Digitech Review: RP 100

History:

Purchase: Alto Music, Middletown $99

What I Like About This Digitech RP 100: Solid construction and easy to figure out. Will never replace a real amp, but some of the sounds are pretty good for my home recording situation. The sounds I generally go for are Neil Young/Crazy Horse, Nirvanaish/Foo fighterish, trashy grunge, and Radio Head, Velvet Underground. I worked up a nice clean tremelo that was nice and I was able to approximate most of the grungier sounds within reason. I like the Gain knob feature.

What I Do NOT Like About The Digitech RP 100: Can't smoothy switch between two sounds, like playing a distortion then punching into a break with a heavier distortion. Some of the other effects are very limited but I don't use them much anyway. I haven't found the gate very useful and the compressor is not musical at all.

Digitech RP 100 Quality Rating: Solid. The buttons and knobs seem to do what they are intended to do. Fairly logical layout.

Review Summary: There seem to be many of you who feel the need to trash this unit because the box can't get sounds that approximate the sound you get with your '59 les paul through a Vintage Marshall. Look, it's a digital box that cost $99. Get over it. Look at it for what it is. Why are you trying to bring this thing on to the stage anyway? I bought this unit to do direct recording in my apartment, mainly to put together demos of song ideas to bring to band practice. For that I think this pedal will be great. I think with some tweaking, you will be able to get useful sounds but if you are really that particular about your sound, you shouldn't be worrying about what this $99 digital effects box sounds like anyway.

Rating of this Digitech product: 4

This Digitech RP 100 Guitar Effects Review Submitted By: bar chord

Review Date: 2003-09-17