Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Well after leaving this thing in the closet for a few years I pulled the whammy back out.

I put it on my pedal board cause we are now doing Killing In The Name by RATM, I couldnt figure out anyway to cover the song without the pedal. After fooling with it, Morellos solo is really quite easy. Just set the thing for 2 octaves up and punch it in with pattern he uses.

I also have a Line 6 Delay modeler. My first preset in there is and Echoplex, Ive got the delay set real tight so when you kick it in it gives you a doubling effect. It also gets a real analog guitar sound. We happened to play SMoke On The Water at a gig a few weeks ago and it really made the guitar sound good on that. But I was reading up somewhere on Jimmy Page and he used an echoplex, specifically on the song Whole Lotta Love. The trick I learned was that I kick the delay in from the start with my preset to thicken the sound up. Then when we get to the freak out sound part. I tap in the tempo and walla it gets the repeats going. I then just scrap the e string over the pickup area and get al kinds of weird sounds, then couple that with the Whammy at 2 octaves up and I can get that bee hivey type sound. Weve been playing Whole Lotta Love for a while but we ussually just get into a kind of funk jam at this point. This weekend at our gig Im going to freak the crowd out with some noise.

Messing around with RATM material made me realize that there is a lot more to guitar than just shredding. There are a world of sounds available with a few simple effects.

The whammy has another setting I like which is a fifth up. Songs like The Boys Are Back In Town use this in the solo and being the only guitarist it really fills up space. Even Sweet Emotion has a fifth come in during that hammering single note run. Listen real close and you can hear it on about the 5th bar. We do Whipping Post sometimes and this pedal allows me to get that harmonized guitar sound.

The other setting Im using is the 1 octave down. This gives you the classic dive bomb effect. I dont have whammy sytems on my guitars so I use this for Van Halen and stuff that has those dives.

I just thought I would enlighten folks on the use of a Whammy Pedal. I have an origianl red one but the one I use live is the black Whammy II. It has a toggle function which allows me to use a couple of settings in one song if need be.

Anyway anyone looking for a very useful pedal chaeck out a Whammy Pedal. Im glad I got mine back out of the closet!

Messing around with RATM material made me realize that there is a lot more to guitar than just shredding. There are a world of sounds available with a few simple effects.

The words of a TRUE guitarist. 'Guitar doodlin' is fun

shoot jw, justin chancellor of tool is a whore with his whammy pedal, some songs he's rocking it up and down with tremelo or delay changing his triggering of it over the song, I wish I had one

I own a Digtech EX-7 Expression Factory, and I love to go crazy with the Whammy setting that's built in. I guess it's missing some of the features of the stand-alone Whammy, but it definately gets the job done.

huh seems like it might be a lil more affordable (when I finally get disposable income again) lemme guess its missin the harmonizer setting?

Did a gig this weekend and really was using my Whammy. We played Killing In The Name and that is the 2 octave up setting. For basic rock solos I set a fifth up which gets a cool twin guitar lead sound. Any time you get a slow legato type line going this will really make the parts stand out. Then I have an octave down setting which I use for a dive bomb effect at the ends of songs. Just hit the low E and drop it all the way and slowly bring it back up. I didnt use the detune mode any that I remember. I also do a noise section for Zeps Whole Lotta Love and use the 2 octave up setting to play with some massive tape echo delay. Sounds really cool.

I went thru a period of using very few effects and now I seem to be back using them again. Im back using the Bad Horsie Wah pedal on almost every solo as a tone device not just a wah.

Ive got a reverse setting in my Line 6 delay modeler that works real well for Legato type lines also. I had a guitarist there who after we were done was wondering how I got that sound.

I just think adding a few extra sonic textures keeps the music interesting.

The Digitech Expression Factory's Whammy mode can harmonize seconds, thirds and fifths, as well as one octave up, two octaves up, one octave down. It also has a "detune" mode for chorus effects. It doesn't have the "divebomb" effect that the newer Whammy has. It also doesn't have MIDI. It sells for about $300 new, but I bought mine on Ebay for $150.

Great pedal with a huge number of uses.
Midi makes it that much more useful.

For those not familiar, keep it first or as close to first in the chain as possible and it also helps to link it through a true bypass looper as there are latency issues in the signal. There is a little bit of sag.

Great pedal though and can even be used as a chorus.

JW, I have a Boss PS 5 Harmonizer pedal and I love it. I use it in Can't Get Enough by Bad Co. for that 2 part lead. I also use it in Sign Of The Gypsy Queen (dual lead), The Birthday Song by the Beatles I drop it down an octive in A and play the high part.

I first heard the whammy pedal on Satriani's "Searching".
[url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Mq2X2RvBo[/url]

I loved that arpeggio sound so much I sat down and learned it. Now I need a whammy to make it sound complete

Your band should cover that tune

The Digitech Expression Factory's Whammy mode can harmonize seconds, thirds and fifths, as well as one octave up, two octaves up, one octave down. It also has a "detune" mode for chorus effects. It doesn't have the "divebomb" effect that the newer Whammy has. It also doesn't have MIDI. It sells for about $300 new, but I bought mine on Ebay for $150.

Well I'm a bassist who stabs at Tool's work so that sounds like a pretty good pedal for me, just run it through the other digitech I have (or replace it cuz the case sh!t the bed on me) and that should provide the right bass sound

Keep in mind that Justin Chancellor uses a "Digitech Bass Whammy". I don't know what the difference would be aside from supposedly having a couple of unique functions, but they're hard to find and too expensive anyway.

I love my Whammy pedal. I use it mostly to thicken up my tone with the 4th/5th setting. Octave setting is also one of my faves. I barely use the dive bomb stuff but when I do I love it !!

Anybody out there use a MIDI controller to change settings during songs? How do you have it setup?

Also, where in your effects chain are you putting the Whammy? And do you use your effects loop or go straight in?

thanks!

Tom Morello is like the god of using weird effects that most guitarists would throw out as cheezy. He's a great guitarist in most ways and I respect his ability to take a cheezy sound and make it actually work. Whammy is a good example. Metallica's song on the Mission Impossible 2 sound track also had a pretty sweet whammy use.

@raintree - my pedal board consists of 1st an A/B switch to alternate between my mesa stack which I use for built in overdrive on rhythm and solos and (this might surprise you) a Crate V120 combo for my special effects which I have the B channel that goes to the Crate runnign to the pedal board and the A channel straight to the Mesa. That said my board has first an effects processor that I mostly use for delay, then followed by a danelectro overdrive for classic rock sounding lead tones, then a Korg guitar processor that has a built in Tremonti Whammy which is mostly what I use taht processor for, and then lastly my tuner and more rock tone overdrive solo pedal I tend to use.

That said - you could say my whammy is kind right in the middle of my board setup with an overdrive and delay ahead of it, and another overdrive behidn it so I can use various overdrive tones combined with the wammy or even delay on it.