Digitech 2101 Upgrade

Hi, I'm Mike Sullivan. Welcome to Guitar Tech. How to do it yourself. Today I would like to discuss a famous piece of equipment that is often sold on eBay. We don't have any videos. I've done a lot of searching on YouTube. There's not very many videos that are actually showing you the unit. So I just thought I'd expose it a little bit. There's plenty of videos out there on what this unit can sound like and how it can be programmed to sound like anything from Eddie Van Halen's tone to Joe Satriani or Steve Vai or Dokken or whatever. It's an extremely versatile tube guitar preamp, the Digitech 2101. This one has the upgrades which I'll show you in a little bit. I will go ahead and open it up. For those who have not used this unit but are thinking about buying one, you can get them for under $300 usually on eBay or Craigslist. They're an extremely versatile unit. I'm still experimenting with this one. I've only had it for a few months. I haven't really delved into all of its capabilities but it is pretty massive. So if you're not a button person, if you don't like using menus and navigating and creating your own tone from absolutely nothing, this probably isn't going to do you very much good. This is really in-depth as far as the programming side of it. But there are some good sounds that you can download into this unit via MIDI off of the computer. These programs and links to the software and things like that I'm going to put on my website at mikesministries.com. I plan on putting up a section for this unit and for other units that I have just for hard to find files and programs that you can use with these units. When it comes to taking the cover off of this one, there are three screws on each side of the unit. There's one on the back right here in the middle at the top. And then the tricky one is you've got to have a hex tool to get this one off right here on the middle of the front. So it's just like the other bolts that are around the edge. But this one here has actually got a little flange on the top. So once you remove that, the top will come right off. So let me do that and we'll continue. Okay, I have the top off and I've zoomed in a little bit on the unit here. I'll tilt it up for you. The additional things that you can get for this box, the processor here, is you have a second VSLI chip board that you can order and add to this unit. It's originally sold with only one on the motherboard. It actually looks just like this daughter board underneath this. When you order it, it'll come with standoffs that you just plug into the board and then plug this in. Very easy to do. And version 3 of the GSP2101 Artist ROMs, you can order those also and install those. And that makes the StudioTube the Artist version. Everything else is identical, except the StudioTube earlier version of this processor did not have these upgrades. But it was obviously built to be upgraded. And if you bought the Artist originally, then you already have those. But you may not have the upgraded version to version 3. The other thing I wanted to show inside of here is how easy it is to replace the tubes and play with your tone. Right here on the right side of the unit, there's a plate that holds the preamp tubes on. Just one screw. Just remove the plate and you're free to pull the tubes out by pulling straight up. And I've changed the tubes in mine. This is a Mullard that I had in V1. That's an ECC83. It's a reissue. New old stock. I always buy new old stock tubes. And then this is a Tung Sol 12AX7. So what I was wanting to do is see what it sounds like if I swap them around. And put the Tung Sol in V1. And then put the Mullard in V2. I used to have both Tung Sols in both positions. But when I put the Mullard in, it really gave it more of a three dimensional tone. So just play with tubes. Buy a whole bunch of tubes. And set it up. Plug it in with the top off. And just swap tubes all day and see what you like and what you don't like in which position. As far as I understand it, V1 is more like your clean tone and V2 is the overdrives. Although you can get overdrive off of the first tube as well. It's a very sophisticated unit. I don't know all the electronics but it's a really neat sounding unit. And you can change the tone of it from the stock tubes. I still have the stock Pentatubes that came with it as well. And a lot of people just like those but I like to experiment. So it's a very simple unit as you can see. This is the entire inside. There's your tubes. Scanning back to your upgrade area. And that's all there is to the unit. On the back, you've got all of your inputs and outputs. And it's MIDI controllable. In, out and through. When you get the cable to hook up the foot pedal board. If you get the Control 1, I imagine the Control 2, the new version, should work too. Be sure you plug it in here. It's the same kind of MIDI cable but it doesn't plug into the MIDI. It plugs into this specific jack. And then you've got a voiced 412 cabinet that you can turn on and off with this switch. Through mic cables voiced out here as well as your normal quarter inch. So it's a very nice unit. If you're looking for a new toy out there without spending a lot of money, you can't beat this. So I hope the video just helps a little bit just to show you parts of this unit that you won't see on eBay. Maybe you will. They do have some shots of this opened up on eBay. You can buy these upgrades that I showed you also on eBay. So I hope the video helps for anybody interested in a 2101 Studio Tube and upgrading it to the Artist with version 3 ROM chips and a second VSLi board. This has been a video on the 2101 Studio Tube upgrade to the Artist by Digitech. Well thanks for watching and see you next time on Guitar Tech. How to do it yourself.