I got a brand new Aqua Puss real cheap, but have never taken it out of the box. I will now, though.

Been searching and waiting a super clean DM-3... found one today for a great price !

Now Tavo, get to buildin' me that new DynoBrain !!

Jeez-louise that IS clean!

MitchC, did you travel back in time?

It IS the cleanest one I've come across for sure. Just happened to be surfing the classifieds on another forum at the right time.

MitchC, surely you could have found one that was actually taken care of?

I don't really do slapback, but the DD-3 is a very decent one. I'll be replacing it soon with a TC Electronic Flashback. I just need some kind of tap tempo

good price for something that well taken care of just remember the whole riot act I like to post about proper power supply to older 80s Boss ACA powered pedals...

just in case, here it is in its entirety

these older boss pedals used a 12v supply and NEED that to result in max headroom for the slapback. The DM-3 should sound warm and dynamic in its initial slapback and then smear in graduated degradation with little to no ring (if the pedal's clock and bias trimmers have been fiddled with you'll hear the ping-ring when you max the time and depth knobs, this has to be corrected)

BOSS 12v power supply ACA unregulated power adapter

*ACA Adapter

The ACA is an unregulated 9V or 12V adapter. For a long time both the ACA and the regulated PSA adapter was available but in the later part of the 90s the ACA adapter was discontinued as all Boss pedals then was designed to run with the PSA adapter.

When a power supply is unregulated, it means that the voltage level will drop as the load is increased. The ACA adapter may give out a full 12 volt when it is powering one or two pedals but if it is hooked up to a long row of pedals the voltage will drop. The ACA adapter is capable of supplying as much current as 250mA but problems keeping the voltage up may occur before the load reaches that level.

The early compact pedals was designed to run on either a 9V DC battery or 12V DC adapter. Because of this the ACA adapter was a 12V adapter. The voltage was reduced to 9V internally by using a 470 Ohm resistor and 1S2473 diode between the minus input on the power jack and ground. The resistor diode pair was later removed and at the same time the ACA adpater was redesigned to output 9V instead.

Powering ACA pedals with a PSA power supply Powering the older pedals designed for 12V DC input with either a newer ACA or PSA adapter will not work very well. The voltage drop over the resistor and diode will prevent the pedal from getting enough power and its LED will usually only glow faintly. The solution is to use a daisy chain and plug in another pedal designed for the newer ACA or PSA adapter. The lead between the two pedals will short the resistor diode pair and the pedal will receive full power.*

right click and open this in a new window for a full size picture since this website now turns every photo into a postage stamp lately

Oh great. Didn't know about the 12v supply. So where can I get one ?

Tavo , would you say the Boss DD20 Giga delay needs 12V?

"The voltage was reduced to 9V internally by using a 470 Ohm resistor and 1S2473 diode between the minus input on the power jack and ground."

Great info! That 470 ohm resistor is 330 ohms in some pedals (my DM-2s for example). I replaced it with a jumper, leaving the series diode in place - it drops the supply voltage 0.6v to an even 9.0v from my pedalboard's 9.6v power supply. The daisy-chaining works fine left stock, but I like being able to use the pedal alone with a modern power supply if I want to.

blowtorch the Boss DD20 is a modern pedal and uses the currently available power supply the Boss PSA-120 I believe (the one that has 500ma for that pedal)

but MitchC, the whole point of that post was to help you understand that the power supply the DM-3 was designed for is as old as that 30+yr old pedal and doesnt exist anymore. The Boss ACA-120 was an unregulated 12v power supply that was phased out when they moved to a 9v regulated 9v power supply. its as hard to find as an old Boss DM-3.

I do want to clarify though that the pedal WILL MAKE DO on a 9V daisy chain as long as another 9V pedal is also plugged in... but this means it will NOT have the same headroom response as running on its full 12v required ac adaptor power.

If it says "ACA adaptor only" on the little sticker by the adapter jack, it's a 12 volt ACA pedal.

the only currently available power supplies for this type of pedal are incorporated as an optional mode on more expensive units such as the Voodoo Labls Pedal Power plus. it has a little switch that goes from 9v to 12v

So a modern 12v DC supply is not the correct unit, right ?

analogman.com has a 9v or 12v supply. Was just about to order the 12v...no ?

I use my Voodoo Labs Pedal Power ISO 5. It has a few 9V power sockets on it but also one 12V output on it just for the DM-3 (and an 18V for the Mistress).

personnaly i used a boss RE20 and i'm satisfied with this one. I can have an echo like Hank Marvin and also a slap echo for rockabilly style. It's a little bit expensive but it's a real solid pedal.

The early ACA's were simply unregulated linear transformers with a bridge rectifier ("wall warts"), which were very cheap and readily available. since a lot of DM-2's used an MN3005, the supply variation is much more forgiving (in my experience at least). Its with the MN3205 units that you begin to experience distortion from an improper bias much more easily Boss DM-3's use the MN3205 and will experience this loss of headroom/ distortion without the proper mod or power supply.

