As promised, here’s my comparison review. In this review, I’m only looking at the features of the Boss PS-3 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay that are shared with the Digitech Whammy IV: pitch-shifting, harmony, and chorus capabilities.
POWER: The Whammy IV runs on a 9VAC adapter, rated for 1300mA. Meanwhile, the Boss PS-3 is far less demanding and uses a typical 9VDC supply. Until the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power Versa comes out, the Whammy will be a hassle to power.
SIZE: The Whammy IV is approximately 8” x 6.3”, while the PS-3 is the same as any other Boss compact pedal. Of course, once you add an expression pedal, the combo will take up just as much space as the Whammy does.
HANDLING: The treadle of the Whammy IV is smooth and easy to manage, IMO. I seem to have a harder time with precision-controlling the sweeps with the Roland EV-5 that’s being used with my PS-3. This is an issue of personal preference, since I know some people hate the way the Whammy handles.
TRACKING: The Whammy IV is like its predecessors – it’s a digital monophonic pedal. It will break up and struggle to track if you’re playing chords or letting notes ring out over each other. The PS-3 shows virtually no struggle at all, although it might waver a bit on fancy low note chordwork. I think the PS-3 may be officially a polyphonic pedal, because it tracks pretty much everything.
MODE SWITCHING: The Whammy is extremely user-friendly, and even offers the ability to use a MIDI controller to switch between presets or dial in specific settings. On the PS-3, you have to dial in pitches manually and adjust the Balance knob for whammy or harmony use. Fortunately, this allows the PS-3 a greater degree of freedom in what you can set it to do, but the Whammy wins for sheer convenience and a nice selection of useful presets. If only it had the 5th up / 1 octave up harmony mode like on the Bass Whammy… :scowl:
WHAMMY MODES: First, I’ll address the upper octaves. The sweeps of the Whammy are thick, full of midrange, and growly. There is a slight boost in volume, which is a nice perk considering that going up an octave will take some of your low end. The sound packs a punch, and can distort a bit depending on your playing style. It sounds awesome running before distortion; it becomes very “organic”, and the effect will cut through even heavy fuzz tones.
The PS-3 is very different. The sweeps seem thinner in comparison, but are clean, have a brighter top end, and carry a slight ambience to them. They also have a characteristic unnatural tone and a slight “tremolo-like” sound to them – it’s extremely mild but ever-present in the sustain. The drawback of the PS-3’s effect is that it is more likely to be buried if run before a distortion pedal. Generally, the PS-3’s sound is cleaner and 100% stable, but the Whammy cuts through better – especially through distortion.
On the lower octaves, the Whammy adopts characteristics more akin to an analog sub-octave pedal (including the mild tracking glitches), which I find to be pretty cool. Meanwhile, the PS-3’s lower octaves sound distinctively unnatural and somewhat metallic. It’s far from an old-school sound.
HARMONY MODES: The main difference here goes back to the “organ” reference. Both have smooth sweeps, but the Whammy sounds like a slightly overdriven organ, and it seems more precise in the pitch it shifts to. On the same settings, the PS-3 sounds more like a clean organ, and seems more dissonant on the end note if the end note is below the dry signal note. They don’t seem to be “tuned” quite the same. The Whammy sounds slightly more accurate to my ears on the bottom end of things.
DETUNE MODES: Each pedal has detune modes for chorus sounds. Surprisingly, these two pedals have a lot of common tonal ground: deep, natural, and not tone-altering. The PS-3 can achieve thicker, more extreme chorus sounds; when cranked, it can reach the domain of delay modulation (minus the delay) or dramatic ambient detuning. With the Whammy, however, you can alter the depth on the fly with the treadle, going from a clean sound to a full chorus tone. If you need a nice, thick chorus that you can gradually fade in with your foot, the Whammy is the ticket. For more extreme chorus sounds, the PS-3 is the way to go.
OVERALL: This really narrows down to personal preference, since they sound and behave so differently. The Whammy IV seems to be my style when it comes to pitch shifting, but the detune chorus sounds are amazing with the PS-3. I think I'm going to keep the Whammy IV for band use, as it has already been band tested and approved, and works better for what I'm doing. I just need to decide what to do with my PS-3 – after all, it has 8 other cool modes I didn’t address in this review (see my full PS-3 solo review for more information on those).
If I get an opportunity, I'll try to record some soundclips.