Nice inexpensive stomp boxes

[Steelpriest]

Lo and behold! I was asked to speak out a recommendation concerning an overdrive or distortion pedal. Well, our local dealer who is actually a nice guy let me borrow a full series of Digitech stompboxes, that are currently available for a special price. The series consists of 5 pedals. Grunge (Overdrive/Distortion), Bad Monkey (Overdrive), Screamin´Blues (Overdrive), Death Metal (Distortion) and the last one is the Hot Head (Distortion). I took them to our rehearsal room and spent some hours with them. Every device has it´s own character and all sound pretty well in a way. I was amazed. When I was about to pack them together and made up my mind which one to recommend, I thought I might take a look at the manuals and find out why they got two output jacks. D'oh! The second output is a frequency corrected cabinet simulating output. Oha! So I had to unpack them again and tried them over our mixing console straight to the P.A. ;D Guess what? Really nice! Now I was drooling myself at the one I was going to recommend. Lol... What could be better when being invited to a jam jession? A little distortion box you can easily plug into the P.A. and that´s it. Also for quick recording of demos this little helper seems to be the right companion. Just plug it into your multitracker, add some reverb and "voilá!". On the Digitech website there are sound samples of each one of those distortion and overdrive pedals. The really do sound like the boxes in reality, or at least give you a realistic clue. Allow some time to load if you check them out.

www.digitech.com/products/Grunge.htm
www.digitech.com/products/HotHead.htm
www.digitech.com/products/DeathMetal.htm
www.digitech.com/products/BadMonkey.htm
www.digitech.com/products/ScreaminBlues.htm



The devices are made of solid metal, the pots move very smooth and make a trusty impression, the sound is good or almost amazing. I rate these stomp boxes 10 points out of 10. By the way, the "Grunge" and "Death Metal were not my cup of tea, I liked the "Bad Monkey" and "Screamin´Blues" for rock or blues, my favorite one is the "Hot Head" for hardrock and classic metal.

[sandman]

I like digitech equipment. I have and rp100 thats pretty flexible. don't think it would be that good for gigging. but great for playing with different sounds. I got it originally so i could playon the road and not need an amp. just the rp100 and some headphones.
they make good sturdy stuff

[Steelpriest]

;D Ahem! Hehe, I bought the "Hot Head"

[ZacAttack]

sandman said:

I like digitech equipment. I have and rp100 thats pretty flexible. don't think it would be that good for gigging. but great for playing with different sounds. I got it originally so i could playon the road and not need an amp. just the rp100 and some headphones.
they make good sturdy stuff

I have no experience with thr rp100. But I do have the RP200A. For me it is great for giging with my own band and ok for just the get up and jam sessions. Here is why. With my own band we would have plenty of practise time to get what sound we wanted for each song. Therefore we could program our RPs in an order that would suit our play list. That made it very flexible for our needs. When I would bring it on jam sessions I found myself using it less because I would use only a few settings that would fit as needed for the TYPE of song being played. I found that my Fender Cyber Twin could handle most of that kind of thing without any help from the RP. But one must not forget that the Cyber Twin is a amazing amp full of almost as many prestes as the RPs. The only thing the Cyber does not do as well as the RP in my opinion is heavy distortion and overdrive. But for blues and rock it can't be out done by any RP or digitech product I have seen to date.

p.s. Hey Steel I also tried all of those stomp boxes and liked some alot more than others. Digitech has great stuff. My pick out of those listed above was a tie between the Hot Head and the Grunge. Also for as much as I paid for my RP200A I tried out THE WEAPON. A great box to be sure, but for my money the RP was more of what I was looking for. And for that matter I could get the Hot Head and the Grunge for what The Weapon cost.

Just my 2 cents
Zac

[noeljob]

i too have the rp200. i have a fender twin reverb. the amp itself has the cleanest tube sound i have had or tried to date. although i like digitech equipment meself. the rp for my use is some amp modeling, and gain, reverb. i like to use the volume control on the rp to get that amp turned up sound, like say for example the rectifier modeler. i turn the gain down to about 3 to5 out of 99, and the volume knob on the box up, to about 55 out of 99, and the twin to 4. that gives me the sound of an amp that goes to eleven, because i cant turn the amp up that loud or it will kill every thing else, ie. drums, bass, vocal at practice. on stage its the same thing. i cant get the fender twin amp above 4. ill kill everyone in the hall that i am playing. it also kills the sound of the band because we mic our amps. it will sound like shyte if iturn it up any louder being mic'd. i also like the reverb the rp puts out. the room reverb is my fave. i dont use much of it, just enough to accent my sound. i did a lot of research and testing at shops to drop $150 us on a multi effects unit that has everything i am looking for. my last pedal i had was a boss ds1. it wasnt very good for the fender. before that i had a randall 150 watt head w/ celestions 4/12's. it had a great overdrive sound but the hi gain channel was not to my liking, instead of it i used the ds1 for a little kick to it. that pedal for me was great for my randall solid state. which i might add is one of the finest solid states ive heard.

[jhorsty]

I have a RP50 to use with headphones, even the lowest model in the Digitech line up is a really good product.They seem to build the best product out there in all categories for the money.

[elroy121]

i have a grunge pedal and an ibanez ts7 ,, the grunge pedal can be a bit over the top ,,, its makin a lot of noise when you're not playin , like the hardest moments of nirvana or that one smashing pumpkins song where he goes off , not the whole song , just the angry part , but it's a well built pedal and does what it does well ,,, i like the tubescreamer better ,, there is a reason these are popular ,, even the cheap ones ,, the ts7 has a switch for normal or hot , more overdrive than distortion ,, with a tube amp and a good pickup it works ,,