Yamaha DG Stomp

As we all know by now, the DG Stomp box is not an amp, but an effects box. How it ended up in the amps section here at HC is anybody's guess.

The features of this box are bountiful and troublesome at the same time.

BOUNTIFUL...
* Plenty of studio quality effects, including chorus, reverbs, rotary speaker, doubling, tremelo, flangers, phase shifter
* Excellent clean sounds
* Variety of speaker simulators
* good mix of desktop recording and live play features
* Midi In/Out and a digital recording output
* Stereo sends
* Good OD tones with 6 or 8 different OD models
* Ability to cut off the preamp and just use the effects
* Rugged, heavy-duty, stage-worthy metal housing, buttons and connectors
* Very quiet with my amps; tiny bit of BG noise with phase shifter
* Some usable pre-programmed patches
* Hi/lo input switch for passive and pre-amped guitars
* Sound carries from patch to patch as you switch - no popping or cutting of sounds
* Fairly low power consumption @ 15W (for those of you with a convenience power jack on the back of your amp)
* Global master volume knob
* Much better tones than higher-end Zoom pedals (GFX-4, GFX-8)... absence of fizzy tones

TROUBLESOME...
* Crappy on-board tuner; doesn't track harmonics well at all
* Too many foot stomps to change banks and patches... four per bank/patch switch! Forces you to group patches by song rather than function, duplicating some patches just for ease of getting to them quickly
* No global bypass just to get pure amp tone without any of the pedal; must create a no-patch patch
* Big kahuna wall-wart
* Really need a MIDI pedal to navigate more effortlessly thru patches
* No expression pedal (not really a problem since every unit I have seen with an expression really skimps on the quality of the pedal)

Guitar: ES-137P (P90) archtop
Amp: Fender Super Amp, Fender Princeton Chorus

My DG Stomp is virtually noiseless except on very high gain settings and extreme phase shifter settings. Really much less noisy than other pedals I have owned. Ptreety much 100% noise-free on most settings.

I play jazz for myself and rock/blues in a band. The DG Stomp fits the bill best, I think, on blues/rock, though there are serviceable fusion tones in there as well.

Straight jazz sounds best just my guitar through the amp, thouhg, to be honest, I have not experimented much with turning off the preamp and using only the effects. I really need to do that, don't I?

The OD tones sound good to me and all the tones (clean or OD) are clear and distinct, unlike other pedals like the Zoom 505-II.

I really like the chorus and reverbs on the DG Stomp in conjunction with the preamps.

The DG Stomp sounds better than any other multi-FX pedal I've had, including the Zoom GFX-4/GFX-8/505-II/GFX-707, Digitech RP-14D/RP-3/RP-7. The pedal also sounds much better than did my Yamaha DG-80 amp! I don't understand that one...

I own other Yamaha gear - CPX-8 flattop. I've never had a reason to contact support.

I've been playing longer than I sound like. I've recently joined my first real band of middle aged rockers, though I have been playing for a long time and played in garaga bands in the late 70's, before giving up guitar for almost 20 years.

I've had my share of gear over the last 5 years. For an incomplete list, see: http://www.geocities.com/oasysco/gearidx.htm.

Amps include Fender SFSR, lots of SFPR's, BF/SF Champs, Gibson GA5T's, several different digital modeling amps, dozens of pedals, and a slew of SS offerings from many manufacturers. Guitars include various archtops - vintage Gretsch, Gibson, Lyle, SLM with my share of solid bodies and flattops.

The list of features (good and bad) I recounted above pretty much sums up the way I feel about the pedal... can't beat its sounds; wish it was easier to use for live play... I'll give it a "9" based on the "good" features and the tones.

Yamaha's try at amp simulation (think: Line 6 POD) and a well built one it is. Metal chassis, very rugged, with LED-Display top left, a row of pushbuttons on top (effects), followed by two rows of rotary pots (effect settings/ amp controls) and four footswitches (channels or effects, your choice) at the bottom. The most intuitive, easy-to-master set-up I have come across! Very easy to dial in your sound, I wish the POD was as user-friendly.
BUT: The changing of patches/banks is crap, very complicated. I recommed using the DG-Stomp in the manual mode, where it really shines. Using it that way, I give it a 10, but in general I deduct 2 points. The manual is okay, though.

