Re: Any work done with the Boss DD-20?

[ArsOcarina@aol.com]

Carl,

In a message dated 04/19/05 9:59:34, RobotFan@aol.com writes:

> It would be very nice to have stereo, but the Loop Station seems to be much more of a looper (the DD-20 has looping as more of an afterthought, yes?).

I would rephrase it more like this:

The Loop Station was designed with ONLY basic looping in mind. It also lacks the feedback control of a traditional delay so it is impossible to gradually fade out old material while still adding new licks. But, you can also store loops too (which is pretty darn nice).

The GigaDelay is designed as a traditional delay that can do several things, looping included. Not an afterthough -- just one of the tricks in it's bag. What it lacks is the long delay time of the Loopstation and its loop storeage abilities mostly.

Neither device was a total design success in my opinion. The lack of feedback control on the former was an unforgiveable mistake and a real disapointment. I owned an RC-20 and traded it in on my first DD-20 withing a very short period. Also, the stunted maximum delay time (at an indivisible prime number of 23 seconds) of the later was an assinine blunder at best. If it was only a second longer at 24 it could at least be evenly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 allowing easier setup of multiple layers of short and long loops. I'l explain . . .

The one really neat trick of the DD-20 is it's ability to set up one delay in a preset bank (say one second at 98% feedback) and another (at say at sixteen seconds with 100% feedback). You can start playing on the first delay seting up a rhythmic figure with a one beat-per-second pace and when you step/switch to the next bank with the longer delay (we're still talking about just one DD-20 mind you) the shorter delay KEEPS repeating what was last played into it just as long as the feedback will allow it to go. This shorter delay can act as a rhythmic guide to set up a sixteen beat (4/4, four-bar) phrase in the second longer delay. Get it? Plus, you don't have to stick with even numbers. You can do it in fives or threes or sevens -- you just have to do the math and hope that the rather limited digital readout will do enough decimals. 

The DD-20 has five memory banks/slots that you can store delay settings to and step/switch through in series. This is pretty darn cool if you ask me. It will also do tap-tempo stuff if you don't want to play to a numerically preset delay time. It's just a little harder to make it all work with multiple pedals if you do though. Another caveat: the manual was a little hard for me to figure out at first. I had no end of grief trying to figure it out.

Best regards,

tEd ® kiLLiAn

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