DigiTech RP-100

I have the RP100W (with a red screen)

This is fairly easy to edit using the knobs on its face. The USB connectivity of the new RP models would be REALLY nice!

The factory presets are ok, especially if you have a cheap amp, but on a good amp, they will sound pretty bad.
You can use the 40 user preset slots to make your own patches. Just google "RP100 Patches" -- there are some great sounding patches that you can dail in if you look for them.

However, this unit will NOT work well with a high-end amp. It adds buzz and noise if put in the effects loop, and it will make a tube amp sound very digital-ly. It also changes the tone of your amp significantly even when it is in "Bypass Mode". I tried using it for delay on my 5150 Combo once, and it was horrible. However, if you own a good amp, chances are you would buy high-end effects as well, and this is not designed to be a high-end pedal.

I rated it an "8", just because on headphones or a crappy amp, this unit can be programed to sound really nice.

This is very realiable. It has only 'frozen' on me once, and I just unplugged and it came back just fine.
You wouldn't need a backup for this live -- (but I wouldn't use it live anyway, just because of its sound quality when paired with the 5150.)

Digitech is a well-known company. They will give you support.

This is a really good do-it-all effects pedal. If you only need a simple solid state amp and 1 multi-effects processor, then this is the way to go.

Considering it only has a small,two digit screen it's actually Pretty easy to use.The layout is pretty intuitive,easy enough for beginners to use(which i'm guessing is the market they're after)For those who don't know any better i suppose it's easy to coax some descent tones out of this box.

Like i mentioned before,i think this unit is aimed at players who don't have a lot of experience playing through great sounding tube amps.It's great for what it is,an entry level digital representation of real amps and effects,but i'm a huge tone freak!!

i suppose the tones are more inspiring than playing strait through a crappy 10 watt solid state practice amp,but after playing the real amps this thing emulates you'll notice how harsh and fake sounding it is,i believe that may be due to the 22khz sampling rate,very shrill sounding highs and unresponsive lows.

i haven't even touched it since i bought my Zoom G7.1ut(real tube distortion!)the Zoom is the greatest sounding thing i've ever stepped on!!Anyone considering the RP100 please do yourselves a favor,save up and buy the Zoom!!this pedal will only hinder your playing and stifle your inspiration,imho

i've never had a problem with it,then again i've never had a problem with the garbage cans out front of my house 8-p.I'll give credit where it's due,this thing is built like a tank!!i've kicked it around for years(until i could afford some descent gear)Never had a problem with it physically.

i always kind of hoped it would die on me so i would have no choice but to buy a better unit,but it never did.

never dealt with them

If you want a broad digital representation of real tube amps,i guess for the price it's not a bad little unit,but if you're looking for tonal bliss,this ain't it.listened back to some tracks i cut before i bought my Zoom,compared to the new pedal it's night and day.

Like i said before,if you're a serious player like i am this thing will hold you back.

Easy.

You can get a huge range of sounds out of this pedal. We play covers so it's great for dialing in sounds from David Gilmour to Joe Walsh.

I run a Fender Strat SSH to a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I've got an A/B splitter box, A for the RP-100, B for a Boss 7-band EQ and noise suppresor pedal.

It's noisy on the major gain settings, but if I'm using a patch for distortion, it's usually dialed in low, just to add a little punch to the Fender amp.

I use the RP-100 on about half our songs, and of those, the majority of the RP-100 usage is for modulation. It does just fine for chorus, delay, flange, phase - but I mainly use chorus, delay, and the compression function is good.

You can depend on it if you're not stomping the crud out of it. It takes a little effort to get to the tuner (stomp and hold both pedals down simultaneously for a second or two, and a quick stomp on both to bypass).

I have the RP-100 set according to our set list. I hit 1 for the first song, 2 for the second, etc. If one song needs a considerably different sound for a chorus or solo, etc. then that one song may get 3 and 4, and then I only have to go back and forth with one stomp. After that, I stomp again for the next song.

Never used

I play a huge range of styles, but mainly classic rock. It's a great match for the money.

I've been playing for 20 years.

I would get something more up to date if it were lost/stolen.

If you read the manual, you will have 90% of your problems solved. Making your own presets can be frustrating at first but, with patience, anyone can do it. My major beef is that it has too much of every thing. You could spend more time playing with your toy than working out your riffs! Buy it only after you already have your chops and song catalog down pat. This thing is like having a new video game.

It has a USB port so you can make a youtube video and sound like your favorite hero.

This will make you sound great through headphones. I use both single coil and humbucker guitars and could get my rock and blues sounds fairly accurately. No noise whatsoever! The effects and amp/speaker models are on the money.

This is difficult to say after 2 week use. The unit is metal and seems strong enough for gigging.

