DigiTech RP-250

It's so easy making your own sounds with this. You can edit the entire preset in a few seconds. The manual is perfect. I have read (I usually don't read manuals but I wanted to learn the RP-250 very fast. I play with it (gigging or practicing at home or studios) for 2 years and I customize my sounds all the time. You can also adjust the settings of every preset in your computer via USB with the including programs.

Pretty good for the price of it. I have Marshall MG10 CD which doesn't support any kind of good sound (except clean channels) but I just got a Line 6 Spider III 30W and it is awesome. Also, I have been playing in a local studio for about a year now (on a Randall 100W head) and I'm totally satisfied with it. Although it's quite noisy but always remember the price you pay for this. It has very good clean effects (chorus, delay, reverb) and you can make some presets for Pink-Floyd-like stuff. Also, the distortion effects aren't perfect but they sure are above the average

Of course I can depend on it. It always there when I want it, never let me down. It's very hard and after being sodomized and abused during a gig or rehearsal all you have to do is to wipe it with a cloth and it's perfect again.

Never dealt with them but I have a feeling (judging from the software that came with RP-250

I play mostly progressive metal and I have to say that it is a good choice. I have been playing it for almost 3 years now along with a 10W Marshall (MG10) (bad combination) but also with various other amps. If it were stolen I think I would buy an Line 6 Pod x3 live because I think it's time to upgrade my gear. But, under other circumstances (low-budget or no-need for upgrading) I would definitely buy this again. I love it because we "grew up" together and it was my first effect processor but also it is a decent choice for every beginner and it can help you develop your skills. I wish it had better noise gate and better distortion effects but it still works with these. I have written all the material in my band with it and it definitely did what I was thinking or it sounds different from what I was thinking in first place and gave me new ideas. The last I would like to say is that you can't start playing guitar buying a 500$ processor. It's lame, it's unjustifiable and it is kind of showing off.

In other words: an amazing entry to average level effects processor

this thing definetley is not butt-simple, but its not rocket science. just read the manual over a few times, and the more you play with it the easier it becomes to use. the maunual is fine, im my expierience digitech is very thorough. i didnt like the preset patches, but i loved making my own, and digitech did make this function relativley easy.

i use a gibson SG special, an epiphone SG400, a homemade les paul junior, and a squier 51 into the RP250 into my 70s dean markley spectra. i use the effects live and amp models for demos on my tascam DP 01, and it all sounds great.

it is very durable, i have brought it to several gigs now without a gig bag, it gets thrown around the back of my car and has fallen onto pavement. great job digitech.

i am in a classic rock blues band, and i think this suits my needs of a multi effects box for stage use perfectly. i dont like tap dancing, so changing to another preset is an easy way of having a nice pedal board.

This thing is not that hard to use on its own but hooked up to a computer its as easy to use a line of pedals. Adjusting patches is as easy as picking an amp/cabinet combo, adding effects and then pushing save twice and you can repeat the process 60 times. If thats not enough for you they make a bigger one thats only 50.00 more and even has a few more models and options. I'd say the ease of getting a good sound out of it is relative to your expectations and what you are trying to use it for. I'll explain. If you think that you are going to put this infront of a Marshall JCM800 stack and that it will sound like the collection of pedals that it models with said amp, you WILL be VERY disapointed. If you think you will bypass all of amp/cab models and just try to use one of the effects models like say.. the tubescreamer or one of the wahs by themselves in front of a good amp, you will probobly be disapointed(although the delay and the whammy dont seem to do too bad in this manner). If you plan to use it with a cheap solid state amp or two(stereo) to get a variety of good sounds CHEAP then, you may be very happy. If you plan to use it with headphones or a computer, well you may be very plesantly surpised at how this thing shines through phones or when recorded with a DAW. Basicly, if you have a great amp with a voice of its own, this probobly wont agree with it. Even if you have a very transparent amp and your cab or speaker has a distinct voice of its own, you will have problems. Through a very clean transparemt amp and some flat response full range speakers, people won't believe what you paid for it. An easy expalnation would be; Sounds good through cheap s**t and sounds like s**t through good stuff. Strange but true! Through my Peavey TripleXXX tube amp = GARBAGE. Through my 2 Peavey Rage 158 15w combos = Heaven in my own home. Through the house PA in stereo on ladies night = sombodys getting pregnant tonight!

