Best pitch shifter (detuner) pedal?

[Jamie Snell]

Hi all, I’m considering getting a pitch shifter pedal to allow me to play certain songs either a semi tone or two semi tones down.

 

i’ve just tried the EHX Pitch Fork, but felt it coloured the tone too much.

 

I also tried The Drop by Digitech which was quite good, despite a slight drop in volume.

 

Someone suggested the Morpheus Drop Tuner.

 

What are people’s thoughts on The Drop and the Morpheus please?  I’ve got the chance to get one or the other so any comments welcome. The Drop is 9v meaning I can power it from my 9v splitter cable, although I may well get some kind of power bank if that would be better.

 

Cheers

Jamie

[stewblack]

Hi Jamie. I've tried a few but I have to say the Digitech Ricochet, while not designed as a simple pitch shifter, is far and away the best.

Assuming the Digitech Drop uses similar technology that would be my choice.

[MattW]

I've been looking at this as have a dep gig in a few weeks where I really need one or I'll be changing basses nearly every song!

 

I borrowed a friend's HX FX for a rehearsal last night and used the Simple Pitch effect.  Was absolutely brilliant, even when playing double stops or three note chords.  Didn't even bother trying the new polyphonic options which are supposed to be even better.  I had a HX about 18 months ago, and sold it in preference of building up a board again (having sold all my pedals to by the HX 🤣), but have to say that having used one again last night I am really tempted to get one again.   Given a decent detune pedal is £100+, and you can pick up an HX FX for less than £300 second hand, and on top of all the other effects of has tuner, looper, and also bass pedal for those Geddy Lee moments!!

 

Obviously this is available on all the helix variants and the go, so certainly something to consider.

[Doddy]

2 hours ago, stewblack said:

Hi Jamie. I've tried a few but I have to say the Digitech Ricochet, while not designed as a simple pitch shifter, is far and away the best.

Assuming the Digitech Drop uses similar technology that would be my choice.

The Whammy Ricochet is ace, it's just a shame that you can't detune a semitone . I would have thought the Drop would have been very similar but with more intervals.

[Jamie Snell]

Hi all, I’ve pulled the trigger on the Digitech Drop, I will let you know how I get on with it!

[NoirBass]

On 14/08/2021 at 09:39, MattW said:

I've been looking at this as have a dep gig in a few weeks where I really need one or I'll be changing basses nearly every song!

 

I borrowed a friend's HX FX for a rehearsal last night and used the Simple Pitch effect.  Was absolutely brilliant, even when playing double stops or three note chords.  Didn't even bother trying the new polyphonic options which are supposed to be even better.  I had a HX about 18 months ago, and sold it in preference of building up a board again (having sold all my pedals to by the HX 🤣), but have to say that having used one again last night I am really tempted to get one again.   Given a decent detune pedal is £100+, and you can pick up an HX FX for less than £300 second hand, and on top of all the other effects of has tuner, looper, and also bass pedal for those Geddy Lee moments!!

 

Obviously this is available on all the helix variants and the go, so certainly something to consider.

This ☝️ I’ve tried a lot of pitch shifters and the Helix one is amazing.

[Al Krow]

On 16/08/2021 at 19:28, Jamie Snell said:

Hi all, I’ve pulled the trigger on the Digitech Drop, I will let you know how I get on with it!

How you finding it? They do look good.

 

Am I correct in thinking it allows you to drop your pitch by 7 semitones (plus the octave down), so if you wanted to pitch shift +2 semi tones it wouldn't work for that?

 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Al Krow

[Al Krow]

What I'm particularly looking for is: to go from PC (Spotify / YT track) --> [Pitch Shift] --> powered speaker to change the pitch of particular songs, without faffing with MP3 conversion etc. This will be particularly helpful where we're not doing them in the original key, rather than for changing the pitch on my bass, and I can practice in the key we're playing them in. My old Song Surgeon software is currently on its last legs and the newer version doesn't have the same functionality of downloading and pitch shifting YT tracks.

