Digitech Whammy

The Digitech Whammy is an iconic pitch shifter pedal from the late 1980s/early 1990s - the first pedal of such to use foot-controlled pitch bends, mimicking the effect of using a tremolo arm (a.k.a. "Whammy" bar) on a guitar but without the tuning problems. It is also capable of doing octave effects.

Steve Hackett has the 4th and 5th-generation versions of the Whammy pedal, both of which he's used quite extensively for recording & touring work. His introduction to the Whammy was through working with John Paul Jones in Japan (in 2004). "Again, it’s just about expanding the limits of what a guitar can do. You can spot it in other people’s playing at times, too... It’s nice to have an upper or a lower octave, or that piccolo rock guitar sound. They’re all very strange settings and very different and it can make the guitar sound like a synth as well.

“I used it on a Steven Wilson track on his album Grace For Drowning (2011). I believe the track was called Remainder The Black Dog and I used it for a solo on that. I also used it extensively on an album I made with Chris Squire called Squackett [A Life Within A Day].”