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Pitchshifting---a blind shootout for your perusal

Which pitchshifter does the best job?

  • A

    Votes: 12 42.9%
  • B

    Votes: 4 14.3%
  • C

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • D

    Votes: 12 42.9%

  • Total voters
    28
  • Poll closed .
The pitchflex algo is also available for the H9 so it is not limited to the Pitchfactor. And while the H9 has a similar price point compared to the Pitchfactor, it is an incredible piece of gear with considerable flexibility.

+1
The Pitchfactor indeed does a ton, and it contains the H910/H949 algos, which once cost over $1000 to purchase alone in their rackmount unit. My guess is that, if you're buying a Pitchfactor, you are indeed getting it for much more than the Pitchflex. You are also dropping $500+ for a new one, and then realizing that you need to buy an expression/volume pedal to go with it shortly after that.
If drop-tuning is the only thing you're after, the Digitech Drop ($180) makes a lot more sense. However, I can literally play the organ intro to Mr. Crowley by Ozzy on my bass using the Pitchfactor, and it sounds just like the original! Try that with a Drop! :D
 
To follow up myself, I ordered a "The Drop" 15 minutes after making the quoted post. Digitech owes you for that excellent piece of accidental marketing, @Adamixoye :D

I'll reiterate one last time that it was in fact accidental...all of the other three pedals have served me quite well in the past for various purposes, and the Pitchfactor and M5 are definitely staying for some of those other purposes. But I'm very excited to welcome the Drop to my board!
 
7 Half-Steps Down:






A. and D. are best, going 7 down A. was good until the last part clankin that B string sounded a little lost but OK. B. was horrible, C. was horrible, AND THE WINNER IS "D." IT SOUNDED GOOD ALL THE WAY THROUGH, AND AT THE END CLANKIN THAT B STRING SOUNDED JUST LIKE THE B ON A 5- STRING BASS. So A. was DigiTech Drop Pedal and D. was the Eventide I listened to all of these on my headphones really closely over and over, D. EVENTIDE IS DEFINITELY THE BEST ONE ALL AROUND AND FOR SURE 7 DOWN. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, THAT WAS AN AWESOME JOB YOU DID ON THIS, NOW I KNOW WHICH ONE TO GET. EVENTIDE IT IS.
 
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We stopped doing drop shifting, so now the trumpets have to play in F#. They love us.
I'd start wearing back armor around them myself ;) . I'm using the pitch shifters in the Zoom B1on multiFX pedal. I play a short scale and already tune in D standard when the guitarists are tuned E standard.

One project I have tunes down a half step and there are maybe three tunes I play that I capo up to E standard for (or Eb standard for that project). So now I regularly use -1, +1, and +2 half steps. I also just started playing a tune I can't finger fast enough unless played in C (using open strings) and the band wants B.

The B1on has two pitch shifters, I was using the polyphonic friendly one but am finding it too "chorusy". The monophonic friendly one doesn't do that as much and doesn't seem to freak out when I play the occasional double-stop "power chord" ;) .

Anyways I now have one bank set up as -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3. That gives me down to BEAD tuning in case I ever need it and up to F standard tuning. The -3 also covers the most that a song can be dropped and still sound somewhat normal IMO. I might add the +4 and +5 in just because ;) , and IMO you can tune up more than +3 for female singers without anyone thinking it sounds weird.

Anyone else doing weird carp like this? ;)
 
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Anybody made any actual latency measurements on any pitch shifters? I measured the one in my Behringer XR12 mixer at 40ms - obviously unusable :( . It was pretty easy to use it's built-in USB recorder to put the input and output of the pitch shifter on the left and right channel and zoom in on them in my DAW. It shouldn't be too much harder to patch in my two pedals that have pitch shifters to measure those too.
 
Kinda sucked at a gig on a VERY crowded stage when I accidentally stepped on a switch and went flat LOL.
I had a similar gig experience- we were doing "pour some sugar on me" and I was using a line 6 pedal to drop tune for the low C#s at the intro. For some reason I kicked the pedal on, but it didn't engage, and it sounded so bad playing low E under the C#. I am not even sure why it should sound so bad, because E is in the same key, but it did.
 
Now that the DigiTech Whammydtv-01 is available that will drop and raise pitches, and since the Drop won the previous shootout, I was wondering if you have tried that??

The Whammy DT is a slightly older design than the Drop. My understanding is that the Drop's algorithm was updated from all the previous Whammy iterations. So no, I haven't tried it, and I'm not sure it would be a useful data point. I would love a 2nd gen Drop that went both up and down, and allowed MIDI input for changes and on/off switching.