DL4 Users: School me?

[ZDPrice]

Obviously doesn't have "cool factor" like Timeline or Timefactor, but I'm just interested in ease of use in live settings, presets, looping functionality, overall quality, tone-suck, and any other insights...

Thanks!

[Ryan07]

I kind of think it does...at this point. It is still on some of my favorite musician's boards. Bill Frisell, Explosions in the sky, etc..

I like it. No real tone-suck for me. The auto-swell is worth the price of admission alone. I like the modulation and how turning the knobs funks with the tone. The dd7 isn't so pleasant. Wish the loop was a little longer.. But I find it to be a nice, though kind of big, pedal.

[jonathansuhr]

I really like how easily you can access three different presets (which is plenty in my opinion) just with one stomp. The sounds are great, especially Lo-Fi, and looping function is super fun and easy to use.

That said, the pedal itself is monstrous, and that's the only reason why it isn't on my board. If it were a little smaller, it would've kicked off my El Cap for sure.

[sascha]

Had the DL-4, switched to M9 later, currently running a M5 + Strymon Timeline.

DL-4 is quite easy to use. 3 easily accessible presets, easy-to-control looper, 5 parameters, several delay models, true bypass (switchable to buffered bypass for trails), that's it. Good enough to be on the boards of Radiohead, Coldplay, Minus the bear and many others for a long time.

Drawbacks:

• The Tube Echo (my favourite model) and some other models STRONGLY color the dry part of your signal. That's ON PURPOSE, Line6 wanted to model the behaviour of an actual Echoplex. However, I never liked it.
• Tap tempo subdivisions are only available in one digital model. For all other models (Tube echo, tape echo) it's only quarters
• Tap tempo and expression pedal don't work well together. tapping always sets the tempo ONLY for EITHER the heel OR the toe setting of the expression pedal, so you will get glitches. Unless you tap seperately for heal and for toe, and both EXACTLY at the same speed :-)

All of these points were improved in the M5/M9/M13 modeler series, that have all the DL4 algorithms implemented (some say that they sound slightly different; well, not to my ears):

• there's alternative "dry thru" models for Tube Echo etc
• 19 tap subdivisions, everything from whole note to 32th
• tap tempo and expression work together perfectly

Additional pros and cons:

• M5 and M13 have a display (M13 actually has 4) that is small and hard to read, but: It always shows you the settings of each parameter and the range of expression pedal control for each parameter at one glimpse. M9 has the same display, but it's shared among the 3 possible concurrent effects. I love that display. I'd love it even more if it were bigger and brighter :-)
• M5/9/13 have a quite good tuner (though small display)
• M5/9/13 have lots of additional non-delay effect models. Most are not GREAT, but useable. I use my M5 for whammy type effects; I use whammy only very seldom, wouldn't justify a dedicated whammy pedal (sold my whammy II when I got my M9)
• M5 doesn't have a looper, and switching presets is quite uncomfortable (at least if you want both preset switching and tap tempo/bypass switching functionality). OTOH, it's the only one that can do preset naming
• M9 and M13 have a looper undo/redo function added

[Catoogie]

I never liked the 'Dry Thru' sounds. People use an Echoplex not only for the delay but for the tone it imparts on their signal. It's part of the magic. Then again, I hear a lot of similar complaining about Leslie Simulators and how it 'colors' their tone. Uh, YEAH... it's simulating an amplifier.

[schrom81]

The DL4 is an easy pedal to use but has some major issues. At least in the old ones. I don't know if they have been fixed but I do know there a lot of company's that do mods to fix.

First off there is some tone suck. It rolls of the high end big time. It is even more prevalent when the pedal is turned on. You can see the problem when the pedal is off you have your sound when on the high end is cut off. I found I liked the high end roll off on my JCM 900 when it was in the FX loop so much I made the pedal on sound my main tone with that amp(it got rid of the fizzyness of the amp). I bought an expression pedal and made toe up the off position and toe down the on.

Second and worse. There is a major volume drop with the pedal. And in my case it got progressively worse from preset one to three. This made me eventually end up only using one setting on the pedal to avoid.

Eventually I sold the pedal.