DigiTech Hot Head Distortion

This pedal has four mian controls. They all work like they should, but the high knob would be much better if it rolled of the realy high frequencies alowing you to tame the harsh sound of this pedal.
The pots jump alot and don't change the sound evenly as you move them at all up or down.

My gear consists of:
Fender 50th Americain deluxe strat with 50s repro pickups
Fender custom shop tele with s/duncan '59 and jazz Humbuckers
Parts Esquire - 80s '52 reissue neck, alder body. 54 Duncan Pickup
Effects- home modded crybaby, home modded Boss CS-3, T-rex Gristle king, Barber Ltd sr, Crunch Box, EH small clone, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal
Amps - 1982 Mesa Boogie mark II or, Laney 1969 Super group Head.


This pedal gives that searing marshall tone fair enough. Which is what it is designed to do. But it also clouds the tone. even with the gain a 0, It's hard to determine what kind of instrument you are using from another. This would be forgivable for a pedal in this price range,.... but.... i can't abide to a pedal that sounds HARSH! It has a nasty, buzzing top end that just make me cringe, it's so brittle sounding. It is also really noisy when on!!!
Quick lesson: People that say they must have True bypass are often misguided. Pedals that don't have true bypass tend to have a buffer circut. This helps the signal go through long cables without losing clarity. This, in most cases does not change your tone in the BIG way people say it does (with the exeption of some wah pedals)

So, the truth is that True bypass does n't really matter a huge amount, SO LONG as the ouput buffer in the pedal doesn't change your tone! This pedal, however does change your tone when it's on and off! I know for sure by using a true bypass looper.

It seems to be quite tough. I have a spare pedal board for those rough gigs and jams, a lot of guitar players go through it, at home jam sessions and at gigs. This one was on that board for years, and never set a foot wrong! so yes it gets full marks here

never had any problems

I have bought, sold and kept HUNDREDS of pedals! And only the best sounds i can get actually go on my own pedal board. This is NOT one of them.

Over all its a really, really nasty sounding pedal, but i am used to higher quality. At this price it does the job for anyone on a budget. But, if your after a realy good tone, save up another 20 bucks, get an M.I Audio Crunch box (about $85 second hand) You will not regret it!

Email me with any questions I???m always available - fendermadlewis@hotmail.co.uk

It's pretty drop dead simple, each nob says what it does and then you have a giant stomp box button.

Good for humbuckers but it's really hard to dial in a good sound with single coils. Very Marshall like sound. Can be very heavy on the gain or can be gain with a bit of crunch for a brighter bluesy attack to the sound. Sound is very hard to dial in a good mix between highs and lows though. If you use a Gibson with humbuckers, and a Marshall amp it'll probably work good for you. Works well with my Ibanez RG350 with the gain on 11! lol but on my Strats and Tele it's just weak, clangy and thin. I will say though it's not entirely the pedal because my amp does suck so keep that in mind!(I use a 83 Traynor Bloc100g)

This thing is built like a tank, I love Digitech's pedals they're just amazing quality and this is no different. This pedal could probably withstand being run over by my car!.

Digitech does it how I like it make a product you never have to get help with!

I play a ranging style, mostly ska, metal, and rock/hard rock. I've been playing for 5 and a half years and this is my third distortion pedal. I've compared it to more distortion pedals then I can remeber but as I've changed back to a mainly single coil sound my love for this pedal has deminished a bit. I love everything about this pedal it just doesn't want to work in my rig for all my guitars. This is a great pedal and I recomend trying it and comparing it to a bunch of different pedals because it's all about what you like.

Not the simplest pedal in the world to dial in, but even the most difficult dirt boxes in the world are still remarkably simple to work with. I haven't even so much as looked at the manual, and I probably never will.

Right now I'm running this, along with a couple of other pedals, in between a custom guitar (loosely based on a Les Paul) equipped with Bare Knuckle Nailbomb humbuckers and a Mesa/Boogie Mark 1. With the knobs turned just right I absolutely LOVE the tone of this pedal, unfortunately with those settings I get so much noise and hum it makes it pretty much useless. The noise with the level and gain turned way up is bad enough that I can't clean it up with any noise reduction pedal and have any sustain left at all. I did clean it up with the ISP ProRackG noise reduction system, but just barely. The other decent setting I get from this is much lower gain and has very little noise, unfortunately this setting doesn't sound nearly as good as any decent overdrive I've ever used.

I was rather impressed with this pedal when used with a Roland Jazz Chorus though. Each knob had a much broader usable range, however I still ended up having noise issues with the higher gain settings.

