Re: cheaply starting out

[buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)]

People asked recently about the DFX94 from DOD, and
I thought I'd comment quickly on my issues with it,
as it also is relevent from the standpoint of "cheaply
starting out" (a little over $100 new).

Good:
  4 second delay
  you can dynamically adjust delay time of an existing
     loop, speeding it up/slowing it down.  This is even
     useful musically, not just as FX, since you can (with
     effort) change speed by a factor of 2, which changes
     the pitch by an octave
  supports both a delay mode (pedal turns on&off delay effect)
     and a "hold" model (pedal on: infinite repeat, can't layer;
     pedal off, decays according to feedback, you can layer),
     and you can switch between the two modes without losing
     the loop (but have to turn a knob)

  It also supports a mode which samples, then triggers on
     footpresses, but I've never even tested that it works.

Bad, compared to other pedals I've used:

  Max feedback setting is not very high.  Stuff fades out
     pretty quickly.  And so there's lots of stuff you can't
     do... e.g. I used to love letting a loop fade out,
     then turn feedback > 100% and bringing the loop back,
     sounding heavily altered.

Other issues:

  No wet/dry mix (just delay level, effectively always at
     least 50% dry)--I'm not sure I've ever seen a pedal
     that wasn't this way.

Dunno whether it's really noisy; I've never tried isolating
it from my other effects to see.

As to how effective a looper it is, I'd say that I always
had a lot of fun with it.  However, I just got a JamMan,
and I would have to say that even with the same loop
durations, I'm creating entirely different textures due
to the ability to set feedback to 100% (or just under).

On the other hand with the JamMan, I'm disappointed about
the tradeoff between echo and loop modes: echo is the only
mode that allows feedback < 100%, but loop mode is the only
way to do a "replace" (not to mention multiple loops).
On the DFX I do this in infinite repeat mode by setting
feedback to 0, then "punching in" and back out (feedback
is ignored while the loop is holding).  I guess with the JamMan
if I got a MIDI footpedal I could trigger the appropriate
feedback-setting-commands in echo mode at least.  (Or I may
be missing something, I've only had it a few days.)

I also wish I could make the reset/bypass footswitch mean
"select in the other direction", since as it stands
I find the select footswitch useless during performance.

Oops, this turned into a whine about the JamMan.  Sorry.

Sean Barrett