Digitech Whammy Pedal

The Whammy pedal can pitch shift and harmonize. It's not a noise generator, and it won't really help you make feedback or chaos. It will help you get detuned sounding shit once you learn it though (and the Whammy is not really hard to use, contrary to what some may say).

it's a -really- digital sounding pedal. it can sorta sound like MBV, but to the best of my knowledge kevin shields never touched one (on record that is... live, maybe). you can really hear it on tom morello's stuff with rage against the machine- lots like really obvious pitch changes and like pseudo record scratching efx. almost synthy. not something i would call particularly noisy or chaotic at all.

sonic youth and mbv both use altered tunings exclusively, and both use surprisingly spare pedalboards. j mascis used to just rock a big muff, pretty much. and ALL OF THE ABOVE use jazzmasters and/or jaguars... i'd say pedals are the dominant force at work in those cases.

are NOT the dominant force, i mean.

use lots of reverb and a whammy BAR :)

you need the 'how to recreate classic sounds thread' below. it's all on there - basically jags/jazzers and reverse reverb

Thanks for the info. I'll check out that thread. Are those specific guitars really that much of a part of it? That's interesting.

If I connected my MXR to a Bigmuff (which one of my friends is kind of looking to sell), would it add anything to the sound, or just make it sound really crappy?

Hey Lee,

Authentic vintage Jaguars and Jazzmasters have what Fender calls a "Floating Bridge" which, when used in conjunction with the tremolo, is responsible for a lot of the blurry, warped tones of MBV and Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth.

Shields claims that recording the guitars via a split signal with a slight delay out of one of 2 amps is more responsible for the Loveless sound than any pedal or effect.

One more thing:

Effects/processors/pedals are a false grail in most regards.

Technique is much more important, esp. with that long trem/floating bridge sound from a vintage jaguar/jazzmaster.

yeah but guitars can be false grails too. i think youd be fine with any guitar that had a tremelo arm, you just gotta practice with it

Steve Shasta mostly OTM above.

However, the reverse reverb from a Yamaha SPX-90 (Isn't Anything used an Alesis MidiVerb) is requisite for MBV stylings. The Waves R-Verb DX plug-in has a very convincing reverse reverb as well, if you happen to use a computer for recording.

I figure Shields used the Whammy for those detuned interludes on Loveless.

That was Colm doing most of the interludes!

Interesting. I was always led to believe Colm had very little to do with Loveless. He was ill at the time, and the bulk of the drum tracks were created from samples of his playing during pre-production.

But either way, it's like a pitch shifter of some sort was used to create those interludes.

I read in some old interview with Shields that the Digitech was only used for the live "holocaust" in YMMR

Tracks

Title
Composer
Time

1 Only Shallow Butcher, Shields 4:17
2 Loomer Butcher, Shields 2:38
3 Touched OCiosoig :56
4 To Here Knows When Butcher, Shields 5:31
5 When You Sleep Shields 4:11
6 I Only Said Shields 5:34
7 Come in Alone Shields 3:58
8 Sometimes Shields 5:19
9 Blown a Wish Butcher, Shields 3:36
10 What You Want Shields 5:33
11 Soon Shields 6:58

indicates Track Pick
indicates a click-through to a song review

"Touched" is the most interludey type thing I could remember on the album.

The most interludy track, but there are interludes between EVERY song. E.g., the one at the end of "Only Shallow," which is definitely guitar/whammy.

Touched is merely manipulated keyboard samples, if I remember correctly. No geetars on that one.

JAM UR HYPES OTM about the end of Only Shallow.

I just rented a Digitech Whammy, and I think Black Arkestra is right. I can't hear an instance of a Whammy on My Bloody Valentine's studio discography.

I'm guessing he dropped the Whammy one or two octaves down and fed it through lots of distortion for the outro of YMMR.

Otherwise, it is a very cool pedal. You can get lots of creamy, moogy type effects using the octave up. The pitch harmonizing presets are great for country leads and pedal steel simulation.