The Twin Pedal Collection from Boss has produced some interesting and quite useful pedals – one of my favorites (and, a bunch of other guitarists, apparently) is the DD-20 Giga Delay. Flush with options, tones, sounds and surprises, the DD-20 takes some getting used to, like any pedal of this magnitude, but once you get it down, it’s a ton of fun to play with, and can really be utilized on stage and in the studio to meet a variety of your delay needs.
The controls are relatively simple, although there are a bunch of them. Effect Level controls the overall volume of the delayed signal, Feedback adjusts the feedback (!), Tone adds or takes away treble to your sound (right at 12 o’clock is perfect for this), and the Mode allows to to select from a multitude of fun delay settings: ‘Sound On Sound’ lets you record and overdub whatever you want, up to 23 seconds – an extremely powerful tool. ‘Twist’ gives you the ability to take your signal and really spin it out of control, for great spaced-out, super-trippy soundscapes and random weirdness. ‘Warp’ simultaneously increases both the Feedback and Volume, giving you yet another unpredictable and out-of-this-world delay setting. The ‘Tape’ mode attempts (quite well, actually) to recreate sounds produced by the classic Roland RE-201 Tape Echo; this is one of my favorite modes, and is superb in it’s faithful reproduction of those sweet analog tape sounds of the past. ‘Analog’ harkens back to another classic Boss pedal, the DM-2 Analog Delay, and again comes very close to matching the original’s tone and voice. The ‘Dual’ mode is fun, too, mixing long and short delays together. ‘Pan’ sounds way cool if you’re in stereo and connected to 2 different amps, I love the bouncing back=and=forth between the amps, it really thickens your tone and makes a giant wall of sound. ‘Smooth’ spread the delay out, adding a little reverb-y sound into the mix. Another weird but rad mode is ‘Modulate’, which adds some wave into the path, creating shimmery, lush modulated noises. And finally ‘Reverse’, which takes what you play, twists it backwards and spits it right back out – another great mode to play around with for hours.
There are many ways to use all of these modes, especially in conjunction with the programmable Memory banks and the Tap Tempo footswitch, which has a number of different uses. The manual is about as thick as a phone book (for those of you youngsters out there who don’t know, a phone book is a directory of people who live in your area and their addresses and phone numbers, used back in the dark ages until about 7 years ago), but once you read through it and discover how everything works, the possibilities open up exponentially, and the fun really starts to begin. A staple on many pedalboards the world over, the DD-20 from Boss is a delay marvel, exploiting the digital and analog aspects of delay throughout, and adding in some fun tricks along the way as well.
Submitted by Mike B, Website
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