Boss DD-20

This unit takes quite a while to learn what it is capable of. Getting standard delay sounds is very easy but fine tuning it to do wonderful stuff takes some patience, the manual is OK but could be a little better laid out. Having 4 memory patches is great like the Line 6 DL4 but the Boss is better as it has a 5th setting for on the fly adjustment, which is handy is you've ever used the DL4!!

All in all Ok to use but be patient and search!! I've had this pedal for about 6 months and I'm still discovering stuff on it.

Manipulating the delay sounds is quite easy but read the manual, but once you know, its awesome, changing the modulation intensity is amazing and the tempo settings give an array of different timed delays, you can do everything from U2 settings, to reverb, to stupidly long delay times, 23 seconds?? how useable is that but its cool to say your pedal can do it I suppose!!

Well I love my setup as do most of you and I'm interested in it so you might be too, here it is:

70's Tele Custom > Boss TU2 > Boss OC2 > Boss GE7 > Snarling Dog whino Wah > Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor > EH Small Stone > Boss CE2 > Boss DD20 > Engl Screamer amp.

The pedal adds a tiny bit of noise to my rig but all delay pedals usually do, particularly if your guitar is noisy, as mine is, old 70's fender pickups are often noisy, but I've played a Les Paul through my rig and there isn't much noise at all, depends what you're running into the pedal.

I adore delay in general and this has samples of some famous delays including the Boss DM2 analog delay, the Roland Soace Echo and others. My favourites are the DM2, the Space echo and the modulated delay. You can also get reverb delay, reverse delay, standard delay, dual delay, panning delay and 2 weird ones, warp which is kind of naff but good if you like your rig to sound like a motorbike and twist which just feedbacks the delays for you, could be other way round but I hardly use these other two anyway!

One of the masterstokes of this pedal is that it has a tone control which is so handy, takes the edge (no pun intended!) off the standard delay and can make the analog delay sound really muddy and thick if thats your sort of thing.

The general sound quality I think is excellent and I would say is similar to the Line 6 DL4 some of the settings are better than the DL4, I prefer the analog and modulated settings but the DL4 has more sounds and is still a great delay pedal but the Boss is slightly better in my opinion see below.

The analog delay is a fair recreation in its warmth and lo fi nature, the standard delays are very good but the space ehco and modulated delay are amazing, this pedal is worth the money alone just for those, they are THAT good!

People who says its digital sounding, get out of your own arse! and don't bloody buy the thing and go and pay #150 for a real DM2 and a years wages for a Roland Space Echo and stop complaining!!! I personally love analog sounds and digital ones, and this pedal does a very good job of both is infinitely more useable live than older delay units and many guitarist and your punters in the audience are going to be hard pressed to tell the difference once a band is sounding off and the public most normal dont give a crap anyway, life is not about impressing other guitarists!!

Its Boss people.

Never had to contact them, I reckon their customer support only has one person on it and receives 1 call a year. This gear is unrivalled in this category.

I play rock, funk, some pop all in a kind of riff Hendrix like style. I'm not a fan of the big 1000 notes a seond lead guitar style, more a lover of riffs, rhythems and melodies and ambience. I've been playing for around 20 years (I'm 28 today!) and I simply love expressing myself through my guitar. Effects help me to create an atmosphere or ambience and this pedal is the best one I have come across for this purpose I love it, I prefer it to the Line 6 DL4 but thats just my opinion their both good pedals.

If it were stolen or lost I would not hesitate to buy another one as I believe this is the most versatile and useable for both live and studio purposes that I have come across. There are other rack mount units which are amazing but if you want a pedal for under #1000 that can do more or less the same thing and something you can put on your pedal board and use live for awesome sounds then this will be for you.

Having the memory patches is great but the main thing this pedal has over the Line 6 DL4 is that you can tap tempo all the delay sounds (not just one) to be any timing you like so you can have triplet timing at 120 BPM for example, on all the delay sounds the DL4 does not do this. Although buy an external footswitch other wise you have to press down the right pedal for 2 seconds for it to be tap tempo, its OK but its useful to have a separate pedal for tap tempo and then have the right pedal to change patches, the left one just turns the delay off.

Having a digital readout telling you the delay time is useful for live purposes as it is backlit.

There are so many sounds you can get out of this thing, classic delay sounds, doubling, reverbs, long delays, weirdo delays and a great chorus effect using the modulated delay at 18ms, amazing!

I have had a Boss DD6 prior to this and this pedal does all that that one does and a whole lot more. As I have said the Line 6 DL4 is the main rival here and I prefer the DD20, I think the sounds are slightly better quality and I presonally find the delay timing thing on the DD20 much better, but some people don't bother with delay timing and just have on beat delay, in which case the DL4 might a your better bet.

