Digitech RP-1 early 90's multi effects board- what can I do with this?

[naneek]

Hi all,
a while back I was gifted a digitech rp-1 by a player who was upgrading their early 90s home studio.
what can I do with this funky looking metal slab?

any tips for programming and using it?

I'm not expecting this to be 'the best', but it was high end when new and clearly very well built.
I figure it will at least be a fun novelty. I can tell the presets are designed to sound like what I heard on the radio in the early 90s.

I did a quick search and saw @Jakedog posted about using one for several years with mixed results.
got any tips, Jake?

edit- of course the manual was long gone, but I'm googling for a pdf or photocopy

 

[naneek]

if you have owned one of these, what did you use it for? what effects did it do well?

I'm guessing even if I don't like everything the rp-1 has to offer, there will still be plenty of useable effects for me to play around with.

I sometimes really enjoy 80s and 90s digital effects. I have an ART rackmount digital reverb / delay / modulation unit which sounds great with guitars and drum machines.

It has a 16 bit sampler which gives the delays a very distinct texture from your dry signal, so the delay never sounds muddy. It sounds very unique when you layer the digital delay with a warm analog delay. you get two distinct echo tones which don't interfere with your dry signal.

 

[bluesholyman]

I have never played with one, but if you have time, run through the presets and see what inspires you.

One song from the 90s that the guitar sound amazed me was C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat" - I couldn't find any write ups on it, but if IRRC, they used a little Zoom 9002 processor which had just come out. That guitar sound in this college kids beefed up stereo was HUGE!! It was an epic sound. Today if I listened to that patch, I'd probably go "meh." No idea what patch it was, just some distorted guitar I suppose.

Its all in what you do with it and what inspires you. The most un-assuming devices can create the biggest hits....or just a cool song. That RP1 probably has way more processing capability than this little guy but someone took a patch from this and made it a hit.

Go have fun!

 

[mexicanyella]

I would recommend getting it into whatever serves as its manual mode and spending some time learning its gain/compression/EQ quirks, and finding out if it can either a) produce a basic amp-like sound you can enjoy, or b) do something so screamingly un-amp-like and weird that you enjoy having it around when you want to get freaky.

Once you establish if either of those is possible, then start exploring the effects.

This is just my logic, may seem silly to others. But when I had a borrowed Pod and later, the Zoom B2 I still have, and still later a Behringer V-amp Pro someone gave me, that approach worked out well. I was trying to find out if those units could function as the entire tone-shaping for DI recording and live use through a power amp and cab, and each of them turned out to be quite capable after I figured out how to optimize the gain and EQ to sound “real.” Especially in the B2—being intended for bass—turning off my eyes and turning on my ears and spending some time exploring yielded some weird sounds Unique to that device, and some sounds that work well with guitar, bass and lap steel.

Have fun and be alert to the potential fun quirks!

 

[mexicanyella]

Also, let us know how you get on with it! I love hearing about people discovering ways to get interesting (or basic, useful, serviceable) sounds from unexpected gear combinations. It inspires to try things.

 

[wildschwein]

Get into the manaul first: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/380800/Digitech-Rp-1.html

Enjoy it -- I'm sure there is fun to be had inside.

 

[dlew919]

Take your time with it. Get a manual if you can and start on page one and work through. There’ll be cool stuff.

 

[bgmacaw]

Based on my experiences with MIDI based units from the same 90's to early 00's, the most difficult things will be getting USB MIDI drivers to work with the device and getting the Windows 3.1 or 95 software (if you can get a legit copy still) to run in a Windows 7 or 10 environment.

On DigiTech devices of that era, some of the effects are good enough but you will probably hear some digital artifacts and noise due to the relatively slower processing speed and immaturity of the algorithms at the time. This will be most noticeable on overdrive/distortion/fuzzes as well as the amp/cab emulations. The digital modulation and delay/reverbs are typically better.

 

[naneek]

thanks all for the helpful ideas and suggestions.

my first impressions are that it's easier to use and program than I expected, and some of the effects are fun to interact with musically. I think I can definitely use this for some things, but it's not the type of effect that you could use all the time.

There is definitely a major tone suck factor. the bypass signal sounds completely different than my guitar plugged straight into the amp. you would not want to play through this all the time because it just sucks all the detail and harmonic content out of your guitar signal. Maybe this would be more tolerable if you used it with 2 amps and an aby for an actual clean / dry signal as well.

it's very odd, and behaves in a very un-amp-like way. all of the stock programs are blends of multiple effects. between the compressor and the noise gate, it has a tendency to unpredictably stifle and silence sustained notes, and it resists all attempts to control the volume with the knobs on your guitar.

