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MGR/Anonymous « DigiTech RP100 »
Published on 06/25/01 at 15:00I bought this little miracle from Musicians Friend. It cost only $99. But you have to get the power supply becouse it eats batteries like a person who's been on slim fast for a month would eat oreos after just discovering a cookie jar full of 'em in the back of the cupboard!
You might get 2-4 hours with good quality battaries. That becomes very expensive after a while. Buying 6 AA batteries every week is not something I plan on doing, so I got the power supply.I guess if you used those rechargeable batteries it would be OK.
I bought it because I've always wanted a pile of effects (there's something like 24 in this unit) to goof around with, the price is great, and I heard it had better quality sound than the competition in this price range. I compaered it to the Korg Tone Works AX1G, The Zoom 505II and buying individual effects. The Digigtech RP100 suited my situation most. I wanted something to plug straight into a power amp or mixer, record on my computer and jam at night with my head phones.
First thing I like about this is the quality of the sound. There isn't terrible back ground noise and when you use the noise gate it eliminates all back ground when your not playing. I plugged this thing in and turned up the volume on my amp and I thought it was brock becouse I didn't hear any humm, buzzing or hissing. so I turned up the amp even more thinking "oh my god, it's broke my amp!" So I hit a power chord, while still crouched on the floor dierectly in front of the 2 15" speakers, and it roared out and almost knocked my over. I was totally shocked! The sound was really good.
I love the amp sims. I love the way they work. You see this box actually doesn't have distortion effects. The distortion is created by cranking the gain knob on the amp sims the way a real tube amp would work. Not all the amp models can distort, some are just clean sounds. The ones I like best are the stack, high gain, tweed, and the black face. I like to play metal(metallica, pantera, etc) and this thing is awsome for that. But I also like to play a little blues now and then and the Tweed amp is perfect, it it's clean when you pick soft but gets angry and distorted when you pick the strings hard. The black face amp is great for playing clean stuff, it has a awsome bass and sweet clear highs.
The other thing I like about this is the usability. It's easy to use and has knobs on it. It is easy to fine tune the settings. A lot of the settings are controlable from 0 to 99. This allows you to get the exact amount of effect, volume or whatever. All the competition use anoying little buttons and most of the other units are not as fine tunable. The 'matrix' that you use to program it looks like some thing from star treck. Phrases like "Crank it up scotty" come to mind.It even has an effect called a Phaser! I'm not sure if you can kill alians with it though.
I like the built in drum machine. It is very very usefull for practice and is a whole lot more exciting than the boring clicking of a metranome. This is essential for practicing, it has helped my playing out a lot. There's all kinds of different styles and you can change the tempo. TIP:to find out the drum track styles (blues, techno, metal etc.) you have to go to www.digitech.com becouse they didn't print them in the manual for some reason.
I love the flexability of the delay effects. You get analog, digital, and ping pong. and they are all totally controlable.
The selection and quality of the reverbs is shocking. Hall, spring, Plate, room, church...whatever you want it's got it. and they are also totally controlable.This is one of the best features on the peddle without a doubt.
Other stuff like chromatic tuner and pickup simulators are cool as well.
The major thing that I like about this is the price. $90 for a Boss Metal Zone + $30 for a cheap used noise gate + $25 for two power supplies + $50 for a decent reverb=$195...obviously the RP100 is a better deal. It's a miracle you can get all this good quality sound out of a little dinky box that only costs $118.99 ($99+19.99 power supply). Wow...technology is amazing, but i'm still waiting for those flying cars si-fi movies have been promising us for years! Or at least a flying motercycle
Flexibility of aplication. You can plug it into an amp, direct into a mixer, use as a head phone amp, and you can do direct recording with it. I use it plugged right into a power amp and have great results. I have also recorded stuff on my computer using the line-in jack on my sound card and had better than expected results. Though it's no line6 POD, but it won't eat your bank account up.
It's Stereo. This is good for recording, if you have two amps, or one stereo amp. It's stereo through the headphones too. This is great fo the flanger and the ping pong delays.
