I want a looper pedal!

[zorrow]

I want a looper, so I can record some riffs and then jam over them live. The simpler, the better —though one with a drum machine might be interesting. Any looper to recommend then? And got one FS? 

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ting Ho Dung]

1 hour ago, zorrow said:

I want a looper, so I can record some riffs and then jam over them live. The simpler, the better —though one with a drum machine might be interesting. Any looper to recommend then? And got one FS? 

Thanks in advance!

 

Guitar Rig 5 has a looper and it's free, sortof. And you can record with it. 

 

[Michael_B]

I had a simple TC Electronics DItto Looper.  Worked great.  I think there's enough of them on Reverb that you should be able to get a pretty square deal.

[Montelovesco]

Zorrow, I got one... Digitech Jam Man Stereo. Its just laying aorund.

[alantig]

I've go a Boss RC-20 just sitting as well.  Can't remember if it has the drum stuff (I think it does).

[Brooks]

I use a Ditto X2 on solo gigs, super easy to use

[geoff_hartwell]

Go for the boss RC-20 or XL. It’s the earlier version of the loop station and I love them.

Far more reliable than the Digitech Jamman in my experience. You can get one used for about a hundred bucks.

[zorrow]

On 5/21/2018 at 6:36 AM, Montelovesco said:

Zorrow, I got one... Digitech Jam Man Stereo. Its just laying aorund.

 

On 5/21/2018 at 6:43 AM, alantig said:

I've go a Boss RC-20 just sitting as well.  Can't remember if it has the drum stuff (I think it does).

Please guys, PM me pics and how much you want for them. In the meanwhile, I’ll check for reviews of those two models online. Thanks in advance!

[sixesandsevens]

I'll second (third?) the jamman.  If what you want is to set a tempo and layer parts and switch between song sections, it's great.  Boss' offering is probably very similar, but the jamman is one of the few pedals that I sold and regret selling.  I wrote a lot of music on that thing and it was easily imported into a DAW to expand with friends and collaborators.

If you want to do something more avant garde and "creative", then look into the Boomerang III or the Echoplex Digital Pro (EDP) with the  Loop IV firmware.  Both give you a wealth of options for how to structure what you're playing, etc.

The ability to set a click and have it record multiples of the click is a major feature if you want to do "traditional" kinds of songwriting with it.  The Boomerang and EDP don't do that internally (or at least not with a click you can hear) and that makes it hard to get "clean" loops that you can use later on.

Lately for the writer-arranger style workflow I've been using Ableton Live with the Novation Launchpad Pro.  The copy of Live that I use came free with the LP pro and it's a great tool for sketching out arrangements.  It's a tiny bit irritating to be triggering entry/exit with my hands instead of the pedal, but that's fixable with a midi foot controller like the SoftStep 2.

There's also Mobius that's a looping VST inspired by the EDP Loop IV.

[sixesandsevens]

On 5/21/2018 at 2:22 PM, geoff_hartwell said:

Go for the boss RC-20 or XL. It’s the earlier version of the loop station and I love them.

Far more reliable than the Digitech Jamman in my experience. You can get one used for about a hundred bucks.

Geoff - How did the Jamman let you down?  Mine never did, so I'm genuinely curious if there's some reliability or performance issue I don't know about before I keep recommending it to people.

[geoff_hartwell]

6s&7s: I’ve used the Loop station rc20xl since it came out and works best for me. It’s a great practice and teaching tool, I used it for all classes and seminars at the NGW. In general though, I now only use loopers for live acoustic shows so I don’t need computer connectivity or anything like that. And I also scrupulously avoid the “one man band” approach to looping (layering too many layers).

Ive done 200 nights a year for 19 years. Not all with the loop station, but that’ll give you an idea where I’m coming from.

I bought a digitech Jamman (the blue one that has two pedals) as a comparison and did not like it. There were inconsistencies with the travel of the pedal when operating, and glitches in the 99 program locations. You will find out, exact loop points become very important. The digitech seemed to be trying  to bridge the gap between live gear and recording software, and my experience is to keep them separate. Honestly, for practice, looping mp3 sections in GarageBand is ridiculously easy, or just get Tempo app so you can easily loop and slow down sections for study. But for real life use, the Boss wins for me.

As I stated, I need a rugged pedal that works easily and consistently. I only had to replace the first one after about 15 years because I left the batteries in it over time and they exploded, killing the insides and I bought another one on eBay for about a hundred bucks.

[alantig]

On 5/22/2018 at 10:45 PM, zorrow said:

 

Please guys, PM me pics and how much you want for them. In the meanwhile, I’ll check for reviews of those two models online. Thanks in advance!