No need yet.

If you are into the heavy metal stuff, the presets are all you'll ever need. Buy this unit if your genre is 60s rock, 70s rock, 80s hair bands, techno rock or spacey music. If you want to sound exactly like SRV prepare to do alot of trial and error.

Buy it if you want to sound like a star through headphones.

This is my first multi-effects unit. It replaces a boatload of pedals and only costs $99. It is versatile beyond belief.

My only wish is that they offered a $40 pedal that has a few amp models and a few effects.

Once you've got it worked out this thing couldn't be easier to use! I guess it's because there simply isn't many features, and each effect/model/module only has a couple of parameters to tweak.

Changing patches sucks because you're only option is to change to an adjacent preset, ie... scroll through 'em 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 etc. There's also a HUGE silence while the preset loads... like half a second or something. This makes the unit unusable in my opinion, except for recording.

Distortions are fake and unresponsive/compressed, but i am pretty picky about my crunch. You can't get a responsive crunch out of this thing which sucks if you like to have a clean sound while picking softly which breaks up naturally when picking hard. Fidelity is low, i beleive the sampling rate is only 22KHz. High gain amp models are noisy.

You have to change patches a second before you want your new sound because it takes so long to load presets... useless for playing any song that requires more than one sound the whole way through.

Effects are not bad a suppose.

I've had this thing for about 6 years, used it extensively for about 2 or 3 of those years. I've had a few problems with it. One of the patch changing switches fucked up so I replaced it with the switch that controls the drum machine, which i don't use (haha, can't use now!). The AC adapter socket fucked up so I've connected a 9V DC adapter straight to the battery terminals. The output socket also fucked up so i had to re-solder it to the PCB.

You gotta be careful not stand on the leads when plugged in, as the sockets are soldered right to the PCB and end up breaking.

Cheap sounding
HUGE SILENCE BETWEEN PATCH CHANGES!!! big issue

Fairly easy to operate and program, even without reading the manual.

I'm very pleased with the sound. I'm really only using it for EQ - Reverb - and Delay. Sometimes I'll use a little Compression. I play jazz and shoot for a sound between Pat Metheny and Ben Monder and I think this does a good job. I'm using a stereo to mono 1/4" adapter in the output to run it in stereo to two early 80's Yamaha G100-112 amps. My only complaint is that when you plug in an expression pedal and try to do volume swells (ala Bill Frisell), you can hear the "MIDI" steps in the volume, so I use a volume pedal in front of the RP-100.

No problems yet, however I don't gig heavily.

I think it's a great value, however I'm really thinking of getting the RP-150 to see how the new "Lexicon" reverbs sound since that's my main use for the effects pedal.

Read the manual (available on-line). Very easy to use. I had to turn it into an emergency bass preamp last night, and that took about a minute.

With all the settings and EQ options on this unit, plus the ones on the guitar and amp, it would be impossible not to find some good sounds on this unit.

I have used this with an GK bass head into an old 2x12 bassman cab, or a TubeWorks 2x12 cab, and also a pair of Peavey 1x12 combo amps for stereo. I have used it both with and without a TubeWorks Realtube preamp, and of course, it sounds better with the tube preamp.

The 40 presets really suck - most are way over the top and I wouldn't use any of them. But they are really easy to tweak and save in the 40 User slots.

I don't use much distortion, but I think the Tweed model with the gain jacked up and a little slapback echo is just FINE.

I've used this on over 350 gigs, and I bought it used on Ebay, so it's been around. It's been stepped on, tripped over, and dropped many times, and I only had one minor problem. One of the pedals stopped working, and it turned out to be the tiny rubber pad that actually makes contact with the circuit board. It had shrunk a tiny bit. I cut the corner off of a business card and stuck it under the pad and it's worked ever since.

I play a lot of Dub and Old School Reggae, and I've used it on live gigs for reverb, chorus, phasing and echos and delays.
I sometimes use two 12" combo amps and the RP100 has stereo outputs, so I can get nice wide tremolo and ping pong effects.

I've used it as a stand alone pedal for a bass preamp, an EQ, or an autowah. I've used it for computer recording and as a headphone practice amp. The built in drums are a nice touch for practice or for a click or scratch drum track.

I can get a full 3 sets on rechargeable batteries if I unplug it during breaks, but I usually use the AC adapter, which in NOT easy or cheap to replace (no Radio Shack!).

Never dealt with them.

I've been playing funky reggae jazzy bluesy dub stuff since Nixon was around. The less I have to carry around and plug in, the better. This is good stuff for cheap. They don't make this one any more, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy a newer model.

Easy to use, but reading the manual is a good thing.

