Boss DD-6 Digital Delay

It's extremely easy to dial in the delay you want and the feedback and intensity of said delay.

Good luck getting the tap or loop functions to work. It's completely impossible.

But since it's so easy to dial in the delay you want, you don't really need the tap either. You can just turn the knob a little bit.

This was my first delay pedal. I used it for three years until the MXR Carbon Copy came out and I realized that I prefer analog delay to digital delay.

But if you're going to go with digital, this is the pedal. It's the most versatile, it sounds excellent, and it gives you near-infinite ping. Seriously, it is virtually impossible to overload this thing with feedback looping. It'll echo for like a minute if you calibrate the settings right. For ambient noise, the reverse delay gives you a fun alternate option. In fact, I'm starting to consider buying one back off of ebay when I get the money.

What the DD-6 does mostly is that it makes the exact sound that your guitar made, and echoes for as long as you could possibly want. If you want something more organic and natural-sounding, go analog. If you want perfection, go digital.

Boss.

Boss. No need. They probably don't even have customer support. Seriously, has a Boss pedal ever broken anywhere?

I play alt/electro/rock and since I can't shred or play too fast I like to use a lot of delay, and the DD-6 gives you that in spades. I eventually switched to the analog MXR pedal and I'm glad I did, but this is a good pedal and I'll almost certainly end up owning one again someday.

Especially since, thanks to the DD-7 now coming out (is there any difference between the DD-6 and the DD-7? I can't tell) you can get these things for like $80 off of ebay now. And that is a STEAL.

pretty easy to use its not all that tricky

nice clear sound quality however it sounds very artificial and cold to me but then some people like that sound. the reverse delay is kinda cool but i couldnt think of a practical use for it

no problems with it

it good for a digital delay but digital delays suck

Simple EFFECT LEVEL, FEEDBACK, DELAY TIME, DELAY MODE.
This pedal can do some things other stomp box delays can't. For a compact pedal, it has a lot of settings that are useful. And the manual explains everything.

No noise for starters:D.

As far as the sound goes, the enchos aren't very warm, definatly a DIGITAL delay. NOT an analog sound or anything like it.
But the sound you have isn't terriable, it's definatly workable. I personally love it. Not a perfect sound but I don't want to get too picky.

The modes it offfers in a compact pedal is simply ggreat! A short loop time of 5.2 second, not enough to get a really melodic rythum in it but that's the improvment they made on the DD-7.

THe reverse effect is great. In slow sounds, you can let the delay do most of the work with the volume pedal letting of trail of echos of notes is great.

ON the tap tempo feature, you can get quarter notes is 3/4 time, eighth notes, dotted eighth note sand quater note delay times which is usful.

The Warp mode can go on forever if you hold the pedal down which is cool but I never use it, no need for it really.

You get a lot of reverb feel when the pedal is engaged BTW.

TANK

Only down fall to this pedal besides the warmth of the delay is that the tap tempo thing.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT THIS PEDAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: To tap the tempo in, you have to hold it for more than 2 seconds so to change it on it off during parts of the song, it sucks. When you want it off, you have to wait for it. That's why I pefer the DD-5 over this.(But the DD-5 knob for modes is very small but that's another story)

The overall use of the pedal couldnt be more simpler. It has a quick manual that explains some of the more complicated fetures like the tap tempo hold and looper feature. The ony complaint i have here is that it is hard to distinguish which mode you are in on a given time.. or maybe my eyesight is just bad.. The looper feature is hard to use.. this catagory gets a 7

Its Digital.. What goes in = What goes out. What I cant understand is people swearing about analog delays.. why would you want a muddy sound with a delay. Delay... hence the name should do exactly what it sounds like. delay the sound but produce the exact same noise that was made in the first place. Here you cant beat digital delay clear pristine delay that sounds exactly the way it came in.