This pedal does help me to make music and can give a wonderful ambience to your sound, you won't be dissapointed if you buy this thing but be patient with it and it will work for you and turn heads!

Enjoy....

Its easy once you read the manual and mess with it for about 2 hours. You can get a great sound with it right away, but to get something unique you have to spend a little time. The manual is great, very thorough (i dunno how to spell)

I think it sounds great on all of the settings except Reverse. I cant figure that out. I think its easy to get the Incubus type sound out of this pedal, very spacey or whatever. The analog delay sounds awesome, it fades away really nicely. Its not noisy for me at all. I've never played any other delays, but this one seems pretty top of the line.

Dude, this thing looks pretty tough to me. But seriously... who doesnt take care of their 200 dollar pedals?

NA

I play progressive stuff, I dont really like to copy other people's styles. I guess I come closest to the style of Incubus. The effects-lathered rock kind of stuff. I love everything so far, but some of the settings sound pretty similar. I think everyone can find something they love about this pedal.

The pedal is pretty easy to use. It's not as easy as something like the DD-6, but that's because it has so many different features. The one thing i dont like about it is that you have to choose which function you want the right switch to have. You can choose between functioning as tap tempo, or selecing your settings. I wound up just getting the boss footswitch to control tempo so i can choose my setting much easier. You might want to read the manual for some of the settings.

This is the best sounding delay i have used. This is my 3rd delay pedal. the first one was a Boss DD-6. i liked it but i wanted to try the Line 6 DL4. at first i was pleased with it, but like many other people on here, the stupid thing just died on me. One minute it worked, the next minute it was dead nomatter what i did. so i wound up just getting this and i wish i had gotten this in the first place because it just sounds really really good. it has a ridiculous amount of delay time and features. i don't really like the looping on this pedal though, because you can't save your loop like on the line 6.

I have never had even the slightest problem with any of the 20 something boss pedals i have ever owned.

i can't really tell. i've never had a problem with any products they make, so i haven't needed them.

i play funky, jazzy, soulful kinda music and the delay works really well. it seems to work well with all my other effects too. (come on now i have to list my setup!) i use an Ernie Ball Volume, Vox Clyde McCoy Wah, digitech synth wah, boss octave, ibanez tubescreamer, MXR Phase 90, digitech talker, in to the DD-20, in to a vintage fender pro reverb. what can i say? i love my sound.

despite the way it looks, its very easy! i did have to read the manual on one or two of the functions, but other than that, its pretty straight forward. the manual was very helpful too

this is the best part of this pedal! this is by far the best sounding delay i have ever heard or played with. i use this pedal every time i play. its THAT essential to my sound. i generally run this thru my effects loop in my mesa lonestar playing with my parker fly mojo. now that is a dreamy sound! i've even run it direct with my acoustic into the dd20 into a DI box. oh, and there is no noise coming out of this thing either. when i was shopping for a delay, i checked out the DL4 and a couple of smaller boss delays, the DL4 sounded to harsh and sterile to me, and the layout was counterintuitive. what does "tweaz" mean? the dd20 has settings like "digital", "analog", "tape". thats pretty simple to understand. the dd20 beat the DL4 hands down. some of my favorite settings:

analog set with the feedback about 8 o'clock the level about 1 or 2, tone at 12, and tempo set at quater note triplets (the black note with the 3 beside it). thats a sweet u2 type sound.

modulate with the feedback at 9, and the level at 1 or 2, tone at 12, and with the rate set at 60hz. THAT is my favorite clean sound. thats what i consider my signature clean sound.

the next thing i like is the fact that if you hold down the "tempo" button near the LED panel, it will change the time from milliseconds to BPM. this is priceless in the studio. i've used it a number of times.

i've actually banged it up quite a bit, nicked the paint, dropped it, cracked the faceplate (just a small crack) from taking it everywhere. i just consider them battle scars from the war of tone that it is undoubtedly the victor. if i lost it, i would have to buy another that day. i cant imagine playing without it now

i havent had to talk with them really (thats probably a testimony in itself), but i talk with the roland rep for the guitar center i work for and he's the most helpful rep of any company anywhere. joey arata you rock!

if you are even thinking about a serious delay pedal, this is it. like i mentioned above, i work at a guitar center, and i sell a lot of these because i love 'em so much! i've talked to people that wanted to buy a DL4 and i talk them out of it! when you compare the 2, theres really no contest. its even cheaper! i'll talk with them later on and ask how they like (love) their dd20 and they give me this response " *sigh*...ah man, i love that pedal. that pedal is awesome."

