Digitech Ex-7 Review (Expression Factory)So you want the honest Digitech EX-7 Review? Here it goes.. I’m certainly not alone here loving my collection of vintage pedals. Sometimes logic seems blurred and the question should be allowed, whether age and rarity outweighs tone. Hey, of course, we all want to believe it’s the tone. We’re not that fickle, or are we? Oh no! So, let’s agree that it’s tone we value most … no really, the odd distraction aside, it is the tone what’s it all about. If you’re one of ‘us’, you either have experienced your pedalboard rapidly expanding in size to the outer edges of your bedroom and not finding enough space on stage or you are looking at gear sites like our GuitarPickZone.com and daydreaming about all the coloured boxes you would like to rock through but can’t afford to buy them all. What Is The EX-7 Expression Factory?Help is at hand – enter DigiTech’s box of wonders, the EX7 Expression Factory pedal. It promises to digitally emulate, or model, many classic sounds from hard-to-find effects units. In comparison to the rainbow coloured vintage stomp boxes of the bygone glory era of rock ‘n roll, the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory is certainly not much to lock at. Vaguely resembling a plain black brick, it has none of the psychedelic-coloured hipness and odd shaped enclosures or explicit names of some of the vintage effects it’s meant to clone. But since we established earlier we’re not into effects for their looks and collectors price tags, it’s the tone that we’re interested. So, what does the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory do and how does it score? The Digitech EX-7 Expression Factory is a effects modeler. Meaning, it digitally reproduces some of rock’s most legendary tones. I’ve had my fair share with digital studio and guitar effects over the years and although some offered stunning results, the majority lacked character and was prone to failure at a much faster rate than analogue counterparts. I could go on how my Line6 Modulation Modeler lost various presets one-by-one without any reason. On the contrary, I’m owning various analogue boxes that have been around for 30 years and still work like they just left the factory. Why The Need For The EX-7 Pedal?So why do I care about the EX7? I heard great things about from players I trust, the EX7 offers the Synth Swell tone from the DigiTech XP300 Space Station that I’d like to incorporate into my sound (more of that later) and … pedalboard space. Well then, let’s take a look at this bad boy On offer with the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory are 7 legendary effects and another 7 classic overdrive and distortion tones that can be assigned to any of the 8 main effects. How Does The Pedal Work?The various effects modelled on the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory range from the weird to the wonderful and a lot in between. The Digitech EX7 Expression Factory is a classic rocker pedal, just like your wah or volume pedals. The long black steal enclosure is tough and road-ready. The top-front of the pedal has 4 knobs lined-up, 3 of them are double-control knobs that allow precise tweaks and sound sculpturing of the 7 main presets. The forth knob on the far right is for selecting effect models. In principle, the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory is very easy to use, but it’s double-control knobs change depending on the selected effect presets. Luckily, the manual is well written and illustrated and should get anyone up-to-speed in no time. Recalling it all when in rehearsal or during a gig is another matter altogether and because of that, I’ve secretly stuck the manual underneath my EX7 for quick reference. How Does The Digitech EX7 Pedal Sound?The main effects comprise the original and most popular wah tones, the Dunlop CryBaby and Vox Clyde McCoy, followed by Unicord’s UniVibe, a Leslie 147 Rotary Speaker, the daddy of all flangers, the much-sought after A/DA Flanger and DigiTech’s own legendary effects, the Whammy and the Space Station preset of the super-rare Space Station. The overdrive and distortion section is showing off with the Dod Overdrive/Preamp, the ProCo Rat, DigiTech’s Metal Master, Boss Metal Zone, the Electro Harmonix Big Muff ‘Pi’, Ibanez TS9 and the Boss DS1 Distortion. All these classic effects in one pedal – and I haven’t even mentioned that each overdrive/distortion can be assigned to various cabinet simulations! XP300 Space StationSince I bought the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory primarily for the Space Station’s Synth Swell preset, I’ll start with this. The Space Station is unlike any effect most guitarists have ever played through. Imagine a heavy reverbed wall-of-sound with added delay and all pitch-shifted 1 or 2 octave up or down. The result is a dense, very atmospheric sound-fog that is not unlike a shimmering and spiralling synth or organ pad. The Synth SwellThe Synth Swell preset on the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory comes factory shipped in combination with nasty Metal Master distortion but personally I like to switch any distortion off and play with a clean tone through the XP300 Space Station Synth Swell preset. The sounds you get are otherworldly. The Digitech EX7 Expression Factory does it all in one compact rocker pedal for you. Those 3 knobs offer almost unlimited control to design your own sound. Line6 produces the Verbzilla pedal with its Octa Pad setting and Behringer the RV600 Reverb Machine has the Space preset, which is basically a direct clone of the Verbzilla. Both are comparable in tone and approach to the Synth Swell preset of the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory. The Verbzilla and RV600 are pretty much identical in regards to this preset, they offer a little more top-end sparkle over the Digitech EX7 Expression Factory. It’s really down to personal taste here. Below a demo of the EX7′s Synth Swell preset. WhammyThe Whammy simulation is equally impressive. Like the Space Station, the Whammy simulation is a scaled down version of DigiTech’s modern classic. While the stand-alone Whammy comes with a number of pitch-shift presets, the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory offers the popular 1 octave or 