The DM-2 / DM-3 as all the old-style ACA pedals - has a diode and resistor between the adapter jack negative and ground, to reduce the 12vDC it expects to see to around 9 volts. If you power it by itself (with its own adapter or from a separate output on a PP2+), you need to give it 12 volts. Giving it 9 volts will drop the voltage the circuit "sees" to 7 or so volts.

But if you run it from a daisy chain-type setup, where there are both power and signal cables connecting it to other pedals, it will work fine with 9 volts. The common ground setup defeats the diode and resistor, so the pedal will "see" the full 9 volts.

you can use the daisy chain from your standard 9v supply as long as a modern PSA regulated 9v pedal is plugged in along the chain with the older Boss ACA 12V pedal...

I personally have found though after modding some 20+ older boss pedals that the simple jumper wire mod on R3 of the circuit board gives the gretsch player the best and most dynamic response from their precious analog Boss pedal.

I'm really serious about these being precious pedals, the slapback is clean but organic and slighty compressed but the analog compander chip and JRC4558 chip condition the guitar signal that just sounds like the right magic for a number of slap back options.

..btw Jack I'm gonna get one of those Voodolabs ISO5's.. I'm really impressed. I've been using the 8 channel Ebtech hum eliminators for live sound and I swear by these passive isolation transformers. affordable magic! I keep the hum-x on my pedal board power supply and it is $60 well spent.

So a modern 12v DC supply is not the correct unit, right ?

analogman.com has a 9v or 12v supply. Was just about to order the 12v...no ?

just talked to Mike P. at analogman.com he gave thumbs up on his 12v for your DM-3

Yep, just got an email from him so that's great ! Thanks for the follow-up Tavo !

I got a Boss PS-2 Pitchshifter / Delay pedal today. Posted something in the Pog/Octaver thread

One question regarding the delay part of it: I can't find any information about it. Just the info that it might be "...surprising that it doesn't use the same chip as the DD-3 and DSD-3." What is it? It sounds fine to me at home use.

Anyone knowing the PS-2 and/or played one in the last 25 years since they came out?

All that other talk is giving me a headache on a sunny Sunday afternoon!

I use a Roland RE-201 for home use, but my pedal board has a 10 year old Dan Echo. Cool color. Cool short slap-back delays. Cool long delays.

FWIW, I plug that in using a Boss tuner daisy-chained to a Fulltone Full-Drive II. Not sure if I'm breaking any AC rules or not, but it works!

Johnny

I have a 10 year old Dan Echo also. Not sure why, but I've never felt the urge to sell it. Well I did, but changed my mind... Guess, cuz I like it... cheap pedal but it's stayed around longer than any other piece of gear I own. Weird.

I have a cheap pedal, 5lbs hammer if you want, I like to put offshore guitar gear out of its misery.

I thought the Dan-Echo was pretty cool. The only reason I got rid of it (besides the Dano tone-sucking buffer) was that it had no modulation for longer delay times. That short/long switch is dam bomb!

I much prefer my Maxon AD-999 (also no modulation, but plenty of "grease"!) and El Capistan.

On the cheap, the Dano BLT also rocks!

I can't even get $50 for the Dan Echo. Not even worth selling really.

El Capistan looks nice, but has WAY more stuff on it than I'll ever need...but who knows ?

on the "bad Dano tone-sucking bypass"...

My theory is, on a filter-tron equipped gretsch, where bright is an issue (just ask brian setzer with his 100 foot cables), the high end loss with the Dano can actually be a GOOD thing. I have a BLT, it sounds just like the Dan- echo, bypass-wise. I dug the Dan-Echo, that short/long switch is da bomb. I would have kept mine if it has a control to add modulation... nothing fancy, just a little wobble. Dig the looks, dig the switch, dig the tone/degradation knob, just don't dig the bypass (altho I can see where it would be useful to tame the high end icepicks that filter-gretsches can produce.)

I find that relative though... most guys running one cheap pedal are often running more cheap pedals and probably one or two cheap patch cables.. exponentially there is WAYYY to much high end loss and trying to add treble at the amp is not gonna save the upper mids loss that those pedals cumulatively sucked up and then the original tonal character of the guitar is deviated.

ps.. Setzer isnt losing any high end because of the impedance matching occuring with the resistance in the cable lengths, the low dc resistance of the filtertrons and the input resistance of the line level input of the space echo. Even those that would say "oh yaaaa.. he turns his presence all the way up and the treble to seven on the amp to compensate for the high end loss" are misgivings because the normal channel of a blonde amp is NOTHING like a blackface amp. That presence control all the way open, is removing the negative feedback in the amp which is making it more dynamically controlled and headroom is reduced which causes early clipping , and more so when the treble of the blond amps 350K tapped pot is opened above half way in its rotation. Which allow him to create that signature sound. (sorry I got carried away)