Anyone Find The Line 6 DL4 and MM4 Kill Your Tone?

[KennyM]

I'm going thru all my pedals trying to decide which ones to keep and intergrate into a rack or pedalboard setup. In testing out the Line 6 boxes, It seems like these make my tone go brittle whenever they are in the chain, fx on or off. Is it just me or what?

I know these units, especially the DL4, make it onto a lot of pro pedalboard rigs and I am impressed with the quality of the fx available, but my setup sounds much better without these in the line.

Anyone else experience this?

Thanks,
Kenny M.

[alderbody]

I once bought the Modulation Modeler and i still have it in its box.

I removed it from my rig just because i hated its sterile tone,
but i'm not sure if it caused tone loss when on standby.
It is supposed to be true bypass...

Of course, the biggest tone loss occurs when this thing is on...

[size=1/2]what a waste of hard earned money!...[/size]

ok, just my point of view...

[drolling]

Yep- real tone-suckers with lots of other issues. Sell yours before it breaks. I sure wish I had. They wanted $300 CDN to fix mine. At least it's big & heavy enough to actually be used as a doorstop.

[John Phillips]

Yes. The first time I played a little gig without my DL-4 (I just used an old Boss DM-2, for space reasons and because I had had another issue with the DL-4 shortly before) was the last time I used my DL-4. The difference in tone was astounding.

I don't know why I didn't notice when I bought the DL-4 - I think I was just listening to the sounds, not the tone. Plus, in the shop I ran it into the front of a clean amp, where the tone problem is least noticeable - it's much worse if it comes after distortion, and unusable in a parallel FX loop IMO.

The problem is very simple - it digitizes the whole signal, not just the repeats. OK it's 'true' bypass, but that doesn't help when it's on, and actually I almost never turned mine off so the bypass type was irrelevant. The digitization messes up the tone, and causes latency which means you get a nasty comb-filter effct if you try to improve things by putting it in a parallel loop, unless you have the DL-4 set to 100% wet all the time - which gives you the same mix on all three presets (probably not what you want), and you can't do on the loop sampler anyway.

Yes, I know a lot of pros appear to use them.

[drolling]

Originally posted by John Phillips
Yes, I know a lot of pros appear to use them.

Yes, and it's quite puzzling isn't it, John. Reminds me of a guy I knew who stuck one of those dreadful little Chinese made Alesis Nanoverbs between his vintage teles & voxes. I just don't get that...

[MAZ]

I agree with the tone suck issue on these pedals. Plus, IMO, the MM4 has only about 2 good sounds anyway.

But you can make the pedal true bypass so at least it won't suck tone when it's off.

If you're really sold on the FX tones of these boxes, at least that helps!

[aleclee]

Sounded great in the loop of my Koch but with my Soldano the amp sounded muffled like it was in the next room.

[HHB]

sucks tone bigtime in my rig, I find the stuff unuseable which is unfortunate, they really do pack a lot of features into their gear, but I'm too picky about the "immediateness" of my tone

Well I'm gonna stick up for mine.

Its ok in a parallel effects loop set 100% wet. I just use it for slap. longer delays w/ mod and thats about it.

I bought mine new and never had a bit of trouble with it for jeez four years now. Gigging pretty steady.

When it goes down I probably won't buy another but hey, it works now

Bob

PS I also had the good sense to hold on to my Ibanez Ad80 but I don't take it out anymore.

[david eaton]

I've never had a tone issue with the DL-4. The MM-4 does tend towards a brittle sound when engaged. I don't use it much for that reason. I too often notice some pros whose tone I respect use them and then I tell myself "I need to mess with that thing some more..."

[gkelm]

That was my impression too...much hapier with the Boss DD-20.
Greg

[KennyM]

Well at least I'm not insane. I thought it was just me.

I just pull these pedals out from time to time and use them for a particular part I'm recording so I really hadn't noticed what they do to the quality of my tone. I'd just dial it up to cut the part and then back it would go into this bag of fx and junk. As the number of pedals I have seems to have multiplied like rabbits, I have decided to systemize everything into either a rack switching system or a huge pedalboard. It's in this developing pedal chain that I am really noticing the tone sucking effects of these pedals as well as a few others.

By the way, the DL4 is not even close in echo sound quality to the Chandler Digital Echo I also have. Just wish it was in a pedal as using it is probably gonna steer me towards a rack type rig, which I didn't really want to get into.

One thing's for sure - the DL4 and MM4 wont be making it into this new setup.

Thanks for all the replies.

Kenny M.

Had mine modded by Keeley, night and day difference for me. Eddie from indoorstorm.com hooked me up. Jeorge Tripps came up with the mod for it, much more musical.

[KennyM]

Thanks for bringing up the Keeley mod Garshopper. I was curious as to how much an improvement that might make.

Can you offer a little more detail as to the difference the mod made?

Thanks,

Kenny M.

Well I mistyped my username, maybe the admin can lend a hand (:

The mod, my complaints were similiar.. I didn't like the way it rounded off my tone. Sounded "digital". After the mod it's a litlle quieter, but it sounds warmer and more musical. The effects are the same, but my guitar sounds better. I think it's worthwhile, I actually like the pedal now.