Danelectro DJ-20 Rocky Road Spinning Speaker

It's pretty straightforward to use, two knobs, a switch and the two pushbuttons (TINY pedal!)
No owners manual but enough info on the internet to find tips and it's easy to play around with to get the sound you might want

OK, i use this thing at home with an Epiphone Valve Junior, and a Holy Grail, Carl Martin Red Repeater, and a Danelectro Cool Cat Chorus pedal.
I have an Epi Les Paul, a Japanese Strat from the 80's, a custom built Tele clone, an Ibanez set up for bottleneck, and a Jay Turser JT133 I won in a contest.
I bought this pedal based on my experience with the Cool Cat, an all metal, noise free chorus pedal that is GREAT. unfortunately, the DJ-20 doesn't live up to it's big brother. As soon as the pedal is engaged, the noise level is there. the other pedals are dead silent, the DJ-20 is noisy at idle.
Hey, it was 40 bucks, so i got what i paid for!
The effects are OK, hardly a Leslie, but decent sound for the price

I don't use it out of the house, but i don't think it would hold up to any abuse.

I had to send back another defective mini pedal, a Peanut Butter and Jelly delay, and they promptly exchanged it with no grief. that pedal now sleeps with the fishes since the Carl Martin got here

I play some Jazz, some blues and lots of rock and pop-rock,
i've been playing since 1967 and i've mentioned my gear above.
i also have two acoustics, a 1967 Guild F-212 12-string I bought new and a 1974 Espana 6-string hand made in Finland of all places
if it was stolen, i'd wonder who was so desperate?
Overall, tor 40 bucks, it really is OK. Now it's a temporary stopgap until my Songworks Rotary Wave comes next week. (I CAN'T WAIT!!}
so i'll give it a 7 for being worth the money and a 5 for performance?

A couple knobs and a switch. ?

With this unit the sound is related to the price:in my vase 38 bucks.
It ain't a leslie or a chorus, so much as it is it's own thing, and will like any piece of gear, sound different accordingly.
I like it. It does what I'm looking for right now which is a vibratone-
type effect.
It is a useful effect,and that's the bottom line.
I couldn't find too much in useful clips on the web, so I put up a small
demo on you tube. It's just a small camera and so you know what to expect. URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA10HemTMVE

yeah

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Pretty decent for the price. Listen to my demo.

Simple to use without a manual. Didnt come with a manual and didnt need it. Did the 1:1 mod even though I could have used it stock for a boost in solos with my floor setup. I think the boost was about 3 db turned down.

This thing reminds me of one of my first pedals I had which was a large Mestro phaser pedal that had 3 buttons and sounded the same.It had a slo medium and fast button with simular ramping speed to this one. I used to use it live where I would speed it up for solos and slow it down at the end of a song. This one does the same except its onlt 2 speed. It would be cool to rebox this in a larger box and put in another switch that would max the speed controll. Set the speed slow for a medium setting, then the switch would short the pot and give a hi speed. Also I could space the switches so I wouldnt have to use my big toe to turn the ramp or bypass switches on/off. also replace the ramp speed switch and add a switch for the mod for a boost when needed. As far I like it. I've done some recordings with a steinberg plug in leslie effect on some takes which sounded great but it was impossible to recreate them live. This pedal fixes that.
It will sound different depending where you put it in a chain i.e before or after distortion so experimentation is needed here. I'm probibly going to put it between to od/distortion units so I can either power into it or drive a distortion/od unit like a phaser/preamp would. This unit is very small but Since I have a specific need for this and it has a time delayed speed ramp, I give it a high rating.

Very solid dont see a problem here at least not mechanically.

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I paid more for this than I should. I could have found one on ebay for half price but didnt want some amatures solder mod hack job. If you're an electronic tech like myself and want to expand the design it has some possibilities. The mod is easy but have someone who knows how to solder do it. You can get this sound from other phasers but the ramp is the key item. I may take a look at the caps that controll the ramp speed. I'm pretty sure the togel switch selects between 2 different caps or 1 cap with a resistor. Another cap/resistor value might speed ramp up. Soldering one of the same value under might mod the switch to doubble the speed of the ramp.