Overall I love this thing, it is good for all styles and has a wide selection of usable effects. Some other boxes have more effects but I would never use a lot of them, or they just sound bad. The tone quality of the Rp100 seems to impress a lot of people, including me. I never believed for this much money you could get something like this. Wow
Major thing I don't like? The Wha Wha. It sounds like a wha wha..sort of. but it just has a bad sound quality. It has some weird back ground noise hissing and it's not very proffessional sounding. It sounds like a wha wha but just a really bad quality one. The tone of it sucks. The pitch shifter is not all that grand but at least it doesn't mangle up the tone of your guitar and add swirly hissing sounds. I can't believe that wha sound comes from the same boxas the other effects! The other effects and amp models are clean and profesional sounding. The wha is definatly the runt of the RP100's family of effects.
The pitch shifter is disapointing. mainly becouse you can't turn off the original signal and just hear the down tuned signal. It plays the original guitar signal and mixes it with the shifted one and it sounds very electronic. It would be way more usable if you could turn of the original signal.
The rotary speaker effect wasn't as wild as I thought it would be.
The volume on the head phones is too low. On some of the clean setting you can hear your pick hiting the strings.You can solve this by turning up the amp level and/or the eq settings while your editing the patch.Lets say your eq setting are bass-4 mid-0 treble-5. Turn them all up about 5, so your new sdetting would be bass-9 mid-5 treble-10. But that is a pain in the butt and there should be higher volume to start with.
The boutique and hot rod amp models aren't all that good. The fuzz is a little dissapointing too. The acoustic simulator is no good at all.
A Jam along jack would be cool, so you can play with your favorite bands or practice tapes. You could jam with Britney spears or Nsync, just like all guitar players dream of doing!!!!
Uses batteries up to quickly. I would like to use batteries for jamming in the back yard or in the park. You can use batteries but I just wish it didn't use them up so fast. It's a shame becouse this thing is so portable.
One thing I don't like is that digitech have released a RP200! it is basically a RP100 with a built in Expression pedal and it comes with a power supply. For $149 it's clearly a better value than the Rp100. It also has something like 2 new effects in it and the expression pedal can be used to control all the effects and the gain on the amp models. On the RP100 if you plug a volume pedal in you can only use it as a volume pedal, wha pedal, and Wammy pedal. So I would check out the RP200 if I was you. And you get a power supply included! Check it out, only $149 from musicians friend and some other dealers.
I would like to mix effects like the flanger and the phaser but can't. a bunch of effects are in one section and you can only choose one at a time. The compresion, delay, reverb, wha wha, pick up simulator are all in different sections . But the chorus, flanger, phaser, tremelo, panner, vibrato, rotary, auto ya, envlope filter, detune, pitch shifter and whammy are all in the same section and you can only choose on at a time. So you can run the choruss through the delay and then through a reverb but you couldn't run the chorus through the wammy. A lot of the lower processors have similar setups. with individual boxes you can put a chorus, flanger and pitch shifter one after the otherif you wanted to, but the lower price processors don't allow this. Oh well you can't have everything, especially not for $99!
The construction is good. It's made out of aluminum and seems to be tough. The foot pedals are plastic but they seem to be pretty darn tough and can take a stomping. The knobs are the thing I would worry about. They seem like the're flimsy and could break of if stepped on.
I don't advocate stomping the heck out of any equipment, but if you play drunk on stage, and you abuse your equipment you might want to look for something else. For onstage use the RP2000 and similar processors are better. it's tougher and is much more suited for stage life. Personally I would use this on stage, but I don't play in a band so I'm speaking from inexperience. I try to look after my equipment, but I can imagine a lead singer stomping around like a retarded elephant and smashing the knobs off this thing! And if the drummer puked on it you could have some problems with shorting out. If that happened I would put the singers head through the drummers drums one by one and you don't even want to know where I would put the microphone!!
Overall This thing is the best bang for your buck. Highlights of the RP100 are the good selection of amp models, great reverbs, wide selection of delays, and good over all sound quality. There is vertually no back ground with the noise gate. The wha sucks and a few of the amp models are disapointing. Being able to plug this direct into a tape recorder, or your computer to record with is very usefull.
