DigiTech RP-10

I have an RP-7 also so I was used to the way it has to be programed. It could be confusing if you didn't know what you were doing.

I use it as part of a bigger setup. Standing alone it doesn't work well. I play classic rock and blues. I use a Strat with a humbucker on the bridge mainly. I go through a Boss TU-2 tuner, a SD-1 overdrive, a BD-2 Blues Driver, a DS-1 Distortion and a GE-7 EQ. I run all this into an all original 1969 Deluxe Reverb. You can get some classic Fender sounds out of the RP-10 if you mess with it long enough. Overall it takes up half of my pedal box but it is worth it. The chorus and delay are pretty good but the distortion is BAD.

I've used it for four or five years of hard gigging and it hasn't let me down yet. I used to carry a RP-7 as backup but it stays it the studio now.

Never dealt with them.

I've been playing for 25 years and if I find something that works for me I don't like to change. I've tried other setups and always go back to the RP-10. Once I get the settings I like I pretty much stick with them unless we work up new material that requires new settings. I have 25 or 30 programs that I use regularly. The built in tuner is worse than useless. The ability to program the pedal for whatever effects you need is great. If I lost this one I would probably get another one just like it. It would really suck to start the programing all over though.

Digitech RP-10 V2.00.

Well, it's not so easy to use...I mean the interface is easy per se, but you *have* to get the manual to understand what each parameter means exactly.

For the manual, I had to download a PDF version from the Web because the guy who sold it to me didn't have it.

Overall, after you get the hand of it, you can set up patches pretty quickly.

Setup:

- Danelectro 56-U2
- Hamer DA-03 strat-clone
- Electric solidbody cuatro (a sort of 5-double-stringed guitar)
- Vox Pathfinder amp

Unit is usually connected DI to my PC for recording with CoolEditPro. The unit is sometimes noisy, but I think that the problem really lies in relatively cheap pickups and cheap cables, and in addition being near the PC monitor, so the unit is really not to blame.

The effects are good, except for the wah, although I don't use it much. Effects sound VERY digital, which works for my style of electronica-influenced music. Very very wet sounds. I really like the flanger, reverb, whammy and chorus. The harmony is a bit slow sometimes. The distortions can be made to sound good; you just have to play a lot with the parametric EQ which is very good but at first hard to understand (i.e. "What the heck is Q?"). Stereo "separation" on digital distortions is awesome.

What I do to "warm" up the sound is that most patches use the cabinet emulator set to "1-Warm Cabinet".

Very reliable. It's made of metal! Could even be a good weapon (in defense, always!).

Never dealt will them. Will do so soon, though, because I gotta buy a new power adapter (I kinked the plug cable on mine when packing it! Mea Culpa)

For my style, as I said before, is perfect. Very electronic, digital sounds. When I wanna warm it, I either run it thru my amp and mike it or play with the cab emulator. I've been playing for almost 3 years, as a hobby. I'm now into home recording.

If I lost it, I'd cry.

This thing has boosted my cretivity, making me explore new, different sounds away from the usual Les Paul/Marshall/Wah sounds everyone dies for (not that looking for a classic sound is bad....it's just that I want something different).

It's tricky to get a really good expressive sound out of this unit. However after a few years of learning how to program it , ive found some neat tricks. being able to assign CC controller parameters to a number of different setting at once really opens up the poissabilities. Ive since opted for the Eprom upgrade for the intelligent pitch shifting. Ive had this unit since they came out, and have recorded many tracks with it.

the distortions dont give you much range but are usable, especially for recording. They dont sound great live, but good on tape. The effects and especially the reverb are pretty good. Unfortunately you must use a preprogrammed effect chain as your starting point, which limits you to certain ( 33 or so) set ups.

The pedal went out onme, I fixed it myself, my original unit had the optical sensing mechanism encased ina cardboard box (within the unit) , I had to replace the wires ( a tricky, for the solder enclined only operation) early on. swtill theresa bit of noise in the expression pedal. The rubber foot pad has come off and ben lost ( the smoth metal base pedal doesnt allow for spray adhesives to remount the foot pad). A couple of swithes broke eventually also, but they are cheap replacement parts form Digitech. The Eprom update is also available from Digitech Direclty. Otherwise when its tuend up and working a pretty good board for dependability. ( read that as no set up and play failures).

Rock, fusion, etc. A good efx board, the floor board nature of the thing makes it a bit of a pain to edit, you practically have to have it on a desk to work with it. I have yet to try using it as a MIDI program sender/reciever. Im hoping it will be usable with my synth and midi rig.

To get full control over this thing, you have to read the manual. The configuration isn't really what I would call intuitive. I guess it's the price you pay for it's rather interesting flexibility. You can assign whatever control to whatever switch you want, even the pedal. For example you could assign the rate of the chorus to the pedal, controlling the speed of the effect with it. That's just an example that shows you can get very funny effects. That's the very good side of this unit.

Distortions are really dull. the compressor is really poor. It's controlled by 2 setting, no more. The cab simulation has got quite old compared to all the gears that hit the market lately. It doesn't sound half as good as what you can get in more recent gears.

