DigiTech 2112 Studio Guitar System

I used to use a Eleven Rack and I was happy with it and had to learn to live with the digital sound .
One day, after I got my tax return, I decided to treat my self to some new gear. I went into a small guitar shop and seen the Digitech 2112 SGS and decided to try it out.
This old rack unit sounded much better than my Eleven Rack, those two 12ax7 tubes gave me some mind blowing tone and soon my Elleven Rack was sidelined for good.
And with the Control One MIDI board controller, it just added more flexibility.

I called Digitech and the nice lady that worked there printed out the owners manual and it helped me zero in on the features of this devine device.
I have a Digitech RP-12 and RP-1 on my effects pedalboard. Even the presets on those floor units sounded great in my 2112 unit !!!!

I went to my RP-12's harmonizer program and made a MIDI CC change that when I would push the root note go to the middle, the 3rd up go to the left and on the rightside ( from the 2112 ) a 5th down.
All those notes were clean and prestine, just as good as my Eventide 3000.

I gain stacked my distortions from my RP-12 and RP-1 so well with the 2112 SGS's overdrive, that I recreated my Carvin X-100 B, V3, Legacy 1,2,3, my VHT Pitbull, my Peavey JSX, Triple XXX with the tube distortion path and with the analog distortion path, I recreated my Randall Warhead, RG 80, RG 100, Carvin SX 300 and other amps.
You can combine both the tube distortion and analog distortion or use them separately. You can recreate any amp ever made.

The modulation; so many variations of chorus, flanging, the phasers, detune are unbelievable and flexable.

I can recreate Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock or the Filmore East w/ the Band Of Gypsys, Dime Bag Darrell's tone, EVH's Brown Sound, David Gilmore's vast tones, SRV's Blues tone, Alex Lifeson's sound, Brian May's sounds , Metallica's sounds or the Edge's sounds and my own .

Someone complained that the Wah Wah was lame, they just didn't have patients to set it up right.
With the detune, I got a great acoustic guitar 12 string with an acoustic simulator sound and 6 string acoustic sounds with a Behringer AM100 Acoustic Modeler going thru a Decibel Eleven Loop Expander.
I can now do Can't Kill Rock n Roll, Fade to Black, Revelation/ Mother Earth, Ramble on, Diary Of A Madman or Dead or Alive.

You can place any of the effects any where in the program ...in any order .
At the end, I always add a 6 band Parametric Eq to make this device to be an equal to any new modeler out there. Another great feature, you can add two more expression pedals, one from back of the 2112 or add another on the Control One pedalboard and that makes three expression pedals .

And with the Seamless feature, I can have no pauses or glitches when I change programs.
I can set it to overlap 2 to 3 seconds into the other program and it will fade away like a studio recording edit / punch in .
Not bad for a device made in 1997 .
Front panel ;
● One Input, Input knob, Output knob, Clipping light indicator .
● Gain knob to control the drive of the tube or analog / distortion, can go from Fender clean to Mega Rectified.
And if the tubes are too intense or too weak , for your tube tastes, swap then out and you'll notice the difference.
● Bass, Mid, Treble and Mix knobs.
● Large Display screen.
● Program knob / Effect Wheel knob .
● Program buttons.
● Effects Library buttons.
● Solo button, give you the ability to get 6 dB boost for soloing.
Back panel;
● AC Line Input, MIDI IN, OUT / THRU Jack's.
● Foot Controller Input.
● Expression Pedal Input
● High / Low level effects loop switch.
● Send / Return Jack's for the Effects Loop .
● Balanced Left and Right Outputs .
● Fuse receptacle.
Over 40 different effect Algorithms that can be organized in your preferred order .
With the gain stacking from my RP-12 and RP-1 going into the 2112, I can set the gain very low on the 2112.
I can recreate any Distortion, Overdrive or Fuzz pedal or recreate any amp ever made .
And if you stack your Modulation, Delays or Reverbs, you can add ambience that even Strymon owners could only dream about .

This unit uses two 12AX7 tubes to produce some amazing tube overdrive / distortion tones. The cleans sound brilliant too.

