DOD 440 Envelope Filter

Two knobs and a switch to stomp on. So easy a caveman could use it.

I bought mine new in '81 and have long since lost the manuals and box, but the manual is downloadable from DOD's website.

As someone else pointed out, there's a bit of a learning curve required in order to adjust your playing to its idiosyncrasies, but once you figure it out (it should take all of two or three minutes), it's a mighty fine sounding addition to anyone's stompbox lineup.

I've been using this for the better part of 26 years and the only thing that's ever needed to be replaced is the battery. You'll be hard-pressed to find anything on the market today that's built this tough.

It's never occurred to me get a backup as I know this will work every time.

Never been an issue. I'd assume that their customer service is on par with any other company's, which is to say that you'll wonder how some of the phone reps ever made it to their current age, never mind actually getting a job.

I play whatever I'm in the mood for, be it blues, rock, punk, and even a bit of metal every now and then to clean the wax out of my ears. I've been able to incorporate the pedal into any style to give it a psychedelic touch.

I've been playing for 30 years as of this year. I have a collection of vintage stompboxes (mostly MXR and DOD) that I bought new while I was still in junior high and high school. I've bought new pedals out of curiosity, but always end up selling or returning them right away because they're cheaply made, mostly plastic, and don't deliver nearly the punch of their ancestors. I guess I'm just spoiled by pedals that were designed for a lifetime's worth of service.

If I were to lose my 440, I'd get my butt on eBay and buy another one right away. After 30 years, I know what I like.

There's nothing I don't love about my old DODs/MXRs and there's nothing I hate about them. I like their simplicity, their reliability, and most of all, their sound.

When I bought them, they were the standard pedal everyone was using. There was no need to compare them, though I have bought newer models/brands of similar pedals, but they just don't stack up.

It's been a great addition to my collection and has helped creative opportunities occur that might never have happened otherwise.

This pedal needs some proper training to use correctly. You have to play within its own confines. If you try to fight it, it definetly is not going to work for you. If you learn to play with it, it'll be your best friend.

Sound quality is not what makes this pedal special. in fact, the quality of the sound is not so great. There is major coloration that occurs when the pedal is activated. But that hardly matters. What makes this pedal a gem is how unique and simple this filter works. This pedal features the famous VTL5C4/2 Opto resistor. This part is commonplace is some of the most cherished analog compressors dating all the way back to the beginning of compression. The reason for afinity with these units is the gentle sweeping that these LEDs create. Most envelope filters attack rather quickly and give you a chopping sensation with your dynamics. This pedal, however, reacts to your sensitivity with a gentle precision. The harder and faster you play, the faster the attack. It follows and reacts to you perfectly. The thing is like a glove.

I haven't had any issues. The other DOD equipment is stellar. Newer stuff is garbage and plastic.

who knows.

it deserves a good score because of how simple and pure it is. However, I can't give it more than an 8, because it is limited in its use in that you have to play within its rules.

The fact that this pedal only has two knobs to tweak makes it friendly to look at. However appearences can be decieving as finding the right sound can take a while due to the complexity of the knobs.
Knobs from left to right are: Level and Range

The setup im currently using includes a Boss Digital Delay (DD6), a Boss Overdrive (OD3), Boss Distortion (DS1), DOD Envelope Filter (440), Dunlop Wah, Digitech Whammy (WH 1). i play a 70's Tokai Strat through a Vox Cambridge re-issue.
I've never found the effect to be noisy, although it is weak without a boost or overdrive. To achieve it's full potential i believe it must be boosted.
The sound of bands such as Radiohead are very apparent when using this pedal. Some Portishead sounds can be found with some tweaking too.

I would rely on this pedal at a gig, although i am yet to play one.
i use it in my bedroom and it's great. However, the fact that they are discontinued makes them harder to come by and so if anything did happen a backup would be needed and it would be expensive and time consuming to hunt down another of these bad boys!

N/A due the discontinuation

It's a fine pedal to add to your board regardless of the genre you favour. One test of this envelope filter and you'll pay anything for it. The wah is subtle but that's what makes it so great.

2 knobs, a level and a range, the green dod440, the superior one.

it may take you a while to find the setting you like the most, and the pedal's envelope effect is hugely dependant on how hard you hit the strings. the harder you hit the more it will shine. while the softer you pick its as if the effect is not even on. pure genious.

ive foudn the best sound to be level at 3 oclock and range and 9 oclock.

