DigiTech HarmonyMan - First Impressions!

[guitarman5560]

I just have to have this pedal on my board.

[Preludiumi]

I am Iron Man

[nintendoor1]

What are the advantages of using dist pedals in loop(besides having it post distortion obviously)like,what does it do for the tone of the harmonys?and also,if your distortions in the loop,can you still use it with the rest of chain?like when the harmony man is off?

[brandon9271]

have you used the HM2 yet?

[sclogse1]

I'd like to get a west montgomery octave sound...anybody try that on their archtop?

[Dedalusalley]

I was wondering how should I do if for example I wanna connect the harmony man with a delay and a reverb pedal all in the fx loop. Do I still have to connect the output of the guitar to the input of the harmony man or can I put the guitar on the fx that are in the chain that goes to the input of the amp? I'm a little bit confused :)

[joniiboy]

The tone you have going on there would be great for video game music :)

[handhband]

hi im in a heavy melodic metal band and we cant find another guitarist so i was gonna cover it all and get a harmonizing pedal would this be good with alot of distortion?

[cyberflea07]

can you harmonize ninth's ,eleventh 's and thirteenth's  above and below the original pitch with this nice little toy?

[sixxstringmf]

picked one up last week,,and it IS the best by far!!

[cmde123]

Thanks for posting this. Nice job explaining the device.  I'm getting one!

[IXBlackjackXI]

i think i might keep my whammy pedal

[robosteven]

Holy hell.

I gotta get myself one of these.

[xdivinebladex]

what do you mean "kinda" jazzy? Take 5 man! :D

[dem466]

hmm. im not sure if i should get the digitech harmonyman or the boss supershifter. i want something that can go up and down the octave, but im not sure if i want something as complex as the harmonyman, but im not sure if i will miss out just getting the super shifter

[fartheststar]

excellent review. thanks for covering all the features. the detune in realtime is fantastic. Maintains all the characteristics of the guitar sound/tone. Somehow they've captured the detuning elements of loop programs like Acid or Live and put them in the pedal. thanks again for the cool review

[TheCapstanShanty]

Ha thats pretty cool man, I've never heard of one of these.

[Nevadatyler13]

Do you need 2 amps to hook this up?

[YouAreNumberSeven]

Nope, just one will do

[Nevadatyler13]

One more thing what kind of power source does it take?

[YouAreNumberSeven]

a 9Volt AC adapter that's included

[djhandicapinthemix]

"its just like havin a bass" lol.

[Yo1Blah]

how much are these?

[supersax92]

like $300

[philbinator1977]

Really good demo man. covered all the bases in an easy to understand way. nice clean tone, too!

[S1lverVENOM666]

Yo I want a harmony pedal so bad.

[btofan]

Man, that's one heck of a bong sitting on your amp dude.

[SilverGreyMonkey]

I'll tell you another harmonizer you can do it with: Zoom G2. Multi-effects pedal, I de-tune all the time...

Someone's gunna flame this..

[themennisspk]

2:20 hell yeah take 5

[seanfanning1]

Sounds good, you have a very good clean tone.

[evsynator]

good demo .... is there any chance of doing a demo with it using a semi acoustic guitar ? i would like to try it out but the shops here dont sell them so its impossible to try before buy ...

[soundwrks]

wow!

[mijmar67]

Slow Dancing In A Burning Room lulz

[carvindc400]

I've had this for 1 month now and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to be only able to get major harmonies out of this. I played a sequence of minor chords through musIQ and it always harmonizes like it were a major harmony. Am I doing something wrong or the logic of this thing is faulty?

[quecha1]

If you set the voicing to one of the lower case letters - h hh l ll, then you will get minor harmonies. Hope that helps

[smithsterino]

the minor sequence is just a major scale structure starting from the 6th note of the major scale.... so it you want to play in Aminor, set it to C..... c,d,e,f,g, A, b c....no fault of the pedal...

[quiveration]

i like it but for the most part it doesnt sound like a guitar.... it sounds like your being backed by keys. i would rather get a boss me70 or gt10

[quecha1]

Huh? Where do you get that from. I have one, and when you solo the harmony guitar tracks, it sounds exactly like a real guitar. I am very impressed with this product. It is leaps and bounds above any Boss harmonizer I have used.

[quiveration]

i think the Gt10 and ME70 have much better harmony effects

[nebilmetalhead11]

the digitech rp500 is much better

[peterfalahee]

hey there i just tried it it does sound good with just one voice and i did what you told me to do thank you for getting back to me it excellent thanks again

[exaltedone]

Near the end, he says no other pedal can give you a step down without the dry signal. That's just not true. My Electro-Harmonix HOG can do that just fine. It can also give me a step up.

