Digitech RP200
by Richard Hunter

I asked Richard Hunter about his Digitech RP200, he's agreed to have our discussion put up here for your interest, in addition to some other comments he's made since.

First off...

Richard Hunter says: I've used this pedal all by itself now, straight into the PA, with blues, rock, and general business bands, and it works perfectly in all these situations. I have very, very few problems with feedback, and the musicians I work with love the sound. In other words, it's a portable, complete, self-contained one-box setup for amplified performance.

Questions & Answers

G from Harp On: Now that you've had your Digitech RP200 for sometime what thoughts have you about it's performance?
Richard Hunter: I generally like it. I put in about 50 hours to set up the RP200 with 40 very-good-to-excellent patches though.

G: What do you wish was better about it?
R: The reverbs are weak and artifical sounding, though usable in small doses. I can't seem to make the wah work with harp without producing loads of feedback.

G: Whats it like when you use the bypass to just have a clean tone?
R: The bypass works fine, very clean, though it takes practice to hit both pedals at once. However, I like to use the Clean amp setting for the clean sound -- it has more body than a straight bypass -- and use my Morley A/B/C box to switch between clean and effected channels.

G: Do you use it much and does it serve your purposes well?
R: Yes and yes. I keep finding new sounds that I like. I recently realized that one of the Blackface setups I programmed is a dead ringer for mid-70s Taj Mahal amped tone. It does lots of different stuff, some very wild, some very stright-up, some just stuff you'd expect to hear from a different instrument, e.g. the Leslie emulator.

G: Is it possible to simply bypass all the tone/cab/micing so that you get just a reproduction of what comes in, and have just the effects?
R: Yes, can do. You can set amp to OFF, ditto the cab settings. Note that the effects are best used in conjunction with particular amp/cab types, so I wouldn't buy it and ignore the amp emulations.

G: Can you combine ALL the effects together, or is there a limitation to which effects can be used at the same time? E.g. Can Flanger, Phaser, Delay, Reverb, Compressor, Chorus, and wah all be dialled in at once?
R: Not all, but some. You can always have amp models, cabs, delay, reverb, wah, and compression. You can't get more than one of flange, chorus, phase, synth, yaya, whammy, or pitch shift at once, though whichever one you choose can be used in conjunction with any or all of delay, reverb, compression, and wah.

G: Can Wah, Volume & Whammy be all used at the same time with the pedal?
R: No. You can only assign the expression pedal to one thing at a time. Note that the expression pedal is VERY useful for bringing effects in and out, and it's a good idea to think hard about exactly what you want to use the pedal for on any given patch.

G: Also can you play with Wah, then with it set to a particular angle swap to volume expession, leave that at particular setting, swap to whammy and play with that, move back to wah ... if you see what I mean?
R: No, see above. You might be able to achieve something similar by switching between otherwise identical patches. But you can't swap the pedal assignment without reprogramming.

Regards,
Richard Hunter

In addition Richard notes...

I have supplied useful details for harmonica players, including four basic RP200 setups for harp at:

http://www.hunterharp.com
Turtle Hill Productions
turtlehill@earthlink.net
(203)459-9939 voice
(203)261-7646 fax

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