Whammy

The brains of the thing came from Canada. IVL Technologies started up in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1983, founded by Phil Scott and Brian Gibson, and its first product was the Pitchrider 2000. Its specialty was working out what note you were playing, and fast.

John Johnson, president of DigiTech and its sister brand DOD, saw a use for that. Eventide’s pitch-shifting systems were the serious option, and they cost like it. Johnson suggested IVL build an intelligent pitch-shifter for less. Fred Speckeen, IVL’s vice president, later said their system could find the pitch in about two cycles of the signal.

DigiTech put the result out in 1989, or thereabouts, as the Whammy. It’s usually credited as the first mass-market digital pitch shifter. It was also painted Ferrari red, which means it stands out a mile on any pedalboard, as if anything that loud needed help being noticed.

Here’s what it does. Rock the treadle and the pitch of your guitar slides up or down, as far as two octaves. Set it for an interval and it adds a harmony line above or below what you play. Set it for a slight detune and you get something like a chorus. Dive bombs, octaves, harmonies: all from your foot.

The early ones had a catch. They could only track one note at a time. Hit a chord and it comes out strange and artificial, with wobbly artifacts all over it. That sounds like a flaw. In the right hands it’s a color.

Jonny Greenwood used it to shift his guitar an octave on Radiohead’s “My Iron Lung,” cut from a May 1994 show at the London Astoria, and the result is glitchy and lo-fi. On “Just” he sent the solo up somewhere high and piercing. That same year David Gilmour put it on “Marooned,” bending notes whole octaves on The Division Bell. He says he pretty much improvised it, probably three or four passes, and kept the best bits of each. It won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1995.

The White Stripes had no bass player. In April and May of 2002, at Toe Rag Studios in London, Jack White recorded “Seven Nation Army” anyway, with a riff everybody hears as a bass line.

It isn’t. It’s a Kay hollowbody going through a Whammy set an octave down, with a Big Muff after it in the chain. Which Whammy is another question. The model isn’t pinned down, and plenty of people say it was a later one rather than the original red pedal. Call it a Whammy and you’re on solid ground.

Others found their own uses. Ed O’Brien used one on Radiohead’s “Dollars and Cents” to shift minor chords up to major. Matt Bellamy used one on Muse’s “Map of the Problematique,” and in 2020 he had one built into a Manson guitar. Steve Vai, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Justin Chancellor of Tool are on the list too.

By 1996, Speckeen could say this without much fear of contradiction:

our Whammy Pedal has been called ‘the wah‑wah pedal of the ’90s’

Later Whammys got better at chords, then added drop-tuning, MIDI, and a dedicated dive-bomb mode. The Whammy DT got bigger and grew a second footswitch. In 2012 the 5th Gen could bend entire chords up or down with every note kept in tune, and it came with a Classic switch for the old sound. Its shape went back to the outline of the original, too.

Morello’s board hasn’t changed since the early ’90s. On “Voice of the Voiceless” he cycles through the intervals with the knob. And sitting there next to the wah and the delays is an original WH-1, Ferrari red, still the reason a guitar in his hands can sound like anything but a guitar.