Its Boss nuff said

never dealt with them

A very god delay pedal. The extra features are just icing on the cake. Some are hard to use and like i mentioned earlier sometimes its hard to see which mode your on. As a general rule you cant go wrong with a boss digital delay

First, I'm taking the time to submit this review because I'm really tired of ill-informed people whining about "digital" effects as if they are somehow tainted or inferior to analog products.

I've been playing for 32 years, and a lot of that time was spent kicking around undependable, quirky, over priced, static-riddled, short-prone analog boxes. Ask any (honest) older player and they'll tell you about the bad-old-days of all-analog gear, and picking up an effects box right before a gig to hear something rattling around inside the case (hand wiring right there for you - that doesn't happen with a circuit board, but that's another post).

MXR went out of business 25 years ago because their boxes were so unreliable and overpriced. The NAME was purchased by Jim Dunlop, and they resurrected the look. Same thing happened to numerous others. Only recently has the infatuation and nostalgia with all things "vintage" dredged up some of these psuedo-good-old-feelings for analog gear.

Have you ever actually used a tape delay? (and held your finger on the tape to slow down the playback?) I have, and man it sucked, in more ways than I can count -- and was a really good way to ruin an expensive piece of reel-to-reel gear.

To all you younger players - don't be so quick to buy into this whole "vintage" thing. It smells to me like a way to get you to part with lots of cash so you won't feel inadequate about your gear. That's BS - buy what SOUNDS GOOD. Use your ears and your heart only.

Anyway...that being said...

I absolutely love being able to dial in a delay perfectly, than switch it on and get exactly what I played returned back to me, with no coloring of the tone. If you use a DD6 and don't like what you hear, it's your playing pal - pure and simple - because this box gives it exactly back the way it goes in. The DD6 has all the features and flexibility that a session player needs, without being overly complex or requiring you to mentally climb into a rack effects unit to figure out how to do something simple.

And it's indestructable. I have a whole pedal board full of Boss "chock blocks" because they work, sound awesome, are quiet even in a long series, and are fairly transparent and let the tube tone come through.

Awesome, but there again, this delay doesn't do anything to your tone, other than repeat it back in millsecond intervals as you specify. Totally transparent, as it should be.

My gear as follows:
custom Strat w/ EMG 81 and SA
Marshall JVM 410H and 1960A to FX loop -
Boss TU-2, MT2, DD-6, DD-3, BF-3 and CH-2.
Fin.

The reason I have the DD-6 and DD-3 is that I like to use the DD-6 for deep, sweeping delays for solos and an atmospheric quality and as a looper. The DD-3 acts as a background slapback for regular play, where I need an echo or just a little signal thickening. The two together are just scary cool. You can do anything you can imagine, including get chorus and flange effects with mucho depth.

They're Boss. Nuff said.

Never had to deal with them, in years and year of ownership.

If you are a working peformer or session guy, you will eventually end up using Boss pedals at some point (after your expensive boutique analog boxes cough up a hair ball...) Everyone does. Petrucci even has the TU-2 in his road rig, and all his footgear is custom made. For the tone, price and simplicity, you can't beat them. In fact, go to guitargeek.com and look at the rigs - the chock blocks are everywhere.

The controls are easy enough to use on this pedal, but that is about the only good thing I have to say about it.

Sound quality? There is none. If you want an over priced digital delay that goes "clunk" everytime you pick a note or chord, than this is the pedal for you. I've had a DD-6 for about a year and there is really no way to "tweak" the maddening and annoying "clunk' and "thunk" sound out of this pedal.

I bought two other Boss pedals, the Super Chorus and the Flanger. The sound is equally "digital" and poor on them, too.

I've been playing guitar for over 40 years, have been in dozens of Rock and Blues bands from Chicago to New Orleans (my current home). I have heard countless better sounding pedals, and I have a hard time understanding how so many people think this pedal sounds good.

There are better sounding and less pricey pedals out there.

If you like a pedal that goes "CLUNK" on every note like this one does, buy it. Otherwise look elsewhere.

