DIGITECH WHAMMY IV MODIFICATIONS

The DigiTech Whammy burst onto the scene as one of the first pedals to provide expression controlled pitch-shifting, detuning and harmonising in stompbox form. It featured over a dozen harmony options and several octave pitch shifting capabilities to become an inspiring tool adapted by many guitarists around the world. Musicians such as Tom Morello and Dimebag Darrell integrated the Whammy into their sound and ‘bag of tricks’, whilst it has featured on may stand out recordings like “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes and “My Iron Lung” by Radiohead. More of these Whammy moments are discussed over at i heart guitar.

The Whammy has seen a few iterations since its inception over a decade ago. The original WH1 is still a highly coveted pedal due to its pitch detection algorithm designed by IVL Technologies. This algorithm could be used in both pitch shifting and harmonising an audio signal, and featured in only the WH1 and its successor, the WH2. These older units are thought to have superior tracking to the reissue. After both of these units were discontinued, a short run of third generation Whammy’s were made called the XP100 Whammy-Wah, combining the Whammy features with wah options. After the lack of success of these units, DigiTech reissued the original as the WH4 – the current model that is seen on pedalboards everywhere.

Tom Morello was my favourite guitarist growing up as a teenager and the Whammy was my first “real” pedal. But like many users, I found some of the features as limitations. The difference between your original signal and clean signal were noticeable and is commonly referred to as “tone suck”. Also, the selection of preset via the rotary knob made changing settings on-the-fly extremely difficult, especially mid-song. So I thought that I would offer some cubisteffects modifications to the DigiTech Whammy to get around these short-comings and make it a much more versatile tool.

I have two more mods on the ‘drawing board’ and will update this page as they come to fruition.

The cubisteffects DigiTech Whammy modifications involve a True Bypass mod and a Preset Switch mod.

TRUE BYPASS

In this mod the Whammy has a 3PDT switch added and is true bypassed, preserving your original guitar tone when the effect is off. This pedal is known to be a “tone-sucker”, so by using true bypass, we can maintain the clean tone you battle for. A bright waterclear red LED is also added next to the main switch to indicate on or off.
The original on/off switch is a momentary switch that not only activated the pedal, but is also used to calibrate the treadle of the pedal. This is an integral part of the pedal and is not removed, but changed to a smaller switch I have placed on the top of the pedal (pictured right). This new switch acts as a “Master” on/off switch and can be held down to calibrate the pedal. The small LED marked “Effect” indicates whether the Master switch is on or off.

PRESET SWITCH

I had repaired a WH2 awhile back and it had a great feature where the presets were selected by an up/down stomp mechanism, rather than the rotary knob on the reissue. This was quite useful in getting to settings quickly and without bending down to adjust – especially mid-song. So I have made a modification that allows you to use a two-button auxiliary switch to select up and down between the presets. This modification involves the addition of a stereo jack to the Whammy that can be then patched (via TRS cable) to the auxiliary switch for more flexibility. This modification includes the addition of the jack, one 1/4″ stereo to 1/4″ stereo (TRS) patch lead and one sparkly red cubisteffects two-button auxiliary switch (pictured below). Not only does this add more options to your playing, but can add some interesting sounds to inspire your next song. Check out the demo below.

C.