Pics coming tonight...

[BubbaVO]

So what did you end up going with?

[zorrow]

On 12/3/2018 at 1:58 PM, BubbaVO said:

So what did you end up going with?

The Digitech. But got distracted by something else and have not given any love to it so far. It’s however cool your reminder. Let’s see what I can do about it...  

[BubbaVO]

1 hour ago, zorrow said:

The Digitech. But got distracted by something else and have not given any love to it so far. It’s however cool your reminder. Let’s see what I can do about it...  

I tried to do some research since my daughter, a keyboard player, is interested in getting a looper.  I envision her wanting something that can mush loops together to create a single loop or keep track of a whole bunch of loops - essentially a one girl band.  Would the Digitech do that?

[kizanski]

I have my sites set on one of these.

[zorrow]

2 hours ago, BubbaVO said:

I tried to do some research since my daughter, a keyboard player, is interested in getting a looper.  I envision her wanting something that can mush loops together to create a single loop or keep track of a whole bunch of loops - essentially a one girl band.  Would the Digitech do that?

Frankly, I don’t know. In spite of being a professional IT guy, I’m a minimalist and tend to underuse complex gear. I haven’t explored my looper enough to answer to your question properly —sorry, bro.  

[JES1680]

Check out the Digitech Trio it's a very fun pedal once you get the hang of it. Does loops but also drums and bass. Amazing that it can get the key right and then you have many options for drums. For me I like it more than my Jam Man, but the Jam Man has a usb port so you can download backing tracks from the interwebs and store them on the SD card. 

[sixesandsevens]

On 12/5/2018 at 1:31 PM, kizanski said:

I have my sites set on one of these.

It's a cool, if minimal looper...

 

But man, oh man,...  That's like the _least_ of the reasons to get that pedal.  It's _so_ good.

[sixesandsevens]

On 12/5/2018 at 11:30 AM, BubbaVO said:

I tried to do some research since my daughter, a keyboard player, is interested in getting a looper.  I envision her wanting something that can mush loops together to create a single loop or keep track of a whole bunch of loops - essentially a one girl band.  Would the Digitech do that?

The Boss models definitely do.  The Boomerang III does.  The Infinity does as well.  For the one-girl-band thing make sure it can do loop quantization, where one loop sets the base unit of the loop length and the others are all multiples of it (e.g. 2x, 4x).  That means your timing only needs to be spot-on for the first loop. 

@geoff_hartwell hit on a point that I make over and over again in these threads: What most loopers are trying to do is be a one-foot recording studio.  The reason they're all so different is that they prioritize very different things to do and not-do in that process to get it down to a few stomps, one at a time.  It's about as far away from "a thousand tube screamers to choose from" as you can get, so the shopping can be a bit brain-bendy. 

[shankyboy]

I have the TC Ditto and it works great. I just use it for practicing but a friend of mine, who is a touring musician, uses it all the time when he is doing solo or duo gigs. Great price and simple to use. 

[sixesandsevens]

20 hours ago, gtrdaddy said:

For one-man band stuff the Boss RC-20 and RC-30 are very capable and are a lot of fun. If you want to go crazy with it, check out the RC-505:

The older RC 50 is pretty incredible too, and can be picked up on the cheap if you look hard enough.

I like how they clearly just reused the housing from some EDM/trance synth. 

Regarding Strymon, I recall there being a lot of reports of folks who actually preferred some of the flexibility of the El Cap to the dTape mode in the Timeline, so buyer beware.  I loved all the tape age controls and the different settings for how the heads work on the El Cap.  

[sixesandsevens]

3 hours ago, gtrdaddy said:

I had an El Cap, and I’ve currently got a Timeline. In tape mode It does everything the El Cap does with the only exception being selection of heads, Timeline has all of the other features including Crinkle and Tape Age. With the added versatility that timeline provides with all of the other delay modes it offers in addition to the Tape mode, I think unless the “Head” options are important to one, the Timeline is a no-brainer.

Good to know!  For me the reverb was a nice plus since I don't have a board, per se, and was using the EC on a mixer bus.  I ended up switching modes a lot, but as the former owner of an M13, I definitely get why some would prefer one box that does most of the tricks to a more focused pedal. 

[soli'd]

I've been thru a lot of them, mostly used for practice and some composition- IME it's hard to play with one live unless you're synced to a click with the drummer.

I have gotten the most utility by far from the Digitech Trio+.  It has generated more song ideas than any other writing process I've tried.  It can also just act as a simple one-button looper.