After I burned out my pedal board a couple of weeks ago, which included my beloved Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay, I immediately went on a search for a new analog delay pedal.
Yeah, I had my trusty MXR Carbon Copy but after using for it a couple of weeks, I remembered why I made it a backup. It’s not that it’s a bad pedal, but I’ve always had difficulty getting it set up with a sound and a response I like.
What I loved about my Deep Blue Delay was that – as Mad Professor put it – it was built to work well with distortion. I could put it in front of my preamp or my effects loop and it would rock. I knew that with my new analog delay, that was an absolute requirement
Enter the BOSS DM-2w.
Truth be told, I had never even played the pedal before I got it, but thanks to several demos on the Web, I had a feeling it was going to work well. What impressed me was that like my old DBD, the delay didn’t engage immediately; something I started calling staying out of the way of my sound. It allows the note to be plucked first, then the delay engages seemingly in the background. It was one of the first things I noticed when watching videos.
So a few days ago, I ordered one on Amazon, but it never arrived. So I got a refund and went to one of my local shops who had one in stock and brought it home.
I’ve been playing with it for the past couple of hours and all I have to say is this: I’m in Analog Delay Heaven!
The DM-2w does everything my DBD does and more. It has two modes: Standard and Custom. In Standard mode, the maximum amount of delay is 300ms and the tone is a little dark. It’s very good for slap-back delay. The Custom mode has a very nice 800ms maximum delay time, and it’s less dark. I won’t say brighter because it’s still a little dark.
But most importantly, one of the things that endeared me to the Deep Blue Delay was how smooth its sound was and the DM-2w is silky smooth. So along with it staying out of the way, for it to produce such a smooth sound, well, like I said, I’m in Heaven.
I’ll probably do a full review on the pedal once I’ve played and gigged with it. Stay tuned.
Guitar Gear 