DIGITECH WH-1 WHAMMY 1989-94 CATEGORY: EFFECT PEDALS

THE ORIGINAL DIGITECH WH-1 Whammy pedal is a great example of thinking outside of the box, literally.

- CHRIS GILL

It all started when DigiTech introduced the IPS33 Smart Shift Intelligent Pitch Shifter rack-mount processor - an affordable alternative to Eventide's Harmonizer processors during the late Eighties.

When a few enterprising programmers used a MIDI expression pedal to sweep pitch shifting parameters via MIDI Control Change commands, they discovered that the unit could create some very musically useful effects. The problem was it required some effort and an extra investment in external MIDI controllers to program and access those effects.