Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler

OK, here's the deal. I bought this box before reading all the negative reviews on this site - "works great initially, but fails over time," "sporadic behavior," etc. While hooking this pedal up I immediately noticed something. While the adaptor connector on the back appears the same as most every other pedal, it is not (even the dimensions are slightly different)! Not only are the wattage requirements huge, but the voltage requirements are different. A normal pedal uses 9 volts DC - this pedal specifically says 'AC'. This would lead to the very type of behavior people have complained of. I could even see where the rectifier inside the pedal would detect the proper current yet be only getting half the wave - only the engineer who designed this would probably know. Don't chince out, if you have this pedal, buy the Line 6 adapter! They should have used a completely different plug!

A little bit of a learning curve is required. Although it is not hard to dial in a great delay on any of the patches.

I tested many delays in every spectrum of price. This was my favorite! Great versatility and models! I use it with my Peavey JSX and Carvin guitars (AH2T and DC127). The looper is an added plus.

No problems as of yet! Not that I expect any. I would not worry about a backup. I have gigged with it for a year now.

Not had to deal with them.

I am a jazz/fusion and a freelance career musician. This delay does work for any style of music. I have been playing 27 years. I would definately miss this if it were lost or stolen.

there are a lot of options here and it takes awhile to get the grasp of what all you can do. I've had this unit for a little less than a year and am still finding neat little tricks. It helps to have to little sticker that comes with it so that you can keep track of what tweak and tweeze do as those knobs change functions depending where you are.

3 preset knobs should be enough for anyone. and you can always tap tempo on any of the patches.

I personally use the loop function, digital delay, and tape echo emulations the most and I think that all of them sound amazing especially the tape echo ones. My favorite thing to do is to turn down the repeats and delay time on tube echo mode and crank up the wow and flutter (tweak) to give the guitar a really lo-fi tape recorded sound. That little trick expands the sounds that you can use this for greatly. any delay that has a modulation on it you can isolate just the mod.

Sure its not a real tape echo but thats not why I bought it. It can make some really cool sounds after a little experimentation

I can depend on this so far and would gig without a backup if I gigged. The only thing I have noticed is that sometimes if you are punching the play once button in loop mode over and over again...it will switch from half-speed to full-speed loop. but that doesnt happen often

never dealt with them

I play a Gibson Les Paul '57 goldtop and a Vaccaro Generator-x (single coils) through a Fender Dual Showman Reverb. I listen to lots of Battles, Do Make Say Think, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky. If you like any of those bands they all use this pedal and is in part why I bought it. If its good enough for them it should be good enough for you. You can get great standard delays out of this and also some really neat space sounds which makes it ideal for experimental music i think.

Very easy to get a good sound. Just dial it up, then hold one of the three preset buttons until it blinks. You're good to go. The manual was great and entertaining, but the thing really required very little manual time.

Using this primarily with a Rivera R100 Duo 12 through the effects loop, a host of other effects, and assorted PRS and Hamer guitars. It sounds great, particularly the tape echo simulation, and the wow and flutter you can dial in. Very authentic. I had an Echoplex to compare it to, and it pretty well nailed it. The digital delay is not nearly as clean as say, a Boss delay, but it has character and I like it. I have noticed none of the tone sucking problems that many people have had, my volume remains consistent on or off, though I've set up the echos to trail off in bypass mode.

This is where the pedal falls flat. It just broke down on me, and this would be the fourth time. Granted, I've had it since about six months after it came out. So mine's been around the block, but let me say, I've had other pedals on my board, such as my Boss TU-2 and my Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere, that have never let me down. I also don't gig like crazy, and I keep it in a roadcase with the rest of my pedals. I'm also not a stomper, so there's no excuse there.

Sometimes it just stops working, other times it's intermittent, other times I have no problems. It's very inconsistent, except in the fact that it can't be consistently relied upon. I've probably sunk almost as much into the repairing of this thing as I paid for it in the first place. Line 6 needs to build some reliability into their products. Look at Boss. Yes, there are better sounding pedals, but one thing I can say for Boss is that even their cheapest pedal is built super reliably.