Don't be a snob! This thing costs 150.00$ brand new! Yes anyone that has had more than a few years musical experience WILL be able to tell the difference between this and the real thing, live or recorded but, the average person(ie. the audience) WILL NOT be able to. Do not expect it to sound as good as a 500$ processor although, I think for the money it comes incedibly close. Do not judge it by the presets, they sound horrible under any condition. Download the editing software, get a good set of headphones, hook it up to the computer via USB and create your sounds. Those sounds will get you in the ball park with the type of equipment I have mentioned. There is only one thing about this pedal that actually upsets me, there is no on and off switch. I think at any price an effects processor should have some sort of power switch. I also really miss the Sparkledrive model that the other digitech pedals have I had it on my old GNX2 and it kicked mucho a**!
!!!!!!!!!!!!THIS IS THE WEEKEND WARRIORS GREATEST WEAPON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well this area is where this thing acts its price. My old GNX2 eventually craped out on me and it cost twice this much, was made of REAL sheet metal(this stuff looks cast), and was made in the USA. So don't expect this thing to be bullet proof. If you use it to gig, baby it and absolutly don't let the drunks near it(band members excluded). The expression has held up remarkably well(I weigh close to 300lbs and love the wakka wakka stuff!) but the preset buttons like to get stuck(I've had to take apart at least 3 times over this issue and so has a friend of mine who has one). They are also too sensative, sometimes when I rock the wah pedal back just the weight of the cuff of my jeans hitting the preset switch next to it will send if flying through presets very fast. This is a disaster in the middle of a solo. I paid 150 for it 3 years ago and it still works so I guess I can't complain. If I were gigging with it regularly I would buy a second for a backup.

I have never had to deal with Digitech so I don't know. I buy most of my stuff from MF and good luck finding better customer service from any retailer anywhere. If you don't like it for any reason, send it back and they even pay for return shipping too!

In all truth this thing does not really rate a 10 but I am jacking it up a few points to make up for all the tone snobs who will never be happy with anything the average person can afford and all the kids who get it for xmas ,have played for all of six months and say "IT" sucks when "THEY" dont sound like Dragonforce or A7X or whoever the kids listen to today(damn, am I that old allready). If you can afford 500$ for a PODX3 or GT10, buy one of those. If not, do yourself the best favors you ever did and buy one of these.

I got this thing by Fedex and within a few minutes I was getting some killer tones and very useful effects.

I'm using a few guitars with this unit, a Schecter Damien B-2 with EMGs, an ESP Viper with factory ESP pickups, and a Dean Razorback with a Dimebucker...the unit doesn't cover up the individual tones of each guitar with nonsense, but each one sounds like it should. I haven't found too much noise in the mix but I still need to work with it a little more. So far so good...

It's built like a tank so it should be pretty reliable. I'm giving it a 5 because I haven't had it long enough to know yet.

Haven't used them yet, hopefully I won't need to.

I play lots of different styles from country to full-blown metal and I haven't failed to find something for each style here. I've played for 25 years now and I guess i've seen it all and played almost everything and I gotta say this is the best processor i've seen yet for the price. Yeah I could maybe do better but i'd have to pay hundreds more than I did for this unit. I think if something happened to it I might buy another one or maybe an upgrade to the new RP-500 or RP-1000, but i'd probably get one of these first.