It wasn`t very difficult to get a good sound from this unit straight out of the box.The drive knob seems pretty useless.I keep mine all the way down to avoid distortion.One thing I do have to say is that the switches are very close together.You hit one,you are hitting them both!I solved this problem by putting some superglue on the ramp switch,and mounting a rubber knob on it.That way I`m not turning it off or on when I want the effect.I usually keep the effect on for a song,and kick in the rotary/ramp as needed.I never bothered with the manual.Pretty simple hook up.

You can get those great Beatles"Lucy In The Sky" effects,or Ringo"It Don`t Come Easy" kind of sound.Pretty darn close!I use mine with a Hofner acoustic guitar through an Akai Headrush pedal(for looping)straight into the PA.I do have to keep the volume way down on the acoustic to avoid distortion.Also when I use this unit,I have to re-EQ my acoustic a little.Roll off the treble and presence about 50% from the normal setting or it gets very brittle.

Seems dependable.Yep I use it without a backup.

Never dealt with them.

I play original Power Pop supporting my CD doing acoustic shows.In a typical 45 minute to one hour showcase set,I will kick this unit on at least twice,just to add another flavor to the show.I have been playing for about 25 years now and own TONS of gear.Fenders,Gibsons,Gretsch,Danelectros ect.If I had to replace this unit,I would probably look into something else.I really like the sound.I don`t like the distortion feature or the way the switches are so close together.They probably could have made the pedal a little bigger,then again that would defeat the whole"mini pedal theme".Might work well if I were a dwarf.I pretty much chose this for the price,and because Danelectro has some pretty cool stuff on the market.
If you are looking for a an inexpensive Leslie in the palm of your hand, go out and get one!All and all I`ll give it a seven.

Funny, i cant see the 'huge' volume increse that you guys are talking about, so maybe dano has fixed this up?
Ill check it against the mod's and see whats different.
Things are easy to use, I want to speed the slow setting up a little bit, shouldnt be too hard to do.
It is really bloody small, tiny, so im definently going to remount it in my pedal box.

I got mine yesterday afternoon, and i think its great, although i have never owned a real lesie, or any other leslie effect (apart from guitar rig, which has a stereo leslie sim that God would sell his soul for).
One thing that hit me was it is less prominant than i though it would be, especially on slow. It does brighten up the sound a lot though.
On fast speeds, that seemingly true vibrato kicks in, and kicks major ass.
There is a little hiss when it is turned on, as well as a -little- volume boost on my pedal, but i think that most of the boost is in high frequencies.
My plan is to add a tone control and master volume on the output, try and get that gain contained.

I have an old Hamer Slammer Centuria running into a Laney VC15 with no other effects at the moment, apart from onboard reverb. The pedal makes a really plush sound when the amp is on the drive channel, pre-gain of about 5 or 6, single coil pickup, and guitar tone rolled just about all the way off. A really great friving, spinning sound, almost organ like.
It is also quite good with a generous amount of reverb thrown in.
Things would sound good in the effects loop of the amp, but i havent got the cables for that at the moment.

The plastic is thick, it has some weight to it, but the foot switches are close and small.

I had been hunting for this pedal for a while, a bit dissapointed with the retail price in guitar shops, saw it on ebay, snapped it up like that. Looking forward to a healthy relationship, and i hope it lasts a while.

Danelectro DJ-20 Rocky Road Spinning Speaker MOD !
VERY easy to do, one piece o wire, one soldering iron.

Ok.

Of course.

Ok.

There seems to be a problem with some cats having messed up their Rocky Roads while attempting to mod the pedal.

This cat here :

http://home.comcast.net/~adamsjohn/rocky_road.htm

Has found an easy, cheap and REVERSIBLE way of doing the same, which will NOT void warranty.

