Digitech Expression Factory EX-7 Impressions

[thejohnkim]

so i just got one of these in this week, and i've been testing it out. i used to search to see what people thought, but only found one person who ended up not liking it. so i thought i'd give it a shot.

ok first off the bypass:

this is a completely digital pedal...all the way down to how the treadle works. that said, the bypass is fine. to my ears it is on par with the better boss bypass stompboxes.

one more thing to get out of the way:

non-standard power jack. it comes with its own 1300mA 9v power supply, but the jack is not the boss-sized standard jack. this is a pain, but i'm guessing this thing really pulls a LOT of juice and this gaurantees that Digitech won't get too many complaints about the pedal not working due to poor quality power supplies. there is no battery compartment either.

the pedal is heavy, as heavy as my full sized ernie ball volume pedal but sized like my wah, and it feels very well constructed, knobs feel a lot like the standard digitech and boss knobs. no complaints here.


ok the real stuff....

Wahs:

there are 2 wahs in this thing. one is a dunlop crybaby model, and the other is a vox clyde mccoy model. i don't think its worth picking which one i like better. both wahs are pretty much unusable for bass. there is a huge low end cut on both wah models. the clyde mccoy sounds slightly smoother. my dunlop 105q destroys them both. no surprises here.

Space Station:

this responds well to my bass. the lows are reproduced as an organ/string sound. there is some reverb and delay going on with some pitch shifting that you choose from the dial along with a volume swell that is eitehr automatic (a la slow gear) or you can manually control the volume swell with the treadle, which i prefer. the problem here is that if you even slide your fingers on the strings while it is still generating a sound, the unit will delay that finger noise as well. also if you hit a note that is not strong enough to trigger a new volume swell, it'll just sound like a delay pedal reproducing the note with the above effects. its a very finicky mode. however, if i manually control the volume swell with teh treadle, i eliminate this issue. also if i just pluck really hard, this issue goes away as well.

Whammy:

sorry fellas, i know a lot of you are into this feature, but i havent played with it enough to say anything definitive. it sounds a lot like the digitech whammy, that synthesized sound, the treadle controlled the pitch change well, but thats all i can say for now. i didnt try this with lower notes or anything. if there is enough interest i can try it and get back to you guys

Univibe: don't care didnt test...

Leslie: don't care didn't test...

A/DA flanger:

i never owned a A/DA flanger. however on g****r it does a decent mimic of what i've heard in recordings. on bass, it does a similar thing as well, but its just not my thing. i really like my Boss BF-2 and the clips of the DOD fx seventy something that i've heard. this flanger sounds more silky-smooth....waaaay more silky smooth. did anyone watch CSI: NY this week? one of the musical interludes had a g****r being flanged, and it sounded just like what this pedal does. i wouldn't use it but some of you might like it.

in flanger mode, if you bypass the effect, the pedal works as a regular volume pedal. the sweep is very small compared to my EB Vol pedal and my Dunlop 105Q. maybe half the regular sweep.

the distortion models that you can add to each model, to me, were very bad. i would never use any of them, even though i wanted to, and i love adding distortion to my effects. maaaybe it was ok with the space station since i just wanted to see if i could get some subtle grit. i would still use a separate box.

anyways. i think i'm going to hang on to this pedal just for the space station strings mode, since i was looking for an ambient sound. not sure if i will keep this pedal in the long run though.

[gibsualdo]

I'm seriously considering getting one of these to use on guitar, mainly for the Space Station, Whammy and Leslie modes. From your review, it sounds like the Space Station mode may be useful to me on bass as well. Thanks for giving me more GAS dude!

[thejohnkim]

Cool. I still have this pedal, and still really liking it. I eventually got rid of my EB Volume pedal since i was running out of pedal board space and so the EX-7 doubles as my volume pedal and a string synth generator. however the other update is that instead of using the EX-7's treadle to control the volume swell of the synth, i have not learned to use the "Swell" mode of my Line6 Echo Park delay pedal to generate a volume sweel, which eliminates the need for me to wait for the previous note to fully die off before playing a new note.

and in a pinch, the wah's are not all that terrible, but i still lug around my precious Dunlop 105Q very happily.

the Whammy feature seems to be fine, and works as a Whammy should.

Its still annoying to have this pedal as the only AC pedal on my board, but since i'm not using a rack setup anymore, i use a power strip anyways for my head, so its no biggie.

The Leslie mode works fairly well, but i would imagine if you want to use this on g****r, having a tube amp to warm up the sound can make it much more usable.

The treadle has become more smooth with use, but not to the point where it feels loose, so i'm pretty happy with that as well.

I still think this is the only pedal where it is at for string synth sounds for us bass players. the only other option seems like the original space station, at double the cost.

[gibsualdo]

Hey man thanks for the follow-up review

For g****r, I'll be running this through an Ibanez TS-9 into an EHX English Muff'n, then into a Sansamp GT2 (which one of the last two provides the dirt, and which is used as a clean preamp can vary).

I've no tube amps here unfortunately, but I'm hoping the Muff'n's 2 tubes and the GT2's emulation will be enough to make the Leslie mode sound good enough for PC recording.

My apologies to the community for all this dirty g****r talk