Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler

After you read the manual it's not too hard to work...

I thought it sounded really cool, you can do a lot of stuff with it... I would have loved if it could hold more custom presets

Just stopped working for no reason at all... I used their a/c adapter and everything... It just won't turn on... I have treated it very well, and have done nothing out of the ordinary, and now it's dead...

Well, the contact page on the Line 6 website is brroken too... Can they make anything that doesn't break???

It sounds cool, but if it breaks, whats the point???
It is truly infuriating and rediculous that these companies charge so much for a product that has no reliability and then don't do anything to rectify the situation... Their contact page didn't even work!!??!! So dissapointed/angry.

Ease of use was marginal. Not too intrinsic, but if you read the manual, its managable.

Muddied/colored the sound, and fairly weak, thin effects.

Absolute junk. The first generation of these several years ago were great. I just bought one from the recent generation and the first one was broken right out of the box. Then i exchanged it and after an hour, the bypass (which is not a true bypass) stopped working, and the delay was ALWAYS on. I returned it after 6 weeks. Complete junk. DONT BUY IT!!!!!!

Didn't deal with them. I went straight back to Guitar Center.

CRAP. JUNK. STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not too bad but I'd read the manual.

I have this last in my chain. I play an SG Standard through a SD-1, Dist. +, Big Muff, Dano Cheese Melt, and then the DL-4 into a 25 watt fender hybrid. I normall us the Low Res delay for the analog. Plays a petty convincing but not perfect. I put a bending mod on my which is fun but I would never use in a live setting. The pedal is really quiet when off and when on steals a little of my signal. When I bought this I was using it mostly as a looper and I found it easier to use that the Boss DD-20. Now I use the warmer delays but I wish now I would of got a Deluxe Memory Man or an old 70s MXR or DOD delay.

I can't afford back ups and from the other reviews I shouldn't trust this thing too much. In my live set up I sometime us my cheap DOD digial delay which sounds much better than this but only does one thing. One thing I noticed that drives me nuts is that when I turn off a delay setting and switch the same back on it not on the same delay modeler. It's like it goes to a default setting. Anyone else have this problem? So, it's pretty usless sometimes!

Fun but not really great. I wished I never bought it, but I've learned my lesson.

Not too bad to use if you read the manual. Tweek and Tweez take a little getting used to, but you can get the hang of it. Too bad it's such a crappy product.

I found the sound quality to be exxelent. Some of the stuff was bells and whistles but thats fine. I used this thing as a huge part of my sound for two years. TILL IT DIED WHILE ON STAGE.

This is the reason for this review, I bought mine hoping against hope that this thing would hold up on me. And it did for two years. Then poof, starts shutting off on me LIVE. Just shutting off. I was using the Line 6 power supply, all my other pedals are also plugged in and were fine, so it wasnt a sudden power surge or any of that malarkey. It just, ,,,,, stopped working. I babied this thing on a MKS pedalpad all latched down and snug as a bug. Never dropped it, never jumped on. Always treated it nice. And then after it dies, poof it comes back on again. Did that twice on me that day. I will futz with stuff when it goes in practice and I know stuff happens whenever you play live, but I have a Dano $30 PIECE OF PLASTIC that has lasted longer than this PIECE OF JUMK. Got my DD20 last week. Dont think it's a good sounding as the Line 6, but WHO CARES IF YOU CANT TRUST THE LINE 6!

If they want to come begging to me with a IMPROVED PRODUCT, I might talk to them, providing they give every customer on this board an APOLOGY for putting out products that THEY KNOW will not last. This should be a BBB issue, not a HC one. So Line 6, how about a apology for this hunk of junk? I am just going to sell this thing (and yes I will let people know it's junk) for cheap, I got better things to do than deal with crappy customer support and then pay to maybe have it fixed. Then only way to fix this thing is BETTER PARTS!

If you are thinking about buying this thing, I am telling you now, RUN AWAY. Got the DD20. I dont care how good this thing sounds, it's worthless if you cannot depend on it. You will be up there someday digging into a solo and THATS when it will go on you. You have been warned.

