Boss DD-3 Digital Delay

I picked the DD-3 due to its simplicity, ease of use and because Boss uses more analog components. I also do not use excesive delay times or any funky sounds, like reverse or space echo, etc. Just a straight-ahead delay the way I like it.

Quite easy to change from one setting to another. Manual is not really necessary unless you don't understand type on the pedal. Mike's website gives you instructions on the high-cut switch, which is helpful. But other than that, it's easy to use and sounds great.

Lots of different guitars and different amps. I use the effects loop on my Rivera, but do not on my Vibro King. The King has a loop, but any Fender sounds better with pedals in front, so there you have it. I also have a deluxe reverb that uses the pedals in front. It all sounds great. I don't have that much modulation. Just delay and a phasor. With the pedals in front, it sounds good too. I have a compressor and a couple of overdrive pedals that don't hamper the tone at all. The wah can sound weird with the delay on with too much level, but wahs sound weird anyway. The high-cut filter really does add an analog deminsion to the pedal. The middle position of the high cut switch leaves the delay in stock digital form. So don't worry if you think the mod makes the digital delay unuseable. Some folk like digital delays. I do not, but after paying out the butt for an analog that could give me only 300 ms. of delay, I had to do something else. Far left the delay is darkened, but still has lots of bounce. Far right the cut is great. You hear the first couple of repeats, but the sound really starts to drop off just like an analog pedal. Perfect! Just great for what I was looking for.

Boss makes reliable stuff. I don't know how well this will last after the mod, but since Mike has been doing this for a long time and there doesn't seem to be many issues related to reliability, I am not worried. He's a good guy and backs up his stuff. So there you have it. I wouldn't kick the switch with your foot or drop the pedal off a tall building, but it seems to be modded with great care and precision.

Mike is great. Follows up and personally signs the receipt. Lots of folks use him, so that's a testament of his commitment to customer service.

I tried different digital delays that claimed to give analog sounds. Well, they really did not. Still metallic sounding and stiff. I didn't see myself paying over $200.00 for a delay pedal that had tons of sounds just so I could get one or two. After all, I could just spend another $150.00 and get an analog with more delay time. Instead I thought I'd try this guy from Analog Man. I'm very happy I did. I feel this pedal sounds great. In fact, I'm so happy with the pedal, I will not hesitate to send more pedals I think could be great if they had one or two things different about it. I owned a DD3 before and sold it because of the boingy and semi-harsh sound. This simple mod changes everything about it. I'm not knocking people who like digital delays. Many have found great use for them. I just like a little bit of slap back or a subtle amount of echo. For the money, I just think this is a great deal for those wanting an analog sound from a digital delay. If you can get a hold of a DD2, I would bet that would even sound better.

I'm sure some people may have trouble with it but I'd mastered everything there was in about a day, and this is my first delay pedal. getting the exact level of feedback or delay time may be a little trouble.

i was looking for the guitar for the verse of dredg's "same ol' road", which gives out that quick clicking sound. i got it. this is great for post-rockers, and i know the guys from explosions in the sky and mogwai use this.

yeah, haven't had a problem.

never needed them.

i play post-rock and 60s stuff. this thing is pretty damn versatile. and i'd buy another if i lost it. i wish the hold feature lasted more than a couple of seconds though. i don't know about any of boss' other delay pedals, so i'd check them out before getting this.

Very easy. 4 nobs to control effect level, feedback (length of delay), downtime (frequency of delay) and delay setting. Its a stomp box tbh how difficult can it be?

With bass and guitar I generally use the long delay setting as it is soooo much fun. In my opinion it adds so much to your sound if ur looking for warm, ambient tones. You have to be careful that it doesn't become a mangled mass of notes though...

The very short delay setting is excellent for making an electric sitar sound (whack the feedback right up and the downtime right down, or the inverse I can't remember actually) and u get a sitar! Wahey!!!

Well hasnt broken yet and I doubt it will

They prob don't need one.

I play a kinda ambient rock and it is a perfect match for the style. It may destroy you creatively however as hours can be wasted without producing anything constructive (although that may be just me). I play bass in the band and write using guitar.

For bass I would say it is pretty unneccessary although unbelievably good fun.

Granted, if you're a delay fiend/fanatic, you're gonna probably gonna have a DD-6, or something along those lines, but if you have a little experience with delay, this thing is rediculously easy to use. Because of the nature of the knobs, it'll take a few moments to get the exact time you want. But is that a problem for normal people? No.