I sold my old Zoom 505 to buy this thing. BIG MISTAKE!!
The Zoom has nice distortions. The distortions of the RP100 are terrible, very artificial. Not to mention the noise and the hiss it produces. The humbucker/single-coil is shit. It makes my Gibson SG scream of feedback. The modulation effects are ok I guess. But I don't use them that much cause I play mostly 80s (hard-)rock.

Sometimes you have to switch it off and on again to work. The switches produces 'plops'.
You cannot run it on batteries, they're dead in 1 hour. You need that expensive DigiTech AC adaptor. Why doesn't it run on DC like normal effects???
Sound is too bad to gig with, so I don't know.

Dont know.

The Zoom 505 is a much better pedal in my opinion. I play 80s (hard-) rock so I need good distortions. This RP100 sounds very digital/artificial and makes a lot of noise..
I ordered a Zoom GFX1 yesterday. So maybe next week i'm happy again.

This unit is easy to use, once you get the hang of the layout of the top panel, and what each effect range is. Some of them are very powerful, so it takes some time to find out what combination of effects give you the sound you want. You can program 40 patches and there are another 40 fixed presets by Digitech.

In terms of switching between patches, I find it is difficult to use the unit as you have to scroll through your preset patches in sequence. What I end up doing is setting up groups of patches for each song or type of song that I play. It works, but then if you just want to add some delay or distortion and improvise then you can't, unless you can remember which number that sound was set under.

An AC power source is mandatory, I had the unfortunate experience of gigging with it, and a new set of batteries lasted the warm up and died during the gig. The problem is that when the batteries go flat, the unit doesn't die, but it goes crazy and switches between different patches on its own. Some of the presets are very loud and crazy sounding, so it can be quite nasty.

I use this most of the time with a pair of headphones and my USA telecaster.

The sound is pretty good. I would not say it was gigworthy comparing it to my normal stomp box set up. Some of the sounds are a bit hollow and processed. Using it as a dedicated pedal would not be a bad idea, for example if you just need a but of flanger, or extreme stereo delay from time to time, then maybe you can use this with an external looper.

Not sure if it is just me, but the tuner is very diffifult to use and not a great aspect of the pedal.

It seems pretty well built. I would gig with it alone, as long as I had the power supply!

n/a

A good unit but not really good for playing live.

perfect for punctual use at home

If I lost it or broke it I would look around as this kind of product evolves greatly and there is surely something more capable on the market now.

This is a decent multi-effects unit if you're practicing, doing home recording, or playing the occasional show. It's not for the gigging guitarist, because, while it has good sounds and is easy to program, it has frustrating limitations that reduce its usefulness for live performance. The RP100 is a prime demonstration of why so many working guitarists still have pedalboards full of snaked-together stomp boxes instead.

The RP100 itself is a compact, dual-footswitch floor unit in silver and blue, with both plastic and metal components. The back holds 1/4" jacks for input, output, and expression pedal (which takes a standard passive volume pedal -- nice) jacks, plus a spot for the AC adapter (which you'll need -- the RP100 takes a slew of batteries and eats them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). The top consists of a two-character LED screen, some more LED lights as indicators, three adjustment knobs, two programming buttons, and a pair of footswitches at the front edge. There's no MIDI control, although there is a built-in tuner.

Having bought it used from the guitarist in my band, I figured out how to use the RP100 quickly without the manual, but I did download it from digitech.com to find out what some of the cryptic two-character LED codes are (although the important Amp Model and Effects ones are printed right on the unit, others are not), and to determine what the 40 preset effects patches are called (even though the manual doesn't reveal what their settings are).

The major downsides, which make the RP100 ineffective for live shows, are:

- Changing patches requires repeated tap-tap-tap on the footswitches. If you're at Patch 1 and want to go to Patch 18, you have to tap up 17 times -- and you hear every patch in between.

- It's easy to change patches accidentally, because to bypass the unit you need to press both footswitches at the same time, and to tune you need to press both and hold them. If you're slightly off with your stomp, you might end up going up or down a patch instead. That's particularly annoying if you mistakenly go down to Patch 80 from Patch 1, since 80 is an especially shred-o-licious Teutonic Metal God patch that you can't change.

- The expression pedal support is weak. Most patches use it only for volume control. The only other effects that take expression input are the various wah pedals and the Whammy pitch bender effects. (When you're using the wah or Whammy, the pedal doesn't control volume. I'm not sure which takes precedence if you try wah and Whammy together.) I was disappointed not to be able to vary the rate or depth of tremolo, phaser, delay, chorus, or reverb with the pedal -- something Digitech could have supported, but doesn't.

