Danelectro DJ-4 Corned Beef Reverb

Come on now...It's got 2 knobs and a circle button to step on. Not difficult at all. Now, getting a sound out of it that you like...that's a totally different story. Overall, with some fiddling, you can get something that you like out of it. No manual, but I did get 2 warranty cards (Useful??? Not really).

I am using a Guild AD-50 acoustic with a Seymour Duncan Tube soundhole pickup (Which is great by the way). This goes through the same Marshall MG 50 amp that I use for my SG and Tele.

I thought it was a reverb. Was I wrong. Actually, let me re-phrase; I thought that it would be a digital style, Hall-type reverb. I was wron about that. It has a real vintage-y slapback thing going on. Boy was I shocked.

It can be a fun pedal f you can reconcile with what it is. It is not an ambience-type reverb. At least not to me it isn't. It can create some pretty sweet slap-back, shower sort of effects. I'll give it an 8 because it's no Electro-Harmonix product, but it makes some cool sounds if that's what you're looking for.

Something that I forgot to mention is that it has almost no hiss, pedal noise, or tone coloring. It's not a hard bypass, but what do you want for 30 bucks new or 5 at a garage sale?

It is pretty reliable. It is plastic...It was made by Danelectro...It did only cost me $14 on sale...Come on now though...If you wanted something that you could jump up and down on, go get an EH or Boss pedal. This is good for small stuff. ie. chruches, club gigs, cd release parties, etc. I would gig it without a backup, because if it does break, I take it out of the chain and no great loss.

Not ever needed them, but for the warranty card and the minimal amount of effort, they get an average 7. Little to no work for a 7...I am pretty benevolent.

I think that it's pretty cool. Neat sounds for electric and acoustic stuff. It is what it is though. You want a really nice hall reverb, got get an Alesis rack. If you don't have reverb on your amp, you can tweak this into giving you a little rounder, wetter, and fuller sound. You can do some pretty cool stuff with it. Good for indie rock, surf stuff maybe, all sorts of different sounds that need a little quirk. The main thing is that you have to realize that you ALWAYS get what you pay for with musical instruments and gear. For 10-30 dollars, it probably won't change the way you think about guitars. It will add a little quirky coler however, and that can be fun.

This has mix and hicut only. Very easy!
There is one interesting thing about hicut . . . as you turn hicut, delay feedback value also decreases. It means that delay repeat times decrease.
It is easy to confirm that. If you turn both mix and hicut to full, you can hear only one echo. (It's a kind of doubling sound.)

This is not reverb but delay. This can not be noisy at all. You like this or not is depended upon your preference.
I suppose if you love spring reverb sound, this may not be for you.
But practically, for live usage, audience can hardly tell difference between this and spring reverb. Because reverbrant nature of room will reduce taste of solid state delay.
I bought this recently, because my Polytone amp has broken reverb.
Direct sound from speaker can not be the same as spring reverb, because this is solid state delay. But I think this is not so bad.
I sometimes use this with another delay (PB&J delay of Dano) to get Metheny like doubling + delay sound. Corned beef Setting is mix=2 o'clock, hicut =full. PB&J setting is mix=10 o'clock, delay time=minimum(in long delay mode), feedback=1 o'clock. Connection order is Semi/full-acoustic guitar => Corned beef => PBJ => Amp.
If you try this setting, you can confirm Corned beef can add warm & rich doubling sound to PB&J delay.

I guess Dano designer must hate to manufacture substitution for conventional spring reverb.?@He must challenge to make something new.
It is interesting that currently Dano has three small stomp delay boxes, Corned beef, BLT and PB&J. Dano must give different concepts to these three. I think Corned beef is so so, PB&J is excellent, and I have not tried BLT yet.
Considering its price, this is not so bad. I can use this for live/gig.
If this is broken, I will try BLT of Dano, or I will repair reverb unit of my Polytone Amp.

Very easy, very clever settings: mix and hicut. It means when you have a lot of reverb you can cut its harshness(or strangeness if such a word exists) and when you have almost none you can make it present in another way, cute dano!
It is an analog device, with high consumption. I don't like the fact that it doesn't accept more than 300ma 9vdc. It will smoke and die if you don't respect that, I've learned it the hard way.
So it's not that easy to use, go check your transformer wattage before gigging... Stupid dano.

I like it! Soooo much!
I also hve a digiverb and two tons of reverb processors(aalesis, zoom, behringer, yamaha) and nothing comes close. Think weird spring crossed with slapback analog delay. Unique!
In fact I use it all the time, I'm severely addicted.
Of course no hard bypass but who cares since it's always on?(like compressors, once you have them every sounds lame without!)