I don't think it's for everyone, if you are just looking for a few effects like reverb, chorus then I don't know if this is for you. Individual pedals can be aranged in diferent sequences and if your a seasoned player this may be desireable. This is mostly suitable for begginers to intermediate. Some Pro's may like this but others hate this and all digital stuff. Some people swear that you have to use only vintage Tube Screamers and others say the new ones sound just as good, and others don't like Tube Screamers at all! It's all opinion and your tone is a very personal thing. I would urge everyone to at least try it out. Just for the noise gate, the delays and the reverbs I think this thing will save you money.
I ordered it online without even hearing it.I didn't have a car at the time and couldn't get a lift. I could return it in 45 days if I didn't like it so I took the chance. But I would test it out first if I was you.
The bottom line with any of these processors is the sound and I think this has a good range of sounds to please most people.
I would advise you to look in a catalog, your local music or online and find out what's available in your pice range. Then go to places like Music Gear Review ( that's the website your looking at now!), and check out what people are saying about all the different equipment in your price range. Go to the manufacturers website and try to fid manuals. Read them to get familiar with the units, then take a trip to the music store and try out the ones you like. If you can't find the manuals and you don't know how to use something, ask the salesman to help you. Try to use similar guitars and amps to your own. If you can't get to the store (i don't have a car right now and couldn't arange a lift.) I would recomend using something like the musiciansfriend catalog to order from. They allow you to return stuff within 45 days and deliver quickly. From the day I mailed of my order to the day I recieved it was less than 2 weeks.
I ordered the RP100 without hearing becouse at www.digitech.com they have a sound sample thing. Any company that stands by their products like that are usally good quality. You can hear what the presets sound like and I thought it sounded good. I think it sound better in real life than it did on those recordings but they are a good represntation of the RP100(and RP200). But everyone has different amps, guitars and playing styles so be prapered to return it. It is programable so you can get many more sounds out of it than the presets in the recordings.
Overall goood quality at good price, try it out. I would give it 5 out of 5 but they have the RP200 out now so I only give it 4. I think most people will be happier with the RP200. All the effects, amp models etc. sound the same just a few extras and built in expresion pedal. Take your time to find the right processor for you, your style is yours and you are the one who's spending the money. Good luck in your effect hunting!
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com
You might get 2-4 hours with good quality battaries. That becomes very expensive after a while. Buying 6 AA batteries every week is not something I plan on doing, so I got the power supply.I guess if you used those rechargeable batteries it would be OK.
I bought it because I've always wanted a pile of effects (there's something like 24 in this unit) to goof around with, the price is great, and I heard it had better quality sound than the competition in this price range. I compaered it to the Korg Tone Works AX1G, The Zoom 505II and buying individual effects. The Digigtech RP100 suited my situation most. I wanted something to plug straight into a power amp or mixer, record on my computer and jam at night with my head phones.
First thing I like about this is the quality of the sound. There isn't terrible back ground noise and when you use the noise gate it eliminates all back ground when your not playing. I plugged this thing in and turned up the volume on my amp and I thought it was brock becouse I didn't hear any humm, buzzing or hissing. so I turned up the amp even more thinking "oh my god, it's broke my amp!" So I hit a power chord, while still crouched on the floor dierectly in front of the 2 15" speakers, and it roared out and almost knocked my over. I was totally shocked! The sound was really good.
I love the amp sims. I love the way they work. You see this box actually doesn't have distortion effects. The distortion is created by cranking the gain knob on the amp sims the way a real tube amp would work. Not all the amp models can distort, some are just clean sounds. The ones I like best are the stack, high gain, tweed, and the black face. I like to play metal(metallica, pantera, etc) and this thing is awsome for that. But I also like to play a little blues now and then and the Tweed amp is perfect, it it's clean when you pick soft but gets angry and distorted when you pick the strings hard. The black face amp is great for playing clean stuff, it has a awsome bass and sweet clear highs.
The other thing I like about this is the usability. It's easy to use and has knobs on it. It is easy to fine tune the settings. A lot of the settings are controlable from 0 to 99. This allows you to get the exact amount of effect, volume or whatever. All the competition use anoying little buttons and most of the other units are not as fine tunable. The 'matrix' that you use to program it looks like some thing from star treck. Phrases like "Crank it up scotty" come to mind.It even has an effect called a Phaser! I'm not sure if you can kill alians with it though.