I've not had any issues and I can't really imagine anything happening to it. It seems built well enough and I'm generally very easy on my pedals.

I've never dealt with Digitech so I can't comment here.

I generally play hard rock and picked this up on a whim because I found it lightly used at a bargain price. It certainly matches what I do very well, but is rather lacking compared to other products. The big upside to this pedal is the price. Even new it's still WAY cheap, so it scores points here.

As mentioned the only real issue I have is the noise. It's not the best sounding box in the world but I'm not going to complain based on the price.

Once you find the sweet spot it's a case of keeping the settings there... wich is how most people tend to use pedals... this pedal can be trebly, but just roll off the tone on yer geetar (thats what it's there for)

A great pedal, a good amount of gain, and much hotter than a boss ds-1... i'm using it with a les pual copy and a 100w marshall, i am SICK AND TIRED of people with crap guitars and amps critisising GOOD pedals like this.

yes.

no

It's a fine pedal, very cheap and worth getting if you want lots of gain... i have four other distortion/fuzz/overdrive pedals, and this is one iv'e recently come back to using as my main distortion pedal... seems to be a pedal that begginers tend to buy and then give bad reviews about, Hint: i'd look at the quality of your guitar and amp (and maybe playing skills)... before you write this pedal off.

Just a follow-up, two years later.
Mixer out very useful, when using the HH in a true bypass looper (passive unit) you can have a tighter sound and still a normal clean bypass.
No noise, effective eq, and very usable gain knob.

As stated before, basically more a Santana pedal than a Metallica one, sweet and on the softer side. Not much precision in fast attack playing overall. It is better through the mixer out, tighter.

But I have found my way with the HH, and it is dead simple: gain knob all the way, and my guitar's vol pot governs the ship beautifully.
A strat clone with two kinmans, and telecaster simple switching. Just a simple master volume, nothing else (no cap on it either.

So at 2 I have a very convincing crunch, with guts and definition. At 5 blues soloing is addictive, still guts and definition, and it sings warmly. At 7 with bridge pup and a strong attack a way good hard rock/nearly metal rythm sound, and at 10 a lush single notes solo sound, with tons of sustain and warmth.

The best pedal with this axe, and no matter the amp (vox modeling 112, bandit 112, toneblaster 15x, 59ltd bassman, all clean) it delivers. Even through my dod fx7 w7phones at night.

Way strong, but it doesn't accept every psu without humming so better stick with the classic Ibanez ac109 and everything will be fine.

Compared with ts7, ud100, pl5, womanizer, gt2, the HH delivers what I need with this axe and the others don't.

The simplicity of the whole thing (gain at max and managing with the vol pot of the guitar) is jaw-dropping.

I am perfectly happy with the HH, what a good deal it is!

So if you own the HH this way of doing could change your opinion, like it did for me. From just ok to astounding.

Need a little bit of work to get what you want.

It do distort the signal! But maybe to sharp sometimes - now, after i play in the practice room with my band along on good ampdistortions, i would say the hot head doesn't give me the sound i want to have.

about 5 months old and still works - but the bypasspedal seems to be wanky now... would gig without a backup, if it was new.

not dealt yet - but 3 years of guarrantie

i play mostly funkrock, blues and hardrock and it fitted perfectly in my style - and for just 45$ it's a good deal. but now i'm looking for a higher quality distortion, which gives me the sound, i need today.

It has four knobs, no rocketscience there.

It's bad, it doens't sound like advertised, it's just a flimsy distortion, unplayeble with an solidstate amp. I play threw a Primaxes Custom > Marshall G50R CD amp.

I'd risk it.

It looks good but that's it, for metal i'd stick with the DS-1 or my NOBELS DT-SN.

The nice thing about a Digitech Hot Head is the way it can provided a distortion sound
that clearly is more than an overdrive, without the gain of a typical metal pedal. The
controls are staight forward, but it is difficult to get increased midrange punch with this
pedal. This pedal features both treble and bass controls, with no midrange control, and
the usual way to increase midrange with this setup is to simply roll back the bass and
treble, allowing more midrange to come through. This method works fine on both my
Grunge and Bad Monkey pedals, but rolling back bass and treble on a Hot Head mainly
decreases overall volume....the midrange is rolled out, too!

I would like this pedal much better if the bass and treble controls only affected the bass
and treble. Because of this tone shaping problem, the Hot Head can be tempermental,
especially if the player wants to go from a real clean sound with lots of bass and treble
to a warm "brown" sound, with lots of mids, using one stomp of the foot. Considering
this tempermental quality, I would say the name "Hot Head" fits this pedal quite well.