It can also do a whole heck of a lot more...even if it is double the price. :)

[grapevineguitar]

I've used the HOG - yes it can do a step down fully wet, but I would never use it like that because the shift quality doesn't even come close to the HarmonyMan. I like the POG actually, but not for crisp clean intelligent harmonies, and lead line pitch shifts. It's really a different beast all together.

[peterfalahee]

hi there a quick story ....i bought this pedal and i cannot get a good queen harmony sound...i do a queen set at the end of our gig...but when i try the solo i want to break free for example ...it sounds out of tune can you quide me or help me in any way please....if you say a 5th up and a 3rd down it means nothing i dont understand all that stuff what setting have you on your two voices for queen thank you peter

[exaltedone]

To my hear (I don't have a guitar in front of me), his 'Brian May' sound SOUNDS like an Octave and a Third up. I don't have one of these, so unfortunately, i can't tell you which settings achieve that.

[grapevineguitar]

I think a lot of Queen stuff sounds good with the distortion using the HM distortion loop, and one voice of harmony set to 3H (try a 5H voice too sometimes). It will absolutely sound out of tune if you use the wrong key though - make sure you set the key correctly. There's a good example on YouTube - search for Killer Queen and HarmonyMan.

[SRVisthebest]

Will it let you change key while your playing or do you have to do it manually?

[grapevineguitar]

If you use musIQ it will follow your key. If you want to change keys while playing, you can just hold down the footswitch and strum a chord to change key. But if the key changes on the fly, I just use the presets and pre-store the key in each preset - then I just step from one to the other during the song.

[kieran369]

sounds like a 3-bit version of somthing

[AlanMcKennaVideos]

That pedal sounds pretty cool, ive the old boss hr-2 but doesnt even compare to this

[lilcody69]

2:24 - 2:40 anyone else think video games? lol

[takujei]

yes i do!! lol

[SYNguitar14]

That Brian May piece was sweet. I'm going to get this pedal, I've been wanting to test out awesome harmonies I've made up, and some from bands I like.

[Tretti12]

do you know some cool bands using harmonies?

Tell me if so :D

[SYNguitar14]

Avenged Sevenfold (almost all of their songs); Bullet For My Valentine (Scream Aim Fire); Shadows Fall (almost all songs); All That Remains (almost all songs); Trivium (most of songs). There's a lot of bands that do some harmonies and dueling solos.

[Tretti12]

thanks :D

[galarius]

Does this stupid pedal do any harmonies other than the natural key?If not it is a POS...My Digitech RP-12 seems like it has more scales you can harmonize against than this....

[ZoomRmc]

Thumbs up for YES!

[peaveylove]

nice. he played long distance runaround at the beginning! lol (and some john mayer????!)

[unopepito06]

Ah, jesus.

[theultimaterockr]

Could you do another demo with a high gain distortion?

[gtrjoe68]

how is this on a clean sound, with a godin nylon sych. guitar, and a roland gr33?

[portranet]

Hate to be a pest, but would you recall the settings you had for the 3 voice Dave Brubeck thing. I think one of the hardest things is knowing what songs work well with it, so I'm trying the songs you demo'd. (Yes is beyound me) I've played burning room for a while, the Brubeck jazz thing is a great song (I had forgotten until you played it) and it's really easy to play. But what settings? Yours sounds much better than what I've tried. Would love to trade note (you hang at any forums?) R]

[portranet]

I kept experimenting and found that or the Brubeck (take 5) that 8L and 3L sound similar to yours. Key it deteted was G/Em

[portranet]

hhhhmmm, that didn't work through the verse - I changed and found that 6L (one voice) seems to work through the verse and chorus.

[sonnikkthunk]

That presentation was pro, dude. Good job, and nice pedals.

[portranet]

Playing Em does work okay in Em key. 3H.

As does "G" but Gmaj being the same scale as Em. Dmaj works okay (prob not as good as Em) but it's the same as Bm. Which would be the V chord in the I IV V progression of Em. (right) And the last one "A" didn't sound good at all playing Em scale position. Cmaj works "fair" but that's the same as Am which is the IV chord in Em. (Am I thinking correctly?) Em or Gmaj (same thing) seems to work best.

[EinerNielsen]

Black Star (L)

[cast390]

You should be a radio or TV announcer, speach so articulate,and clearly spoken...I like the digitech presentation but am more impressed by you're Soliloquy!