2 octaves up or down options. Owners of the original Whammy-1 find it hard to warm up the updated Whammy models that followed it. While some were indeed inferior imitations of it, the most recent version, the Whammy-4, is certainly the closest to the original and actually pretty decent. The DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory simulation is very close to the Whammy-4 and will meet most expectations easily. Those who owned previous Whammy units will love the fact that the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory doesn’t have to be re-calibrated each time you plug it in. A/DA FlangerThe Flanger, that kick-started it all back in 1977. The A/DA Flanger’s most famous user is certainly Eddie Van Halen, who used it a lot in the early days of his band. Just listen to Un-Chained – that’s the sound of the A/DA Flanger. You can accurately set the long jet-plane swoosh on slow rate settings with added distortion before the flanger, as you can get those swirly, watery tones made famous by many New Wave and Post-Punk acts from the late 70s and early 80s. The simulation on the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory is not as good, but close enough to please most. Where the original sounded quite plumy and ‘juicy’, the DigiTech EX-7 Expression Factory simulation comes along with a little bit too much clarity for my liking. But make no mistake; this is still a very good and close-enough simulation. The added bonus of adjusting the flange rate with the rocker pedal, something the original lacked, is surely makes up for it. Unicord UniVibeThe UniVibe simulation of the classic Hendrix sound, but also famously used by Robin Trower. Listen to Jimi’s Machine Gun to hear the original UniVibe in full effect. In short, the UniVibe is the predecessor of today’s chorus and flanger effects. Originally the UniVibe was designed to imitate a rotating Leslie speaker in a compact form by the British effect wizard, Roger Mayer, who previously built the Octavia and other custom-designed effects for Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix premiered Mayer’s latest box of tricks at his 1969 Woodstock Festival appearance and created the tone guitarists all over the world have since been trying to recreate. Of course, you can spend as much on an original UniVibe as you could invest in a small new car (if you ever come across one, that is) or pay still loads of money for so-called ‘faithful reproductions’. While some are certainly worth their price tags, the in-built UniVibe sim with the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory is actually rather good. Of course, it’s not the identical to Jimi’s tone and just like the A/DA sim, the UniVibe preset is also lacking a little of the plumy, organic fatness. At least I’m saying this to avoid countless of Hendrix and UniVibe fans marking me down. Just speaking for myself here, the UniVibe sim is pretty damn cool and I would love to hear someone doing the Pepsi-test and see if people can actually hear differences to much more expensive boutique clones of the UniVibe. Leslie 147 Rotary SpeakerFrom the original UniVibe, which was more-or-less an attempt to get the effect of the original rotating Leslie speaker in a compact form, the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory even offers a preset simulation of the actual Leslie 147 Rotary Speaker. I did play through some UniVibe clones, but never played an original UniVibe and I also never played through an original Leslie speaker cabinet. I’m therefore cautious to make any comparisons to the original. So much though, the Leslie 147 Rotary Speaker simulation on the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory offers some interesting tones that border on various tremolo effects. I did play through various Leslie simulations from other multi-effects units of similar price range and I can say, the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory Leslie 147 Rotary Speaker preset sounds the best. Certainly inspiring and offering countless possibilities to tweak some cool tones on it. Dunlop CryBaby & Vox Clyde McCoyI used to own the Vox Clyde McCoy re-issue from the early 1990’s and have played countless of times through various Dunlop CryBaby wahs over the years. I favour the warmer, less aggressive tones of the Vox wah pedals over the Dunlops, and I was excited to hear the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory doing an exceptional job recreating that tone almost down to the dot. Same goes for the Dunlop CryBaby. Of course, Vox and Dunlop have released various versions of their classic wah pedals and some are offering interesting additional features, but if you just need the classic wah tone off these iconic pedals, look no further. Concluding My Digitech EX-7 ReviewThere’s really not much more to say. You want a Vox or a Dunlop wah? This is as good as the original and even offers 7 more presets – all in one box and for pretty much the same price tag. What more do you want? Needless to say, unlike the originals, the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory has true bypass and its wah simulations allow the user to place the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory anywhere in your audio chain. Plus you might be able to save on one or more additional overdrive and distortion stompers, as you can program and assign the EX7’s brilliant own overdrive sims to your presets. DigiTech have done everything right here. Really, the only downsides to this amazing pedal is that you can’t use the overdrive and distortion tones on their own and I probably would like more play for the rocker pedal for fade-ins and –outs. But I guess for those liking to rock the pedal fast for fast wah action, the rocker’s short distance might actually be just perfect. Either way, the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory is a killer; an absolute winner that will satisfy the most demanding tone enthusiasts. And for a reason, it’s the only non-analogue unit I have allowed onto my guitar rig. Try one out today and share your experience with us below in the comments section. Also fire away any questions you might have regarding the DigiTech EX7 Expression Factory. Over and out for now. 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