The good part is the digital part. Most of the FX are rather good, except the wah which is average but you can get funny things with it. the possibilities of tweaking are rather interesting, and if you're looking for some chemical sounds from outer space, well, you should find something here. Delays, Quad Chorus, Pitch shifters, Whammy effects... There are a lot and all are rather fun to use.

But if you're looking for a killer tone, a real enhancement of the subtle sound of your favorite guitar, try something else. The thing does change the sound into something very cold, very thin, whatever settings you have. The overdrive and distortion are transistor like, they don't smoothly warm the sound, they just kinda clip, or sound badly fuzzy.

Again, I'm not saying you can't get anything from this unit. You can get real cool and fun chemical effects. But nothing really powerful or warm or authentic.

I had the unit for 6 years. I had it with me for a bunch of gigs. It always worked fine. One of the switches got loose, but it's been fixed easily and I never got any more problem with it... But I haven't used it for two years...

Never dealt with them

I used to play funk/blues/rock tune with it. And apart from few funny effects I've programmed with it, I couldn't get a good tone with it.

The unit is now useless to me, cause I can't use it as a plain FX unit with my new gears. It's not clean enough, not at all transparent. I guess the problem comes from the "Analog" section of the unit which can't be bypass and that's a shame.
All in all, it's an old unit. The FX by themselves hadn't got that old, they're good, the flexibility of the switch configuration is cool, but the overall sound of the unit is weak.

You can mess around with things right off the bat in you have an inquisitive mind & a will to get what you want, it takes time though. After familiarizing myself with the parameters & their affect thing becam much easier.

I have used the RP-10 in studio, straight into the board & with a Carvin 212 amp. The unit itself is not noisy to speak of but it will reveal any shielding inperfections you might have in your instrument. The distortion sounds are great but a little thin. The wah sucks!!!

I have used it on gigs without a backup - a real workhorse.

It's pretty cool but makes you thirst for something with the bite of tubes, like in more sophisticated, rackmount effects.

This unit is similar (program wise)the other s-disc processors digitech makes,I did not have a manual and had no trouble gettin several useable sounds.Of course I have had a few other digitech products so its not new to me.Those not fimilar with diditech might have a bit of trouble(If you`re not very intelligent).

I use mostly BC Rich guitars and Jackson with emg 81(+preamp booster switch,a must for 81`s).I have tried running rp-10 into several amps(mesa triple rect,marshall 800,mesa 50/50 and others).At first I was dissapointed by the distortion,it was hot BUT thin sounding.Then I ran it into a LANEY aor 50 pro tube head...This was the answer to the problem.Most all of the older laneys have a stupid amount of bass(when you pull boost).This compleately makes up for the thinness of rp-10.I like the sound Im getting from this rig better than what I get from my triple rect.It does`nt sound as natural,but it is so much more...evil(for lack of a better term).I play metal,REAL METAL like maiden,priest,hammerfall,Iced earth,BLACK SABBATH,ect.I am getting a killer sound for this type of music.
The delays are good and very full sounding.
The wah stinks...yes its true,its true.
The unit does take some tweaking to keep things from sounding overprocessed.If you own a laney tube head,and play metal old or new I recommend this unit highly.Other wise I think you might be let down.

I have had it a while and had no problems,I am second owner so any problem before me I am unaware of.

I have`nt had to use on this unit.But digitech is cool I once had a problem with a tsr 24 processor.It kept freezing up,they tried to fix it but could`nt,so the gave me a new one with an upgrade chip(265$)for free!

I play metal,And it works well with what I said above.If it broke or was stolen I would probablly try a newer RP unit(with a laney amp)

Not so easy to use,but it's a "multi-thing",so I expected a challege.
Took a couple of days of digging to figure out,but got the hang of it's basic functions.The manual is O.K.,though it tends to get a little too techncal at times.Not for the lazy,gotta work this baby.

When at home,I use it with a Fender Twin amp.The problem is when I use it with another amp,I have to "re-tweak" some of the E.Q. settings.The distortions are quite nasty,as are most of the other effects.With it's stereo outs,the choruses,panners and flangers can
tickle the hell out of you.The amp simulators is the reason why I bought it.They are pretty good,especially for studio work.I need to work with the phase shifters a little more,but they're not too shabby.The delays aren't analog,but huge,flexible,and spacey.Be careful with the reverbs,they're a little complex and can screw you up if you over-analyze them.I try to keep all the reverbs similar,like Twin verbs.Sound quality however is very good,but very digital.You got to tweak it right.Overall,I think it's a very good mechine,it gets lots of work.

It is dependable,but you must be careful when travelling.If knocked around,your sounds and settings can get lost or jumbled.

Sent Digitech a letter of praise,and question about smart pitch-shifting up-grade.They never wrote back.

Own other gear,but this is the only "muti-thing" I have.It's bypass mode is very cool.I can hook up another efects chain and bypass the RP-10 altogether.It also has a midi in,out/thru jacks.Wish the manual
was easier to understand.I want to know if different sounds can be assigned to pedals in a program?? And how??

Probably one of the hardest units around to use. I've had mine for many years now (since it was released actually) and I still don't know how to change certain things. And the manual is no more than a piece of paper; crappy.