The presets are ok I guess until I started tweeking stuff and found things that were close to my other setups. Editing is very much easy to comprehend and formulate. The wah is not that great but it works. I bought this from a friend who lost the manual but it is very much straight foward. If you can open a can of soup, then you can program this unit. He never upgrade the firmware and I did not like the sounds out of it until I upted it to the 2.0 version and it sounds 10000% better- more smooth

Im using my custom built guitar with a DiMarzio PAF PRO II humbucker and a Peavey backstage bandit 50 watt amp and it sounds great. I get some noise on some settings-( of course house wiring contributes to white noise ). Like I said earlier-Im not impressed with the wah. I tried all 3 and my Boss GT 5 wah sounds better. My band did instrumental rock - ie steve vai and joe satriani until I retired but I still use it for that stuff when I sit in on the studio practice. If only this unit had the chance to setup order of chain effects like my GT 5- ie put the wah behind the d/s or chorus then eq, etc...

I would take it on stage to see its potential and yes I would depend on it--- hell my wife likes it

never dealt with c/s

Like I said earlier - I do instrumental rock and I think it does ok.
I have been playing for 33 years but retired now-play for fun. If it was stolen, I may upgrade to the rp 500. Simplicity is what I love about this unit.

Simple to operate, back panel is very neatly labelled for input, output, head phone and auxillary inputs. Boots up pretty fast, but I would have preferred Digitech to put a on/off switch on the unit. The factory presets are pretty impressive in terms of tone. 1-60 are user programmable and 61 to 120 are factory set and cannot be wiped out. Out of the box, 1-60 are the same as 61-120. Simple edit function, press the down or up edit key to cycle through the various signal stages - from Pickup simulation to Expression pedal and then turn the knobs to adjust each parameter individually. The user manual is very well written and easy to comprehend

My set up is. Ibanez RG2550Z Stock Dimarzio (high out put pups), Cry Baby 535Q, Digitech Hardwire CM-2, RP250, Laney LV300. The RP 250 was great guns until I started using it as a boost pedal. It colors the signal and really doesnot help in boosting the signal. FOr isntance, my objective was to use the tube screamer patch as a boost by keeping the level up and the drive down and tone centered. Just like a over drive pedal would drive the guitar into the amp head. But the sound is disgusting. As these pedal models are simulations, there is a kind of hiss that is produced for a split second after you mute the guitar strings. I noticed this while driving my amp at a high volume. I tried every distortion pedal as a boost rather than distortion and the results were awefull. But drive the RP250 into a simple single stage cube amp and the simulated pedal sounds work well. It would be a huge WASTE to drive the RP250 into the dirty channel of a tube amp. High gain models lke the Metal Zone and Rat are pretty good. BUt then again you feel it is not the real thing. This drive me to go and buy the Hardwire CM-2 Tube over drive pedal. My quest for tone ended with the CM2 and was happy finally. BUt I noticed that the RP 250 also atenuated the guitar signal significantly. When I drive the LANEY with a CM2 I get more dynamic range than when driven with the RP250 -- To be honest, dont use this pedal on a pedal board if you have loads of analog pedals. It took me an additional 150 $ to find out how much this pedal sucks even in bypass mode. BUt I have kept the Rp250 as a back up. If I cant carry my laney and pedal board to a show, I would program my RP250 and take it instead.It is not true by pass

No Problem built like a tank.

UNit woudl not boot up due to a boot up failure. Digitech support responded withing 1 business day with secret key strokes to update the firmware via USB.

I would recommend this pedal for a begineer who wants to get a preview of how different pedals in the market sound. Its good to have in a jump start kit. Definitly not for pro recording or for road shows. My majot concern with this pedal is that is does not even come close to the characteristics of those classic pedals.

This is my first multi effects unit.So it's taken a bit to figure things out.As far as running through the presets it easy enough but call up a single preset out of them all is a small chore for me and there maybe some user error here.That is my only concern about using this thing live is i can't see using it as a stomp box due to having to fish thru the presets and user settings to find what i would want inbetween songs without disturbing the flow of the rest of the band.

