Loop Pedal Question.

Eblis

Eblis

New member
Hey guys, Im thinking about buying one of these loop pedals. Im going to be using it to practice improvising over chord progressions and jamming with friends.

Have any of you had experience with them? Which ones would you suggest?

I was looking at the Boss Looping Station RC-20XL or the Digitech JamMan.
Im leaning toward the Boss cause the reverse feature it has seems cool for some trippy stuff, but the Digitech has nice storage features with the compact flash card.

What do you think? Are there any other ones that are worth looking in to?

Thanks, and have a good Holiday!

Jason :wizard:
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

I believe Mince is quite experienced with looper.

Just wait for him to chime in...

(bump)
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

The Line 6 DL-4 seems to be the industry standard for delay and looping. It does reverse too. Plus, the versatility of the pedal tells you why it's on almost every pedalboard you see.

It's the only delay pedal I've ever used that sounded just fine into the front of an amp.
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

I use the DL4 for pedal looping (an Echoplex in my rack), because it is an awesome delay pedal too. You can get to reverse and octave down modes easily, it can be set for true bypass, and it is the most intuitive live looping pedal (maybe a tie with the Boomerang).

In the end, it depends on how you loop. I tend to not care if there are background rhythm patterns, or if I can save loops. To some people, these are important. Also, on the Boss, the reverse button is tiny...you need to keep it on a table to hit it. In fact, on both the Boss and Digitech, many funtions are only accessable from the front panel, not the buttons, and you can't have pedal control over the volume of the loop, which is the deal breaker for me.
For casual jamming over chord progressions, pick your budget and the looper- they all will work, although the 'intuitiveness' certainly goes to the DL4 or Boomerang.
One thing many cheaper loopers (Boss, Line6, Digitech) don't have is a feedback control, which allows loops to gradually die out. It allows the improvising guitarist to add new layers and morph the loop in real-time, not just play static progressions. But again, it depends on what kind of player you are. Again, I can deal with the lack of feedback control on the DL4, because I can control the volume of the loop with an expression pedal. For all things looping, check out www.loopers-delight.com
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

Yeah that is one bad thing about the boss, your stuck with the same thing

But for what i use it for (just for practicing over chord progressions like you said) its fine.


I'm too scared to use it live....i'm sure i'd stuff up (press it too early/too late)

Not that your audience would really notice, but i'm sure you have the odd mini-disaster when playing live mincer???
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

larry_emder said:
Yeah that is one bad thing about the boss, your stuck with the same thing

But for what i use it for (just for practicing over chord progressions like you said) its fine.


I'm too scared to use it live....i'm sure i'd stuff up (press it too early/too late)

Not that your audience would really notice, but i'm sure you have the odd mini-disaster when playing live mincer???
Click to expand...

The Boss can 'quantize' your button presses to the beat, which works if you have some timing issues with the loops. It will automatically sync it up to the defined quarter note. This would annoy the hell out of me, but for those into strictly rhytmic loops, it might help.
Yeah, I have things go wrong sometimes, but now its pretty rare- I can't be timid about it and I have to trust where I want the '1' to be. If not, recovering gracefully is a great skill for any musician to have. If had terrible disasters onstage....last week, I taped a TV show on CBS, and I pressed 'record'...recorded my loop, pressed 'record' again to stop the recording and start overdubbing...and nothing. Silence. So we had take 2. It worked this time. A few days after I had an NBC show (taped in Tampa) and it was live. I was freaking out about the gear....I tried it about 50 times beforehand. I came up with something else in case it didn't work. Luckily it did!
 
Re: Loop Pedal Question.

Gearjoneser said:
The Line 6 DL-4 seems to be the industry standard for delay and looping. It does reverse too. Plus, the versatility of the pedal tells you why it's on almost every pedalboard you see.

It's the only delay pedal I've ever used that sounded just fine into the front of an amp.
Click to expand...

Another vote for the Line 6 DL-4. Someone else mentioned the ability to reverse, speed up, and slow down the repeats. You can also stack loops: Play one chord progression and loop that, then add a second progression or riff on top of that and loop it. Now jam away!

- Keith
 
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