Line 6 DL-4

builttospill

Are these still any good/reliable? and were the switches improved on the later versions? I'm interested in getting one for live use where I can recall a couple of presets. 

meltedbuzzbox

I never personally had an issue with mine but I am sure lots of people we be posting to moan about the switches.

I'd personally get an used m9. You get all the pros of the DL-4 and a bunch of extra options

ICBM

I had a non-switch-related issue with mine, but they're probably not too bad given the number that were sold - I don't see many for repair now.

EricTheWeary

I think the switch thing was partly because Mike Landau raised it as an issue and he’s a poster boy for TGP. But probably not many people who’d get the wear and tear on such things as Mike. 
The DL4, IIRC, doesn’t have analogue dry through which some people don’t like, although it never bothered anyone for years. 

richardhomer

Mine died completely about a year after it was out of warranty. 

The dealer got Line6 UK to fix it FOC - which was impressive....

ICBM

EricTheWeary said:

The DL4, IIRC, doesn’t have analogue dry through which some people don’t like, although it never bothered anyone for years.

It certainly bothered me - I had to mod the FX loop of my Mesa to fix the awful tone suck it caused.

To be fair, that's as much of an issue with Mesa's crappy parallel loop with no 100% wet setting as it is with the DL-4...

builttospill

ICBM said:

EricTheWeary said:

The DL4, IIRC, doesn’t have analogue dry through which some people don’t like, although it never bothered anyone for years.

It certainly bothered me - I had to mod the FX loop of my Mesa to fix the awful tone suck it caused.

To be fair, that's as much of an issue with Mesa's crappy parallel loop with no 100% wet setting as it is with the DL-4...

I've read about this, is there a lot of tone suck on the DL-4? and is it that noticeable? 

ICBM

builttospill said:

I've read about this, is there a lot of tone suck on the DL-4? and is it that noticeable? 

Not usually. The issue is in parallel FX loops - the DL-4 (and all the others in the series) digitise the dry part of the signal too, which causes a small amount of latency. Mix this with the un-digitised dry signal in the amp and you get a nasty tone-sucking comb-filter effect.

If the loop has a mix control which goes to 100% effect - essentially series - it isn’t a problem either, but some, including most Mesa (even though they say they do, they only go to about 90%) and Laney ones, can’t be set like that and need to be modded to do so.

builttospill

ICBM said:

builttospill said:

I've read about this, is there a lot of tone suck on the DL-4? and is it that noticeable? 

Not usually. The issue is in parallel FX loops - the DL-4 (and all the others in the series) digitise the dry part of the signal too, which causes a small amount of latency. Mix this with the un-digitised dry signal in the amp and you get a nasty tone-sucking comb-filter effect.

If the loop has a mix control which goes to 100% effect - essentially series - it isn’t a problem either, but some, including most Mesa (even though they say they do, they only go to about 90%) and Laney ones, can’t be set like that and need to be modded to do so.

Thanks @ICBM ;I play through a Princeton Reverb so in theory it should be ok? Also is it safe to power one off my burkey six junior isolated power supply? I read somewhere that it can be powered by a normal dc outlet but using a center postive adaptor lead

builttospill

Bugger! My power supply outlets are only 100mA but are switchable from 9-12 volts, am I right in thinking that the DL-4 requires 200mA to run? Could I just use a current doubling adaptor from two 9 volt outlets but then connect a centre positive adaptor to the current doubling cable?

meltedbuzzbox

I think you need 12v @ 200ma centre positive.
I ran my m9 on something similar.

meltedbuzzbox

What power supply are you using?

builttospill

meltedbuzzbox said:

What power supply are you using?

Thanks @meltedbuzzbox I'm using a Burkey flatliner Six Junior switchable from 9-12 volts... 100mA's from each outlet

meltedbuzzbox

Never heard of one of those :-(
Don't plug in a voltage doubler, that won't end well. 

If you are running at 9v I think you will need more ma.

Is using the default line 6 PSU an issue?

ICBM

From memory - I don’t have one here to check - the polarity doesn’t matter, Line 6 designed it to take an AC input and then rectify it. The current draw is somewhere in the region of 250mA though, so linking two 100mA outlets won’t be enough. It also uses a larger size barrel plug than the standard Boss-type one.

EricTheWeary

The official figure for the DL4 is 1200ma (9vac) although if you google this it appears to be nonsense. Line 6 on their forum say minimum 250ma from 9v. 
Diago do an adaptor for the barrel size.

builttospill

Thanks all for your input! Guess I'll just get the separate power supply

english_bob

ICBM said:

It also uses a larger size barrel plug than the standard Boss-type one.

Smaller as I recall, but the point is that it's different.

It's also got a known issue that may well be to do with the power supply where it'll basically stop working for reasons best known to itself, leaving just the status LEDs blinking at you.

It was common enough that the "so simple you can do it yourself" fix was common knowledge on the old Harmony Central effects forum back in the day: take out the huge number of tiny black screws that hold the baseplate, find the socketed EPROM chip on the back of the PCB (can't miss it), use some sort of pokey-prisey instrument to pop it out of its spring-loaded socket and put it back in. Done. What could possibly go wrong with a hurried repair at a rehearsal or a gig?

