Re: [Harp-L] To pedal or not to pedal, that is the question

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neil Warren wrote:
<Well, I just bought the DigiTech RP355 plus the patches from Richard Hunter, and I got to say <I&#39;m impressed. Some great blues tones from the amp models, plus some very nice reverb and delay <effects for chromatic. 
<I actually bought the pedal for the express purpose of improving the tone of the chromatic, which <it does quite nicely, but it&#39;s the diatonic blues that is really served well by the pedal. 
<Only a few months back I invested quite a lot in a not inexpensive small tube amp. Now I&#39;m <thinking the pedal sounds better! (going through my clean Roland AC60). 
<The real advantage of the pedal is the versatility it offers. At the press of a button you can get <a new sound. With a tube amp you pretty much get the same sound. 
<So the question is: can effects pedals really replace the sound of the tube amp?

It has for me.  At least 80% of the gigs I've done over the last ten years have been done with an RP and no amp except for a PA.  Most of the rest were done with an RP and a keyboard amp, which is basically a self-contained PA.  I've done only two or three gigs in the last ten years with a traditional tube amp setup.  (And I liked it, by the way.  Tube amp technology still sounds good, dunnit?  But the RP is a lot easier to drag around and set up, and it sounds just as good.)

If you listen to the numerous clips and videos of RPs made by myself and players like Marcos Coll that I've posted to my website at http://hunterharp.com, it should be pretty obvious that an RP with my patches in it sounds as good or better than most of the tube amp + FX setups out there.  And of course, an RP is much more portable, much less expensive, and much more versatile than even a small tube amp with one or two FX pedals.  

I'm bringing some RPs with me to SPAH, and I look forward to making some good sounds with them there.

By the way, I do a lot of amped-up sounds for the RP because that's what most harp players need.  But every set I sell includes plenty of patches designed for "acoustic" playing, and depending on what you're trying to put across, any of my patches can work for either chromatic or diatonic harp.

I'm putting out another update set soon.  This update will consolidate many of my smaller releases with previous full sets for a "best of" set of killer stuff.  It will be free to current subscribers, and will be the default set for new subscribers.  Stay tuned.

Regards, Richard Hunter


author, "Jazz Harp" 
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