Some of the factory patches sound pretty good in a generic late 80s early 90s digital studio kind of way. Others are just terrible. the patches have generically wacky corporate type names, like "rippin' solo" and "big country!!!"

the "straight cab" patch actually sounds pretty good as a boost with compression and light overdrive. The overdrive and distortion sound much better than I expected, although very generic. This leads me to believe the distortion is probably solid state / analog, and not a digital modeling effect.

The least useable feature is probably the flanger which is very noisy and grainy sounding if turn it up past 2 or 3 out of 10. the noise gate really freaks out when used with vintage single coils. It will probably perform better with humbuckers.

I think it will sound good once I start programing it for only one effect at a time. It can sound really artificial and muddy with the patches that have multiple effects. I think I can get some good use out of these effects individually.

The compressor is ultra aggressive, so it could be used as an exaggerated squashed effect. The distortion sounds like most distortion pedals from that time.

the reverb can't do very long decays, so it just sounds like a spring or plate reverb only worse. as far as I can tell, there are no out-there spacey sounds to be found with just the reverb. the delay is ok but the repeats sound kind of weak and indistinct from the dry signal.

that's as far as I've gotten with it, I'll be sure to update here as I continue to dial this in.

It's kind of fun for a canned generic 90s digital studio sound. It's kind of like a rockman rack mount system only not as good.

Definitely fun to play with, and I'll figure out what use I can really get out of it.

 

[naneek]

a) produce a basic amp-like sound you can enjoy, or b) do something so screamingly un-amp-like and weird that you enjoy having it around when you want to get freaky.

this is pretty much how I am approaching this as well. I think it will mainly be good for bizarre non-amp-like sounds, but I may find some more conventional sounds that are useable once I get deeper into programing it using only one or two effects.

the stock patches usually have 4 or 5 effects running simultaneously. Most of them are not very useable, but I'm getting some interesting heavily processed 80/90s studio DI type guitar sounds with the stock patches.

 

[mexicanyella]

If it helps, I’d say that what ended up being kind of a general crunchy Marshall/ProCo Rat kind of guitar sound in my Zoom was actually Zoom’s idea of the Boss ODB-3 bass overdrive pedal. Not a unit most people associate with Marshall JCMs or Rats. And a sleazy-fun Black Keys kind of fuzzy sound ended up coming from Zoom’s idea of a Acoustic 360 bass amp, cranked and carefully EQed.

My point is, be prepared to get non-amp-like and weird yourself; sometimes there are some cool surprises in there if you tweak parameters and just listen, ignoring —or intentionally defying—what the manufacturer intended.

And yeah, those 5-simultaneous-FX presets are usually a bummer!

 

[Jakedog]

Hi all,
a while back I was gifted a digitech rp-1 by a player who was upgrading their early 90s home studio.
what can I do with this funky looking metal slab?

any tips for programming and using it?

I'm not expecting this to be 'the best', but it was high end when new and clearly very well built.
I figure it will at least be a fun novelty. I can tell the presets are designed to sound like what I heard on the radio in the early 90s.

I did a quick search and saw @Jakedog posted about using one for several years with mixed results.
got any tips, Jake?

edit- of course the manual was long gone, but I'm googling for a pdf or photocopy

To tell you the truth man, I don’t remember much about it. I had mine in the early 90’s when they were new. I remember that at that time, I thought it was pretty damned impressive. Now? I have no idea. I doubt I’d be as impressed at this point, now that multi-effects pedals have gotten so much better.

I remember hating the “speed bumps”. That’s what I called them. The really abrupt sounding slight hiccup when changing patches. It wasnt a smooth transition at all going from one patch to the next. At least I think I remember that… now I’m trying to put my finger on it that might have been an early Boss processor that did that.

Every once in a while I see an RP1 pop up on Craigslist or something. I think it’s a testament to their build quality that they are still around and functional. I always talk myself out of buying them, though. I think if I stumbled onto one for like $20 I’d have to have it. Not sure it would be worth it to me at any more than that. I already have so much stuff.

 

[naneek]

That’s what I called them. The really abrupt sounding slight hiccup when changing patches. It wasnt a smooth transition at all going from one patch to the next. At least I think I remember that…

yeah this rp1 definitely has a noticeable hiccup when switching patches and when changing the parameters of a patch.

thanks for your insights on the matter Jake!