I use the DG-Stomp with a 50's Telecaster Reissue ("Tequilacaster"). I simulate a slighty overdriven Bassman with Slapback, Reverb and ocasional Tremolo a la Johnny Burnette Rock'n'Roll Trio.
The Sound is nice, but slightly too precessed. Running it through the Power-Amp section of my amp, a Blues Deluxe, helps for live situations. The speakers seem to color the sound and take out the digital cleanliness.

Would I use it to a gig, without a backup? I did, no problems. I own it for about 10 months, it has not let me down. But someone has yet to spill beer on it, then we'll see... The AC-Adapter runs HOT very fast, but it did not fail yet. Plus there is no other unit on the market that is as compact and user-friendly.

Never dealt with them.

My sound is basically fifties-style rockabilly. So why bother with amp-simulation at all and not go for the real thing? First of all, I would have to schlepp a heavy Bassman amp around with not much help (two girls, one other guy in the band). And I'd have to crank up that baby REALLY LOUD to get distortion, which would drown out everybody else! And this way, I don't have to deal with stompboxes (batteries, patching up etc.).
In a perfect world either Line 6 would make their POD more user-friendly or Yamaha would make a better sounding unit, so I would not need both. As it is I stay with the DG-Stomp for gigs and POD for recording.

It does just about everything. The best feature in my opinion is the display and adjustment knobs for all of the effects. In other words, you have separate knobs and LEDs for the effects so you know exactly what is on and off at a glance.

Unbelievable. For the price, this stomp box creates some great tones. If anyone says it doesn't, they didn't know what they were doing. I just returned a PODxt because the sounds were very simliar and I already own the DG Stomp. It's that good.

No problems.

Don't know. Haven't needed them.

Wonderful tones for those looking for a versitile stomp box in this price range. I wish the tuner was more accurate, but the tones more than make up for that. Yamaha was ahead of their time with this unit. You can get them now for under $200, so buy one!

This guitar effects processor offers a lot. 8 amp characteristics, 16 Cabinets, tuner and many effects. I would give it a 10, but it does not have a Noise Gate.

I play Smooth Jazz and Fusion instrumental music. I get a great sound from the DG Stomp. I love it. It is the best guitar effects unit available that sounds like a real amplifier. The Clean patches sound amazing for all styles. The gain presets sound as good as a tube amp. I will say that if you are in to the syle of Metal you may not like this unit. You can't get that scooped metal Mesa Boogie type of distortion from the Stomp, but you can get a Fender and Marshall sound out of this and it sounds great! This unit fits my style perfectly.

This may be the toughest floor effects processor ever made. Very gig worthy!! Solid Metal!!

I have never dealt with Yamaha. I bought the DG Stomp from zZounds.com which is where I buy everything from. Their prices and Customer support is the best! If something went wrong with it I know zZounds will take care of me.

I really love the DG Stomp. I can't believe it is selling for $139.00 new. Like I mentioned earlier, I wish it had a noise gate. It isn't that noisy, but a noise gate would have been nice.

It's very easy to use but impossible to get great sounds out of it. I give it a 5 just cause it sounds so bad.

I've been playing guitar for 12 years and I know my gear. This thing isn't noisy but sounds like crap. There isn't nearly enough gain for shredding and the distortions just remind me of some bad boss distortion pedal on half. Even with a lot of tweaking and trying to put the dg's effects on to help the tone I couldn't get a usable tone out of it. It sounds very low gain and very low quality. As soon as I got it as a gift I called to return it.

I'm sure I can rely on it to work but it just sounds so awful.

I didn't deal with Yamaha since i'm returning it to the store.

I don't think the tones on this thing are believable enough for any genre. I think too many people just want the convenience of an all in one piece of gear and they end up sacrificing tone to do it and that's sad. I never wanna sacrifice good tone just for convenience.

DG Stomp is easy to use. I really like the method of editing the patches. "Tweak" the knobs until it sounds good. (Good quality pots!) There is a manual and no complaints.

Right now I am using it with a Behringer Blue Devil. Also have a JC120, can't wait to try it out with that. When I first plugged it in it was a bit noisy, but I think it was the hi/lo switch in the back of the unit, and also the presets are a bit extreme, especially when the pots on my Gibson are turned on 10. The effects really sound good. I like the distortions and the clean sounds. I like digital sound, so if it sounds like "tube" or not isn't an issue. (I will spoil myself someday with tubes, for sure.) Right on the box it says that it is quiet, and I think it is too. The clean effects are very rich, and you can't really hear any modulation when you are not playing, and I checked for that with the phaser. I am happy with the purchase, since I was looking hard for the right pedal.

