Best pedal to go from standard tuning to 1/2 step down?

A few years back I did this:
Pitchshifting---a blind shootout for your perusal

TL;DR - the Digitech Drop beat the Eventide Pitchflex algorithm (barely), the Morpheus Droptune, and the pitchshifter in my Line6 M5.

Some people swear by the EHX Pitchfork but it's not really intended for this purpose, though you can use it that way. However, it doesn't do 1/2 step as one of its settings, you would have to use an expression pedal to estimate the middle pitch on its full step setting. I have never played the Pitchfork, at least one review I saw directly compared the Drop and Pitchfork and said the Drop had better latency and tone for this purpose. I've seen people on TB disagree. YMMV.

EVERYTHING will affect your tone to some degree. For the Drop, at the 1/2 step setting, it's minimal but not zero. Again, YMMV. Same with latency.

For really high end (read: expensive) stuff I liked what I heard out of some demos with Axe FX.

 

My humble opinion- they all sound like synthesizers. I just use basses that have a note in between the full steps.

 

Digitech Bass Whammy

 

Only thing I can recommend is to downtune and recapo back to standard. I used to do this on guitar when a set needed both standard and Eb. You will have to get used to all fretted notes being a fret above where you'd expect them at all times; that's easier when the song is all first-position chords on the gitfiddle, but if you bounce around up and down the fretboard it can be a much more difficult mental exercise.

 

I use a EHX HOG2 with great results using the filter and resonance to find the tone I want. It also has the spectral gate.

 

Two basses.

 

Along the lines of one of the above replies, the Digitech Drop is quite effective in retaining most of original timbre with very little latency in smaller intervals, and if you do have to go the digital route, it's probably the best at doing it, maybe down to a major 2nd or minor 3d (everything below that quite poorly tracks on bass).

If it had to do with subbing for a 5-string or tracking in the studio I'd have nothing add, but for a live performance needs with just a half-step on tap, I'd feel that the Drop would be more than sufficient with little to complain about.

 

I agree and in a live situation I would be surprised if anyone would notice a difference. I can tell a very slight difference when flipping back and forth when I am playing alone but with the band...meh. The reason I got mine was because my SRV obsessed guitarist would switch guitars at the drop of a hat and play an unscheduled SRV song! It made life easy!

 

This, if it's an option, but IMO it should be. I never gig without backup. When I played a few sub gigs with a band that detuned for half their set, my backup bass became the detuned bass.


FWIW I currently play in a few bands, some of which play in standard, some 1/2 step down. So, I keep half my basses in standard, half detuned. Fortunately none of my current bands switches tunings mid-gig! So for each gig I bring a pair of basses in the appropriate tuning.

 

Piling on here, but if it's only a half step, just bring two basses and switch. Our lead guitarist has used a Digitech Drop, and it's pretty good, FWIW. Good luck! Our lead singer often asks for tunes to be 1.5 -> 2 steps lower, so I envy you.

 

Our rhythm guitarist uses a digitech drop a lot and I messed with his. If you’re playing a 4 string the digitech drop works pretty good to get to Eb. The farther you drop the pitch using the pedal the more artificial it sounds but for 1/2 step or even a full step it works pretty darn good. Something else I noticed is running it into an overdrive helps make it sound even better as the overdrive masks some of the artificialness of the drop.

 

All detuning pedals degrade the tones and induce latency unfortunately.

The Digitech Drop is the best one, but I still found it an unacceptable compromise.