Very reliable but wait: my unit stays always on in the back of my amp, or on the desk.
Oh, and the problem with the 300ma max. a 5 for this one because transformers are now very powerful in average

Life without it just good for drummer. And even then I don't know.
So sweet sound I wish my wife ever had. In the wildest settings my fish when burping comes close.
I like the sound of this little thing, I buy one more next month, before it is discontinued.
Ten here, no questions.

cheap reverb at a cheap price. getting a good sound is questionable, but if you're wondering how hard it is to tinker with it, it has two knobs and a footswitch.

slightly more difficult than an MXR Phase 90. but only slightly.

when I had this, i used it through a variety of tone sucking, bad sounding effects into a cheap amp (which I continue to use today; i said it was cheap, never said it sounded bad). this reverb sounded more like playing your guitar in a shower or a bathroom. the hi-cut knob may have well just been decapitated from the unit, as it does absolutely NOTHING. Believe me, I tried to hear a difference.

The mix knob is self explanitory...dry/wet, if you don't know what that means, may I suggest asking someone to tell you about it. At about 9 o clock you could get a convincible "furnished room" sound with minimal bounceback, 12 o' clock was like an empty room, 2 o' clock can get you a cheap imitation of a hall reverb, anything past that is pretty much gigantic shower/stall/bathroom/really long drain pipe reverb.

from what I remember I think I used it consecutively for the first two weeks I had it, then I pretty much never used it again. Only sparingly did I turn it on. When it came time to sell my effects, the Danelectro was next to go right after my Zoom 505II. Now that I think of it, the Zoom had better reverb than this. That's pretty sad.

psshh...

pshhh again...

I'll almost play anything and everything. I couldn't see this pedal being used by or for anything more than :

a) a cheap nashville-country imitation guitarist in south dakota
b) a paperweight to hold your setlist down.

I really did not enjoy this pedal very much. I am now less of a man for having owned it. Please stay away from this pedal, because it is dangerous, and gives good sounding reverb a swift kick in the behind and a bad stereotype.

Blessings

Single control. Easy to use but take the time to play with it to find the amount of reverb you want.

OK, it isn't really what I wanted, was too echoy and I found it hard to find the right spot to get what I was looking for. I am used to the built in spacy spring reverb units and this one doesn't really give it to you. It is more of a reverb/delay hybrid I guess.

One thing to note is that the hum mentioned below is due to crappy power supply. I bought one and this pedal produced a horrid hum but then agin so did the Boss and other pedals. I bought a Danelectro power supply and the hum went away in them all.

I use it at the end of my line of pedals for my electric axe and it operates OK. \

I ran it as loop back reverb through the PA and found it to be too over the top for that. Became very delay like when strong sharp sound put through it. Long constant tones where fine but short harp tones do the horrible delat thing.

Goes fine.

n/A

Good for the price and better than nothing. Works fine with clean guitar work as I use it.

It's cheap... and small... and not much else. It does, however, take sometime to learn the ins and outs of getting good tones. I give it a 7 only for the fact that you will need to play around with the settings to get the tone you want.

I'm running an Ovation 6-string Acoustic (seriously) through a Semour Duncan Woody into a Fender Acoustasonic 30. It can get a little noisy, so play with your pedal sequencing to minimize/eliminate hum. A lot of the other reviewers really seem to bash the quality of the reverb, but when you consider the price, I think it's pretty damn good. If you want an expensive sounding reverb, buy an expensive piece of equipment. Again, I can't stress enough that the Corned Beef pedal can be a bit tricky, be prepared to spend a little time getting to know this one.

2 out of every 3 reviews of Dano products I've read here really stress "the plastic this and bad switch that." And, yes, it's plastic. And yeah, Dano stuff is cheap. But, I've never had one go out on me. I've gigged on the Corned Beef numerous times and it's done great. I've had it for about 4 months now and I practice on it 3-5 day a week and do about 3 shows a month. I don't beat the heck out of it, but I also don't treat it like it's made of glass. I've got to give it a perfect 10. From start to finish, this pedal handles everything I throw at it. And who needs a backup when you have the DJ-4

I got nothin'... I guess that says something about the product.

I guess, overall, the Danelectro DJ-4 Corned Beef Reverb gets a 9. If someone stole it today, I'd be at the store getting another one today. I'm a big Dano fan, to date I've loved everything I've tried. It works great for my acoustic/rockabilly/garage sound, in the vein of Young, Stray Cats, Georgia Sat., Dylan and Jack Johnson. The only other thing I can say about this pedal is: For the price, it's the best thing out there.

easy to use.