This is a moot point. This pedal sounds so bad I removed it from my pedal board. I'll never use it long enough to find out if it is reliable or not. I do not like plastic pedals, but the plastic case will likely outlast the poor quality electronics inside it.

Never had to deal with them.

There are MANY other better sounding and less expensive delay and reverb pedals on the market.

This part of the review is very relative. The pedal has a ridiculous amount of options and features and as always, the more features the more complicated the pedal. However, for a pedal with a footprint as small as it is, its fairly easy to use. The most important thing you can do is READ THE MANUAL! If you don't read the manual, its near impossible to take advantage of everything this pedal can do. The DD-6 has a tap tempo function built in as opposed to the DD-5 which had to use an external tap tempo pedal. However, the tap tempo function is kind of a pain to use and it cannot be done quickly since you have to hold down the pedal for like 3 seconds to go into tap tempo mode. This is one part where it is vital to read the manual because different settings have different tap tempo beats.

The pedal sounds great, and if you can take advantage of all the features it has you will agree that this pedal is amazing. I like to play with a natural jazz type tone and this pedal does not detract from the natural tone at all. It's not true bypass just like all other boss pedals but the buffer in it is decent. For a digital delay this pedal does a great job and sounds great.

Just like all other boss pedals, this thing is extremely solid.

Never had to use it

There is a missing subject here and that is value. The pedal sounds great and it's one of my favorite pedals, but I think it costs too much. If the pedal was stolen or lost I would need another one but I may try getting a DD-20 since they do not cost that much more.

Considering all of the options available, this pedal is pretty easy to use. The hardest thing about it may being able to see which delay setting you're on on a dark stage or situation like that....even in a well-lit room with my glasses on I sometimes wonder why the "Reverse" mode isn't working only to figure out I'm really stuck on "Hold" or something. But looking past that, it's really an intuitive pedal with not much of a technical learning curve to deal with. If you're familiar with Boss delay pedals, you'll be able to work with this one easily. I had never used or owned any kind of unit with a Tap Tempo function, and I had no problem getting the hang of it with the DD-6 without even consulting the manual. While I can see how an external footswitch would probably make that feature a bit easier to use on the fly (especially if you didn't have to hold the pedal down for two seconds first), the fact that you can tap your own tempo relatively quickly and easily without using any sort of external device is pretty f****** cool.

The one mode that requires a little bit of practice to use is the mode I bought this pedal for specifically..."Reverse." The pedal will try to guess where your phrase ends on top of only having so much delay time to work with. Sometimes it can sound a bit clunky, with notes that didn't get squeezed into the time period popping up a few seconds later and sounding cut off and a bit out of place. For instance, let's say you have the reverse delay time set at 1 second. If you play a phrase that goes 1.10 seconds and stops, the part of the phrase that fell within the 1 second setting will be reversed, you'll hear silence for .9 seconds, and then the little .10 second blip. Two ways I've figured out to make this feature work the best are: A) adjust the Delay Time on the shorter side and stick to quick single-note phrases and doublestops, dialing in a delay that works with your natural phrasing tendencies and B) set the Delay to the longest time possible, get a feel for the time and craft your phrasing so that you're just finishing up your riff as the playback is started. This isn't as hard as it sounds, and the "Reverse" mode is very cool, musical and usable.

I also love the Warp feature, which is another setting I use quite a bit for droning, atmospheric sounds.

No doubt about it, this is a DIGITAL delay, meaning that whatever you put into it is going to come out sounding practically identical. Which, in my opinion, makes it better than a "warm-sounding" analog delay. I'm not anti-analog, mind you...I just prefer that something like a delay not mess too much with the tone I feed it. I don't want to warm it up or add a subtle fuzziness or anything like that.

And this pedal, with the exception of softening the attack of your notes just like most delay pedals do, does exactly that. I put in a warm, neck pickup tone...I get warm delays. Bright and twangy Tele bridge pickup? Comes out just like it went in.

