Why I Still Use A BOSS DD-20 Delay

For nearly ten years, I've used the BOSS DD-20 as my main delay. I've had several others come and go, but I've always stuck by the BOSS Twin Pedal. When I bought it, it was one of the best delays you could buy. As the years have gone by, I've seen many impressive delays come to market. There are a few reasons why I haven't upgraded.

It's Simple

If you can use a any of the BOSS digital delays, then you can use the DD-20. With just a few turns of a knob, you can dial in just about any delay sound you want. That's not to say that it's lacking features, but the interface is very easy to understand and use. There are no menus. There is a screen to give you all the information you need. It's all right there in front of your face. So simple, it's almost dumb. Just the way I like it.

It's Deep

This pedal does a little bit of everything. It's not perfect by any means. However, there are plenty of options to choose from. Not only that, but there is feature that you don't see often on a delay. Not only do you get Tape, Analog, Ping Pong, Looping and other modes, but you get a Tone knob. I know that's not super exciting, but it let's you dial in how dark or bright you want your repeats. I'm sure that some of these uber delays can do the same thing or similar, but when this was new on the market, it was very unique.





It's A Value





I paid top dollar back when I bought mine, but now you can regularly find this pedal for under $100. I've done a lot of looking recently, and $100 doesn't buy you a lot in regards to delay. In this case, You can get tons of delay for your money.




Conclusion




If I had the 200-250 dollars it would take to buy a DD-20 at its original price, I'd do one of two things. I'd save up for the DD-500 or I'd get the Carbon Copy Deluxe. The DD-500 might be a little overkill, but it won't leave you wanting. The Carbon Copy Deluxe is a great delay made even better. I'm running analog type delay sounds most the time anyways, and the Carbon Copy is just about the best deal going for one of those. If I had to put together a full feature pedal board for the least amount of money, then the DD-20 is my pick. For about a hundred dollars, the DD-20 is very hard to beat.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It's main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming. According to http://www.hydrogen-music.org/.

Its free, or at least it was free when I downloaded it a couple years ago. Recording acoustic drums in a room-studio is a pain. I have no budget for mic kits and stands and a mixer to handle all the mics. (not to mention the fact that room it's self is not at all acoustically designed for this) So a good drum machine is the best thing for getting tracks together in a days time. If done right, all you notices is that your drummer isn't all that creative. Don't get me wrong. I'd rather have live drums played by a pro than a segments of drum loops, but you gotta do what you gotta do. There are some free DMs out there on the web, and some that you pay out the but for. Obviously Hydrogen is not the top of the line be-all to end all, but it does make for a good starting point. I've had a little trouble getting new kits to load, so that means I'm stuck with the stock sounds. For stock sounds, they aren't that bad. With a little work this program could be a powerful little tool for the artist with more creativity than funds. The controls are intuitive, and pretty in depth. You can Eq and adjust levels (and other variants) for each sound. There are lots of nerdy/tweaky things, but I leave that alone for the most part. I give this program my seal of approval. Not bad for free!