[portranet]

Could you share more of the settings you used for each of the demo rifs? I received my Hman and I'm having some trouble picking how to set it. (like you jazz 2 voice, what did you use? 3H and 8L?) If you were to do a blues progression and penta lead - how would you set it? THANKS! Ron in MI

[grapevineguitar]

Hi Ron - I think I was using 3L and 5L in that example. For blues you can use 3H, but don't set the key to the blues key! For example, with E blues, set the key to G, D, or A. Best of all, don't worry about key and use +12 on one voice and -12 on the other - that's a really great sound! Also, +7 and -5 sound good with blues. Let us know how that works!

[portranet]

THANKS! so much for the reply, I'll try those (G D AND A) for E blues. (we're talking Em? right) I would normally use the Em penta or blues scale. You're saying try G D or A (maj or min) and why? Em blues would be a I IV V  (E A and B) I believe? - where did you come up with the G D or A? (so I can figure it out for other keys) again thanks a million!

Ron

[SRVisthebest]

Where did the Chorus come from? I thought it was a harmonizer.

[grapevineguitar]

Thanks for all the comments! The chorus sound comes from the cool detune settings on the pedal - there are four of them.

Also, the digitech web site now has a video that goes over the pedal in a lot of detail. It's long, but if you stay with it, you'll see how well it tracks - because that guy plays pretty fast!

[rollinover11]

Thanks for the video. Enjoyed the presentation very much.

[slipintoanightgown]

Take five was good

[TVTsteven]

John Mayer

[tiboss2]

Hey Grapevine, you should get a commission. I'm going to buy one now, I love my HR-2 and for the money it's great but Harmonyman has the goods. Thanks!

[AshunTekno]

sounds a bit too video gamey (like something from a snes or a sega genesis game) :P

[MyNameIsNotBrian]

Would this thing work for shredding? Because I've always wanted to harmonize when I'm sweeping arpegios. Will it be able to track when playing that fast? Thanks and very good, informative video!

[CJ101nicKA]

oh dude...imagine those awesome sweeps with this harmony maker......lol i bet itd sound like alexi laihos sweeps mixed with some classical shit like bach or mozart xD

[Friendlyreaper33]

i just did and now that's all im able to think about

[ironrocker13]

...

[FogOut9921]

wasnt the first thing you played for slow dancing in a burning room?

[independent9781]

It's a nice harmonizer, but 300 dollars seems a little high for it.

[grapevineguitar]

Well...you get what you pay for I guess. I'm ok with the price because I'm getting a 2nd and 3rd guitarist cleanly playing along with me rather than warbles and glitches that I have to turn down in the mix!

[eventhoriz0n]

Have you seen some of the Eventide stuff?

[galarius]

I heard the newest Eventides are crap compared to the H3000...I guess the harmonizer does not track well anymore

[brendanokelly]

Thanks for posting really informative vid !

[gibsoneer321]

Hello I have this pedal also, can you tell me how you are running the loop pedal, I know the harmony pedal goes first, but how are you connecting up to the loop> thanks for posting. great reveiw

[r2blank2]

can you play chords into it?

[twistedsalute]

will this pedal recognize a series of singles notes instead of just chord progressions, like if i played an e minor arpeggio would the pedal recognize the scale

[Wilq59r]

great review, and a very interesting pedal to play. I liked the most the jazzy part with two harmonizers at once.

[naakkve10]

If the pedal decides that you're in a certain key and you modulate or it's wrong, how does it adapt?

[feelee15]

take five, great sound,great pedal, great review thanks!

[workingclassdan]

Excellent demo. Thanks.

[mysticradio]

can the HARMONYMAN do simulated 12 string like the ELECTROHARMONIX POG?

[reyan]

can you make a video using distortion channel of your amp?

[grapevineguitar]

I haven't tried that yet - if I do I'll post something.

[LosmaFan]

too bad its like $300

[quecha1]

Holy Crap - that sounds amazing! I never truly believe until I try, but that is one of the coolest guitar pedals I have seen in a while! How do you set the harmony interval and key on the thing. Is it just strum to set key or does that fancy key detect thing work well enough to just use that? What intervals can you choose? Can't wait to try one!

[grapevineguitar]

Thanks! Setting intervals is easy - there is one knob for each voice. You can store your favorites in one of the memory locations. I strum to set key because I usually know the key, but I also tested the automatic (musIQ) method and it worked really well. Check out the manual at the digitech web site for all the different options.

[hogiepans]

sounds fantastic!

[ragincajunx]

nicely done Dave, you know you've made it when you're on youtube!

Brian

[grapevineguitar]

Thanks for that! I didn't use any reverb because for a demo I wanted to show how clean this pedal sounds. Reverb can sometimes hide problems!

[gnumusic]

sounds great man! informative, entertaining... awesome work with the demo examples. [could use a little reverb...maybe a lexicon? :) ]