 

Having done a bit of research on this I came across this and have just downloaded - seems to do the trick! (And it's free )

 

Transpose: pitch shifter browser extension

 

[fretmeister]

23 hours ago, Al Krow said:

How you finding it? They do look good.

 

Am I correct in thinking it allows you to drop your pitch by 7 semitones (plus the octave down), so if you wanted to pitch shift +2 semi tones it wouldn't work for that?

 

 

Correct.

 

It's down only.

 

Presumably you have enough frets to go upwards though?

[Obrienp]

Just regurgitating this thread. I read it and decided to try the Digitech Drop that looked perfect for what I wanted. One band I play in does a lot of songs detuned a semitone but also a few in standard tuning. I find I need two basses because even one semitone difference seems to cause all sorts of tuning stability issue, if I try to use one bass. However, a second bass on a stand can cause overcrowding problems on the kind of “stages” we tend to get (5 piece band), plus delays between songs.

 

Well my experience with the Drop has not been good. My main gigging bass with this band is a Guild NS Starfire 1 (the one with the P pickup) but I also use a custom shortscale P/J. I tried the drop with both basses, plus another partcaster medium scale P bass and a medium scale Maruszczyk Elwood (jazz copy). The Drop just didn’t work well with any of them. On lower strings the drop was either flat or sharp and on the upper strings it started doing a sort of octaver thing with both a dry and pitch altered note, which sounded horrible! The only feature that worked OK was the actual octaver setting. That tracked well on the top two strings but got less accurate and more laggy as you dropped to the lower strings. That seems pretty much par for the course with octave pedals, so no worse than most.

 

I have sent the pedal back and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. I am now contemplating whether it is worth trying the more expensive EHX Pitchfork. That seems to get mixed reviews and I have a feeling it doesn’t do semitones, so I suspect I’m going to have to stick with two basses.

[tauzero]

On 06/12/2024 at 15:36, Obrienp said:

Just regurgitating this thread. I read it and decided to try the Digitech Drop that looked perfect for what I wanted. One band I play in does a lot of songs detuned a semitone but also a few in standard tuning. I find I need two basses because even one semitone difference seems to cause all sorts of tuning stability issue, if I try to use one bass. However, a second bass on a stand can cause overcrowding problems on the kind of “stages” we tend to get (5 piece band), plus delays between songs.

 

Is there a reason you can't just play a semitone down, or just use a detuned bass and play the standard tuning songs a semitone up?

[Storky]

I’m really interested to know if there is a workable solution, ie a pedal which can drop a key in semi-tone intervals? Like others, I am more comfortable on a four string and dep in bands that play in varying degrees of detuning (typically either one, two or three semi tones down, or a mixture). For example I’m required to play “Stuck in the middle with you” in C, which doesn’t sound great utilising the B on a 5er and is way more fiddly than it should be, especially for such a standard song. Any suggestions welcome.

[jrixn1]

On 14/08/2021 at 09:39, MattW said:

I borrowed a friend's HX FX for a rehearsal last night and used the Simple Pitch effect.  Was absolutely brilliant

+1 on this.
I'd previously tried a Digitech The Drop and a EHX Pitch Fork but wasn't happy gigging with them.
However the Simple Pitch in the HX One worked for me on gigs. You can set up multiple presets for different amounts of detuning.

[MattW]

I use a Helix LT these days for all my FX needs.

 

However I borrowed a pitchfork recently to use at home to use with my practice amp for when I want to learn songs in different tunings to save me getting the Helix out between gigs.  The pitchfork was unusable to my ear even at home - I would never gig it!

 

I've played shows in theatre size venues with Helix simple pitch shifting between standard E, Eb, D and also up to F and it's been absolutely spot on. Still my go-to 3 years on!!

[Obrienp]

21 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

Is there a reason you can't just play a semitone down, or just use a detuned bass and play the standard tuning songs a semitone up?

I do occasionally play the standard tuning songs a semitone up on my detuned bass but I get confused sometimes, especially in the more complex songs, so I find it less risky to keep a bass in standard tuning for gigs.