Does Overdrives, Distortions, EQ, Delay, Reverb, and Stereo (panning) effects as well as a bunch of other stuff like 'Quad Delay', has left/ right amp out mono jacks - and when used between two amps in stereo , does some pretty amazing stuff, like a rotary simulations / phasers and panning delays. Very cool.

Upgraded mine to the 2120 with a really simple EPROM chip swap. Swapped out the stock tubes for Groove Tubes, and went to Ruby Tubes now. Sounds great with pretty much all. It's hard to tell, personally with tube swapping that your tone has changed ' a lot ', it's only a minor change. I think you could even use 12AU7's in here for less distortion , if that's what you were after and 'soften' things up a bit for blues, country, etc...

UTILIZATION

Even the presets on this thing sound GREAT, and are very useful as a guitar player - and maybe even a Bass player / keyboardist could use one of these to get some really cool stuff. I had a BOSS GT-6, and GT-8 but don't have anything good to say about those. They sound horrid compared to this unit, though it's older than both of those!

Tubes are what make this baby really cook. It's one of the best FX processors I've ever used because it sounds 'analog', and not 'tinny' or 'digital'.



SOUNDS

I use the unit for Delay, and most of my distortion tones. I get both a Chandler Tube Driver tone, which I use most of the time for that Pink Floyd / David Gilmour sound. Cleans are AWESOME, and very useful. Quite a few blues tones to play with in there too, and everything is super customizable.

One of my friends is a guitar player, and he ditched his BOSS GT for one as well. He plays metal, and Punk and gets a really authentic Mesa Dual Rectifier tone out of it through his twin after tweaking one of the stock 'mid scooped' distortion settings. He was also a 'purist' before owning one, always ragging on his digital equipment and using mainly analog stuff. Now the pedals are back in their box, and this unit has really simplified his rig setup.

I don't like the 'noise gate' feature, and always turn it off. Distortions are OK, but the Tube sounds / overdrive modes are what really make this guy sound great. I love the Compressor, EQ, and pretty much everything about its sound except for some settings such as the Whammy, (which doesn't sound like the red whammy pedal), noise gate, and some other stuff I don't use. It's packed with features. If you're not getting a good tone out of this unit, yours is either defective or you're tone deaf!

Controls take some time to get used to, and I feel like some of it's features are rather buried. I don't like that aspect of it. That's about it.



OVERALL OPINION

The thing I like the least about it? Well, the Wah tone is merely 'OK' , and the Pedal Board (control one) feels cheap and slides around on the floor because its too light if you buy that accessory. I broke quite a few MIDI cables because of that.

I don't like the menus / sub menu crap to get to certain aspects of it because it's very complicated at first. Then I guess you kind of get used to it and it becomes easier to use. Probably one of the main reasons you can still find them used!

I LOVE the sound. That's why I bought it. This thing is super responsive, and I can't see a guitar player not connecting with one and wanting to push it for hours. Lots of guitar player friends of mine have been 'lost in la la land' for hours playing through this thing on my rig.

Bought this previously used unitfor £200 about 6 months ago, price included foot controller unit. Dreadful machine.

Nothing, the valve sound is very poor, much better sound from a Marshall amp and the effects, ie wawa chorus etc are also very disappointing.


as said above. The new model is much better, tried it in a shop and found all the sounds to be far superior.

Very ordinary rack mount effect case with aluminum face and plastic knobs. don't think the controls could handle much abuse.

Rubbish, wouldn't advise anyone to pay more than £100, buy the new
Digitech, Artist 2120,Guitar Effects unit.


This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Bought unit new at Sherman Oaks, CA Guitar Center for approximately $650 some time ago. Purchased on recommendation from recording pro for use in direct recording.

Versatility and reliability.

Noise clipping setting on many of the factory preset effects cuts off the ends of notes. Also could be difficult to program for some.

ordinary rack mount effect case with aluminum face and plastic knobs. doubt knobs could handle much abuse. Has worked many hundreds of hours without a glich.

Versatile and reliable multi-effects unit - suitable for direct recording.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com