It is probably very reliable. (Kid you not, says so on the box: "Don't be scared...") It is in a metal housing with 4 "classic" stomp box switches. However, they don't have that annoying "click" that some of the classic old pedals had.

I bought it because I am involved in a project and we are playing "personal power" alternative, a la Anthony Robbins. Pearl Jam and Chili Peppers come to mind, although we aren't talking to any of their people. :-) I have been playing 25 years, single, no wife. I own a modest Gibson Firebrand, and a couple of Mexican Tele's. If Stomp were stolen, I would buy it again, but if I couldn't buy it again (see the price I paid, new???), I would wait for the next wave of effects to come out, and start my search all over again. REELY

tiene todo lo que la gente necesita en un studio, pero no tiene sonido real.... suena bien con caja directa a una consola, no intenten comparar esto con amplificador de tubos verdadero....

jejejejej, primeramente a quien se le ocurriria comparar una marshall del 1974 con un pedazo de @!#$@# digital, puedes tener la mejor guitarra del mundo con los mejores microfonos, cuerpo de cualquier madera... etc... el resultado final es que este equipo suena bien en estudio cuando no tienes buenos equipos(profesionales) y quieres un sonido que pueda resolver tus problemas de equalizacion rapido,

pero el sonido real viene de amplificadores y guitarras reales (punto)

asi que el que espere que puede comparar una marshall jmp mark II conectada con una gibson custom a un pedazo de $%@$ digital mejor que se vaya a su casa y lo pienze ....

despues de todo suena bien si eres una persona que no sabe o que no puede probar lo (real)!!!

para el que quiera saber, no considero que este aparato deberia usarse en vivo porque no se puede sacar un sonido descente.... pero en studio podria dar (a lo mejor) resultados aceptables.....

Easy to use. Easy to edit and store patches.

Distortion(2 types), crunch(2), drive(2) and clean(2) sounds all have an unpleasing harshness in the mid and high areas. The best sounds are the clean sounds. One crunch and one drive are'nt too bad either. I tested it for studio purposes only and it does not compare to a real amp at all. Also there is no air or dimension in what I hear.
I am very disapointed. It is a lot less convincing than the other most popular modeler out there! (you know, the red kidney bean)
Effects are cool. Chorus, flanger, rotating, phaser, tremolo, dlys, reverbs, comp. They're all fine. Really, it is the dist. and the like that sucks, a bit like plugging an overdrive pedal directly into a mixing console (I exagerate but you get the picture).

From what I see and the company reputation, it should be reliable.
The construction is solid. Good for onstage.

I bought it (I had a good deal though) to work at home first. I already have a POD and an Ampfarm plug in at work so I wanted something that would give me another sonic color. Maybe it would be good in a live situation but then again it does'nt have a bypass switch. From what I see you always have to be on one of the 8 amp simulation so if you still wanna use your amp tone once in a while, you're screwed! Like I said, the amp simulations dont cut it for me. The different cabs are not convincing either, more like a twisted eq to me than a real cab characteristic.

For features I have to give it an 8. This is only because there is no true by-pass switch so I can go through the amp alone...transparently. I got around this a bit by programming the patches so that I have a lead tone, a clean tone, and an alternative tone for 'song types'. For example if I want a Hendrix bank or a Skynyrd bank, or a Clapton bank, I have three sounds in each of those styles. Not ideal but it seems to work fine. This leads me to another negative. Changing banks is a pain. If I'm in the 011/012/013 bank and I want to move to the 021/022/023 bank I can't without doing it manually. The pedal feature for doing this takes me directly from the 011 bank to the 111 bank...skipping all of the remaining 0 prefix banks. Oh yeah the tuner sucks and I still use my Fender floor tuner. Minor problem. Beyond that it's very versatile when dialing in different sounds. I've programmed some quality banks and they don't sound overly processed. I can get some really nice warm tones. Programmability is a snap...a short review of the manual and I was on my way. I like the pre-amp feature...presence is nice to have available to help you cut through the mix.

