Danelectro DJ-5 Tunamelt Tremolo

It may take awhile to get the tremelo setting your looking for but once I figured mine out then it wasnt hard for say someone else to mess with and for me to still find my old settings

Im not too familiar with tremelo's at all but I tried the boss TR-2 at guitar center and still loved my tunamelt's sound, it's fun to mess with as far as with other pedals like distortion or wah especially.

I use a Fender HotRod Deville 212 and American Telecaster as well as other effects, I used to own the milkshake and hashbrowns and these were great sounding pedals too so to me they all sound nice but I like this pedal cause it does put out some nice sounding tremelo and it's just simple and cheap.

I hate the plastic part of this pedal and the fact that its so small compared to other pedals

For example I have trouble finding a spot for it on my pedal board because its so short and other pedals are so much taller than it that my foot has to push others away before I can click it.

Its too light as well, my patch cables sometimes make this thing Lopp sided.

and no volume knob :( Somtimes its too loud when I turn it on and other times its not loud enough but I have this same problem with my other pedals so compared to them the volume is set just right

I may or may not keep this because this is a beginners pedal in my opinion but its doing well for now and sounds great and this is all one really needs but I make get pedal picky in the future and buy another tremelo pedal but it seems this pedal just keeps getting better the longer I own it.

For example little things like knowing what kinda 9volt ma adaptor it needed conveinently placed on the bottom like other pedals should.

Easy, has Speed, Depth, and Hard/Soft controls. Turn the knobs and listen.

First of all, I purchased this pedal because I love simple old-fashioned tremelo. I love that Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells tone, or Love Hurts by Nazareth. I just wanted this to pick chords arpeggio style or strum simple chords. I always use Soft mode, always leave Depth at around 3 o'clock position, but I do vary Speed according to the song. And for what I want this pedal works very well, gets the tones I mentioned before. I own a 1958 Premier Twin 8 amp with fabulous tremelo. This pedal is not quite that good, but close enough. It is warm and full sounding. This pedal is not noisy at all, but does give a slight volume boost when you kick it in. I do not find that it affects tone when off in the chain at all. I have tried the Hard mode but did not care for it. Not saying anything is wrong with it, just not something I'd ever use. But for good old fashioned vintage tremelo, this pedal is very good. If I had to say anything negative (and it's not really a negative) about this pedal it would be that you have to carefully tweak the speed.

I currently own 7 Danelectro pedals and have never had a single problem with any of them, some over 10 years old. I play in a Classic Rock band and use several of them on my pedalboard. Not all Danelectro pedals are great, but some like the Daddy-O and the Fish & Chips 7 Band EQ are. They are often far better than "name" brands that cost 2-3 times as much. I am never afraid to take my Danos to the gig, they have proven themselves over and over again. I have had a few of the expensive names brands break, but never a Dano.

Never had to contact support 'cause these pedals never break down. The best customer support is a good product to begin with.

I give this a 9 because this pedal gets me very close to the old vintage tremelo I want at a good price. I have tried other more expensive brands that were far worse. I have been playing 34 years, play in a Classic Rock cover band, so I think I know good tone when I hear it. If lost or stolen I would buy it again for sure. Danelectro makes some good effects pedals, and this is one of them.

easy - bought new in 2005

guitar >>>>> a s**tload pf pedals >>>>>>>>>> amp

not noisy - I use it with a tweed bassman / strat
this gets the right sounds for me
It does effect tone when bypassed.

so far/so good.

40 yrs playing - past 10 yrs gig x2 per month in pop-rock/party oriented cover band ( translation - a garage band that does pretty well ) I use tremolo for maybe 15 minutes in a 4 hr gig. I have been the happiest with this cheap little plastic box. - much more organic and warm. Others I have tried: Swamp Thang ( $200 boutique box - whatever that means ) Dunlop ( the one that pans - the tone on this was the worst of the bunch ) Voodoo labs box - uh uh. vibrato on a re-issue vibrolux reverb I sold in 1999 ( $900 ) - this was pretty good - but this $10 little yellow box
( ebay ) is better.


there are only 2 downsides to this pedal:

1. it effects overall tone when off - so I use a true bypass looper to keep it out of my chain when it's off.

