Deltalab DD1 Digital Delay

This is a digital delay pedal. It has your typical setup, with an on/off switch, time, repeats, and level knobs. It has a very limited sweet on the time, so if you're interested in long delays this definitely isn't the pedal for you.

It has stereo outs and true bypass, which are very nice features you don't usually see on pedals at this price point.

The enclosure is surprisingly well made, its solid medal and seemed very rugged. Honestly its probably the nicest thing about the pedal.

UTILIZATION

Setting it up and using it is very straight forward, like any other delay pedal with the same setup.

SOUND QUALITY

This pedal sounds horrendous. I don't know if I can properly convey just how bad it was.

This is a digital delay so all the repeats should be pristine copies of the original signal. This was not the case. The delays sounded grainy and distorted. And it sounded like digital clipping, which is the worst sounding distortion out there.

The advertised delay time is something like 600ms, which is already really low since digital delays aren't limited like analog. In reality though mine had much lower delay time. On maximum time settings I was barely past a slapback style delay.

OVERALL OPINION

From what I've said its pretty obvious that the pedal I bought sucked. Honestly, I've heard some decent sounding clips of this pedal so I probably got a very very defective one.

However, there are much better delays out there for the same price or just a little more. Even just looking at the specs this pedal leaves something to be desired, especially in the way of delay time. So if you're in the market for an inexpensive delay pedal I'd recommend looking elsewhere. The BOSS DD3 is a great option with better features for only a little more, and the Danelectro D-8 is only $25 and has essentially the same features but sounds great.

DeltaLab's DD1 Digital Delay is a pedal for electric guitar or other electronic instruments. I've used the pedal with electric guitar, so that's the application I'll be focusing on here in this review. As far as basic characteristics go, the pedal has a 1/4" input and two 1/4" outputs for using the pedal in stereo if you so choose. The pedal is of course a digital one as stated by the name, and requires power from either a nine volt battery or power supply. It's also got true bypass and isn't rack mountable in any way.

UTILIZATION

The make up of the DeltaLab DD1 Digital Delay is really about as simple as you can make it. The pedal simply has three knobs for parameters that control time, the number of repeats, and effect level. There's also a button to turn the pedal on and off, but that's really everything you need to know about the pedal in terms of utilization. For this reason, a manual shouldn't be necessary.

SOUND QUALITY

While not the most impressive sounding digital delay pedal, the overall sound of the DeltaLab DD1 Digital Delay is really quite clean. There aren't all that much different sounds you can get with this pedal when compared to some of the other digital delay pedals, but it's certainly got an adequate amount of tones here. Of course it won't match the sound of an analog delay pedal, but no digital delay really will. Keeping this in mind, the DD1 is a very solid sounding delay pedal.

OVERALL OPINION

For the price, the DeltaLab DD1 Digital Delay is one of the best delay pedals I've used. To me, it's the perfect delay pedal for the player looking to just started with delay without spending much money at all. Don't be fooled however, as this isn't a toy and is definitely a legitimate delay pedal. If you're looking to get some serious bang for your buck, stop the buck here and check out the DD1.