I presently play through an all tube Marshall 2x12 combo, and generally use guitars that
have two standard type alnico humbuckers. The Hot Head produces almost no background
noise and this, coupled with hum cancelling features of the pickups, makes it easy to get
lots of hight volume distortion with little noise mixed in.

Using the mixer output on this pedal adds bite, and makes the overall sound cut through
with increased definition. I like it better than the output labled "amp", although it is a
matter of personal taste.

The Hot Head appears to be designed with classic rock in mind. Tones it creates remind
me of bands like ZZ Top, Bon Jovi, and Boston. Those playing mainly blues or metal may
like other pedals better, but for straight ahead rock, the Hot Head works extremely well,
once the E.Q. is set, which, as I said before, can be a little difficult.

The Hot Head is a sturdy a pedal, and I doubt it will ever break down. The casing is solid
metal and it sits on solid rubber. Very, very durable.

I once wrote Digitech a technical question about another product I own that they make,
and they were so quick to respond to my question, that I bought more of their products,
including this one. They impress me as being both friendly and involved. I think Digitech
is a really good company.

Overall, with the exception that it is difficult to adjust for enhanced midrange, the Hot Head
is a very usefull pedal, and should last the owner a long, long time. I own several pedals,
and none are beyond replacing, but the Hot Head has a personality of it's own, and, if you
like it, it won't let you down.

Very easy to get a good sound of it, just remember not to max the EQ's but just adjust them very litte as they have a huge impact on sound even with the slightest turn.

Very very good, I've tried them all and narrowed to this, the Boss DS-1 is good, but this is just better, more warmer and organic sounding distortion. The speaker emulated output is also very nice add to the pedal as it can be used for real! Also what I really like is that it doesn't color the sound anyway it really lets your sound come through.

I use it without a backup, no reason to have one, it lasts as long as any other pedal

Never dealt with 'em

I play rock / metal, and use this in front of my Marshall JCM 800 50w head and a 15w custom tube combo and I get very good "woody" distiortion from this little pedal. I recommend this to everyone looking for a good distortion pedal. It's cheap but the sound is not a cheap copy from any other distortion pedal, it's got flavors from others but in the end has it's own unique sound.

Stock Brand New Digitech Hot Head Distortion. It's a simple, and efficient stompbox. It's easy as pie to use, and great sounding without a lot of tweaking.

I run this bad boy with my Ibanez RG350DX, Fender Strat Custom Texas Special, and Warmoth Custom into a Hughes and Kettner Blue series combo amp. It is sometimes in junction with my synth wah, hyper phaser, volume pedal, amongst a BBE Sonic stomp. But this review is based on it and a guitar and amp. This thing gets great sounding distortion without mudding up the notes to sound like fuzzy garbage. My biggest problem with the boss Metal Zone was it's tonal loss when cranking the distortion, this pedal mimics some of the lighter, yet capable of being pretty heavy sounds that the Boss pedals do but a fraction of the cost and seemingly sturdier. I go for the full stack distortion sound and a little British rock. It's great! I eve play Nu-metal on it and it's perfect.

I'm sure if I dropped it and it landed on some rocks and tumbled into acid it'd fail, but for everyday purposes I'm sure it's gonna take a beating. It's heavy, thick metal chasis and very cool design (boss style with some different batter compartment features). I am definately throwing this into the live gig, and would only bring spare batteries knowing that's the only problem I could face.

I used the website for digitech and found all my answers without looking to Customer Support, I even registered my product there.

I stated previously I play Nu-metal to rock and some odd stuff outside that. This pedal is great and can dial in on a number of great sounding but tonally clear distortions. You don't have to crank the OD to 11 and then palm mute everything on a Boss Metal Zone to be heavy, and this proves it. I can get all the oomph of that pedal without the questioning of what notes the band is even playing. I've been a casual player going on 11 years and a gigging player for about 5 of those years... I wish I had this then. I tried Tubescreamers, DS-1's, OD's, amp ditry chanels, Line 6 DM5, and a Zoom 505 (series 1 and 2)... the zoom was my favorite, utnil now. If it were stolen I'd be pretty pissed, but wouldn't settle for anything less, so I'd probably buy another the next day!!! I do wish it had a Mid range tone button, but a High and Low is more than some crap and even big name pedals have! It's a great tool to stay true to your notes, and rock hard at the same time! I also have to mention it's orange casing is pretty sweet. I'm not a colors kinda guy but cannot stop thinking of how cool this thing sounds and looks