Let's cut my guitar's balls (bearing) off! Cheap

[clr]

I've finally awoken my inner RATM fan out. (Fine, the singer just wants to cover it)

But, I do want one of those fancy whammy pedals, however, I can't find a cheap one! Most of them cost 100-300 dollars.

Know of any poor man's alternative?

[sumgai]

clr,

There is only one "Whammy Pedal", and that'd be any member of the series of units produced by Digitech, like so:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whammy_pedal

Notably, Roland and Boss have whammy capabilities in most of their high-end pedals, but IMHO, it doesn't sound nearly as good at anything by Digitech.

Fortunately, if you're willing to forego the fancy paint job, you can get virtually all of the Whammy's features (the various settings) on many, if not most, of Digitech's cheaper pedals, such as those in the RP series (that have a pedal!), or in the GNx units - they all have the Whammy feature, in one form or another. For example, you can often find a used RP-3, which implements the original Whammy Pedal perfectly, for way under $50 on eBay, or perhaps even on craigslist.

I just looked at your local craigslist server, and I can see why you're singing the blues about now - those are some mighty greedy sellers you've got in your neighborhood! In my area, nearly every Digitech pedal listed for your city would fetch only about 1/2 to 2/3 of what your "friends" are asking. And that's even considering that the American and Canadian dollars are just about par. Nonetheless, nothing comes close your price range, so let's move on to eBay........

Right now, there are a couple of RP-7s, one for pretty cheap, the other a bit too rich for my blood. I've seen these guys in operation too, and for the price, they're pretty nice to have around. Not to mention the fact that they have a 12AX7 for the amp-sims, which gives you a very usable Crunch sound.

Other than that, you have to keep in mind that the circuitry to do this job is not child's play, there's truly some solid engineering going on here, not to mention the parts count, so....... just a word to the wise, tha's all. ;D

HTH




sumgai

[ux4484]

As usual, the Gai is right on the mark.

....but to supplement, I'll cover the "new" options:

New, the LEAST you're going to pay is $100 USD for a Digitech RP90. While it is a wonderful thing and will do what you want out of the box, it has a fairly large learning curve to make it do things OTHER than what it does out of the box. The Digitech Whammy is excellent, I don't have a trem on any of my guitars, so the Digitech is my only Whammy and once mastered might be your only one too.


but.....Once you have it, you'll discover the pre-programmed "artist" selections are wanting, and tinkering to get the sounds you want can be a labor compared to having separate stomp boxes for individual effects. You can program up to 50 sound combination's into it which is more than enough for a few set lists, but you'll have to reprogram it every time you change your set list.
Lastly compared to previous Digitech products, the RP90 is now almost completely plastic, I don't know how well it would hold up to road abuse compared to older models which feel like concrete filled steel bricks by comparison.

If you move up to the RP250 for $150 USD, you get a much more sturdily made and useful device. Metal base and pedal with much sturdier feeling buttons and controls. It has a USB recording interface that's compatible with any MIDI via USB recording software (Digitech used to package recording software with some models, but has since dropped it). Best of all, via the USB you can use Digitech's Xedit program on your PC and tweak the user programmable sounds via your computer which is much easier and faster than playing with the knobs on the unit (not to mention you can try the army of sounds other users have posted in Digitech's forums).

Both units can do what you want and more, but require some time and trouble (if you consider learning how to use your equipment trouble) to make them worth the investment.

That said, If you just want Whammy and nothing else, I'll second Sumgai's suggestion of ebay and pick up and old RP-3 or 7.
Sometimes simpler is better.