“Tom Morello probably sold more units than every other early adopter combined”: How the DigiTech WH-1 Whammy pedal changed the game for guitar effects

DigiTech Whammy WH-1 on a red, black and white background.

The original DigiTech Whammy pedal is a great example of thinking outside of the box, literally. It all started when DigiTech introduced the IPS33 Smart Shift Intelligent Pitch Shifter rack-mount processor – an affordable alternative to Eventide’s Harmonizer processors – during the late ’80s.

When a few enterprising programmers used a MIDI expression pedal to sweep pitch shifting parameters via MIDI Control Change commands, they discovered that the unit could create some very musically useful effects. The problem was it required some effort and an extra investment in external MIDI controllers to program and access those effects.