I like the built in drum machine. It is very very usefull for practice and is a whole lot more exciting than the boring clicking of a metranome. This is essential for practicing, it has helped my playing out a lot. There's all kinds of different styles and you can change the tempo. TIP:to find out the drum track styles (blues, techno, metal etc.) you have to go to www.digitech.com becouse they didn't print them in the manual for some reason.
I love the flexability of the delay effects. You get analog, digital, and ping pong. and they are all totally controlable.
The selection and quality of the reverbs is shocking. Hall, spring, Plate, room, church...whatever you want it's got it. and they are also totally controlable.This is one of the best features on the peddle without a doubt.
Other stuff like chromatic tuner and pickup simulators are cool as well.
The major thing that I like about this is the price. $90 for a Boss Metal Zone + $30 for a cheap used noise gate + $25 for two power supplies + $50 for a decent reverb=$195...obviously the RP100 is a better deal. It's a miracle you can get all this good quality sound out of a little dinky box that only costs $118.99 ($99+19.99 power supply). Wow...technology is amazing, but i'm still waiting for those flying cars si-fi movies have been promising us for years! Or at least a flying motercycle
Flexibility of aplication. You can plug it into an amp, direct into a mixer, use as a head phone amp, and you can do direct recording with it. I use it plugged right into a power amp and have great results. I have also recorded stuff on my computer using the line-in jack on my sound card and had better than expected results. Though it's no line6 POD, but it won't eat your bank account up.
It's Stereo. This is good for recording, if you have two amps, or one stereo amp. It's stereo through the headphones too. This is great fo the flanger and the ping pong delays.
Overall I love this thing, it is good for all styles and has a wide selection of usable effects. Some other boxes have more effects but I would never use a lot of them, or they just sound bad. The tone quality of the Rp100 seems to impress a lot of people, including me. I never believed for this much money you could get something like this. Wow
Major thing I don't like? The Wha Wha. It sounds like a wha wha..sort of. but it just has a bad sound quality. It has some weird back ground noise hissing and it's not very proffessional sounding. It sounds like a wha wha but just a really bad quality one. The tone of it sucks. The pitch shifter is not all that grand but at least it doesn't mangle up the tone of your guitar and add swirly hissing sounds. I can't believe that wha sound comes from the same boxas the other effects! The other effects and amp models are clean and profesional sounding. The wha is definatly the runt of the RP100's family of effects.
The pitch shifter is disapointing. mainly becouse you can't turn off the original signal and just hear the down tuned signal. It plays the original guitar signal and mixes it with the shifted one and it sounds very electronic. It would be way more usable if you could turn of the original signal.
The rotary speaker effect wasn't as wild as I thought it would be.
The volume on the head phones is too low. On some of the clean setting you can hear your pick hiting the strings.You can solve this by turning up the amp level and/or the eq settings while your editing the patch.Lets say your eq setting are bass-4 mid-0 treble-5. Turn them all up about 5, so your new sdetting would be bass-9 mid-5 treble-10. But that is a pain in the butt and there should be higher volume to start with.
The boutique and hot rod amp models aren't all that good. The fuzz is a little dissapointing too. The acoustic simulator is no good at all.
A Jam along jack would be cool, so you can play with your favorite bands or practice tapes. You could jam with Britney spears or Nsync, just like all guitar players dream of doing!!!!
Uses batteries up to quickly. I would like to use batteries for jamming in the back yard or in the park. You can use batteries but I just wish it didn't use them up so fast. It's a shame becouse this thing is so portable.
One thing I don't like is that digitech have released a RP200! it is basically a RP100 with a built in Expression pedal and it comes with a power supply. For $149 it's clearly a better value than the Rp100. It also has something like 2 new effects in it and the expression pedal can be used to control all the effects and the gain on the amp models. On the RP100 if you plug a volume pedal in you can only use it as a volume pedal, wha pedal, and Wammy pedal. So I would check out the RP200 if I was you. And you get a power supply included! Check it out, only $149 from musicians friend and some other dealers.
