moving a phrase up/down in octaves or to slide in/out of notes like a horn player might do. Also it can really simulate a tremolo-arm beeing pressed in either direction - but unfortunately not up/down at the same time. (eg. I would have liked to have a preset where "zero" is in the middle of the rocker and then slide in/out) Anyway, the pedal doesn't change the guitar's tone and these presets can be used in a lot of way's for the creative player.

The Divebomb preset lowers the note exactly three octaves down, and can be used to simulate Floyd Rose like effects. The Droptune setting is really made for all metal-guy's - it lowers the pitch two semitones which is great when You want to play a heavy riff without retuning the guitar.

The Harmony presets:

Feel

Overall Impression

Alternative Weapon

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