Demo Review: Line 6 DL4 MkII Delay Modeler

The Line 6 DL4 MkII Delay Modeler enhances the original with new delays, hidden reverbs, and advanced looping capabilities.

Time to read: 7 minutes

Versatility Meets Innovation

The original Line 6 DL4 was a staple of versatility when it came to one of the most popular guitar effects out there—delay. The newly released MkII version expands this with 15 new MkII delays drawn from their HX family of amp and effects processors, as well as both 4-Switch and 1-Switch loopers with up to 240 seconds of record time.

There’s a wealth of options to explore and endless ways to dial in a specific or wild delay sound. We go over the options in our demo review. Plus, JayLeonardJ stopped by during the Yamaha Mezzanine Grand Opening to show off the tones he likes to dial in on this pedal.

Line 6 DL4 MkII Delay Modeler

Cosmo SKU: FSEFLINDL4MKII | Model: DL4 MKII | UPC: 614252311656
Guitar Effect Stompbox Pedal | Delay Modeler | 30 Delays | 4-Switch Classic Looper and 1-Switch Looper | XLR Mic Input | MIDI In and Out/Thru Connectors | Onboard Memory | Bypass | DC Power

Watch: JayLeonardJ’s 3 Essential Delays Featuring Line 6 DL4 MkII Pedal

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR5M05eRN5w

Watch: Line 6 DL4 MkII Demo Review

“You got 15 new delays, 15 of the original delays that you fell in love with in the ’90s and 16 hidden reverbs, plus the looper, plus mic in expression pedal. This thing does everything. It is a spaceship.”
—Matthew Leitch, Cosmo Music Guitar Specialist

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlN5uN0Z7FQ

Key Features

• 4-Switch Classic Looper and 1-Switch Looper operate in either mono or stereo and may be positioned before or after other effects
• Onboard memory provides up to 240 seconds of recording time, expandable to several hours using an optional microSD card, which also enables a loop to be stored in memory
• Allows you to connect a dynamic microphone to the XLR input for vocal (or acoustic instrument) processing and looping, and adjust the gain using the Trim control
• MIDI In and Out/Thru DIN connectors enable the DL4 MkII to receive continuous controller, program change, and other MIDI messages from external sources
• Bypass options include buffered, DSP, and true bypass, with buffered and true bypass avoiding A/D/A conversion by routing analog signals directly from the inputs to the outputs
• Constructed from cast aluminum to withstand the rigours of performance

Compact Green Space

Along with the expanded delays and looping capability, the chassis is noticeably more compact than the original, in a streamlined green finish that keeps all the tone controls and LEDs neat.

Demo Review Video Transcript

Matt here from the service department. Line 6 DL4 MkII. 23 years after the original, this bad boy gets an update. You got 15 new delays, 15 of the original delays that you fell in love with in the ’90s and 16 hidden reverbs, plus the looper, plus mic in expression pedal. This thing does everything. It is a spaceship, you’re going to want one. Let’s get into it.

Vintage digital, this is your classic digital delay. Does the thing that you expect it to. This thing gets wacky, let’s try some neat ones.

This is a crisscross. If you’ve got stereo headphones on and you should this is super cool. The crisscross delay is two delays that intersect in a stereo way and when they cross over they distort and interact with each other in different ways. It’s very cool, dig it.

Next for the new ones, out of Line 6 laboratory is the Euclidean delay. I don’t know what that means but we’re going to hear it. That’s fun.

Okay, dual delay. This one I really dig. There you go that was the intro tune. So in this one you’ve automatically out of the box got it set up on one side, quarter notes one side, dotted eights, you get this.

Very cool pitch echo okay, that’s fun. Let’s see what else this does. You could do stuff with that additive this is going to be like a slapback. Cool cool.

Okay this one is fun this is a harmony delay. Yeah right let’s speed that up. I don’t know what that does okay let’s try that again. Okay whoa. Neato.

Heliosphere. What do you like? Super cool just like the original DL4, the MkII has multiple different modeled analog vintage delays like the transistor delay right here.

Cool, we’ve got the multipass here, which would be i think a Roland RE201, whoa okay that doesn’t sound like a Roland RE201, I may be mistaken. That’s pretty cool. Let’s play with this. Yeah you can play with this thing all day and just zone out on cool stereo stuff. Adriatic – is that a kind of flu? I believe that’s an adriatic. That’s stereo too. That’s nice.

Yeah the elephant man here is a new one from Line 6, which is modeled after a modded, a modded Memory Man Electro-Harmonix Memory Man (they’re not allowed to say it’s an Electro Harmonix Memory Man but we can). So the elephant man is their new take on the original DL4’s analog mod, which we’ll get into in a sec but this is pretty sweet.

This is fun, this is the glitch. I don’t know what this is gonna sound like but i bet it’s freaky. That’s cool. I’m gonna start that over and fake it, watch.

Sounds like a hit to me. And for any of you pining for the original DL4, it has the legacy button here. Gives you all 15 original delays from the 1999 version, your favourites like ping pong, that one’s fun. The old classic reverse delay. Groovy.

I had a DL4 for a long time and got a lot of use out of this effect. Real simple, real nice. I’m gonna try to do this all at once for you here so one of my favourites from the original DL4 is the sweep echo because you can play this Alkaline Trio song.

Besides being one of my favourite effects, the sweep echo also makes a really awesome noise box. Watch how easy this is to set the expression pedal. What we want to do is toe down gonna change the time, the mix, crank the repeats all the noise, back it off, done. Cool, right?

Alright, alright that’s enough out of you. The DL4 MkII also comes with 16 extra hidden reverbs. They’re hidden because they’re not labeled on the pedal. but they’re not hidden because everyone knows about them and I just told you. To access the hidden reverbs, you just hold down the legacy button and turn your knob to whichever reverb you want. Now I know already that the glitch one is the shimmer reverb which is a pretty cool one, so let’s hear what that sounds like.

Not bad, right? One feature I’m very happy to see on the MkII is the addition of subdivisions. You’ve got triplets, dotted eights, dotted yada I don’t know, different subdivisions. There’s like 12 of them on here, but everyone just wants dotted eights so here we go. Here’s the quarter notes if you’re on this tempo. Right, go hold this button, move that over to dotted eights. It’s pretty close, right?

One of the reasons the DL4 was originally so influential was the looper that it comes with this is a whole other topic, we can do another video on that. Drop us a DM or leave a comment. Hit like and subscribe. Come check out the Line 6 DL4 MkII in the store or at CosmoMusic.ca.

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