The sucky thing is that I can't think of another pedal that lets you dial in wow and flutter like this. Most pedals just add chorus, which sounds nothing like actual wow and flutter. This one actually does it correctly, with the flutter getting more intense as the echos continue. I'm probably going to end up with the Space Echo and something else, though I'll miss my Line 6.

It didn't go down until after the warranty period. I haven't contacted line 6 in such a long time I don't remember.

Love the ease of use, LOVE the sound, LOVE the tape echo sim, hate the fact that I can't rely on it.

This unit is pretty easy to use. Although you might have to periodically go back and forth between your manual to understand what the "Tweez" and "Tweak" buttons do for some of the delays. But overall not too difficult.

The looping function, which is the only setting I use on the DL4, is really easy to use.

Some of the delays sound pretty good and some of them don't. The ones that don't are way too digital sounding, not very organic and lack any kind of warmth.

However, the DL4's looping function sounds great. Very clean and clear.

I bought mine in 2003 and haven't had any problems with it yet. Perhaps I have a good one? I'm not sure, but it hasn't failed on me yet.

Haven't had to deal with Line 6, so no opinion.

Like I mentioned above, some of these delays sound great and some of them don't. You should enjoy many of them. My favorite delay on the DL4 is the ping-pong. This delay sounds really nice, especially if you have a stereo amplifier setup.

I don't use the DL4's delays that much. I have an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man and a Boss DD-6 delay, and still consider Boss to be the makers of some of the best delay pedals out there. I use the looping function only. This is really the only reason why I bought this pedal for it's looping capability.

If you don't have a delay, then you can't go wrong, but you can't go wrong especially if you don't own a looper of some kind, so you're really getting two pedals in one.

Since 2003, I have found better looping pedals, but the Line 6 still stays in my chain if I want to do a quick rhythm loop or something. I love what this pedal does and the way it sounds doing it.

was easy to use. i found that out of the box it was a little overwhelming seeing all variations of delay available. after a read through the manual and a bit of time playing around with the unit i found it very easy to use. the loop function was also very simple to sit and play around with for hours.

so i have a practice rig at home that consists of a traynor yc-80 and a fender fat taco strat. at the jam space i have a mesa triple rec through a standard recto cab, in my effects loop i have a korg tuner and a bbe sonic max. so when i got this pedal home and threw it infront of my traynor i was amazing at the quality of delay coming from this line 6 unit considering i never have been a big fan of the brand. i was looping and playing around with lo res and reverse delay. needless to say i was very happy with this pedal. the next weekend i brought it to my jam space and was completely heart broken. i ran it in my effects loop and found that running it with any amount of mix completely raped the tone out of my amp that i loved so much i noticed with some settings it was even trying to replicate the breakup of my amp which left me with a mucky line 6 mess behind what i was playing. i set the mix to about 2 out of 10 i found that it was an acceptable amount of tone loss but i could not hear the delay under pretty well any setting. next i tried running infront of my amp i found this to be a lot more effective and i did not seem to be sacrificing as much tone but i did notice a a large amount of my attack was gone and with playing in a faster band i could not stand to keep this pedal in my rig.
a week later i tried to return it to axe music but found that their return policy was insane and ended up trading to music center canada for money than axe would give me on a return.
moral of the story buy this if your running a clean amp or just want it for playing around with around home, and dont buy from axe they will make you feel 10 fold worse about your mistake

did not keep it long enough to see how it held up although it seemed pretty solid

in 15 years of playing guitar this was the first piece of gear i bought that i honestly could not have been let down more. i see when it would be practical now but if your anything other than some guy playing in his basement with the need for a diverse set of delays, this pedal will just not cut it and with this pedal i have i have lost all hope for ever finding a piece of line 6 gear that dose not colour my guitar with some sort of digital aurora

To get the most out of this pedal you need to do some serious reading. Especially to get the most out of the loop sampler's half time and reverse functions. The manual spends too much time pushing it's other products to get enough from it.

I used it with a fender American S-1 HSS Strat. (Note past tense, we will get to that). My backup is an upgraded Gibson SG Standard. These go through multiple effects to my Traynor YCV40 with celestion vintage 30 speaker. The reason that I got this pedal is that all my favorite guitarists have one of these on their pedal board. Dave Knudson has 6! These things sound amazing WHEN THEY WORK.