FWIW, I was always of the opinion that the Vox Delaylab was essentially a DL-4 with many of the issues fixed- it didn't randomly brick itself, had proper expression pedal control, enough presets, dotted eighth subdivisions on the tap tempo (which the DL-4 doesn't have), and pretty much everything that the DL-4 did that was cool. Still massive and heavy, but about the same money now- perhaps a little cheaper used.

impmann

richardhomer said:

Mine died completely about a year after it was out of warranty. 

The dealer got Line6 UK to fix it FOC - which was impressive....

You're welcome. :-)

Seriously - we had so few of these back under warranty that a complete death would have been unusual and we would have wanted to look at the root cause. I can't remember the unit in question, though. Although we did have a few through where the root cause of total 'failure' was the eprom chip falling out! As mentioned above, take the bottom off and give it a wiggle and bingo... til it got dropped again (oh, sorry nobody dropped them... ;-) ). The other issue here was tarnish on the pins of the eprom and the socket - but that tended to be on old units or those used in damp environments.
The other failure was cracking of the solder around the power input socket. That gave intermittency and then no power up (too many power cycles due to the make or break of the solder and the processor would just say 'no more' and shut down - give it a couple of moments and then it would intermittently come back to life). A quick reflow and job done.
Yes they can be fussy with their power supply - it is an AC supply. The correct Line6 supply is designated the PX-2 (or PX2-G if you want the tree-hugging version).

To be honest, the DL4 - apart from the stuff about the switches which was grossly overstated by some (the figures don't lie about the returns for that issue) they are pretty much bullet proof. I've personally never experienced any "tone suck" with one - certainly no worse than a Boss pedal. Talk to Lu Edmonds from PiL about how the DL-4 is an essential part of his sound - he has one patch where there is no delay whatsoever but he likes the preamp effect... he's had the same unit since day one, and never had an issue gigging all over the world.

Certain vocal people on certain websites like to quote things going wrong - there's one particular chap who used to pop up on the Line6 forums, TGP etc blathering about how he'd had serveral fail and the CS was shit etc... so I tracked him down and contacted him. The exact story was he bought a secondhand one, it went wrong so he had it "fixed" several times by a local 'tech' who clearly didn't know what he was doing. He'd never contacted Line6, the CS team, the repair team or me... so I challenged him about the accusation that the CS was "shit"... Imagine his surprise when I offered him a FOC repair... and the fault? A non-standard power supply that struggle to give enough current then overheated and cut out... So don't believe all you read. Often these tales of woe aren't all they seem. Although Line6 UK doesn't exist any more, I'd like to think that the ethos we had still exists and that Yamaha and their service team will help out.

There was a reason why Line6 sold quite so many and why so many ended up on pro pedalboards - and many are still there. Its a great unit.

builttospill

impmann said:

richardhomer said:

Mine died completely about a year after it was out of warranty. 

The dealer got Line6 UK to fix it FOC - which was impressive....

You're welcome. :-)

Seriously - we had so few of these back under warranty that a complete death would have been unusual and we would have wanted to look at the root cause. I can't remember the unit in question, though. Although we did have a few through where the root cause of total 'failure' was the eprom chip falling out! As mentioned above, take the bottom off and give it a wiggle and bingo... til it got dropped again (oh, sorry nobody dropped them... ;-) ). The other issue here was tarnish on the pins of the eprom and the socket - but that tended to be on old units or those used in damp environments.
The other failure was cracking of the solder around the power input socket. That gave intermittency and then no power up (too many power cycles due to the make or break of the solder and the processor would just say 'no more' and shut down - give it a couple of moments and then it would intermittently come back to life). A quick reflow and job done.
Yes they can be fussy with their power supply - it is an AC supply. The correct Line6 supply is designated the PX-2 (or PX2-G if you want the tree-hugging version).

To be honest, the DL4 - apart from the stuff about the switches which was grossly overstated by some (the figures don't lie about the returns for that issue) they are pretty much bullet proof. I've personally never experienced any "tone suck" with one - certainly no worse than a Boss pedal. Talk to Lu Edmonds from PiL about how the DL-4 is an essential part of his sound - he has one patch where there is no delay whatsoever but he likes the preamp effect... he's had the same unit since day one, and never had an issue gigging all over the world.

Certain vocal people on certain websites like to quote things going wrong - there's one particular chap who used to pop up on the Line6 forums, TGP etc blathering about how he'd had serveral fail and the CS was shit etc... so I tracked him down and contacted him. The exact story was he bought a secondhand one, it went wrong so he had it "fixed" several times by a local 'tech' who clearly didn't know what he was doing. He'd never contacted Line6, the CS team, the repair team or me... so I challenged him about the accusation that the CS was "shit"... Imagine his surprise when I offered him a FOC repair... and the fault? A non-standard power supply that struggle to give enough current then overheated and cut out... So don't believe all you read. Often these tales of woe aren't all they seem. Although Line6 UK doesn't exist any more, I'd like to think that the ethos we had still exists and that Yamaha and their service team will help out.

There was a reason why Line6 sold quite so many and why so many ended up on pro pedalboards - and many are still there. Its a great unit.

Have a Wisdom from me, thanks for that, I think a DL-4 is going to be heading to my board in the near future for simplicity reasons. The modded versions seem interesting but I may just opt for a fresh one at some point.

meltedbuzzbox

Seriously, get an m series