Product Review – Digitech Synth Wah/Envelope Filter

Sometimes you need to add some unique textures to a song or surprise people with an unexpected tone. When I’m in those situations I grab my Digitech Synth Wah/Envelope Filter.

As the name suggests, you essentially get two pedals for the price of one in a compact package – a traditional envelope filter and some interesting synth-like tones that are triggered and controlled by your guitar.

The biggest plus point for this pedal is its variety. There are four controls: Sensitivity [which controls the trigger sensitivity of the envelope, synth, and filter effects], Control [which controls the attack, wet/dry mix or sweep, depending on the effect selected], Range [which controls the parameters of the effect], and finally a selector for the seven different effects, which include:

1. Envelope Up – Decent wah-like envelope filter, which is good for funk chording
2. Envelope Down – Sounds like an open “cocked” wah, but it sounds wimpy; this patch is good for reggae chords though
3. Synth 1 - Monophonic synth tone generator with opening filter envelope; a good basic bass synth
4. Synth 2 - Monophonic synth tone generator with closing filter envelope; this is one of the best sounds, great for ‘70s progressive rock synth sounds
5. Filter 1 – Powerful bass synth sound that is good for single lines
6. Filter 2 – Another bass synth option
7. AutoWah – Continuous wah sweep, but it’s a tone killer and a poor autowah IMO

While there are seven different effect options, many of them sound quite similar – basically wah variants or bass synth tones. Some of these effects sounds better than others. I like the Envelope Up tone, but compared to my Tone Factor Analogue Filter it is not as transparent, clean or organic and it does cut some high end from your tone. The Synth 2 and Filter 1 tones are both very cool sounding synths, which can really add some bottom end. The pedal tracks single notes surprisingly well, but it gets lost with chords on many settings. The biggest disappointment for me is the autowah. I found that all settings worked better being driven by the stronger signals from humbucker pickups.

This pedal lists for $90 and I would not pay that for it because I just don’t use these effects that often. I picked mine up used for $50 and for that price it’s a fun novelty pedal that you can play around with to get some really weird, but very cool synth like sounds from your guitar. The pedal eats batteries so you’ll need to run it of off a power supply and it is made in China, so it is doubtful it will last like the 1980s Boss pedals. I use it on my second mini bargain basement board mainly because it sucks some tone and sounds, not surprisingly, very digital. However, if you are into electronica, drone tones, ‘70s progressive rock and shoegazing, this pedal could be a nice addition to your collection.

Product Review - Boss FT-2 Dynamic Filter

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Boss decided to discontinue a number of esoteric pedals like the Dimension C, Xtortion, Slow Gear and Dynamic Filter because they were not big sellers. Fast forward 20+ years and due to their relatively low initial sales, these pedals are quite collectible among analog pedal enthusiasts with a price to match. The Boss Slow Gear for example regularly sells for over $200 on eBay. When I saw a Dynamic Filter come up for auction a couple of months I was very interested mainly because the guitar player Alex Gunia from Matalex (a killer German fusion band - check out the "Jazz Grunge" CD) had one on his pedalboard and I really liked his guitar sound. $75 later and the Boss FT-2 was mine.

According to the promotional verbiage the Boss FT-2 is an auto wah pedal that fits into the company’s line of auto wahs between the TW-1 and the AW-2. I think this is a little misleading because in essence the Boss FT-2 is an envelope filter and produces quite a different effect than an auto wah.

There are four controls on the pedal: Sensitivity, Cut Off Frequency (high – low), Q, and Up/Down/Manual modes. You also have an “Exp In” jack, which provides the option of plugging in an external expression pedal so you can control it like a traditional wah, although I did not bother to do this.

The keys to this pedal are the Cut Off Frequency the and Q, which controls the peak bandwidth. By finding the right setting you can get some decent “quack” from this pedal, especially with single coil pickups, but try as I might I never really found “the sound” to make it a keeper. The pedal is an obvious choice for funk guitar, but it is more subtle and less usable to my ears than the Electro-Harmonix Dr Q or its Micro Q-Tron, which I think are much better sounding effects pedals in this genre.

When engaged the Boss FT-2 also destroys your tone – not really surprising because it is a fairly aggressive filter effect. My favorite setting was using full on distortion from the amp – it produced a very subtle wah effect, which could spice up solos and with the distortion cranked tone loss was less noticeable. I did try this pedal with my Ibanez bass and I think this may be where it shines best. Despite being a rare and somewhat collectible effects pedal, it didn’t make it on to my pedalboard so back to eBay it goes.