9 for it taking me a while to find the sound i want.

i use:

American Tele->BOSS GE-7->Proco Vintage Rat->BOSS SD-1-> Danelectro Tuna Melt Tremolo->DOD440->MXR Phase 90->fender princeton chorus

the sound quality is great, again my settings are level at 3 oclock and range and 9 oclock. this pedal is definitely not noisy at all. Best of all it sounds KILLER when you hit the overdrive on, especially the SD-1. You definitely get those jonny greenwood violent intimidating guitar wails.

my unit must be over 20 years old, and it works fine, i think its been pretty dependable! I dont think it would be easy to find another backup for this baby!

uh no.

definitely worth the price paid. one of the best vintage envelope filters out there. very hard to come by nowadays, if you find one for under 200, consider it.

Two Knobs only,sensitivity and range. Of course this pedal only starts working with sens knob turned between 3 o clock and 6 0 clock, with knob turned anywhere before this and you get a horrible, blurty, loud 'nothing'sound . I got my pedal on ebay and my intial reaction was that it was broken as it sucked all the volume and didn't appear to sound at all.
What you arn't prepared for is that you need a big volume boost going into this pedal to get it to work

I give it an 8 as this pedal when first plugged in , shatterd the glass frames of two of my oldest pictures that were hanging in my room, scared my flatmates to death ,and left me feeling absoulty terrified and dissapointed as i had heard so many good reviews of this pedal.
When plugged into the clean channel on my messa boogie the pedal refused to work until my guitare volume was at 8 and sensitivity knob was on full, with the range knob not far of it,also the sustain i found quite poor. It of course took all the volume and treble out of my sound. The same thing with the drive channel on my amp .
I was so fustrated that i decided to solve the problem by placing an old boss super feedbacker and distortion in front of it with the distortion level set quite low and the volume level set high .This i found gave the pedal the huge volume boost it needed,and balanced out the volume leak. Then still not quite happy i placed a boss cs-3 compressor after it(with sustain very high) and this eliminated any nasty earthquaking decay. Then i nudged thedistortion up a bit more on the boss and got the most amazing sounds ever .Mlky creamy but still 'whacky' wah , and i use a cheap mexican strat with single coil pickups! Quality Quality sound, as with Jonny greenwood and others, Now i use it for my bands loudest most intense song,which i used to use my fulltone clyde wah pedal for . This pedal is pefect for intensity as that's just what it is !
Down sides to the pedal is just that it isn't a stand alone affair and needs to be used with at least two other pedals to get it kick started, but after that - sonic heaven!

The pedal is quite old now and not made anymore so your only back up is the newer fx25 which is a terrible pedal, pedal also sounds differ every time its used very organic . If used for a maximum of 2 songs out of a 10 song set it should last a lifetime and after.!

I don,t think dod are going to care about a pedal that is this old ,so if it stops working i'd say your on your own!

I give it a 9 as when this pedal kick in after you've somehow soted volume levels and compressed it slightly ,its sound is pure inovative and there are no current pedal owned by myself that i can say that of.
When used to full capacity you can get the type of sound that Edge gets for his solo bit in 'The Fly' and thats what i call top notch!
I get the feeling that alot of these pedals werer thrown out when first bought,or never used . My opinion is that its a nice pedal to have in your set up but certainly not to be overused in your playing as this takes away from its uniqness when eventually stomped.

The pedal is easy to use and gives a great filter effect after you get over the learning curve. With only two knobs it can be confusing at first, but gets much easier after you mess around with it.

I use a Fender Highway 1 with an Ibanez SM-9 Distortion and DL10 Delay, and a E.H. 4800 Customized Small Stone Phaser. The pedal can get very loud at sometimes, but is worth the noise cause you can easily adjust the settings. Hooked into my Peavey 40 watt Envoy 112 it sounds vey good and it totally gives me that Jonny Greenwood effects I wanted.

My 440 is in mint condition and I have no problem I can see depending on it. I would use it for a gig, but I know that it is fragile and can easily be damaged if I were to go crazy on it.

Never delt with DOD. Picked up the pedal off Ebay with my Ibanez DL10 Delay. Don't think I'll need any support; its a pretty straight forward pedal.

I play rock music and have been playing for 5 years . I love the ease and great effect this pedal produces. It really helps me to make music because I go for that Radiohead / Jonny Greenwood sound and this thing pulls it off; I guess thats why Jonny uses this same model.

It's really easy to use. 2 knobs. You don't need a manual.

It's not noisy. The effect doesn't really kick in until about 3:00 on the dial. That's a little weird. But from 3:00 to 6:00 is a whole world of sound. I'm not really going after any specific sound. It can be funky and wacky or really subtle. It seems to work well with other effects.

I have a wah already so I wouldn't need a backup. I would depend on it, it's lasted a long time already. I have the green first issue one.