2. you might be embarassed to have people see this little thing next to your 'boutique' pedals - but you can cover it with black tape and stick it inside a cardboard box stuffed with paper and spray painted black so nobody will see what it is.

Extremely Easy!
Play a note and fiddle with the knobs until it sounds like you want it.

Brilliant!
I play a mixture of styles (Heavy to 50's / 60's) and it somehow fits in everywhere. Works particularly well on a clean setting with just a touch of Reverb...

Again - faultless.
I bought one of these little boxes about 5 years ago. Bearing in mind that I *do* look after my kit, it hasn't gone wrong at all.
Power consumption is almost negligible, so I've not had to change batteries very often at all (although this isn't the easiest thing in the world - a bit fiddly, but certainly not Rocket Science...)

As I've said, 5 years without a single fault - I've had no reason to call them.

My basic setup is this - Sexy Mexy Telecaster / Tuna Melt / Occasional Delay Pedal / Classic 30 valve amp.
This setup covers almost everything I need to do and the Tuna Melt is a great (and dependable) piece of gear. I bought it un-played as a bit of a cheap risk, with a view to buying a more expensive unit if I really liked the sound. I'm still using my faithful Tuna-Melt. It's great. I'd be distinctly upset if it got stolen / broken / lost, but at this price, I'd go and buy a replacement the very next day. I can't rate this little beast highly enough.

Incredibly easy to get a good sound out of this. No manual needed at all. They give you a few example settings, and those work good though.

I don't find it to be noisy, and it works great and enhances a lot of other effects. Overdrive, ring modulation, chorus, you name it. This does what it is meant to do, and very well.

I got a little plastic protector with it. I don't think it is gonna break anytime soon.

I have never contacted Danelectro, but I assume they would be friendly. I've always considered Danelectro a company on the verge of bankruptcy, but that is just because they discontinue stuff often and have a cruddy website.

I play shoegazer/gothic/post-punk/post-hardcore. I use it mostly in slower noisier songs, as that is where it shines. It is a great effect, and the hard/soft switch makes it more than a one trick pony.

Two knobs, speed and depth, and a hard/soft switch. Piece o' cake, except as mentioned before the knobs are tiny.

My setup is a late 70's/early 80's Memphis Tele Custom copy(don't laugh, awesome guitar from back before Memphis turned to complete shiat), Tuna Melt, Danelectro Fab Tone distortion, into a 70's Music Man RP 112 65 watt combo. I play a mix of blues, rockabilly,surf, old-style country and hillbilly(not this Toby Keith watered down Bon Jovi garbage), garage, punk and 70's style hard rock. I used to be in a few bands years ago, but now I just play mostly around the house. I got this specifically for that Duane Eddy/John Fogerty/Bo Diddly/Louisiana swamp blues sound and it NAILS it. A friend of mine used to have a '66 Vibro Champ and this thing could give the Fender's trem a run for its money. I think I detect a SLIGHT volume loss, but nothing major. Switch this thing on and it's the early 60's again. I thought about other tremolo pedals, such as the Boss, but I'm on a fairly tight budget, and this little yellow box will do all I need it to do and sounds INCREDIBLE for the money. I'll give it a ten, considering how inexpensive this little yellow beauty is.

Can't say as of yet, as I've only had it a couple days. However, I've had other Dan-o pedals and never had a bit of problem out of them. Switch seems a bit dodgy, but for the price I can always get another. Stupid Dan-o battery that came with it crapped out in 20 minutes though.

Never had to deal with Danelectro on anything.

Like I said previously, I'm mostly a retro style player and got this for Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley and CCR type stuff, and it nails it. Any rootsy guitar player looking for a tremelo, you'd do well to take a chance on one of these before shelling out $100 and up for something like a Boss.

I didn't like changing the battery on this pig. Couldn't be designed any more poorly. But hey, use a digital power for all your pedals and you're golden. They're cheap. Also, I didn't like the tiny little knobs either, but I guess that's part of the charm of the 'Dano' pedals.

I was playing my strat through an Ibanez UE-300 multi-fx compressor/tube screamer, then the DJ-5, holy grail reverb, out to a crate vc-2110 EL84 amp. Sounded real good, no loss of high end, just a little putt-putt on idle which wasn't bad.