The Giga Delay is very straightforward like all Boss products, but it is also the
deepest, most flexible and inspiring stomper I have ever run across.
The manual is clear, but it hardly hints at the things the DD-20 can do.
It will take time to discover the many things it can do. This is
perhaps its only drawback. The DD-20 would be overkill for anyone
who just needs a basic delay sound.

Tap tempo was the most important feature for me, and I could
operate it right out of the box. So is standard 9VDC power input.
Many boutique pedals use their own power supplies, which is an annoyance
when you have a pedalboard.

I do a lot of improvising in a band context and I was able to grab
some cool stuff easily on my first gig with it, after owning it
for only a couple of days. I read through the little manual
twice and now I think I know all the controls.

It sounds wonderful on practically any setting. Really.
It depends on what you play into it. <g>

All of the controls are scaled perfectly, and the available
effects run the gamut from subtle to emulations to over-the-top.

I am using the DD-20 with a Fender Twin and various other
stompers. The DD-20 is at the end of the chain before a volume pedal.

The mode settings, briefly:

- Standard is like any Boss digital delay pedal. This sound
plus the tap tempo would have been worth $199 to me
without the rest.

- Analog emulation is spot on. I sold my analog pedal decades
ago. Now I have it back, sort of.

- Tape. This is likewise accurate and possibly my favorite.
There's a bit of tape slippage in there, as well as a darkening
and distorting of the echoes, especially with feedback up.
Using Tape on a slapback setting is great.

- Warp and Twist are special fx, and don't appear very useful
until you experiment a bit. By holding a pedal down in warp mode,
the feedback ramps up to max. I found that at longer delay settings,
this created a loop that could be overdubbed. Twist does the same
while changing the delay time, causing the pitch to ascend; when you
release the pedal the pitch drops down to a motorboat. The jury is
still out on this....

- SOS is a looper. It allows overdubbing, and soloing over your
creation while using an echo effect. Not for dedicated loopists,
but a very nice feature well implemented.

- Modulate allows you to do two things not mentioned in the manual:
chorus and flange. By using short delay times and adjusting
the modulation speed and depth, you can achieve a nice flange and
a room-y chorus.

- Reverse is just that! Set the wet/dry control to full wet and go.
Big fun, if you like that sort of thing. I do.

- Smooth smoothes the attack of the echo. It sounds dreamier. A nice and
unique flavor.

I have no reason to think this Boss pedal will be less dependable than
any other. Boss pedals have been absolutely reliable in my experience.

Haven't dealt with Boss directly, ever.

I needed a delay pedal with tap tempo for onstage jams. I first bought
a Line 6 Echo Park, which was a huge disappointment. It was returned quickly.
I tried a number of boutique pedals, (the best of them was the DLS Echo Tap.
It sounded beautiful, but it would not go extreme. For someone just looking
for a pretty echo, I would recommend the DLS) I felt at home with the Boss immediately, and a little fiddling in the store revealed the DD-20 to be very deep.

This has been an exciting purchase.

Got to master this incredible pedal. Just might be THE BEST DELAY UNIT known to mankind. This thing is almost too good to be true.

As far as I can tell,this thing flat out beats out all of the delay toys that I have played with,and that is dating back to the mid 70's Analog snob? Well, I used to have an old Boss stomper,but the sound quality was so close that I could not justifiy having two delay pedals.Sold the old and it almost made up the difference for the DD-20.

Hopefully will last for ever!

No contact,no comment.

I play mostly blues oriented music. I also like to play ECM styles(Bill Frisell, I really love).I have this thing nested in a three line effects loop(about 20 effects all together).IT IS ABSOLUTELLY THE ESSENTIAL PIECE OF GEAR for me. Boss has made quite a few pedals both good and bad,but they certainly got this one right.

It took me a few hours of tinkering around with it to figure out all the modes, and how to work them, but the manual is perfect! There are a butt load of sounds you can get from this machine!!!

My set up is a Epiphone Les Paul Standard -> BOSS TU-2 -> BOSS DD-20 -> Traynor Custom Valve 40, and it sounds awesome! There are 11 different modes, some more usefull than others, and as a lot of people have said TWIST is coll, but i would probably never use it in a gig. Im a big U2 fan and you can get all of The Edge's sounds out of this baby. Sound on Sound is the ideal mode for practicing solos, and taty licks, just lay down a basic rhythm line, and play some lead over top, it rocks!

I just bought it, but it is Boss, it will never die!