I have a rickenbacker 650 through a fender deville 212 combo. This rig sounds fantastic, and this pedal doesn't take anything away from it. No noise whatsoever (anyone who complains about it should replace their battery). On the first mode, you have extremely fine control over the delay time. I LOVE the digital-ness of this pedal. When you crank the time so it's very short, the echos actually oscillate to produce notes. It'll boost certain notes, and produce interesting harmonics on others. On the second mode is a good range of slap-back effects, which can be almost reverb like, or make it sound like you're playing inside of a metal container. On the third mode are more atmospheric sort of sounds, which can really thicken up your sound. The hold function is a little bit enigmatic to me. I don't quite understand what you would use it for. Also, i don't quite understand the means by which it finds the "last sound you play," which can make it kind of awkward when you try to make it play the middle of a note, but it gets cut off so just sounds like a series of pops. You CAN make some neat sounds using it though, from a short riff to jam over for a few bars to weird pitch bending effects. 800ms is enough to satisfy me, although i'm quite sure that it wouldn't be enough for some people. Overall - very good sounds come from this little thing. It doesn't have the surreal swelling and reverse modes of some pedals, but it's definitely enough get you through the day.

Are you kidding? BOSS.

Never ever had to deal with them. It'll probably stay that way.

I play alternative rock and other styles which don't really have names. Think along the lines of Radiohead. This pedal fits right in.
Needless to say i'd want another if it disappeared. I love pretty much everything about it, that's there. Of course, i had to experiment with it a little to find out how to use it well, but that's a given with any good pedal.
It gets a 9. It's stellar, but it IS a little limited, just by the fact that it's simple to use and compact.

if you're not familiar with delay pedals, it might take several minutes or so to get used to it. but it's really pretty simple. it's not exactly rocket science to get a good sound out of it cause i guess every sound is a good sound in this pedal.

im using an ibanez rg470 >> boss ds-1 >> proco rat2 >> boss dd-3 >> marshall mg15cdr practice amp.
i must say...the dd3 is excellent. i mean it's one of those pedals where after getting, you wonder how you ever lived without it. i know its a digital delay. but it doesn't seem to color my guitar tone at all. so that's a +.

i'd think it's totally dependable on. i got myself an adaptor, so no battery problems for me. (i prefer all my effects to be on an adaptor)
there's no doubt that's it's gig worthy in terms of sound quality and it seems to be built like a tank. i'm pretty sure if i threw it down a flight of stairs it's still be in tact, but i would never try that anyway.

i play anything and everything i can handle from metal to jazz. and this pedal is game for anything i put it through. i love the depth the pedal brings to my sound. i mean although in my opinion i've got a pretty decent sound even without it, with it, it just put's iceing on the cake. if this thing was stolen i'd get a new one for sure. it's just one of those pedals...

Slightly hard to use, only because you can get so many different awesome sounds out of it. Very hard to make this pedal sound bad. Although if you turn the feedback to 100% it will extend the noise forever, so it will get so loud it will eventually blow your amp. You can get the hang of this easily.

As I said, hard to get a bad sound out of it. It works very well, whether you are playing your guitar or plugging it through your microphone. It won't work as well once the battery starts to run out though.

The battery life on this is about an hour, but it will start to go dead and lose quality after 20 minutes or so. I wouldnt use this in a gig unless you change the battery after each song. Basiclly, you have to get the adapter. This thing is a tank though and you could play trampoline on it and not break it.

Boss makes it so it wont work with any 9v adapter except for theirs, and they design theirs to short out very quickly so you have to keep buying it. The actual pedal however does have a 5 year warrenty.

Once you have an adapter, there is no limit to the fun you'll have, and the awesome sounds you will make. I've found a use for it in all but one of my band's songs. This item, although expensive, definitely has many useful purposes. But you don't really need it.

If you are familliar with delay its simple....if not it will only take a few minutes to suss it out and years to master the art.

Simple controls and layout. Not a complete no brainer but delay is not a complete no brainer effect.

The sound is very good indeed. It gives nice lush textures to a lush guitar sound. The repeats are exact in tone as the original signal and to me thats a good thing. If you have a nice guitar sound then this pedal will echo that nice sound......as much as you want it to.

It is a pro piece of gear with pro sound quality. It is used by alot of top pros who are not restricted by what they can afford so yes this pedal has a professional sound quality.

For my needs the delay time at 800ms is long enough and a nice slap back is acheivable aswell if thats your bag. Rack unit quality in a handy floor ready package.

Well built, durable and strong. I've had mine for 4 years and it is still in perfect nik. Dont abuse your gear and it will always be there for you. A six monthly clean and tightening of the screws and stuff helps to keep these things well in check.