On slapback settings it does tend to be a bit brighter than I'd like...if you're looking for something that can provide a lot of slapback, then you might want to go analog here. I just roll the tone off at the guitar a bit and it's fine.

Boss is well-known here...I don't think I need to add anything.

Have never had to contact Boss/Roland for any reason, and I've been using Boss stuff for years.

I've been playing guitar just about 20 years now. I'm a Fender guy...Fender amps (tube and solid state), Fender guitars (a Strat and two Teles). I also have an SG Jr., a Rickenbacker 360/12 and have owned a coupld of Fender Jaguars, a Les Paul and a Fender Mustang. I pretty much dabble in everything except reggae...my true loves are classic and indie style rock, old school electric country and the blues. As far as pedals go, my pedalboard changes every now then, but basically around the same handful of effects. For overdrive I use either a Boss SD-1 or Ibanez TS-9, fuzz is either a Fulltone '69 or Big Muff USA RI, phasing is pretty much always an MXR Phase 90 and other swirly stuff comes from either a Dunlop Rotovibe or Option 5 Destination Rotation Single. I also have a handful of chorus pedals and several other distortion pedals that will I use from tiem to time to keep the ears fresh...including an old Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal which is one the coolest, most underrated pedals ever.

As I mentioned, I got this pedal specifically for the Reverse feature. I've been listening to the Beatles and some of the trippier Oasis tracks for a while now. I have a Boss RV-3 Digital Reverb/Delay which I use for nomal delay duty (I like the delay+reverb settings there) and use the DD-6 for kookier delay setting like Warp and Reverse. Sometimes I'll use the straight-up delay setting and set the DD-6 long and the RV-3 short.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic pedal that can be used a lot of different ways. Boss puts out high quality products that sound great, are easy to use and affordable and the DD-6 is a great example of that. It is certainly priced at the upper end of the scale, but is not unreasonable at all IMO. If it went missing I'd definitely by another.

The operation of this thing is pretty easy, considering the amount of functions and modes it has. Overall, the user interface is well thought out. I only use standard delay on one song, so I just set the knobs and leave them. I checked out the tap tempo feature anyway, and although it's a little confusing and takes practice to match the delay perfectly to the song, it's seems to work OK. I'm going to give it a 7, because it will take some practice and dedication to really learn to get the most of this unit.

I use this pedal with several others, but my set up is still fairly basic. '62 reissue SG through a Monster cable into an Ernie Ball VP-Jr. volume pedal (with a Planet Waves pedal tuner in the Vp Jr.'s tuner dedicated tuner output), then to a Morley Mark Tremonti Power Wah (douchebag guitarist, AWESOME wah), followed by a Boss NS-2 noise supressor. In the NS-2's FX loop, I have an Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 Nano and Big Muff Nano. After the NS-2, my signal goes to a BBE Sonic Stomp (if you own only one pedal, do your audience a favor and PLEASE make it a BBE Sonic Stomp). I run a Boss PS-5 Super Shifter, a Boss OC-2 Octave pedal, and then the DD-6 in the FX loop of my amp. All of this is linked together by various jumpers and patch cables on a home-made plexiglass pedalboard, and then sent to my amp via a Stage Magic PedalSnake. My amp is a Lee Jackson XLS500 w/EL34s, into a Marshall JCM800 angled 4x12 with English Greenbacks. I think I just realized that my rig is getting complicated.

Anyway, this is a digital delay, and it sounds like a digital delay should. Cold, crystalline repeats of whatever signal you put into it. It is very accurate, and I don't mind that it is not "warm". It's not noisy, and I can't notice any tone loss when the unit is bypassed.

When you get into the various modes, things get a little more complex. In reverse mode, the delays sound very good, providing a pretty wild sonic character. However, it doesn't trigger fast enough when the effect level is all the way up (which mutes the input signal, spitting out only reverse delay). It takes a while to get used to playing a little bit behind the beat to keep the reverse echoes in time. I may find some different uses by speeding up the delay time (thereby reducing latency in the output signal). Overall, still pretty cool and fairly useful feature.