- When you're in Performance mode (i.e. not editing, tuning, or in bypass), only one of the three control knobs modifies anything useful: no matter what patch you use, they change output level (good), gain/distortion (tolerable), and amp model (useless!). Seriously, how often do you want to crank around trying different amplifier emulators while you're playing? I'd much rather be able to (again) change the tremolo rate or reverb depth. But no go.

If I were gigging with this box, I'd probably use it as a serial-offender single-effects box, setting it for tremolo, for instance, but leaving it in Edit mode so I could tweak the settings. Unfortunately, once I did that it would forget the setting if I changed patches. As it is, I only use it for practice and home recording, where it is quite a good unit indeed -- see below.

Here's the chain: Godin LG (dual humbucker) or Strat guitar into the RP100, with the output of a cheapie Italian volume pedal plugged in separately for expression control; an MXR Phase 90 phase shifter; Fender pedal tuner; Danelectro Daddy-O overdrive; SansAmp GT amp simulator; 1970s silverface Fender Princeton Reverb amp (12 watts of monster power, with 10" stock speaker). All run off AC power except the Phase 90, which is old and can't, but when it's bypassed it doesn't seem to consume any 9V battery, so that's good.

The first thing I noticed: the RP100 hisses. Take it out of the chain, and the background noise diminishes noticeably. The hiss isn't terrible, but it's there, and the built-in noise gate won't help. Otherwise, its sounds are remarkably good: quacky wahs, decent EQ and amp, pickup, and cabinet mic modelers, and a wide range of lush tremolo/pan, rotary, chorus, phase, flange, pitch/detune, and Whammy effects, plus delays and reverbs. Unfortunately, most of the interesting effects (from trem to Whammy) lie in one bank, so you can only run one of them at a time. (You can combine effects from different banks -- such as wah, amp sim, EQ, chorus, and reverb -- simultaneously.)

The preset patches are of variable quality, and in no logical order. You can have a nice shimmery clean chorus patch, tap a pedal, and suddenly be in too-loud, echo-drenched, harmonized, super-shred prog-metal territory. Worse, of the 80 patch spaces in the RP100, half (41 through 80) are locked and unchangeable, with only patches 1 through 40 ready for editing (which you can do to your heart's content, including really easy copying of an existing patch -- yours or a preset -- to another memory location as a basis for tweaking).

How the expression pedal works for you probably depends more on which pedal you choose than on the RP100. I found my cheapie Italian job just fine for wah and whammy, but something with more throw might give you finer control. The nice thing is, since you can use any standard passive volume pedal (or any other sort of volume control, really), you have lots of choices.

So, if you want rockabilly slapback, AC/DC crunch, Clapton's "Brave Ulysses" wah-ified Woman Tone, acoustic simulation, old tweed blues, or whatever else, you can probably find a decent approximation from the RP100. You'll just have a hard time if you want to switch between them or make adjustments on the fly during a gig, without breaking the flow of a song or show. And there's that hiss. Which is too bad, really.

It's not a Boss pedal or even Digitech's all-metal Whammy, but it's not flimsy like the Zoom and ART multi-effects monstrosities of the early '90s, or even many other models today. My guitarist did gig with it (though the moved to a Line 6 pod and then a Vox ToneLab, which has a lot more knobs and two built-in expression pedals) and mine is beat up, but it still works. I wouldn't use a backup -- but I wouldn't rely on the RP100 either. Instead, I'd use it to supplement further, more necessary effects on a pedalboard, and wouldn't sweat it too much if it broke.

Once more, it's durable enough for the basement, garage, or home studio, but not for rattling around in a touring van.

Used, out of warranty, and it works, so I have no idea since I've never talked to Digitech. Their website is pretty good, though, and includes manuals, so they get points for that.

Okay, I admit it: I'm a drummer. I studied guitar when I was a kid and play it when I record my own Penmachine Podcast of podsafe instrumental tunes, but I make my money behind the kit, and have since 1989. So the RP100 works for me, because I don't gig with it. I play sixties-influenced rock (as well as actual sixties rock in my cover band), with some blues and electronica styles thrown in. The RP100 _can_ get good sounds for me, but as I mentioned, some of the presets are more suited to '80s hair metal, as is typical with these sorts of units.

If it went missing, I'd check out the competition first, since its limitations are annoying. The RP100 has some great individual effects which can be layered into cool patches, but I wish it had broader expression pedal support, a way to run some of the time- and waveform-based bank's effects simultaneously, more intelligent performance-mode controls, and less hiss. But for $50 from my guitarist, it does what I need pretty well, and I shouldn't knock it.

But if I were making my living with my guitar? Well, I'd save up for a better, more expensive, more durable multi-effects box or, more likely, a serious multi-stomp pedalboard, which might have a Digitech Whammy on it.