Digitech’s Best Kept Secret!

on today's episode i'm gonna make you like a pedal from 2005 that gets no attention and costs hardly anything and if by the end of this video you don't like it you can just unsubscribe [Music] in 2005 digitech the digital division of dod released these three pedals that are now this kind of lost and forgotten subseries that i think are really important to the evolution of pedal and especially dsp they are these guys right here so you have the ex7 expression factory the df7 distortion factory and the cf7 chorus factory and today i'm going to focus in on the distortion factory this is a pedal that i have used on and off on a pedalboard and at one time had it on a desk in a studio and just really enjoyed it i think it's phenomenal and i think that most of the internet poops on it without giving it a chance so i want to set it up by just saying this is a time in petals when dsp still isn't absolutely accepted like it is today we have hx by line six we have strymon this is still in the dark ages so to speak but right before people start to trust it we have seen petals similar a multi-distortion that claims it can do different distortion pedals you've heard well we had seen that before in the line six but this is huge and this is small and this starts to open up this idea of a compact pedal that does a lot and they claim that it does all of these units here this is the original ad copy they claim it does a tube screamer a 250 a ds1 a rat a big muff their metal master and a metal zone and we'll look at this each time we do a jam but we're going to compare it to those and i just want to say lastly that even myself doing the muffaletta the bonsai and the pack rat it's a bit of a tip of the hat to what digitech did digitally i did it with analog and i think that this is as worthy as any of these pedals i've done for any guitar player who wants different sounds and this is definitely much more affordable so with that said let's jump into a couple things i'm going to use and then we'll do some jams the very first mode we're going to try out and compare is mode one when we look at this original ad copy you see the 99 dollar tube screamer so what i'm going to do to raise the stakes is i'm going to use a 1982 with the sacred chip apparently it's sacred this guy's expensive it's like 400 ish bucks maybe maybe even more so we're gonna compare it uh to the mode one we're gonna shoot it out in a jam and the way that's gonna work and you might have seen this on the show i have this device called the switchback and a remote on the floor basically when you see the green light on this is in that loop the original pedal that's how it'll be on all of these and then when you see the red light that means i've hit the switch and you'll be hearing the distortion factory we'll go back and forth i'm going to use the delay a little bit every time so i'm going to use the x series delay the digital delay this is the version from china i'm not going to really explain that here and i think we just jammed we're going to jam see what happens and see if i can convince you that you've been wrong about this pedal that you probably didn't even know about [Music] [Music] hey [Music] man i heard such a huge difference um this is just obviously so much different and you know the biggest thing i learned is there's no way that this digital emulation could ever match the real thing and i think when it comes down to it if i could buy this for 65 right now on reverb i'd rather spend you know four or 500 on this i think everyone agrees also my slide tone was better than red shells the next model we want to shoot out is model 2 it is seen here on the sheet as the 39 dod 250. this refers to the 90s reissue those are now a couple hundred bucks but i'm gonna spice it up and play a vintage one here's a yellow one these are about 250 now but i even want to get a little more crazy i i want to i want to keep the stakes going up so i'm going to use an original gray box uh i have the gray box and here it is look how beautiful this is a very coveted petal these are like 800 now i think it's because of how good the the foam nick you want to smell the foam such a good foam smell so i'm going to shoot this out remember green light is the original red light is this uh i used tape delay from this delay on the last one i'm gonna do like a really hard one repeat slap back on a solo section and just act like i know what i'm doing and play random notes and see if it fits into the song [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] are we sure the the switch was switching did you get was it actually going back and forth because it's weird like this is so expensive and yet this people have pooped on this and do they sound the same i don't think it was working was the switch even working i was it was working yeah we confirmed this yeah oh man isn't that weird how like they sound identical yet digital is supposed to suck and this is like from like decades ago that's really strange mode three right here is representative of a boss ds1 so at the time these are 39 and you know it is what it is so i'm gonna again raise the stakes i'm gonna use an original silver screw i have the box and this is a really coveted model these are like 350 bucks or so black label japan silver screw apparently it has the sacred op amp so let's shoot it out here and there's really no way they'll compare it's not possible impossible [Music] [Applause] [Music] man i uh it just sounds so much different it's crazy i can't believe the things i just heard it's like when i stare at that light switching it's wild to just know yeah they sound so much different this thing sucks i love this so much more next up if you can count like me it's mode 4. it is the rat we see here 99 but again let's just go all the way let's do an 84 white face this uh sell one for 800 bucks it's insane it's crazy let's shoot them out uh obviously this is gonna win because it costs more so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] okay dear josh youtube thing hold up the white okay there is nothing better than this pedal there's no way the digital pedal ever compares you could hear clearly that this pedal is better and i'm sorry for doing a video like this and deceiving you all the digitech pedal is not good it's not cool and it doesn't look right you should not listen to anything i've said and this pedal is the best pedal and you should pay all that money for it sincerely the gear page okay next up is mode five it is one of the most hated and loved pedals in the world it's the thing where everyone says they hate it but yet they've sold a million i hate it it is the boss metal zone mt2 ironically you can buy this for about 50 and this is like 65 but just to keep going here and to compare this may be the one that really hangs us up and they just can't nail it i guess we'll see [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] you heard it for yourself first of all we kind of played metal it still wasn't what i'd