There is alot of effects that are just play toys.There fun to play with but to me don't have a true purpose but lets face it there still fun to screw around with.At 41 i think i would be past that but i guess not.But the bottom line is real simple.How much do we as musicians pay out just to find one unique or great sound?.....To my taste this thing has at least 8 or 9 presets that i really like.Let alone all the ones i can dial in.I would gladly pay the $130 for one of these tones.Here is one that i really like.And i haven't even tried it with my non practice amps yet.I take the Fender twin reverb preset and run it through my little MG 10 Marshall with a small amount of amp gain and like magic classic Fender twin Blues tone and i mean grade a 100% recording sound like i said $130 for that tone alone without a doubt.And there several more to go Digitech in my opinion has hit a home run with this thing.

I'm giving this a seven even though alot of the rating is based on old digitech stomp boxes that lets face the facts were less then stellar.Ive had it for 6 weeks and so far so good.

I gave it an 8 i had some questions so i e-mailed there support team and there response could of been faster.It by far wasn't out of line but i don't think that it was a 100% effort either.

I play what i like to call electric Blues and hard driving Rock N Roll on a pro level.You know taking ole rock n roll tunes and making them your own on the lines of Thorogood and such.I also play Classic and Hard Rock.Some Rockabilly very little metal as metal as i get is like Judas Preist, Iron Maiden,Black Sabbath even then its just playing songs from the past...Ive been playing for almost 25 years at all different levels of Pro and hobbie.If it got ripped i would be pissed but it only cost $130 so easy to replace.I would replace it with either the same one or an upgrade to the next level if the upgrade included the tones i like.I wish i could figure a way for quicker transition of settings in between and during songs...I have had less skillful guitar players check this thing out and it helps there sound 10 times over....As i said earlier this processor is a huge homerun for Digitech.I would pay the cost of this unit for one of the tones it gives me let alone the 10 plus usable fantastic tones i'm getting .Great value from Digitech

I'm giving this a five for one reason -- this unit is not suitable for live use in my opinion, because of the difficulty of going in and out of bypass mode. If the two switches are not pressed EXACTLY together, it will scroll to another preset instead. Major hassle. If you just want it for playing at home or recording, it's probably not a problem, however I hoped to use this thing live. The only way I would use this live is by hooking up a hard-wired bypass loop box that would take the RP-250 totally in and out of the effects line. Now, as far as ease of use for tweaking the presets, etc, it's great. It's very easy to get up and running on this unit without even reading the manual.

I owned a some really nice amps and pedals and I'm picky. I have not been a fan of modeling technology up to this point but I found this box to sound really really good -- although you do need to tweak the presets as they are overly effected and too bright, for the most part. There are a lot of good crunchy tones in this box, and the delays, reverbs, wahs, etc sound great. While all the amp models are not spot-on, they are useful and like I said you can tweak them easily.

The plastic switches worry me a bit, and then there is the above-mentioned problem with the bypass and tuner modes, it's impossible to get in and out of these modes reliably without accidentally changing the patch. Very annoying and I will probably not be able to use it live for this reason. Otherwise it seems fairly well-made, time will tell of course, it's too early to say.

Don't know about the support so I can't comment.

Been playing for about 35 years, done pro gigs, tours, sessions, TV, clubs, etc etc. Have some nice vintage and boutique amps so I know what stuff is supposed to sound like. I like this pedal, for the price, & will probably use it mostly for recording and practice purposes. I'd like to gig with it if the switch problem wasn't there. If it was lost or stolen I probably would not replace it as for me it is not an essentially part of my kit -- not yet anyway.

With X-EDIT, quite easy. Some bugs need to be taken care of though, like moving patches - moved patch has a volume shut down and you have to power down RP to restore it. Editing with panel not to difficult too, 6 alphanumeric digits is better than 2 in Zoom G2.1u.

I am home-brew, occasional half-guitarist, but I also like to think of myself as an audiophile. I guess I know a nice sound when I hear one. I was balancing for a while between Zoom G2.1u and RP-250. I tried both units but in different shops. Honestly, both sounded pretty shitty with random guitar/amp setup I was presented each time, and with factory presets. I went for Digitech anyway because of more features.

