DigiTech Bass Whammy Pitch Shift Bass Pedal Reviews

This pedal is insane. I have played it for a total of like 4 hours and already think its the best $240 i have ever spent. I would give it 5 more stars if i could. The moment i got this pedal i immediately unlocked something in my tone that i needed. My band also loves it. My favorite settings are the 2 octave up mode for weird noises, especially going into a fuzz and delay. Very crazy. And the 4th down is also very cool. Everything is cool

Received Digitech whammy very quickly. I have owned one of the originals many years ago. This unit far surpasses them. The whammy effects are great by there self, but the harmonies an octave work of this unit is very impressive and beautiful.I love it

I have to say as a bassist it is nice to see the love we are getting lately with some of these new pedals that are coming out! Everyone thinks we are just low end and so we only need our bass and an amp right? Wrong! I make music with my bass! I use this pedal for filler as well as some nice additions to the music but this thing gets kicked on mostly when my guitarist is playing solos live. I put it on 1 octave up and let notes ring out and it fills the empty space perfectly. The way it lets my bass come through and an octave up sounds like two people playing. I love it! The tracking on this pedal is amazing as well! 1 octave up + 1 octave down is probably where it sits the most. I would recommend this pedal!

Yup, 5 stars! Digi Tech knocked it out of the park this time. Not only is this a fun way to change up your sound and create some wild expressions. It can be very USEFUL at providing simple intervals, octaves, and even 3 note chords. If you play with a guitar trio, when the guitarist takes a solo, you will totally be able to keep the bottom grooving, while the pedal splits off and harmonizes, giving you chords, etc. The tracking is amazing. I find that the octave down tracks better than my $190 Aguilar "Octimizer". (And that is a really great unit too, BTW.) Tracking in general is very very good. The traditional whammy effects work quite well, and really do emulate having a bass whammy installed on your axe. The new, harmonizer effects, are cool because it leaves your original note present, and then adds other intervals, until you rock the pedal, and then it whammys all of the notes either up or down. Crazy! I find that in a bass solo, the effects make me think of scales and modal ideas in a whole new way. Now that's quite an effect, one that inspires you!! A nice way to use this effect is during a groove section of a song, where solos keep going around, and over and over. It gives you somewhere to go, so to speak, as to changing up the colors, and textures underneath the jahm. That can make an extended solo section seem more interesting for both the band members, and audience as well. If you can swing the 200 bucks, I'd recommend giving this a try. I about can't imagine returning it once it's in your hot little hands!! :-)

I own the original Bass Whammy Pedal from 1993 or 1994 that I bought used off of eBay. I loved using it but the tracking wasn't the greatest, and the polyphony wasn't all that good either, therefore making it difficult to use in my playing. Then this came along, and I instantly preordered it. It got here yesterday and after playing with it I was instantly blown away! I honestly can't say anything bad about this pedal. The tracking is superb from the Low B to the G strings, all over the neck and even on the Harmonics. The Chords Mode is what sets this apart from its original counterpart. Now I can use this on chords and it won't sound like a mess! It also has a lot more Settings than the original Bass Whammy, as well as the original settings, so you can find a sound that works for you. But one thing I should point out: if you're using this and you realize the sound doesn't change until the Expression Pedal is about halfway down, Calibrate it! Digitech's website has the Manual you can download and gives you easy to follow instructions on Calibrating your Bass Whammy. This helped me out and might help you out. And finally, Sweetwater made my purchasing experience perfect, thanks.

This thing is just too much fun. I always enjoyed the octave shift pedal function on my old BOSS ME-50B multi board. This is way better and has more options than I can even wrap my head around. So far my favorite moves are using the 2 8va Whammy mode for popping up occasional accent notes, and also enjoying the 1-8va to 2-8va harmony mode for reverb-y chordal playing.

The only reason I'm rating 4.5 stars is because there is a noticeable delay (not sure how long exactly, but I do notice it) introduced to your signal from this pedal when the pedal is "on" (even if it's not currently modifying your signal, i.e. pedal is rocked all the way back in whammy mode). I doubt that's really Digitech's fault, probably just a limitation of how fast the hardware can process the signal at this current time in technology. If there was less delay, the tracking would probably be worse. So that does limit the ways I would use this pedal in practical band scenarios, as I imagine (haven't tested yet) either having to play super on top of the beat to compesate, or just be okay with the bass laying back for certain passages.

All that said, just buy this thing. It's so much fun, even if it never makes it to an actual gig.

The bass whammy works great. cool sounds and very nice intervals choices. It doesn't do the nasty OC-2 sound or pog octave up sound, it's cleaner and more natural, less synth sounding. The 4th down can be used to breifly fake a 5 string by instantly down tuning the bass from eadg to bead which I love when im playing my 4 string. The octave up and down sound pretty cool, the detune is a usable chorus. One octave down whammy is a fun setting for Hollywood endings.

The only reason I didn't give I a perfect score is at times the switch is noisy. You know an audible "click" when you engage the pedal. It's not always there and not terrible, but can be annoying at times.

Pretty cool pedal. I bought The Bass Whammy so I could play higher octave bass chords on my Boss Loop Station so I could come up with bass lines and practice improvisation on top. At first I didn"t understand the difference between the chords/classic toggle. Without understanding that it"s no wonder I thought the thing sucked at first. Classic mode is for playing single notes in modulated pitches while Chords mode is really optimized for... well duh. If you try playing single notes in higher pitches in Chords mode it will sound like a synthesizer or keyboard instead of a bass, and if you play chords in Classic mode a muddy tone can be heard(. I experienced this most with major seventh triads, just sounds dissonant.). So if you don"t mind switching the toggle in between your play styles then this will work fine, this just a bummer for me. Also there is a small amount of latency. it is a digital pedal so of course that makes sense. After playing for a few hours the latency didn"t seem to bother me at all. When I played in higher octaves on a nickel wound bass it had much clearer and crisp tone than any of my rotosounds equipped basses(my favorite). It sounded more like a guitar that way. The harmony side works just perfectly. Maybe on guitar the dive bomb mode works better but it is absolutely useless on a bass whammy. The detune modes sounded just like a flanger effect. All in all, the more I play with this thing the more Iike it. I wouldve given four and a half stars if you didn"t need a toggle to switch between chords or single note optimization. I feel like I haven"t even gotten close to getting all the sounds I can from this thing!

I had high hopes for this pedal. I purchased it to replace my Morpheus Dive Bomber because it can do so much more. the Dive Bomber is an awesome pedal but somewhat of a one-trick pony. However, it dive bombs incredibly well. Another issue with the Dive Bomber is how much real estate it takes up on a pedalboard. The thing is huge. The Bass Whammy is about a third smaller, which also influenced my decision.
The biggest drawback to the Bass Whammy is the fact I have to press down on the foot pedal at least an inch before any effect start to kick in. Then when it does kick in, it's really sensitive. For instance, when I dive bomb, I push down on the pedal and the first inch or so gets me nothing, then a super-fast dive bomb unless I slow the velocity of my foot. That's a deal breaker for me. I want immediate effect with no play, nice and smooth. The Dive Bomber was great in this regard. I may try recalibrating the pedal before returning it, but that's just it, I shouldn't have to recalibrate a brand new pedal. I suspect the play in the pedal is by design.