I think this is a fairly easy pedal to use. Nothing too complicated. Like a lot of Line 6 products, they like to pack in the features. The fact that the tweak and tweez knob have different functions based on what preset you're working in is a clue. Personally, I like that they pack in the features. For some, this might be complicated but I like it.

The "modeled" presets have varying degrees of authenticity. I mean the Echoplex models are close and by all means they capture the "essence" of the effect but they're not exact. I think the convenience of a unit like this balances out some of the "exactness" of the model. I think anybody can find a couple of models in this unit that they will keep as favorites. That's important and something everyone should consider if they're looking into this unit. Having a tap tempo feature for all the models is awesome! When I initially got the unit, I felt the loop sampler and or reverse setting were worth the price of admission alone for this box. Come to think of it, I still feel that way. I really dig this pedal. I actually have two of them on my pedalboard. One solely for looping and the other for delays. I recently sent in the one I use for delays to Robert Keeley for the mod he just recently started offering. His mods make this good pedal great! No lie!

I've read where a lot of people are having problems with their unit. I can see where a "mass-produced" effect like this could have problems with parts and switches. That's too bad because the idea and design of the unit really is great. I've been fortunate with the two units I have and have had no problems in over two years.

I did email them a while ago when I thought the power jack was producing some noise. I received a roundabout email response with some generic information. Nothing too specific or helpful. Even though I found out the noise was coming from another source and didn't need the service, I think their way of handling problems could be improved.

From my experience, I'm giving this unit a good review. I've had no mechanical issues with the pedal and the mod from Robert Keeley makes the sound quality even better. If you love the DL4 and have no operational issues with the pedal, I would suggest sending it into Rober Keeley for his mod. It's worth it. The pedal still sounds really good without the mod but if you're picky, get it! The DL4 provides a lot of sound possibilities from subtle to deep space nine. Check it out and if you decide to buy one, just make sure it's fully operational before you walk out of the store.

Reasonably easy to use but like all the other reviews say you can't change one parameter, as soon as you change one the others change to what ever the knobs are at. Because of the switches design (read below) it's very difficult to tap in an accurate tempo.

Sounds great. The sound quality is the only reason I've kept this stupid pedal. I love having the huge number of presets and the swells you can put on the delays. Also I love the delay that you can adjust the level while your playing (can't remember what it's called). It means when you're playing the delays don't mush up the sound too much but when you have breaks the delays come through nicely.

I also love the tap tempo (when it works)

Absolutly crap. It broke after about a month of having it. I would have fixed it myself but didn't want to void the waranty. What happened was the tap tempo switch went. It wouldn't work at all. I waited 3 long weeks to get it back (despite its crap reliability I do really like this pedal) and put it back on my board. I play in a church band and that night after tapping the switch about 4 times it went again. I was so pissed.

I decided to open it up and repair it myself this time. When I did I realised what the problem was. The switches are so badly designed. It's simply a large switch with a spring attached which presses on a smaller mementary switch on the PCB. The springs bend and move off the switch, especially on the tap tempo switch.

The repairer had simply moved the bend spring from the tap tempo switch to one of the other switches (I'll get to this in customer service) and now the new spring had bend off too. I've ended up chaging the springs for bits of rubber but this will probably break the small switches eventually.

Also if you tap in a tempo it canges speed. It tends to speed up during a song and sometimes it buggers up alltogether. And the tapped tempo changes if you switch to another preset the back again or if you bypass the pedal this switch it back on. I'm sure when I first got it it remembered the last tapped tempo but I might be wrong. It's kind of anoying if you're playing and you want to switch delays in and out during the song and you have to keep tapping the tempo in. People tell me I look like I'm trying to tap dance.

When I first took this pedal in the get repaired I had to chase them up to get it back and it took 3 weeks. This was not really line 6s fault as i was dealing with the store but what really bugged me was how they repaired it (just moving the springs) I couldn't believe they were that lazy and that I had to wait 3 weeks for something I could have done in 3 minutes.