N/A

I play alt-rock. I've been playing for about 7 years. I won't get into my gear because I'm still buying and swapping stuff out. I think I'd buy a Lovetone Meatball or a clone of the Meatball if this died. Or maybe the Dual Rubber Fetish from Prophecysound. It's a cool little box for the price.

A RANGE knob that sets the width of the sweep (minimum settings keep the tone low, higher settings keep the tone almost always trebly, middle setting give you one hell of WAH)

A LEVEL knob which is the key of everything and it sets the threeshold beyond which the filter sweeps the tone...

This pedal is not easy to use... especially if you're using it along with distortion or other effects... First time I plugge it I couldn't get a single sound coming out of it (I was really scared!) you really have to spend some time finding out the exact setting for the sound you want... this because you risk to blow you room away: this pedal can get LOUD

the sound quality of this pedal is AWESOME! You can get a GREAT variety of filtered sounds!

I have the original issue (the green one which has a better chip, some of the blue issues have it too therefore they should be just as good)...

and also is so DAMN analog, it almost changes with the weather! (that's why it's also hard to set it properly)

turning the range knob to 4 o'clock or more the pedal doesn't wah but adds some sort of fuzz effect that is totally cool...

My setup is Fender Telecaster (AM std) into Digitech Whammy WH1, Boss TR2 Tremolo, MXR Phase 100, Boss SD1 Overdrive, Marshall Shredmaster, Boss HF2 Hi Band Flanger, DOD 440, Line6 DL4 into a Princeton 65 amp.

I play alternative rock in general but my effects are mainly based on my love for Radiohead... and this pedal just works GREAT for them... setting the distortion and some phaser right I can get that Meatball sound Ed does on talk show host... and of course Paranoid Android and Lucky... This pedal is very sensitive to the use of filter/contour of you distortion pedal: with high filter settings you'll get some sort of noisy sustain that goes kinda crazy/randomly filtered by the dod 440: FANTASTIC!
while with less filter the tone will be cleaner and the pedal will directly work on your single notes (the attack is more audible)

the pedal does great and crazy things with feedback...

anyway a compressor and or volume pedal after the DOD 440 may help to avoid devastating volume boosts

the pedal looks well built and I received it in MINT conditions...

the switch is solid amd the case too...

the knobs looked VERY sturdy and well built too but after a while of foot working on the range knob is started to be less solid but it's not a big problem... probably I can fix it

PLEASE NOTE that this pedal has positive ground and a different jack for the power supply (like the russian small stones)... anyway it doesn't seem to suck battery very much...

Not sure dod will care about a pedal built at least 20 yrs ago and that came here in Italy from San Diego (God Bless eBay)

This pedal is simple but effective... I paid quite a lot for it (pn eBay it goes high) but it's worth every cent of it... it does what all pedals should do
1- it gives me the sound I was looking for
2- it gives me other great sounds I wasn't expecting
this pedal really works great and the difficulty of getting the right settings is well paid back by the great sound you can get from the pedal...

comparing it to other straight envelope filters it blows them away for the quality of the sound... and it's still good in comparison to rack stuff or lovetone pedal... and it costs a lot less

the things this pedal is missing are purely "accessories": there's no led to indicate that it's on or off, no velcrum under the pedal (at least not under mine), difficult to reach battery slot (you have to take away all the 4 screws)

everything else is super... If lost or stolen I'd buy a different envelope filter only after accurately tried it (maybe a mutron III or a meatball)

2 knobs easy as cake

well i have a moogerfooger and a mutron III
hmmmm i like this guy better
it is more "liquid" and alot smaller
very eddie brickel "What i am" solo sound

damn things 20 plus years old
i got fulltone crap thats 6 years old and it's starting to crackle
go figure

????

i like this guy
it sounds killer with bass and synth
just keep the secret

It takes a little time to figure out, but is fairly easy.

I am a BOSS man, (MXR and high end Danelectro are both great stuff too), however, this is the only DOD i'd buy (I think)! It sounds better than the BOSS envelope. Not as good as Electro Harmonix Q-Tron, but 150.00 to 250.00 is way too much for now a filter of this kind. Definitely not noisy. I run it closest to the guitar for the best effect.

I dont use it much, but thus far- she's been good. Unfortunately, DOD uses plastic stomp plates. And what is really bad is that it is American made. DOD should use metal like Boss and MXR.

???????

I'm a Rock-n-Roller, I use a custom made strat, custom made Shuller amp ( I know you dont know them yet but you will soon)<tone like no other.....(little plug for my man Dale Shuller), Boss effects, MXR too. I have to run it closest to my guitar to get best sounds. If lost, I would DEFINITELY get another. Been playing 23+ years, ina high powered Christian rock band(Jesus is Awsome!!!), I know sound, try the pedal and a Shuller amp.