From analogman.com FAQ on Whammy Pedals:
Why does everybody seem to prefer the old wh-1 Whammy over the new one?
The Whammy II had redesigned "improvements" made when over the original whammy when it was released. The biggest mistake was putting the input gain control in there - if you don't get the adjustment "just right" then it will not track the input pitch properly and, even if you do get it right, as the input decays the pitch tracking will eventually lose its "lock" on the signal.
The original WH-1 Whammy had a special circuit that the Whammy II does not (thus no "input level" control), allowing almost any input signal level to be dynamically scaled so that the pitch tracking can "lock on" faultlessly. This also meant that as the signal level decayed, the pitch would remain locked due to the scaling action. The Whammy II loses lock on the signal as it decays, resulting in a highly unpleasant "warbling" sound which you may have noticed if you've used one.
Why was the whammy modified?
The old red Whammy was probably changed because it was quite expensive and not selling as well as it could be. On most newer mass-marketed pedals, the price/cost is the main feature. In reality, the Whammy-II ended up costing almost as much (and even more in some areas) and people didn't like it nearly as much. It had some cool features (you didn't have to bend down to change modes, and it had the "toggle" feature to switch between your two favorites) but it did not SOUND the same, and it was a little less robust than the original version.
How about the reissue whammy?
It seems that they did not use the exact same algorithms as the original so they still don't sound quite as good. The original manual has a note Copyright 1990 IVL Technologies Ltd, looks like they were the ones who designed this pedal for DOD. You can find the manual on
www.digitech.com.
Can you modify the reissue whammy?
No, we don't do any work on those due to the construction making it very difficult. We do a lot of true bypass mods on the original WH-1 pedal, even though it is a difficult job, because they are valuable and sound great. The bypass mod on a WH-1 is $60 plus S & H.