Never delt with them

If you're not big on delay it might be a bit to much for you, you might want a DD-3 or DD-6, but if you are big on delay it is perfect for you!

if you have owned the line 6 delay, or maybe another boss delay then it's fairly easy to use. i figured out how to use it about 75% without the manual, but after i read it i found out all the little tricks, like switching it to one head or two heads for the tape delay setting. the one thing i dont like is that you have to choose between having the right pedal be a settings selector OR tap tempo. to change it you have to hold it down for 3 seconds. i plan on getting the footswitch so i can use both.

this is my third delay pedal. i owned the dd-6, the line 6, and now this. i traded the dd-6 towards the stupid line 6. that thing died after only having it for 6 months. just straight died. stopped working. i have never owned a tape or analog delay or anything like that, so i cant say if the models on this pedal are great compared to those, but i can say that it sounds much better than the line 6, and practically has the dd-6 in it. i really really like this pedal. my setup is (come on everyone likes to flaunt their setup so just lemme do it): boss ns-2, ernie ball volume, boss tu-2, crybaby special edition, ehx doctor q (vintage), boss cs-3, boss oc-3, ibanez ts-9, mxr phase 90, ibanez cs-9 (vintage), digitech talker, then the delay. so as you can see i love boss pedals. basically, the thing is dope. much better than any other delay on the market today.

ever wonder why line 6 has a one year warrantee and boss has FIVE years? boss is the only brand of pedals that i have never ever had one single problem with. ever.

i have never had to deal with boss.

its definately a great pedal. who doesnt love boss? the one thing i do wish it had was the volume swell setting like the line 6 has, which is why i bought a whole new volume pedal when i sold the line 6. either way, definately worth checking out if you're looking for a delay.

Its pretty complicated. Takes some tinkering and playing around with, for sure. Its worth it though.

This has many sound qualities. A lot of tweakable settings, a lot of noise making potential. I play psych/garage rock, using a 2x12 tube combo and a large chain of effects. its definitely true that you need to right power voltage or you get noise. The pedal does have a bit of that digital edge to it, so if you really want pure analog sound you probably won't be so into this one. But, it does a good analog mimic, and can do a number of other things as well. I have found the 'warp' setting to be one of the best tools for soloing that I've ever come across. Very useful

So far so good.

???

This is an amazingly useful pedal. Can do a thousand things. If you find a good deal and you're thinking about it, just get it. You won't regret...

It is very easy to get a good sound out of this pedal. But being that it is delay and has a number of different delay types reading the manual is recommended. Example, when I was trying this out in GuiCenter I couldn't wait to get home to try the warp and twist (I wasn't getting right in the store), after reading the manual and then trying the warp and twist I realized I'll never use those delays again.

The unit is very quiet and is the last effect in my chain before my amp (Mesa Nomad 45 4x10). Again, the twist and warp feature are not for me I thought my amp was going to explode the one time I tried the twist feature. The Level knob seems to act as a wet/dry effect, the more level the more the unit just sounds like a delay. With the level at about 12 o'clock gives me the right balance of guitar and effect. The pedal shows no bias towards my LP Std. or G&L Legacy, it's quiet either way and my Les Paul's signal doesn't blow it away like it does my analog phaser (also a Boss Ph-1r). Aside from the "warp" and "twist" all the delays sound great. I especially like the analog delay, it's got that lo-fi thing going for it. I would give this a 10 if not for the warp and twist. If I was at a show and the guitarist kept using the "twist" effect I'd know that the guitar playing had been playing guitar for about 5 minutes to a week or that I was simply at the wrong show. The "warp" and "twist" almost made think I had bought a toy.

I've had this pedal for a non-gigging year and no problems so far. My other boss pedals refuse to stop working, amazing!

I've never dealt with the company outside of buying their products.

I auditioned the DD-20 and the Line 6 DL-4. I desperatley wanted to favor the Line 6 since it seems just about everyone is using one in some facet. But it just isn't better than the DD-20. You just have to ask yourself what you need and how you will use it. The Line 6 had more models, but more doesn't make it better, couple that with the fact that I only wanted a few. And I'm definitely not saying that the DL-4 is inferior. I almost used the "twist" and "warp" as an excuse to buy the DL-4. But I couldn't get past the backlit display on the DD-20. I appreciate being able to see where I'm at on the delay scale (how fast or slow), it spoils you. And then throw in the four slots for your own custom tweaks and the fifth (first) slot for on the fly tweaking. I am very pleased with this unit. I think the DL-4 and the DD-20 are both great delays, but the DD-20's features did it for me. I like the idea of being able to go between a splapback delay and reverse delay a the step of a button instead of a twist of a knob.Bands that are currently seeing high rotation in my CD player are Kaiser Chiefs, THE THE, The Cult, Queens of the Stone Age, Brant Bjork, Mary's Danish, Los Super Seven, Ryan Adams, Guided by Voices. I have a long drive to work!