call metal what what is that genre addison is it like new metal is that like post metal pre-metal folk metal yeah we did we did it's pretty good i had uh the whole rig inside of a noise gate as well so it cut off really clean i mean you could hear the difference i'm sure so with that said let's move on to the next mode the next mode is mode six it is a digitech pedal called the metal master from the x series i'm not gonna demo it you can check this out these are great it's a pedal that does like the hm2 metal zone it does like a ton of metal sounds and it's a good point here to interject something i didn't bring up in the beginning which is this x series existed and then we have these factory pedals these three that came out and they should be seen as a stepping stone from the x series and this is the stepping stone and then you end up with the hard wire the tech got better and better the hardwire stuff is phenomenal probably do something on that at some point uh let's jump now to the next mode which is the big muff if we look here on the sheet it's a russian kind of the smaller box stigma 59.88 they're currently you get it for about 150 bucks i have one it's problematic because it's never been out of this box i have the box i don't want to oh actually i'll open it a little um it's uh do i have to open this can i you don't have to i mean i feel there's pressure there's like people and i don't can i you know oh man don't let the oxygen oh it's in the bag it's it's in the bag uh i'm gonna close it quickly it's never been played or touched by human hands i have a similar one here so i'm gonna do this this will be the last jam and i think we need to try to sludge it up can we sludge it up yeah i'll add some delay and kind of like if weezer and dinosaur junior and like the bass player from creed got together [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] hey this is josh from the future i'm wearing a different shirt and things because it's the future and i didn't dress the same i just want to say it's bothered me you know we're here on the editing process the jam's wicked sick but i'm really concerned because i didn't express something i deeply love about the big muff setting on the df7 that is this the normal big muff has three controls right it's cool it's awesome you can start a band dinosaur junior example but the tone control does one thing and it gets lost sometimes because it doesn't have mids but this gives you three tone controls bass mid treble big muff you ever seen a big muff with bass mid treble maybe probably not it's one of my favorite things about the pedal and i left it out so this is josh from the future i'm gonna walk away and then you're gonna keep watching this and this never happened that's it it's a final jam uh i think the point has been made that just because something looks a little strange and is supposed to be carbon fiber but it's not doesn't mean it's not a great pedal you should check these out they're all over the place pawn shops craigslist your closet trunks of cars you can check it out i did some basic math and i did the calculations for inflation not because i'm good at math but because i just use google and it adds up to 65 currently i know a bunch of you are whining about the price is gonna jump up or whatever there's enough of these out there and if you'll just hold your horses and settle it down the price will probably level back out and they'll be like a whopping eighty dollars in about a month but if you want to buy all the classic pedals in their current state 2500 to 3 000 versus this i think the point has been made and i do want to say i've done a lot of research i've talked to a lot of people from digitech i'm still learning about all these lines the dod history as well and this is a very good example of companies don't make things people do and there were three people in particular that seem to be most involved here and i may leave someone out but i want to give them a big huge shout out because these engineers are invisible the first one is craig devry he did the hardware he was over how the hardware function and everything then we have jeremy geisler who designed all the dsp so the way that it actually sounds and how perfect it is that was actually jeremy and then there was a project manager of sorts i believe he was the ears of the project the guy that said this sounds perfect this is exactly right he felt it out he heard it out and his name was billy clement so big shout out to them this pedal is cool in the comments let me know what you think and if you've ever seen this and if you've ever played it one last thing i want to mention is there is a mixer output on this i didn't want to clutter this video and get into that because it's honestly a whole other video but this has an amazing cab sim now this is 2005 and this is way before the big cab sim ir craze that we're in now it's phenomenal so when you have the pedal on and you're using the overdrives they match a certain cab they think goes well with that pedal and then when it's off you can still use that with your other pedals i'm gonna do a wednesday live this coming wednesday where we have this expression factory the chorus factory and this i'm going to show the cab sims some other digitech pedals and it'll just be a fun time of exploring these factory pedals uh so tune in for that let's go to record time today's record time is brought to you by plans death cab for cutie's album from 2005 when this pedal came out i think this is an overlooked record that i really enjoy for a lot of people it's when death cab sold out but it's when i really bought in you know that's what i'll say about it my favorite song is brothers on a hotel bed crooked teeth is the perfect example of what i think death cab sounds like soul meets body i will follow you into the dark every song's good that's all i know to say go check it out let me know in the comments if you like this if you hate it and what your favorite death cab album is if you're a fan [Music] thanks so much for watching this episode i hope you enjoyed it if you did click like subscribe to the channel and there's a bell icon you can hit that to get notifications of future episodes be sure to let me know in the comments below what your favorite mode was what your thoughts were about this also come and join us on wednesday where we play all of the different pedals that are involved in this series also you can go over to band lab and jam with us with these jams you can play metal with us because we played metal i think it was metal was that metal as mel you can come like play metal you can come scream over that song see ya [Music] you

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 165,625

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, overdrive pedal, chorus pedal, distortion pedal, boss pedals, compressor pedal, univibe, delay pedal, octave fuzz, reverb pedal, reverb, eq pedal, boost pedal, behringer

Id: HSu1pWot2Cg

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022