DigiTech: The DROP Polyphonic Drop Tune Pedal

Take a chord or a note and drop it in semitone increments by anything up to (or down to, depending on your point of view) an octave.

DigiTech have nailed this technology. You've heard of The Whammy, right?

The Drop allows you to drop your tuning momentarily (want to make that big fat E chord a big fat D chord for a couple of bars?) or you can decide to latch - there's a toggle that allows both. Excellent.

Setting 1 - Transposes guitar signal down 1 semitone
Setting 2 - Transposes guitar signal down 2 semitones
Setting 3 - Transposes guitar signal down 3 semitones
Setting 4 - Transposes guitar signal down 4 semitones
Setting 5 - Transposes guitar signal down 5 semitones
Setting 6 - Transposes guitar signal down 6 semitones.
Setting 7 - Transposes guitar signal down 7 semitones
Setting OCT - Transposes guitar signal down 1 octave.
Setting OCT + DRY - Transposes guitar signal down 1 octave and adds dry signal

Latency? Yes, but very little. I think it's less than you'd experience with most DAW software versions of similar products. My loose guess is somewhere between 64-128 samples which is very reasonable and useable given the size, price point and feature set of The Drop.

Tone loss? None to speak of considering the crunching this little engine has to do in such a short amount of time. I hope I demonstrate this in the video

True Bypass? Yes.

Easy to operate? Couldn't be easier.

There's a Dry/Octave below setting as well.

Useful? Absolutely. Fun? That too.

Today's tools:

Guitar: PRS Studio 10-top. Stock.
Amp: Laney VH-100R Clean Channel & L212 Cabinet (Greenbacks).
Cables: Providence
Mic: Shure SM57 (amp) Samson Airline77 (me)
Camera : Canon 60D (me) and Sony HDR CX150 (pedal)
Soundcard: AVID Mbox Pro 3
Computer: Apple iMac 27" i7 3.4 GHz 16 GB RAM
Software: Pro Tools 11, Waves CLA Guitars (slight comp over input track), Waves L3-16 Limiter (to keep levels in check at output), Apple Final Cut Pro X (video editing and Youtube compression).

[blackpanter]

this pedal is extreamlly good if you have floyd rose it save so much time. :)

[syazwan_ruslaine]

This pedal is so freaking useful, i think everyone should REALLY get this pedal.

[Texasbluesalley]

Great demo. Had no idea a pedal like this existed.

[illuminatiCorgi]

I'm actually really surprised how well it holds up. Sometimes with pitch modulation you get some 'wiggles' when your going lower, so happy days!

[javiceres]

Thanks for demoing clean sounds. Nobody does and almost feels like they’re kinda masking the actual sound of the pedal.

[FlavioCastro]

This review made me buy this pedal! Digitech, pay this man his deserved money!!!

[Bluesplayer]

Love it!! I think these things are so underrated for live work. Thanks for the in depth review

[BrettKingman]

Hey, no probs. Thanks for watching and for your support. Rock on!

[StevePrentice]

Great demo. So much easier than switching guitars, and makes practice easier too! Play along with the artists in the chords they chose, then drop the whole thing down to perform. Much easier than transposing manually. And that Aussie charm, Brett! How many guitarists have you ever heard saying "I need an extra arm"? Well, maybe if you're playing Steve Vai. Anyway, I'm sold.

[damienhutchinson]

Suddenly...my Danelectro Baritone became obsolete...
Pretty cool capabilities. Love the mixed octave mode.

[chrisdeibel]

I have seen many of your demos, and I appreciate the time you take to go through all these pedals and their settings. You ROCK!

[revsharp]

The shifting is great on these. I own the whammy dt. I really wish they would have added the up shifting option for capo sounds, but also because the dry + 1up oct option sounds great for copping a 12 string tone.

[JamesThompsonOldTimeTrucker]

First person to actually show the complete workings of the unit. I chopped up my index finger on my left hand some time back, and have been looking to find the IDEAL unit to help me out at the Church, SINCE i HAVE MY GUITARS TUNED IN "F", "C", and "D"---OPEN AS A STEEL GUITAR, without having 3 guitars on stage with me, and having to jump ship so many times at every song change... THANKS A MILLION GUY...

[xray]

I remember when this was a rumor last year. I'm glad they did it. I didn't really need the whole whammy thing. It's not perfect, but having a dedicated guitar is the only way you'll do better. Which isn't an option for some people's budget.

[markbramham]

This review is brilliant, I really appreciate how well you show the polyphonic tracking of this pedal - as I'm buying one to save tuning my guitar down from song to song in practice, and need it to cope with chords well without introducing too much latency and changing the sound too much (apart form frequency, of course!). THANKS FOR MAKING THIS VID!

[barrywuthrich]

Thanks. You are the only demo I could find that played some simple open clean chords. That is what I wanted to hear.

[Jeepjones]

The tracking on that pedal sounds amazing I didn't hear any lagging I'll be picking up one of those

[richjohnson]

You need to play at a higher volume to cover the sound of your strings. I almost was ready to return until I read about this issue. When I opened it and tested I didn't want to play loud and I was hearing the standard tuning along with the drop sound which is not good. Turned it up and it was perfect. It is happily situated on my pedal board now.

[Samadabedi]

My buddy plays in a cover band and he uses this pedal. Perfect for that application.

[burro]

it kinda loses the tone a little bit in my experience, it's not the same thing as actually down tuning, but in a gig it's very useful