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Bradley wrote:Two digital pedals you might find interesting are the Digitech Whammy pedal and the Line 6 Digital Delay mutlieffect. The advantage a whammy pedal vs a whammy bar is that whammy bars have a tendency to knock you out of tune very quickly. Obviously, a pedal effect will not do that.

i have a Whammy pedal, and I have guitars with Floyd Rose Licensed (Jackson), Washburn Wonderbar (two of these) and a knock-off Bigsby on them. Here is my opinion on experience with all these:

There is no comparison, the Whammy pedal isn't even in the same arena. A properly set up whammy bridge will not go out of tune unless you break a string, and then you're very screwed.

Of the three whammy bridges I have, the Wonderbar is the best, the Floyd and the Bigsby knockoff are second, and the Whammy pedal is last. First of all, the Whammy pedal is all but useless for more than single notes. Chords (especially, for example, something like a minor barre chord that you'd like to throw a little vibrato onto) sound totally messed up. Single notes don't even track perfectly by my standard, as there is a small but noticeable time between when the note is struck and when the pedal locks onto it.

The Wonderbar keeps excellent tune, the Floyd is fine as long as I have enough springs on it (three or four, depending on string gauge and overall tuning/drop tuning of the guitar), and the Bigsby-knockoff is fine ever since I put a roller-style bridge on the guitar. Without the roller bridge, the Bigsby-knockoff would leave the strings in tune or slightly sharp or flat, depending on how they settled against the heavy-friction saddles of the normal type bridge.

Don't think a Whammy pedal is a substitute for a whammy bridge. It isn't. What it does best in my opinion is its "detune" mode, where it produces a non-oscillating chorus type effect. It works alright as a pitch shifter (i.e. up a major 3rd, or down a 5th, etc) for single note melody lines, but even there, it's noticeable that there's a digital effects box in play.

I also would recommend the Line6 Delay Modeler. I'm really happy with it.

Be careful of Floyd Rose though; they are a serious pain in the dick and chaning the strings is a baffling ordeal. I think the Floyd Rose is made specifically for people who are gonna be using tremelo a lot, and are really picky about it. If you just want to have it there at your disposal, ol' Floyd might not be your friend.

Plan B: Go to guitargeek.com and copy J. Mascis' setup exactly: http://guitargeek.com/rigview/223/.

I'm only joshin'.

I too found the Floyd Rose to be a pain in the ass to restring.

and the Line 6 Delay multi-effects box is IMHO the only decent thing that line6 has put out. it's a great pedal.

I am an assmaster:-

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