My problem is when you buy something and it say's "reverb", you expect "REVERB". This is not a 'reverb' pedal, what this does is imitate's (not very well)reverb by using a very short slap delay effect. O.k having gotten that of my chest, this can be a bit of a cool, quirkey effect if thats what your after. I was after a reverb pedal, but I suppose you get what you pay for. Anyway, for the money I'm giving this a very generous 6 out of 10. oh almost forgot to mention the hum you get when using this pedal. Apparently it does'nt hum if you use a Danelectro power supply. I've got a power supply!! I should'nt need to buy another one!!!! Changed my mind I'm giving it a 5

worked fine for the short while i had it...Probably would'nt want to step on it to hard, But would probably last a lifetime for most people who look after their gear.

Been playing for 20 years, no I would'nt buy this pedal again in fact I sold it the same week I bought it. Like I said before it's not a bad pedal for the money (except for the hum) and I would imagine could come in handy in a studio. Quirkey is the word that come's to mind. Not bad, just not for me.

I agree with the previous reviewer that this pedal shouldn't be compared to high-end rack-mount or plug-in reverbs. It's "reverb-like" in the manner of older non-spring reverb processors. However, I bet folks who buy it without trying it first, expecting a pristine, lush, smooth-tailed reverb, are going to be disappointed. My bet is that if you work with it long enough you can find a sweet spot, yet because of that it's not all that easy to use. Yeah, you can easily turn the knobs, but certain other Dano mini-pedals sound good no matter where you set them. This one doesn't.

I'll help to offset the bad reviews, too. We'll get to the reverb sound in a minute, but first ==> no discernable sonic coloration to your unprocessed signal, and no hiss or other artifacts. It's a very quiet pedal, and that should count for something.

The reverb sound is metallic-sounding at worst, and at best, tends toward a subtle multiple-slapback. That's right, you can hear distinct rapid echoes of your original signal, more and more as you increase the Level control. The Hi-Cut control does reduce how noticeable the repeats are but you'll always hear them unless you turn the Hi-Cut all the way clockwise. Then, the effect seems to disappear entirely (huh?). I thought I heard actual "smooth" reverb in-between the repeats, very low in volume, but I bet that's my aural imagination. And I suppose that's just what Dano was trying to do, make a cheap pedal that fools you into hearing reverb from a pile of quick repeats.

So instead of scrutinizing the reverb sound, just set it and play ? indeed you, your bandmates and your audience will hear a non-dry, reverbed sound. Alternatively, exploit the pedal's dark secret to your own advantage ? for instance, you can easily coax a realistic bathroom-slapback from it. Or front-load it with a metal distortion pedal and dime it for some sonic otherworldliness. Remember, players from the 60's and 70's never expected anything from their pedals beyond "it makes my guitar sound different". But now we clamor to pay top dollar for those same rusty pedals, because they have "personality" compared to our mass-produced digital wonder-boxes. Ah, the irony !!

Probably good enough for bedroom or garage-band use. Obviously not made to be abused, but mount it on a board and it will probably last forever. I doubt anyone will be depending on this pedal for critical performance or studio work, so my reliability rating is relative to how it would typically be used.

I bought this used and will likely never contact Danelectro for any reason. No opinion here.

Overall, it's just a weird pedal with its own kind of mojo. After two weeks of using it I've found two good settings and I can imagine finding more. Like many, I got this for a small home amp that didn't have reverb. It fits the bill just fine. If you can get past the alternative-reverb approach, you may find ways to like it. If not, you can at least sell it for close to what you paid.

knobs and a button, it doesnt get much easier.

i have this pedal run through a fender blues junior / vox pathfinder and the sound is amazing! i am rating this pedal as high as i can to try and neutralize all the bad reviews. Dont bash it because you dont understand it. i agree that maybe it should be labled something else possible corned beef slap echo / reverb but i have used many other vintage electronic reverbs and the sound is almost identical.
If you listen to Neil Young at all you will know exactly what this pedal is supposed to do. Sorry to all you hard digital rockers that need a nice warm reverb served to you on a silver platter.

who cares, there like cheap now.
i can and will gig the crap out of this.

nope

surf rock
neil young
anything tube vintage analog.
indy

as easy as it gets, 2 knobs dial them in and find something you like

I use an Italia Modena with 2 P-90's through an old Kelly (60's calss A, rare basically a Selmer with a different badge), if I go in the front the sound is defineatly unique but a tad muddy, but through the fx loop, it's sweet as a nut.The pedal is a retro style sound and it delivers.

This is my only reverb pedal and i've gigged it a fair bit, the body is plastic but i leave it on all the time so i don't get to stomp on it but i reakon if you did give it a size 10 it would survive. It's never broke, yet.

never needed it

If some blaggard half inched it, i would buy another, although i have hankering for an EH Holy Grail, this peadl is excellant at delivering one style of reverb only, if that retro thing ain't for you then this is not gonna work, but if like me you have both feet firmly stuck in the 50's/60's then maybe give this a go. It's excellant for surf as well