Distortion sounds I was able to make quite quickly were quite damn good. If you expect that just switching one amp model will get you there, think again. "Amp modeling" is probably just approximation of frequency response, and just a fragment of overall sound, so no surprise there. I had to mix two distortions and one modulation at least to get thick, reach and full sound. Once I figured that out, I overwrote entire 60-preset user bank with my sounds in two days.

Clean sounds are something else - they might appear good to you if you haven't heard Small Clone Chorus for example. In comparison, Digitech sounds thin and dry, but not too bad overall. Bare in mind that Digitech also sells separate stomp boxes, so why shoot themselves in the foot by making 155 eur box that does it all perfectly.

Distortions are more important to me anyway. With some of them I created, I just could not stop playing.

Don't think it can be too reliable, after I took a peek inside. Robust plastic buttons with rubber tip are hitting cheap plastic switches soldered right on the circuit board. Never mind, I won't be playing in public any time soon, I could go for 6 for those who might. At least the pedal really feels solid as well as the box itself, so 7 after all.

If X-Edit can be put in here, than I'll rate it 8. Nice touch.

I am playing it with Ibanez SA and with AKG K-501 headphones most of the time, or rarely through Kustom 12-watt hybrid combo.

I used to have plastic Boss ME-something few years back. This one is much better. I wish I could compare it with Zoom G2.1u at home, with custom made patches. Zoom has better sampling freq of 96KHz that might add some value, but on the other hand, CDs are still being cut with 16bit/44Khz.

Once you get the hang of the interface it is pretty easy to use. You have a main knob that controls the function you are on, and the other knobs adjust the parameters for that function. The current operation you are working on is shown on the display. The software you get from the Digitech website is very easy to use, and provides a little extra functionality. The ability to download and share patches from the internet via the software is nice also. I didn't even look at the manual so I'm not sure of its quality, though it seemed pretty small for a manual.

The default clean patches are ok. The modeling, well... The default patches with alot of gain sound small and tinny, like you are playing inside a metal tube. They sound extremely digital. If you fiddle with it for awhile, you can get some usable tones. To be completely honest, my old POD 2.0 has much better sounding amp models and distortions. The POD sounded much warmer and less synthetic compared to the RP250. I have yet to get a big loud metal tone out of it, but then I am used to playing a modded 5150, so far this pedal doesn't even come close. The acoustic sims on the RP250 are kind of cool. The whammy is good as long as you are only using one note at a time. As others have mentioned, the wah is pretty nice. The reverbs and delays are pretty good and clean sounding. There is a delay that kind of bounces around in a set pattern...I found it to be more annoying than anything. The chorus and flange, eh, sound pretty digital, but much nicer than the chorus and flange on the POD. In general, I don't know if I am imagining things or what but it sounds like there is a very tiny delay from the time when you pluck a note until you hear sound. I question whether the processor is as fast as they claim it is.

It seems pretty durable. Its a sturdy metal housing. The buttons are set low so there seems to be very little possibility of kicking them off. I have other Digitech equipment that has never given me any hickups or anything so I am assuming this will do the same.

Only had to deal with them on an older device I own and it wasn't for anything that was broken, I just wanted the latest firmware (which they sent me for free and did it very quickly). Their website support is fairly easy to use and I've always found what I was looking for, which is mostly software related (downloads, etc).

I have been playing for 20 years or so. I'm not a pro or anything, I just play to please myself. I have a decent job so I have a good pile of gear, most if it I modified myself. I bought this device as something new to take to work with me so I can play on my lunch break. I think it will work out fine for this. I doubt I will use it for any kind of recording as it honestly doesn't sound that great. I wouldn't say there is anything in particular that I love or hate about it. I wish the modeling wasn't so digital sounding. I don't know what that weird delay thing is, maybe I'm imagining it. Overall I think it will work for what I wanted it for.