DLS EFFECTS
VERSA VIBE
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
Vintage/ Modern switch
Back in 1998, Dave Sestito, a musician and engineer, built his young guitar-playing
daughter a distortion box at her request. His
success with the project gave him the box-building bug and before long, Sestito was hard
at work building a delay pedal he hoped would
best his own Electro-Harmonix Memory Man.
The process involved scrapping at least one
prototype in frustration. But Sestito kept at
it—coming up with two excellent designs,
which in 2000 became the Echomaster and
Ultra Chorus, the first two products from his
boutique pedal company, DLS.
Since then, DLS has expanded and evolved
its line of highly rugged and eminently
musical stompboxes. The Echomaster and
Ultra Chorus have been replaced with the
Echo TAP and the Ultra Chorus II, respectively. And the line is now rounded out with
the Chorus~Vib, the RotoSIM, and the Versa
Vibe—a compact, pure analog unit with tons
of very cool vibrato effects on tap.
Waveform
selector
LED indicates
effect rate
Vibrato/
Chorus
switch
Vibe Selection
The Versa Vibe is DLS’s most compact pedal,
measuring 5" x 4" x 2. 5". But like most DLS
boxes, it packs a lot of functionality within
its tough, stage-ready steel enclosure. On the
back of the unit are a 9V DC input with a
2. 1 mm jack that will work with any polarity,
along with three 1/4" steel jacks: in, out, and
an input for an external expression pedal, such
as a Yamaha FC- 7 or Roland EV- 5, which can
be used to control modulation rate. The Versa
Vibe also comes with a DC adapter, which is
not an optional accessory given that the unit
cannot be battery powered.
On the face of the Versa Vibe, you’ll find
fairly standard Depth, Rate, Dry/Wet, and
Volume controls, a Waveform pot, which
moves the vibe effects between smooth and
choppier settings, and Bass Throb, which
adjusts the intensity of the pulse in the lower
end. There are two mini toggles on the far
right of the controls. One moves between a
Vintage setting that’s a bit thicker sounding,
and Modern, which imparts a distinct brightness. The other switch selects between vibrato
or chorus effects. A green LED lights up when
the effects are on, while a red LED pulsates
according to the rate of the effect that’s dialed
in.
The Versa Vibe is all top-notch components on the inside—including a charge pump
circuit for increasing analog voltage (for a
warm and dynamic sound without clipping)
and an INA Pot, which adjusts the input gain
level of Input A.
Wealth of Sonic Possibilities
With so many wave-shaping options on tap,
the Versa Vibe could potentially overwhelm
an effects-pedal neophyte. Thoughtfully,
though, the DLS includes a handy data sheet
(also downloadable at the website, in case
you lose it) with some very cool jumping-off
settings, including Trower Vibe, Jimi Vibe,
Double Pulse Throb, Rotary Speaker, Pitch
Bass Throb Control
Bend Vibrato, and Magnatone Vibrato, to
name a few.
To audition the Versa Vibe, I plugged
a 1962 Gibson ES-330TDC into a Line 6
DT50 112 amplifier and the pedal into the
amp’s effects loop. I was pleased to find that
with the effect off, the sound of the guitar was
pure and unadulterated, thanks to the pedal’s
true-bypass functionality. Whether off or on,
the Versa Vibe was nice and quiet.
When I tried the suggested Trower Vibe
setting, I found that the pedal added a bit of
girth to the basic tone of the ES-330 (this
proved true for just about every setting, as
a matter of fact). The Trower setting was
immensely pleasing. It provided a richly swirling, almost wah-like effect that made major
7th chords sound really colorful. Fiddling
around with the rate control, it was easy to
tailor the effect to suit a range of tempos.