I would like to mix effects like the flanger and the phaser but can't. a bunch of effects are in one section and you can only choose one at a time. The compresion, delay, reverb, wha wha, pick up simulator are all in different sections . But the chorus, flanger, phaser, tremelo, panner, vibrato, rotary, auto ya, envlope filter, detune, pitch shifter and whammy are all in the same section and you can only choose on at a time. So you can run the choruss through the delay and then through a reverb but you couldn't run the chorus through the wammy. A lot of the lower processors have similar setups. with individual boxes you can put a chorus, flanger and pitch shifter one after the otherif you wanted to, but the lower price processors don't allow this. Oh well you can't have everything, especially not for $99!
The construction is good. It's made out of aluminum and seems to be tough. The foot pedals are plastic but they seem to be pretty darn tough and can take a stomping. The knobs are the thing I would worry about. They seem like the're flimsy and could break of if stepped on.
I don't advocate stomping the heck out of any equipment, but if you play drunk on stage, and you abuse your equipment you might want to look for something else. For onstage use the RP2000 and similar processors are better. it's tougher and is much more suited for stage life. Personally I would use this on stage, but I don't play in a band so I'm speaking from inexperience. I try to look after my equipment, but I can imagine a lead singer stomping around like a retarded elephant and smashing the knobs off this thing! And if the drummer puked on it you could have some problems with shorting out. If that happened I would put the singers head through the drummers drums one by one and you don't even want to know where I would put the microphone!!
Overall This thing is the best bang for your buck. Highlights of the RP100 are the good selection of amp models, great reverbs, wide selection of delays, and good over all sound quality. There is vertually no back ground with the noise gate. The wha sucks and a few of the amp models are disapointing. Being able to plug this direct into a tape recorder, or your computer to record with is very usefull.
I don't think it's for everyone, if you are just looking for a few effects like reverb, chorus then I don't know if this is for you. Individual pedals can be aranged in diferent sequences and if your a seasoned player this may be desireable. This is mostly suitable for begginers to intermediate. Some Pro's may like this but others hate this and all digital stuff. Some people swear that you have to use only vintage Tube Screamers and others say the new ones sound just as good, and others don't like Tube Screamers at all! It's all opinion and your tone is a very personal thing. I would urge everyone to at least try it out. Just for the noise gate, the delays and the reverbs I think this thing will save you money.
I ordered it online without even hearing it.I didn't have a car at the time and couldn't get a lift. I could return it in 45 days if I didn't like it so I took the chance. But I would test it out first if I was you.
The bottom line with any of these processors is the sound and I think this has a good range of sounds to please most people.
I would advise you to look in a catalog, your local music or online and find out what's available in your pice range. Then go to places like Music Gear Review ( that's the website your looking at now!), and check out what people are saying about all the different equipment in your price range. Go to the manufacturers website and try to fid manuals. Read them to get familiar with the units, then take a trip to the music store and try out the ones you like. If you can't find the manuals and you don't know how to use something, ask the salesman to help you. Try to use similar guitars and amps to your own. If you can't get to the store (i don't have a car right now and couldn't arange a lift.) I would recomend using something like the musiciansfriend catalog to order from. They allow you to return stuff within 45 days and deliver quickly. From the day I mailed of my order to the day I recieved it was less than 2 weeks.
I ordered the RP100 without hearing becouse at www.digitech.com they have a sound sample thing. Any company that stands by their products like that are usally good quality. You can hear what the presets sound like and I thought it sounded good. I think it sound better in real life than it did on those recordings but they are a good represntation of the RP100(and RP200). But everyone has different amps, guitars and playing styles so be prapered to return it. It is programable so you can get many more sounds out of it than the presets in the recordings.
Overall goood quality at good price, try it out. I would give it 5 out of 5 but they have the RP200 out now so I only give it 4. I think most people will be happier with the RP200. All the effects, amp models etc. sound the same just a few extras and built in expresion pedal. Take your time to find the right processor for you, your style is yours and you are the one who's spending the money. Good luck in your effect hunting!
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com