After messing around for weeks I finally got some kind of cool sounds. And now, years after the purchase, I've actually got a lot of high quality sounds that many guitarists would envy. It's not easy to get the sounds right but when you do you will not be disappointed. The things I use are: one Gibson Les Paul Studio, one modified Westone Pantera (EMG-85, Torsionbridge Shift 2001) ==> Boss Fuzz ==> Dunlop Crybaby Original ==> Digitech RP-10 ==> Laney GH-100L ==> Crate BV412SV....and that's it. Being a metal/rock/blues-kind of guitarist I of course want at least the sounds of Entombed, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Kyuss, Fu-Manchu, AC-DC, Hooker, Gary Moore etc. And NOW I've got them. But it took time, so be patient if you are to buy this machine. Because this unit sounds lite CRAP if you don't get it right. But if you get it right, then you will be happy about it. No lies there my friends. IMPORTANT: If you are after heavy metal distortions with this baby, then you GOT TO HAVE a powerful amprig or else it will just sound like shit. I will give it a 10 because I finally have got all the things working right. But it's a hell getting there.

Solid metal. Will take any beating. The little plastic editing buttons are crappy though. But it have never failed me and I treat it with no caution what so ever. Ok, it can take what I expect it to take.

Never needed.

It's great once you mastered it. Which takes almost forever. I would never buy it again if it was stolen. Too hard to use but it got the sounds allright. But you can find all those sounds in different units. Actually, I'm trying to sell it just for the sake of changing my sound. I don't know what to replace it with just yet. :-) Last word: No unit should be this hard to use. And if you can't use it, then it is worthless. I can use it so I'll give it a 5.

This unit could baffle Einstein. I've had it 5 years and the Reverb parameters still leave me with a cold sweat. Every preset patch is seriously OTT, to the point where you are better off creating your own patches from scratch if you want a decent sound. I'm good, really good with the techie stuff but I've steadily grown to hate messing with this unit over the years.

Oh am I going to have a rant! Lousy, absolutely lousy. There are one or two redeeming factors but in comparison to similarly priced units it has the worst 'real-life' signal-to-noise ratios i've yet to come across. If you use any amount of distortion you HAVE to use the noise gate, which is a real shame. I've tried it through dozens of amps and it prefers solid state ones; it's 'favourite' was a mosfet PA head!

In short, Good= noise gate, parametric EQ, Reverb, 6 voice chorus (v.cool) (once you've waded through the params) Bad=distortions (only 3 and they are all thin), compressor (lots of it but over noisy) delay, phaser, flanger, wah (ahhrrrgh take it away) everything else is about average.

Overall it's just an inherrently weak sound, also a spectrum analysis showed that it rolled off the bass response of whatever you plugged into it on the way through!!!! Not good, very not good.

Bar the plastic sides falling off when you first get it (a bit of a decent glue solves that) there is one serious problem. It can't stand dust. It gets into the footswitches and pushbuttons and before you know it they just stop working. You can get a tech to replace the footswitches with dustproof ones but it costs money, however there is nothing to be done for the pushbuttons, you just have to hit em really hard, wiggle em or whatever. I've had this happen in the middle of a gig before now and it seriously annoyed me.

err I live in the UK. They don't provide support to us directly, we just ring their distributor and, basically they fob us off with excuses because, at the end of the day, they can't help.

I play lead guitar in thrash metal band VERM (www.verm.freeserve.co.uk) and bought this as my first serious piece of fx kit some 5 years ago. The only thing that has stopped me ditching it is that no-one has invented a floor unit I like up until now... (Boss GT-5 ??)

If it were stolen? I'd pity the thief and go buy something else, anything else. Bluntly? It's rubbish. I bought it because of the advertising and because it looked cool. There is a lot of intelligent design gone into this but at the end of the day it's what it sounds like that counts, and it sounds RUBBISH!

I'm going to give it a ridiculously low score, simply because it has given me blisters on the ends of my fingers trying to get a decent sound out of it.

I hade the RP-1 before this so I basically knew what I was doing without the manual. Some of the new features took a bit to get used to. Some of the Reverbs have zillions of parameters and it's difficult to know what each one does. Overall, it was pretty straightforward.

I use a Jackson guitar, ADA power amp, crate cab.
I love the parametric EQ. I can't live without one now. I play metal and make most other metal players envious of my tone. The digital effects are supurb. On the downside, it is a noisy pedal but that's what the noise gate is for. As most other people say, the wah sucks. Digitech can't make a decent wah and probably never will. I use a Morley.

I've had it for over 5 years and it finally fried out on me. Unfortunately it was 2 days before a gig. I never had a backup before but I would definitely recommend having one.

I emailed Digitech about the problems about a month ago and haven't heard anything.

A great processor for the money. It lacks the smooth pitch shifting of the RP-12 but otherwise is virtually indestinguishable. Everything is adjustable and the sounds you create are only limited by your imagination. You can link multiple parameters to one switch or to the pedal making it possible to change lots of effects and tones with one tap of your toe. If Digitech made a newer version of this processor, I'd probably buy it. I wouldn't buy a used one because of reliability issues.