Also, there's a cat wanting to mod pedals for ohters for 16.50?, that's a true ROBBERY ! Don't fall for it, just follow the link and carefully do as shown

I'm posting this as a "warning" to those that may be tempted to buy one and "do the mod". I have some soldering skills and after trying the volume mod my pedal stopped working. I never even got to use it because after I initially turned it on and was thrown back by the volume increase, I knew it was mod or die. Too bad - I was looking forward to playing around with it. Anyway, the damn circuit board is REALLY small and there's little room to work. If you're unsure about mod'ing, you may want to hold off and find someone with good eyes and a steady hand.

I literally plugged it in...turned it on...and it was SO loud that I yanked it out to mod it. I think it would have sounded really good had I not killed it.

I understand that there or only two knobs and one latch, with two foot switches, on this pedal, so it's not THAT complicated to use. However, there is one design flaw in this pedal that nearly gave me a migrain when I took it out of the box. I'm not talking about the gain-boost issues.

Invariably, when you buy something that includes a battery, the battery will be dead by the time you try to use it. Ok, no worries, you've got a boss AC adapter, rated at 9V +tip 200mAmps, about as accurate of an adapter you could hope for to use with a Danelectro pedal. You plug it in, the light comes on when you press on the right footswitch. The gain knob gives you a beautiful distortion, almost a perfect replica of an over driven leslie... but the speaker isn't rotating. There is almost no discernable chorus effect. After pulling out your hair, and trying for over half an hour to find which combinations of settings will produce the sound you heard in that mp3 file from that website.... nothing. Until it dawns on you, there's a dead battery in there... what if?

Right, so for some reason, if you are connected to an AC adapter AND have a battery in the pedal, it will favour the battery. This could kill you if your battery dies during a gig, because plugging the pedal in won't help you, and the batteries are inserted from underneath.

That said, I love this pedal and it sounds great, but because of the migrain it gave me when I took it home, I can only give it a 5 for "ease of use"

This sounds like a single rotary speaker. It sounds a lot like a single rotary speaker. If you really want the sound of a dual-speaker rotary effect, don't buy this. It's not what you're looking for. However, as far as matching that SRV tone (you know the one I'm talking about) ... yeah, it's pretty close, and the best possible option for the price.

In fact, it occured to me that buying two of these pedals, rigging them up to an 800 Hz crossover, and giving them both different "ramp" settings, would be a less expensive simulator than most that produce the dual-speaker sounds.

This pedal sound great with my Strat, but I bought it for my keyboard set up. I've tried it with various organ patches on my Yamaha TG-55, but it only really works if you remove any kind of LFO from the synths. It actually sounds best with one or two triangle waves (place them an octave or two apart). It will take any triangle, sine, or square wave and make it sound like an Organ. Which is why I use it with my YC-10A http://www.combo-organ.com/Yamaha/YC-10A.jpg , a simple Yamaha organ that doesn't produce more than just beeps.

Now I must mention again that this pedal has THE sound of an overdriven leslie. It is the perfect sound if you want to emulate that growl of Chest Fever by the Band or that sheer crunch of Deep Purple's Lazy.

As long as the power doesn't go out, I can rely on this pedal. But I would not trust it with batteries to save my life.

Never tried. Their web-site sucks, though. There is nothing helpful, just pretty pictures of their gear.

Overall I think this pedal has a wonderful sound and if you don't find Danelectro products aesthetically pleasing, something is wrong with you.

As I said, the fact that it favours the battery over the AC adaptor sucks. Appart from that, the ramp times, are rather slow, but I tend to play keyboard anyway, and I'm constantly sarting and stopping the rotors, so I usually keep the speed hovering, so it doesn't slow down all the way.

I recommend this pedal because it is remarkably inexpensive and it sounds great.

Rock on.

If you don't have the manual (I didn't) I can see where the growl knob would get you into trouble. Turn it all the way down for quiet clean operation and turn it to 10 o'clock for a little boost with out to much noise. Crank it from there for distortion and noise. The next thing that the speed knod control the maximun speed of the ramp up. Once you know that it is up to you to decide how fast you want the wobble to be on leads. After overcoming those issues 10 minutes of fiddling I was off to the races. There is a learning curve if you buy the pedal with no prior knowledge because there is alot to consider for the set-up. Now that I kow what the pedal does I have three settings that I use for different things.