I'm using Strats and a '77 LP through the Stomp and I find that the settings I've dialed in with my Strats have to be modified a bit (at least to my ears) when I use the Les Paul. As I said before I'm using a floor tuner instead of the internal tuner on the Stomp. From here my chain goes----> Vox Wa ----> Stomp ----> Marshall 50 watt Plexi head into a Duncan 4-12 cab with Celestions -OR- Into a Vox Cambridge 30R into the Duncan cab. I tend to get better sound through the Vox with the Stomp I think primarily because the Vox has such a nice clean tone that allows the Stomp tones to come through. The Vox is only 30 watts but with the pre-amp in the Stomp I can get some blistering output. I prefer to go directly into the Marshall just because I think it's a crime to color it's naturally beautiful OD tone. The Speaker cab emulations are a bit weak in the Stomp...there is very little tonal variation on the Clean 1 and 2 settings...ther is a more noticable difference on the Lead /Crunch settings. Overall great performing tone. Fro the price I'm really happy plus it allowed me to get rid of my rack which was a pain to haul around. I play rock and blues primarily and the tones suit my music in good fashion. One thing I miss with it is the ability to use my guitar's volume control to go from clean to OD as I do with the Marshall...reducing the volume on the input does not dynamically change the characteristic of the OD effects. I wish it did.

it's built damn solid...I could drive nails into the wall with it and then plug in and play.

No experience herre yet...but that's good right?

I've been playing since I was 14 (I'm 49 now....*sob*...;o) I've got an '02 Fender American Strat Limited edition (Butterscotch Blonde), a '99 Fender Strat - '57 reissue in Shoreline Gold, a '77 Gibson Les Paul Custom in Tobacco Sunburst, a Duncan 4-12 cab with Celestions, a Duncan convertible 2000, a Marshall 50 watt Plexi head, and a variety of other stuff (mics...pedals ...Fender floor tuner (very good!) etc.)

If it were lost or stolen, I'd replace it. I tried Zoom, DigiTech and others. To date the Stomp is the best yet in terms of quality of sound. No noise problem...and I don't doubt that there are ground loops and other have noise problems, but I don't.

Primarily I love the programmability and the variety of tones I can dial in. It's versatile and flexible. I hate the tuner, lack of a true by-pass, and the bank selection method. I hope for future incarnations the add a true by-pass and improve the bank selection process.

Preamp, Tuner, Chorus, Flange, Phase, Delays, Reverbs.... you've heard it before.

I've been playing 40 years now. Mostly classic rock, big band jazz, funk, blues, pop.... most everything but country and classical. I had this box about a month learning all about it.

First, there is a very awkward, non-standard method of selecting patches.... especially for live performance. Too many "stomps" to get where you're going. Loading out a bank of 3 is easy enough. More than that and it gets hairy. Hold the bank button long enough but not too long or you're muted in the tuner mode. That's terrible. There are plenty of switches to do a simple up/down bank/patch selection, but this is just not easy at all.

Second, I know it's a preamp. I bought it partially for that. But I also like the straight sound I get with my rigs. No bypass switch means I've got to program a "no setting" setting to get this. Again, a simple feature left out.

Third. Try as I might, I could NOT get rid of the hum. I tried every trick in the book but it was always there. Not always loud, sometimes unbearable, but there just the same. All these features and no noise gate?

The tuner is pitiful.

Battery operation would be nice and may help the noise some. Several reviews have indicated that the unit is not built for proper grounding. I didn't open it up because I wanted to be able to send it back.

I also bought the FC-7 foot controller. The pedal has WAY too much sweep. You'll get a sprained ankle trying to get a decent WAH. I know it's variable, but the areas outside the target area are just dead and serve no purpose. A wah should wah the full range of motion and it shouldn't be as much range as this thing. The "on/off" feature is also very awkward and lets you turn wah on/off without trying at all.

Guitars: Gibson ES-175, Epiphone Del Ray, Fender Strat, Samack Classical, Ibanez Acoustic, Takamine 12-String.

Amps: Fender Super Reverb, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Peavey Bandit 112 Transtube

Effects: Super Crybaby, MXR Compressor, MXR Phase 90, Tubescreamer.

Noise was constant, though not always really loud, but enough to make me return it.

This box, though, does have some very powerful features and very nice sounds. Chorus and Flange very nice. Phase ok. Amp simulations aren't as much simulations as they are distortion sounds. All relatively useable and full sounding. Compressor sucks. Delay is nice and clean. Reverbs ok, but I use the amps.

But that constant persistent noise...........

Try breaking a brick. It'd be much easier.

Didn't use it so I have no idea.

Overall, the box has a lot of features, some very good sounds and is a good buy for the price-to-feature ratio. However, the noise.......

I sent mine back.

With the pedal.