I bought my first DL4 from Ebay 2nd hand. This unit set on fire within 5 minutes of use whilst being used on the correct PSU. Luckily I got my money back. My second and present unit has the following problems - 1. When the unit is off but has a signal it repeats every note I play. 2. When I switch it on, the lights don't correspond to the switch (E.G. Press A - B lights up). 3. When you finally get it turned on, it wont turn off. And the Loop sampler? don't know WTF happend with that. This is a $250 unit. This shouldn't happen - as for customer suppport....

I bought this pedal during my short stay in America to save money because in the UK they cost about $350. As soon as I had problems I resisted putting it in the wall and got in touch with a certain "G center." They wouldn't touch the thing. They wouldn't help me at all and they weren't going to have it back so I started trying to send them Emails which were all sent back by Postmaster saying the email didn't exist. Getting worried I spent the day calling the number in the manual for a UK service which was the wrong number. Eventually after getting very annoyed on the Line6 forums someone gave me a number. Now I have to pay to send it half the length of the country and pay as quoted "At least ??65 (about $130) not including shipping (Another $20) and it will be done in about 2 weeks."

I could cry thinking about this pedal. The thing I enjoy about guitar is manipulating sound and experimenting with all different pedals and I just can't get one of these to work. They are potentially one of the best delay pedals out there, but they re the most unreliable pieces of junk at the same time. I cannot stress how important it is to be certain you have time and money replacing these things because they are pretty special and I still want one. Even though I have ****luck.

With 16 different available effects it's easy to get lost at first, but the manual is extremely informative and you'll get very used to which settings do what. The only difficult part is the Tweak and Tweez knobs as they both perform different functions depending on the type of delay you're set on.

I play a Rickenbacker 330 into a Fender Twin Reverb and I've gotta say I've never noticed any loss of tone. Every time I plug in my guitar I go through my DL4 and I've been using it for about 8 years now, so perhaps I've just gotten used to the sound, but I know my tone is good and I have no problems with that.

Sadly, I cannot rely on my DL4 anymore. I'm currently on my 3rd unit (like many others on here) and once this thing dies on me, I will not buy a 4th.

I'm having the issue where I press button #1 and button #3 comes on, or I press on button #2 and I have to press it like, 5 times for it to finally come on, etc...

These things are notoriously unreliable. It's EXTREMELY tempting to get another because I love all the different delay options (even though I only truly use 3 or so of them) and I really love the looping option. Although, the looping doesn't loop in perfect time, it slowly degrades, but still, very nice to have all this in one package.

In any case, not reliable. Mine only last about a year or two then they start breaking down.

Never dealt with Line 6. I never bother calling support for these type of things.

In my opinion, if you're looking for your first good delay pedal, buy one. Used, preferably (it's not worth $250 new). Use it for as long as it can go. You may get lucky and it might last you a few years. BUT, once it breaks down on you, upgrade. Find something better and more reliable. Even though I'm on my 3rd, I've really enjoyed this unit for the time I had them, wouldn't have traded it for much else. But I will not buy a 4th.

Pretty easy....you have delay rate, repeats, and mix (dry/wet blend) for each effect....then you have a tweak knob and a tweez knob....I would say that these are the trickiest as they change their purpose for almost everyone of the 16 delay modes. But, once you get it, you get it. I'll give it an 8....because I'm sure it'd take some people a little while to get used to.

