Speed of Sound

I'd bought a Digitech RP350 Guitar multi-effect pedal. It cost me Rs11700. I'd been targeting this music gadget for a very very long time, because all these while i was using my friend's old Digitech RP80, but as i got more used to the sound, i started to get sick of it.

When i brought this new gadget back, i was damn excited and the first thing i did was to jack-in my Fender guitar and then jack in the pedal to my Marshall 10W amp. For an instance, there's no buzzing noise at all when i turn on the amp, unlike the RP80 which produce lots of hissing unwanted noise. Then the second thing i did was to test the difference between direct connection between guitar and amp, with connection of guitar->multi effect pedal->amp, under the Bypass mode, the sounds between both are indistinguishible, which i'm real happy as the old one has so much sound loss at the 2nd test. This pedal brought me to a whole brand new world of tones. It has total of 118 different models of tones, including Distortions, Wah wah, lots of Amps models, lots of Cabinet models, Compressors, Delays, Reverbs, Chorus/FX, Drum machine, USB interface for computer recording and tuning, built-in Tuner, built-in Expression pedal etc etc.. For those who do not know a single term that i wrote above, you're forgiven cz few months ago i was in the same situation.


The sound it produce is very very raw and 'analog', full of power and pump, without any distorted sound, unlike the old RP80 which sound very flat, unreal, muddy and 'digital'. It uses a latest digital music processor (DSP) - AudioDNA2, which is better and more well developed than any other brand's DSP in the market today. The learning curve of this machine is darn simple, and it only took me 15 mins to understand all how they work. I love the tunes a lot, but i'm yet to discover all of them. Imagine mix & match 118 different effects, the net sum is enormous, and the results is never predictable. Sounds are perceived differently by different people, some are sensitive to even slight change in tone and frequency; some are totally tone deaf, while some cannot tolerate whatsoever sounds.. Sounds can hardly be described by words, as i'd tried so hard. It's a very subjective interest and i presume not many people who read this post will understand much, if at all, what i was talking about.

A multi effect processor is never as good as a real life Amp or Cabinet or analog single effect stomp boxes. However, imagine it had digitally combined 118 types of real life huge amps & cabinets and numerous pedals on the floor into one small piece of machine and reproduce them to be as "real" as possible, plus the price is like 118 times cheaper, for an amateur guitar player like me, it's more than enough for daily practicing, even playing live and recording. I love my Digitech RP350, as i think it's better than any other products of the same line of other brands elsewhere. I hope it'll last me for a life time, as long as my beautiful fingers can still dance and tap on the fret board of the guitar. My personal target as a guitarist is to become a guitar player who're able to perform on stage well, so that people will say" oh, this guy is not bad". I'd not dreamt of becoming as good as my guitar heroes like Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), or Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton, or even someone who can invent new riffs and write songs. As long as i can perform well with the "machine gun" baby on my hand, i'm happy. Hopefully my target will be realized.