However this little pedal is no longer with me - I actually put an axe through it, then my lawn, after trying to wrestle the battery out after an apparently too long day at work. I'm embarrassed. Geez there were little Chinese plastic parts all over the place. It really was a cute pedal.

Otherwise, I think it would've held up pretty well.

I highly recommend using a power supply with this pedal.

Extremely easy to use. There is no manual - just some notes on the packaging.

I love it! I've wanted a tremolo pedal for a long time, but they're so damn expensive that I could never justify spending the money for one. This thing really sounds great - I'm very surprised. It seems very quiet too which is amazing for such a cheap pedal. I spent a couple of hours playing with it after it arrived - must have played Born on the Bayou for 20 minutes....

OK - it's plastic, and the footswitch doesn't seem very solid. I was thinking about trying to either replace the footswitch or even moving all of the components to something a little sturdier, but I'm not ready to start hacking this thing to pieces. The good news is that it's cheap enough to replace and I may even buy another for a backup.

Haven't had a problem yet.

Fantastic value for the money. I just wish the footswitch were a little taller and sturdier.

Pretty easy to use. just two knobs, a switch, and the on/off button. not exactly rocket surgery. getting the speed set to the exact rate you want can be tedious though. that's not all that uncommon with tremolo though.

The main guitar I use this with is my Les Paul and I run it into a Fender Blues Jr. I have other pedals, but thats irrelevant. The tremolo effect itself is pretty good. Not great, but good. I like how the volume doesnt drop like the Boss TR-2 does. I used to have the TR-2. The TR-2's effect sounded better and was more flexible, but the volume drop turned me off. I use the tremolo a lot of the time for arpeggios over strummed chords and if the volume drops, i cant be heard so the TR-2 was almost useless to me. The Tunamelt though doesnt have that problem. Doesnt sound great, but for the price, it certainly sounds good enough. If I had $120 to blow, I wouldve gotten the Voodoo Labs Tremolo pedal, but this will do.

dunno. i'm sure its not Boss reliable, but i'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt and say i'm not worried about it fizzing out or anything.

never dealt with them

I play Brit-rock and this thing gets the job done. I rarely use tremolo, but when I do, this thing works fine. I've been playing for almost 6 years and i've had 3 tremolo devices. One being the boss tr-2, the other being on one of my old tube amps that i no longer have, and the third being this. this is better than the tr-2, but not as good as the amp's tremolo. if it were lost or stolen, I dont know what i'd do. I probably wouldnt get another tremolo pedal for awhile and i dont know which i'd get if did get another. I bought this on an impulse. it was $30.49 (including shipping) for a new one (still in packaging) and i've been wanting a trem pedal for awhile so i snagged it. i'm definitely glad i got it. $31ish isnt much for a pedal, especially one that is pretty good.

if you want a decent tremolo and are hurting for cash, this thing is great. great value.

Very obvious and easy .. speed, depth. And a switch for hard vs. soft trem.

One minor complaint is that because the input and output jacks are so close together, I can't use two of my right-angle patch cords with it; one has to be a straight jack.

I don't have any experience with other trems, but I have absolutely no complaints about the sound. It does exactly what it's supposed to, with no obvious signal degradation or noise. When I say "obvious", I mean in a live gigging situation ... I haven't tried it for recording.

I'm using it with a Strat and a Gibson GA-15RV combo. I use it mainly to get some vintage trem sounds like for the intro to Born on the Bayou and similar. Also planning to use it to get the lead-in to Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", though I think to get that to sound right will require me to change the order of effects, putting the trem before the overdrive pedal.

I have no reason yet to be concerned about reliability. Seems well constructed for the price, despite having what appears to be a plastic body. I've played gigs for 3 years without it, so if it failed, I'd just return to playing without a trem until I got it replaced.

I'm putting an 8 just because I haven't owned it long enough to give it a 10.

No experience with customer support. If this unit broke, I'd probably just buy another.

How I bought this: I went into the rec.music.makers.guitar forum and posted a question about decent quality trem pedals. I got lots of good advice, but the recommended models were all in the $150 to $190 category. WAY too much for an effect that I use on maybe three songs in a 50-song gig. Then someone highly recommended this unit and suggested that I could get it on e-bay for only $30. I found one on e-bay, bid, and sure enough, won it at $30 the same day. It arrived in like-new condition. I am very happy with it for the price; if it were stolen I'd buy another.