Alright....so, this is what matters....
When I first got this I was very excited because it seemed to be able to do a lot. Yeah, it can do a lot....but most of the time it sounds horrible. Too digital. Too fake. The tone is horrible and it lacks a lot of depth and which is really the beauty of delay. So, for a long time I just used it to make crazy sounds by setting the repeat to maximum, letting it self-oscillate and then turning the rate knob. I love to do this with delay or just make loops. So, I was pretty satisfied. Then, recently, I decided to sit down with it and try to get some sounds that are more useful and actually occupy the 3 available banks for presets. And....wow....to my surprise, I got some very nice, interesting, unique sounds. And, the tone is okay. Of course, I back it up with other effects, but it is not bad on its own. I used the Volume Swell with a slow swell rate and fast, long delay to increase the sustain and that sounds amazing. No modulation though. The modulation features on this thing hurt my ears. Unless one is trying to make something kinda wacky and experimental. Then they can be pretty cool. I also got a very good Reverse delay. Although, this took me a pretty long time to achieve. It actually almost reverses right away. That's what I was going for. Instant reverse....not delayed reverse. Also, the Digital Delay w/ Mod is pretty cool. I put the modulation depth to maximum and found a nice speed for it and I got a sound that warbles like a Space Echo. But, unlike a Space Echo, you know that it is going to happen because it is preset. This is a good DIGITAL sound. The Dynamic Delay can be pretty cool as well because you can set it in a way where the delay sound is totally missing until you stop playing your instrument and there is no incoming signal....then all the delay fades in heavily playing back a blend of everything you played while it was quiet. Very interesting. So, this thing can be very fun to make weird sounds with....space, sci-fi sounds....but for very beautiful delay, I would not recommend it. As soon as you plug your instrument into it and go out of it into an amp....it eats up your instruments tone. I play Fenders with custom pick-up combinations and naturally I get wonderful tone out of them. Full, balanced sound. This destroys that half way. Something I am going to try....is to run it into my amplifiers effects loop so that my guitar doesn't go into it....maybe this will help but I'm sure I will have to mess with the mix knob to get it right. But, now that I think of it....this might work. Most likely. So, maybe that is a way around the tone issue. Anyway, I think that Line 6 just naturally makes things that are way too digital sounding. I mean, digital is good....I like it sometimes. But, there's got to be a balance, I think. I do use this delay a lot, though. It is very fun and interesting. Especially in combination with other effects, the delays are very useful. You can make them sound better. And an effects loop can probably save your guitar. 7 for bad but fixable tone issues.

Well, I had a DL-4....and the 4 buttons started to malfunction....I'd hit button 1 and preset button number 3 would come on. I'd try to tap a tempo and the effect would bypass....I'd hit button 3 and 2 would come on. And so on....So, I sold it for $50 and got another one that I have had for about 2 years now. It is perfectly fine. I think the other one was just a rare issue that is probably not very common with these DL-4's. Otherwise, I think it's pretty reliable. If I had money though, I would have a back-up for every piece of equipment that I have. Because you never know what can happen. 7 for that first encounter....

I have never tried....I usually contact companies....just to get to know them....but I have never tried with Line 6. Probably because some great force knows that I shouldn't contact them, because I will just be disappointed and is keeping me from them. it is probably for the best. I don't imagine Line 6 would be very good with Customer Support....They're such a big Guitar Center kind of company and they are usually the worst for this.
Once, I sold a Boss DD-5 to some guy who used to work for Line 6 and helped design the DL-4. He hates the DL_4. Heh. I don't hate it....I just thought that was funny. Anyway, I have no say in Customer Support.

The DL-4 makes very great sounds....it would be great if it were true-bypass and if it was less digital or at least able to be balanced. But, in the end, it is interesting, it helps me with ideas for songs, I would get another one if it were stolen (and I have a lot of other delays....so that is saying a lot)....i like it overall....it is suitable for my experimental, art-rock, ambient phase....but it is not for everyone. So....6.

This is a follow up to my previous review. I have learned how to get a usable sound out of this pedal and now feel much better about the pedal all around.
The key to using this pedal is to use it in a parallel loop configuration so that your direct sound does not go through the pedal at all and is not sterilized and ruined by it. Turn the mix knob all the way up on the pedal for effect only.
Using a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue I have my direct guitar sound going through one channel and the effected only(phase inverted to compensate for blackface design) going through the other. (Both channels on these Fender amps play at the same time.) This works great! The cold sterile sound of the pedal is not as noticable when it is confined to the delays only and mixed with pure real guitar sound. There are some small volume differences when switching between some of the effects but I can just reach over and use the channel volume on the amp to compensate.
What this means for me is that this pedal is only seriously usable with an amp with a 2 channel Fender design or a parallel (not the more common series) effects loop.
The sound lacks the mojo and warmth of using actual analog or tape effects for sure but the models are really excellent and can be inspiring. I'm enjoying the pedal now.