Product Review: Digitech PR100 Guitar Effects Pedal

I am cheap. I can squeeze a penny 'till the zinc oozes from the middle. I guess my skinflint ways pay off about fifty percent of the time, anyway. When I spent $99.99 (plus tax) on the Digitech RP100 Guitar Effects Pedal, I could definitely say it was indeed a 50/50 payoff!

This eighty channel unit, which runs off of either 6 AA batteries or a 9 volt/130mA optional power supply ($29.95), is small and light, but surprisingly durable. It can be used in stereo, mono, or through headphones so as not to disturb your square-ass neighbors and/or housemates!

It has a drum machine, digital tuner, pickup simulator, compressor, wah-filter (both automatic and manual controlled with an optional "expression pedal"), reverb and delay in both analog and digital, amp modeler, cabinet simulator, noise gate, phaser, chorus, and flanger. The RP100 has 40 factory preset channels and 40 user-programmable channels that can be changed by stepping on the either of the two main buttons to go up or down in channel selection.

It has many good qualities. The chorus, wah, phase, flange, delay and reverb sound awesome, as one would expect from Digitech. The Amp modeler does a great job of imitating the sound of a dozen vintage amps, the most realistic ones being the Marshall JCM900, '65 Fender Twin Reverb, '57 Fender Tweed Deluxe, Mesa Boogie Mark II C, and that great old British Invasion amp, the Vox AC30 top boost.

The Cabinet simulator, used to simulate an openly-miked amp when plugging straight into the mixing board, is very realistic. It simulates 4 different kinds of cabilnets combined with four different microphone-placement schemes. The modeler and simulator used together while running the guitar through a PA channel makes a sound virtually indistinguishable from a vintage amp!