I favor a Schector tele copy going UHF wireless thru my whole chain: TC Elect. experience pedal, Crybaby wah, RP-50, split with a morley a/b box to a Cavin x100-b half stack with m-70 celestions and to a 70's Peavey Classic with Phaser. The split going to the peavey has a Boss Noise gate with a metal pedal and digital delay. Usually, to get the Jimi thing happening I use the wah, the experience set to octave, and the rocky road, the carvin on a medium crunch and the delay on a slap going to the peavey. I turn on the experience and wah for solos and play with the rocky road an delay the rest of the time.
Setup #2. This is a great pedal for those times when you want to keep it simple (One guitar, one pedal, one amp)because the ramp gives who three effects (Slow chorus, ramping, fast chorus) with out any knob twiddling. I have read the whole two ramp speeds, slow and slower. These people are missing the point. those selections are for control of the pedal. Here is the deal. Option A. 1.Leave the pedal on for the whole song. 2. Ramp up for the solo. 3. Ramp down after the solo. This works great with the ramp speed on fast. Option B. 1.Leave pedal off. 2. Turn on to get ramping rotary sound at desired time. 3. Use ramp button to keep the speed where you want it. This is easy to accomplish with the ramp speed set to slow. I hope this concept will help people apply this effect with more taste and success. This pedal is swirly enough if you are using a low wattage set-up. This is because you have alot of gain going just to get some volume. With a pro rig it is a little dry. The good news is that if you throw some Digital modeling (RP-50 for instance)in front of it, and another analog time delay pedal after it (try a phase shifter or flanger) this this will go nuts in a good way. I always keep the growl down when I have it in a chain of effects. This pedal is a very easy way to get the vibe of alot of great players. It reminds me of hendrix, stevie, and zz top when used alone. To get into Pink Floyd or Trower land you will need to stack another oscillating pedal with it. I am giving it a ten because the ramp is worth a couple of hundred dollars and I paid $20 for it. If you want a leslie buy a leslie and drag it around.

I have read where some of these don't work out of the box. That is not reliability. that is poor quality control. This is plastic. If you are going to be moshing around leave it at home. If you take care of a piece of gear it will take care of you. This means to wrap it in cloth with you are not using it. Do not toss pedals around.

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I play blues,country, classic rock, shred metal. This pedal is for classic rock/americana.
I am 38, I have been picking on electric/acoustic guitars, basses and mandolin since I was twelve.
I would replace this piece of gear. It has to be the altime bang for your buck pedal.
The tone is great, the smaller and crappier the gear set-up, the better.
The wish list would include stereo outs and an expression pedal input.
I think Dano should make a $200 dollar full size version of this pedal with daddy-o distortion (for everyone crying about the growl and for the volume mod. crowd)in the front end and the stereo out & expression pedal input on the back end for me.

I have to give this pedal a lower rating, because it takes a few minutes to fix the volume problem. If you have minimal soldering skills you can fix it with no problem (see mod below). Once I did the mod . . . WOW!

The thing to do is to give the little guy some room. If you look at the pedal, there are cutaways near the knobs that represent the tip of your foot. If you give the pedal room on either side, it will be easy to use.

This pedal is the ugly duckling of my rig. All other pedals I use are high-quality, true-bypass units: Keeley Modded Crybaby, Stigtronics Compressor and Overdrive, Tremulator, and an Ibanez DL10 delay (another gem). I have had many of my peers laugh at this unit, but when they hear it, that's another story. I've used this pedal for a couple of weeks on a tour with another band, and I've already talked the guitarist into buying one.

Okay, here's the skinny on the sound. It reminds me of an old Fender Leslie at times, though it has a slower ramping speed. For your dollar there truly is no other Leslie simulator that will cut it for the money. I tried the new Line 6 Roto-Machine . . . wasn't impressed at all. The Rocky Road, though small and sometimes tough to get around due to pedal size, is a bargain and a half!

Once you do the simple mod, the levels are even and the unit just shimmers. I REALLY like this pedal!

I doubt it will break, but it IS plastic, so it might someday. I'm thinking of buying a backup to have just in case.

Don't know . . .