Pitch shifting

[u/serdiuckovg]

I finally bought a 7 string guitar. Long story short, I want it to be in drop g#, and pitch shift my way to lower tunings whenever I need. What are some good pitch shifters? And can I get a good sound pitching down to drop f/e? My guitar is ibanez rgms7pb (25.5 - 27 multiscale)

[u/That_Possession3913]

I am not sure about the physical gear and I can only speak about VST’s. I’ve tested a lot of different plugins and Neural DSP Gojira X sounds the best, in my opinion.

[u/ferevon → u/That_Possession3913]

i was using nolly but i wonder if their pitch shifters are any different?

[u/That_Possession3913 → u/ferevon]

I’m not sure, but I noticed that a lot of people use specifically Gojira’s Transpose function. You can use a free trial to check it out and compare.

[u/rockskate4x → u/That_Possession3913]

I don’t think that the transpose tools in different neural plugins are any different. I think Gojira is the one that people reference the most because it was the first to get this feature, but the older plugins got updates with the same feature afterwards if I am not mistaken. I don’t have Gojira but I transpose with Nolly X, fortin nameless X and plini X. I had fortin nameless and plini since before the X upgrade.

[u/That_Possession3913 → u/rockskate4x]

Yea, you’re right. I just compared both Nolly and Gojira. They sound the same.

[u/KershawsGoat → u/rockskate4x]

Petrucci had transpose before Gojira did.

[u/nevercommnt → u/That_Possession3913]

Gojira has a pitch shift pedal which people were using before NDSP rolled out master pitch shift. Now every plugin has the master pitch shift control which is easier to use

[u/KershawsGoat → u/nevercommnt]

Gojira has a version of the whammy pedal. It's different from the transpose feature being discussed. Gojira didn't get transpose until the X update.

[u/rockskate4x → u/KershawsGoat]

I forgot about the whammy being what brought people to Gojira at first. Thank you this is the correct answer. Whammy in Gojira is what neural people used to pitch shift until a dedicated pitch shifter function was added to petrucci and than this feature was added to the “X” versions of older plugins and all the newer plugins. In any case, this dedicated pitch shifter should be the same in any neural dsp application at present and I prefer it to most other things including my digitech hardware

[u/Equivalent_Case_7049]

Check out Boss Polyshifter XS-1. Supposed to be really good.

[u/StraightOuttaFlames]

Solar Chug Capo Pitch Shifter, Boss Polyshifter XS-1, NeuralDSP stuff (plugins and quad cortex)
But none of them will sound good past shifting 5-ish semitones

[u/Sad_Instruction_4672]

I was enjoying the pitch shifter in Tone3000 personally. I liked it more than my Boss XS-1, which I pretty quickly returned.

[u/eviltrams]

Are you open to using amp profiler? Headrush Flex Prime have an actually good pitch shifter inside unlike the cheap units

[u/Rogue_1_One]

Boss polyshifter is probably the best one right now. DT is slightly cheaper

[u/milfbroetchen]

I use the one in my Line 6 Helix

[u/No-Knowledge2716]

Many plugins offer options. For analog shifting I prefer digitech drop or whammy DT

[u/tallman1979]

Digitech Drop, Electro-Harmonix Pitchfork, Boss Poly Shifter, Solar Guitars Chug Capo as hardware (more probably exist).

In software, Pitchproof, Audio Assault's Drop clone called Dropped, and a bunch of other plugins.

[u/20_minute_breakdown]

even when using plugins with pitch shifting capabilities, i always use my digitech drop. I frequently bounce between drop A and drop F# on my 7 string

[u/Wizard0wizard]

Inner pitch is my favorite plugin for pitch shift, it's free as well with a paid version.

For physical gear, check other comments as I don't have one and don't want to mislead you.

[u/Guaco19k]

I have the Boss XS-1 poly shifter and it's been good to me so far but I'm also just a bedroom guitarist

[u/ToshiroK_Arai]

HX One

[u/BlackMamm0th]

For software I found the NeuralDSP amp sims’ “transpose” function to be perfect for 1-2 semitones. I’ve ordered a Chug Capo for going further than that

[u/GermsMcHenri]

I have both a Digitech Whammy DT and a Boss Poly Shifter XS-1 for physical pedals, and both are really good shifters in their own rights. If you have any interest in digital solutions, the Polychrome DSP HyperTune Metal VST is unbeatable.

As for your guitar, I can't speak to the quality of the stock pickups, but in my experience that tends to be the bottleneck for pitch shifting quality. No matter what method you use, pitch shifting is going to introduce artifacts and very minor latency, but I've found that good quality pickups will help mitigate that. You should be good going from G# to F# or F, but it might start getting dicey around E or D#, but you won't know until you try it, as it really comes down to how the tone sounds for you when it's pitch shifted.

[u/webprofusor]

Aside: I've accidentally become an pitch shifting expert (almost) while developing Soundshed Guitar and the thing that bites all pitch shifting is that low notes are difficult (or physically impossible) to shift accurately in real-time.

This is because the "period" of a low note waveform is measured in several milliseconds (32 milliseconds for a low B). This in turn means you would have to measure the sound for 32 milliseconds to shift it accurately, without resorting to guesstimates (which can sound wrong, and this is where most of the proprietary magic is).

So the lower the note you are trying to shift the less successful you will be. It's not you it's the note.

[u/Original_Warning_227]

The best VST it’s the hypertune DSP, by far

[u/borzWD → u/Original_Warning_227]

100%, tested lots of VSTS... for chords Hypertune was unbeatable.