The Warp mode is fun, and offers pretty much limitless experimentation. Subtle knob twists produce wild fluctuations in sound, and it can make some reeeeeeeally weird noises. This mode is super fun to improvise with on the fly. Truly killer.

In 22 years of playing, I've never seen a Boss pedal that didn't function exactly the way it was supposed to.

Never dealt with them, but I've heard they suck. Their website definitely sucks.

I play very aggressive rock'n'roll, in the vein of Turbonegro/Fu Manchu/QOTSA/Appetite-era Guns'n'Roses. Most of the time, in fact probably 95% of the time, my tone is guitar-straight-into-the-amp. I think effects should be used sparingly, because it makes them (pardon the pun), more "effective". This thing allows me to make several interesting sounds, and I think that makes it extremely valuable

Quite easy to use in my opinion. It obviously has several modes and is therefore not totally straight forward. But it is simply laid out, select what type of delay you want and then blend the wet and dry signal with the level knob (nice and tweekable without being overly sensitive). Feedback and delay time are also easy to set and relate clearly to each mode.

You have to turn the knob to change modes, this is possibly a minor bad point. I suppose it could have been rectified with a up/down foot pad, but those things can break and that could be a pain.
The tap tempo is a good idea. not so good for in-song changes because of the time it takes to access it, but if you set it before a song it's great. Having a jack for an external tap tempo pad would have been better.

But you have to remember this is after all a Boss pedal. It could be more advanced, but it is really a small highly functional stompbox. If you want something more advanced buy a rack unit with a MIDI foot controller.

I'm going to give it an 8 just because of the tap tempo difficulty, and that you can't switch between modes without using your hands (only a minor irritation). But in my opinion a clever pedal like this should never get a 10 for ease of use otherwise it wouldn't be so versatile.

You could get away with having a couple of these pedals for a very powerful and intricate live performance especially with one on warp mode.

Okay, many years ago I used to own a Boss PS-3 Pitch-shifter with delay. It had quite a nice and very easy to use delay function on it. I used to use it for standard pulsing delay and for a big screaming fadeout at the end of songs. (I never really used the pitch shift functions because they were pretty useless) It wasn't the best tone in the world, but at the time it worked really well.

I sold it after about 3 years of gigging with it, after i had started using a Electro Harmonix and some MXR effects. I started getting rid of BOSS pedals and buying more boutique effects. I've gone through loads of different effects brands, searching out the perfect tones and sounds for each aspect of my playing. I never found a delay that i liked since that PS-3.

I have finally gone back to a BOSS pedal, this DD-6. Personally i prefer the crispness of Digital delay. I find analog delays too warm or muddy for the kind of music I play. This pedal does exactly what i want it to; gets all the sounds i need from a delay.

I don't get any hiss from my unit, and I am using it in a fairly loaded signal chain. I do run it out of a bypass box on my board to cut it out fully when I need to. Maybe those with hiss have a faulty one?

I'm going to give it a 9 just beacuse i love the sound from this thing, but i think there's probably a pedal out there with a slightly better tone somewhere. And BOSS pedals are tone suckers (reason why i bypass it.)

You don't need to what gear i have, suffice to say that i have a few custom guitars and I regularly mess around with my effects chain. This thing is still in there and I'm thinking about getting another one.

It's a BOSS pedal, they are built like russian tank parts. Not from russion tank parts like Sovtek pedals.

I've never managed to break a BOSS pedal.

I'll give it a 8.8 overall just to be fair. I think that if it had a Tap tempo EXP slot it would most likely be pushing solidly into the full 9s.

The reverse function is pretty good for a stomp box. I've used a few and this one makes less of a clicking noise than most. The WARP function is a great thing. I use it a lot when jamming.

Delay pedals can be so expensive (especailly analog ones) and in my opinion under ??100 for a good one is a bargain. If you like Digital delay and need something with a small footprint i would recommend this.