Never needed......touch wood!!!

Great pedal for me....my band is a Pearl Jam/Radiohead type rock band and it suits my style perfectly and works well with my other pedals. I use a '72 thinline telecaster and a Vox AC30TB with overdrives like the TS-9 and the BD-2, sound quality is very important to me and im very happy with the DD-3.

If you've never used a delay pedal before it might take you a bit of time to find the sounds you want, otherwise dead easy.

Les Paul copy with lots of pedals with this one at the end of my chain into an ashdown p60 tube amp. The sound quality is excellent. For a digital delay it has a good warm sound. I mainly use it to get a claer delay between notes with a medium amount of feedback. There are loads of possibilities with it. I have a carl martin analogue delay pedal and inmy opinion this is a better sounding more usefull and cheaper box.

Bought when my carl martin pedal concked out as a back up. The carl martin can't get back in the chain now. Have gigged with it and i leave my other delay pedals at home.

NA

My chain at the minute is jacques bat fuzz --> jacques fuseblower 2 --> pharoe amps tone engine --> jacques meistersinger --> akai intelliphase --> Vox Wah -> EH mini q tron --> ibanez fl9 --> boss dd3 --> amp.First up, i hate boss pedals. There the mcdonalds of the guitar world. Cheap effective and everywhere. I bought it cuase there was nothing else in the shop and i had a gig that night. I was desperate. I took it out of my chain when my carl martin pedal came back, then put it straight back in. In a word : excellent. I'm still not buying any other boss stuff though.

This is pretty easy to use once you've messed about with it for a few minutes. I couldn't quite see the point of the 'hold function' exept using it as a weird sort of pitch-bender but as soon as you play a new note it doesn't stay at the 'bent' pitch and will return to it's proper pitch.

The manual's not very brilliant. There's a reference to a 'stereo mode' which as far as I can tell doesn't exist. The pedal theoretically is a mono delay and what makes it stereo is that you can have an untreated signal coming from the other channel so the first note you play will come from channel A and the delayed repetitions generated by the pedal will come through channel B rather than swapping between channels like a stereo delay would.

I'm a keyboarder and use this pedal for creating echoey arpeggios and spaced-out chord sequences. It works really well as well in conjunction with a chorus and then you can hold chords down and get the illusion of slow attack pads as the effect builds up over itself. I don't recommend trying this without a chorus though because it sounds metallic, phasey and generally not very nice.

I find that balancing the effect level with the direct out signal while the effect is switched on actually helps to reduce the level of noise. If the effect level is turned up to full, the direct sound gets drowned out so you lose the stereo effect.

I personally don't think much of the really short delay or (echo) because it sounds like everything has been put into a metal box. If you turn the feedback right up it will self oscillate and gradually get louder and louder - and probably blow your amp if you leave it long enough!

The best delay is probably the 800ms one with the delay time somewhere between 12 and 2 O'clock.

It's Boss, it's a stompbox - will last forever except that thin battery wire. Experience teaches me that keeping a soldering iron to hand means this pedal will live longer than you will.

Nope...

I play all sorts of music from Dance/Funk to Progressive Rock. I only just bought this pedal after I realised I could use it in conjunction with a chorus pedal to simulate really washy, slow attack pad sounds with the most basic of equipment (believe me I can make an old Casiotone sound like a million dollars through this pedal and my Super Chorus CH-1!). This set up works well on FM strings as well. They almost sound real with this tratment added.

I think this pedal would be cool if you could detune the delayed signal against the direct out signal so you could do basic chorusing all in one.

My other stuff:

Korg 01/wFD
MicroKORG
Oberheim MC1000
Yamaha DX7
Yamaha DJX
Yamaha PSS 470
Casiotone 101
Technics EX 50L
Evolution MK-125
Stylophone(!)
Boss PW-2
Boss CH-1
Boss RV-5
Behringer MX-2004A
Fostex VF08
Peavey KB-100 x2
Marshall MG10CD
Yamaha PAC112
Ibanez GSR200
J&D Brothers 5-String Bass
oh and about three miles of cable!

Very easy in using, especially on stage. Never needed a manual. Best when used with a Ac adaptor (no need to buy the original, but keep regard to a larger current capacity, else you'll get a humming).

State of art sound in the late eighties (when I bought it). Nowadays rather old-fashioned.

absolutely perfect.

never needed

I've been playing lots of styles for 24 years now. In the 80's the DD-3 was perfect for delay dominated Pop music like U2. Nowadays modern equipments offers better opportunities for creating special sounds. i wouldn't buy again if it was stolen.