Daddy-O baby!

I purchased a Boss overdrive/distortion about 3 months ago and the thing started to flake out. The sound drops in a major way to the point where nothing comes through the amp. Tried new batteries, etc., and nothing worked. I had a gig so, with little choice, I ran out and picked up a Dano Daddy-O overdrive. I thought it would be an ok cheap back-up while I sent the pedal back to Boss. But WOW. Its the best tone Ive ever gotten out of my Tele! Granted, I had to play with the settings on the pedal and my amp for about 2 hours before I was happy, but wow.
I was almost to the point of replacing the p/u's in my HWY 1 in an attempt to find a good tone, but now Im pretty happy with what I have.

Just wanted to share with you my happiness with a semi-cheap product. Goes to show you that their are so many combinations of guitars, p/u's, amps strings, pedals, etc., that creat a "tone" that you should never dismiss anything or give up and start ripping things apart to make them better!

It's been talked about here before. Somebody mentioned that it has the magic TS-9 chip or whatever. I won my at fendertalk.com maybe 2 years ago, and I must say I really like it. I hear good thing about the DanEcho too. Inexpensive, and good tone. Won't last as long as some boxes, but hey, at the price, just replace it when necessary...

http://www.tdpri.com/viewtopic.php?p=36567&highlight=daddyo#36567

...and i think you hit the nail on the head about why so many players pass it up - you gotta fiddle with it for a bit to dial it in. i think some folks give up before they get it to where it will work for them, or opt for a pedal with less controls (and hence, less control over the pedal).

sure the pedal is cheap, but where else can you find a pedal (cheap and mass produced) that is based on the tubescreamer thing, but actually has knobs for bass, mid, and treble?

i'm still not sure why these pedals aren't more highly regarded - probably because no one like SRV or Eric Johnson has ever used one...

i replaced the silicon clipping diodes in mine with LEDs and it smoothed it out a touch more (one of my favorite, easy tricks).

probably the coolest thing about the Daddy O is the lack of that midrange hump that the tubescreamer is famous for.

i bet this pedal is capable of boutique type tone if someone were to take the time and tweak some caps and resistors in one. if i ever get the time i might just be that someone (don't hold your breath though!).

actually, the D.O. has the TL072 chip - the TS stuff uses the JRC4558, i believe (been awhile - i could be wrong). in all honesty, most opamp chips sound very similar IMO but the TL072 is my fave of the bunch - very smooth chip.

I had one and had no beef with it except. I could tell a difference in tone while plugged into it clean as opposed to just a guitar, cable, and amp. It sounded good. I jsut thought that it's lack of bypass circuit sucked tone. This is the first test that I do while trying out a pedal.

Good luck

I had one and had no beef with it except. I could tell a difference in tone while plugged into it clean as opposed to just a guitar, cable, and amp. It sounded good. I jsut thought that it's lack of bypass circuit sucked tone. This is the first test that I do while trying out a pedal.

Good luck

Yes, I too think it sucks a tad of sparkle. Many pedals do.

I bought one of these when they first came out, but have been using the Voodoo Sparkle Drive for OD for a while now. I'm going to dust off the Daddy-O and have it on my small board for this weekend's gig. I can set it up for crunch and continue to use the Sparkle Drive for boosts/solos.

I use a Double SwitchBox which is a true-bypass box with two loops. The Sparkle Drive is already true bypass, so I leave it in the main signal chain, but everything I else sucks tone, so they go into one of the loops (CryBaby Wah, Dano mini leslie pedal, and now the Daddy-O). The second loop I use for silent tuning.

This allows me to keep my amp pretty clean (either my SF Pro Reverb or my recently aquired PV Delta Blues) because I do love clean tones and want that available throughout a gig.

Dano makes some real bargain pedals. May not be built like tanks, but they give you a lot for the $$.

Hmm, I'm not as enthusiastic about them .
I borrowed my friends one for a week to compare it to my old Marshall Guv'nor and thought it was pretty listless.
Admittedly, I'm probably looking for different things from a pedal to you guys, but I was pretty un impressed, I thought it lacked the guts of the Guv'nor :?

I'm very happy with mine!! I use it for a few years now (also during gigs) and it never failed me! I really like it for a raw, dirty overdriven sound (think 70's rock/punk sound....basically Marshall plexi's on 10 ;)). IMO it likes non-master volume tube amps the most. (I once tried it with a Marshall valvestate in our practise room and didn't like the sound..).
With a weak battery it can sound pretty bad, so I always use an adapter.

A friend of mine knocked mine off a box and it fell about 6 inches and died. Not exactly road worthy IMHO. The very low settings sound pretty awful, not a good mild or clean boost. But crank the drive up to 3/4 of the way and it sounds alright. I use mine when I gotta play anything related to punk and that's about it.

hmmm, I use it as a boost (gain on 1/4) for my already slightly overdriven tube amp and that's where it shine's IMO. Maybe just a matter of taste?!

Our singer jumped on my daddy'o once just where the input and output jacks are going into the pedal. Both jacks were bend, but the pedal was still ok....

I had to laugh. I opened up my daddy-o pedal intending to add led's to smooth it. Imagine my surprise when there were already two (apparently stock) LED's in the circuit. So I replaced them with 1N1004's just to see the difference and the quality of overdrive immediately turned into a ts9 clone. I ab'd the pedal with my reissue ts9 and the tone on the dano is somewhat lacking. I'd say far low end and hi mids are less, sounds less lively overall. But I bet into a turned-up amp you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. The LED's were just too buzzy for me. I bet a little more probing into component values, swap a couple of caps and a resistor or two and it could be an exact ts9 sound. Maybe mr Keeley will offer this soon. The mod would have to be more than the pedal, though.

Since I started using my Daddy, Ive fallen in love with my tone (which, by the way, has influenced how well i play lead).
By just using the tone nob and p/u selector on my tele, Im able to go from traditional tele tone to Les Paul tone. Its so easy to basically "switch guitars" in the middle of a song! I will think hard before buying anoth Boss (the one I purchased 4 months ago keeps cutting out...it will be returned.)

I had to laugh. I opened up my daddy-o pedal intending to add led's to smooth it. Imagine my surprise when there were already two (apparently stock) LED's in the circuit. So I replaced them with 1N1004's just to see the difference and the quality of overdrive immediately turned into a ts9 clone. I ab'd the pedal with my reissue ts9 and the tone on the dano is somewhat lacking. I'd say far low end and hi mids are less, sounds less lively overall. But I bet into a turned-up amp you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. The LED's were just too buzzy for me. I bet a little more probing into component values, swap a couple of caps and a resistor or two and it could be an exact ts9 sound. Maybe mr Keeley will offer this soon. The mod would have to be more than the pedal, though.

there are mods availabe for the daddy-o, I believe its based on the guv-nor circuit, not the ts circuit, though.