Also just recently I noticed the problem I sepecified above of the tempo changing when switching presets. I sent Line 6 a question about it and they simply said it doesn't remember the last tap tempo. I'm sure it did when I first got this pedal but I might be wrong.

The only reason I have given this pedal a mildly good overall rathig is because of its sound quality. I love having 3 presets and the cool delays I can get with this. If I had of known all the problems this pedal would have had and I had of read some of the other reviews I wouldn't have bought this pedal.

I was kind of conned into bying this pedal and originally I was going to go with something boss but it seemed so cool when I used it in the shop i bit the bullet.

I'm torn between two worlds here in that I love using it but its so unpredictable that I can;t rely on it.

Impossible, it was broken outa the package!!!!

Well, it was stuck on the loop function and none of the knobs or dials did anything, the sound it did make though was lo-fi.

Well, I chose to ignore the posts here about its dismall reliability and bad build quility and buy one anyway.
MAN OH MAN!!!! From now on I'm really going to take all the reviews here seriously.
I was totally bummed, got a brand new one, not even out of its packaging, get it home, plug in.........and dead!! Broken, I could not fu%^ing believe it!! ?200.oo hard earned cash and the sodding thing did not bleeding work.
Took it to the store and they are getting another one for me, if that breaks I'm getting BOSS pedals.

Not even going to bother, took it back to the store where it came from.

PAH!! Seriously doubtful about line 6 now, Hope the replacement they get for me works!!!!!

Very easy to use. If you can't use it then i would take it in to your special needs teacher to read you the manual.

Never had a problem with sound quality. It usaully surprises me how good it is. Some people seemed to have problems but maybe they should check the rest of their rig. I play a Stratocaster and a Les Paul through a Marshall and it sounds braw.

I've had mine for nearly six years and it's been in the shop because i broke the delay rate knob due to over use. My fault. The people who have problems must have bought some cheep ass mexican copy or smething. Oh, if you use the right power supply it'll be fine. Don't be a retard and use something that isn't recommended or you may fry the circuitry and get problems.

Never had to use it.

I couldn't live without it. It's been gigged to hell and back and still works like a little trooper. The bad reviews of the DL4 don't make any sense and are probably down to mongoloid users.

You need to spend some time with this unit in order to find the sounds you like. It's easy to just twiddle with the knobs, or use the tap tempo, to set up a massive range of delays, with a maximum 2.5 second delay - which is more than enough. The range of sounds you can get is very impressive, and the looper is lots of fun. It's useful to make notes on what settings you like as well as saving presets as the palette of tones is so vast.

Fantastic tone. Much better than my Boss DD-3 which I've had for years, and until now was all I considered delay to be. However, as delay is my favourite guitar effect I figured I'd like some more versatility - and some presets so I didn't have to keep bending down and tweaking knobs between songs. The analog echo effects are gorgeous, and you can add modulation too for some spacey sounds. The swell and reverse delays are wicked fun, and on the whole I can see myself getting some use out of most of the delay models.

I've read a lot of horror stories about these units - and Line 6 gear in general. I've only had my unit a few weeks, but I can't see it mucking up as I look after all of my gear really well. I'll definitely gig with it, and if I have any disasters I've got my Boss DD-3 as back up, which is very reliable but limited in tone.

These units are absurdly expensive in Australia, so I decided to import one from USA. It cost about half the price. They are great units - lots of fun, and very versatile. I play atmospheric instrumental music and use lots of delay sounds, so this is what I've been looking for. I can see this leading to lots of great songs in my band, just from messing around. Highly recommended, especially if you buy new - that way you don't have to worry so much about reliability as you'll have the manufacturer's warranty.

easy if you have the manual

strat/tele/les paul into fender bassman. The effects are really good. Its truebypass, cool. It sounds great -if it works- see below

sorry, the horror stories are true. You can't use it live. This thing stops working in the middle of a show. I mean it goes crazy, it shuts down and you cant do anything about it. Well, then it decides to start working again sometime when you dont need delay. It can really turn the show into a nightmare. Dont say I didnt warn you.
I know other people that had the same problem.

If it does work, it sounds great. Its a shame you cant depend on it. I had to buy me a Boss DD-3.