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Topic: Looper pedals: |
Pete Burak
From:
Portland, OR USA
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Posted 19 Aug 2006 7:46 am |
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Anyone Looping?
After borrowing a Boss RC-20 for a few weeks, I picked up a Digitech JamMan last week.
These things are fun!
You can make a loop of a segment of a song, or segment of a rhythm track, or play in a passage of music on guitar or steel, then solo basically till you drop!
What a great tool for learning to play in time, in tune, and to work out several ways to play through a passage, not to mention practicing application of scales over and over in many different ways.
I like that I can easily remove the non-steel sections of many of the rhythm tracks I own (the fiddle, horn, piano, guitar, etc.. solos), and just solo over the steel section (with original steel removed) of the background tracks endlessly.
This one has 99 patches, and up to 6+ hours of memory storage with a 2Meg CF card (the memory card it comes with is a 128Gb 24min card). You can save patches to your computer using the USB out.
Funn Stuff!
~pb
http://www.digitech.com/products/JamMan/JamMan.htm
[This message was edited by Pete Burak on 19 August 2006 at 08:49 AM.] |
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Keith Cordell
From:
San Diego
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 8:51 am
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Yeah there are a few great loopers put there. The Boomerang is the most user friendly, but the footprint is ENORMOUS. Takes up a ton of space.
The Boss RC20 and the new Boss RC50 are great sounding but there are some bugs they are working out that need to be addressed.
The new one that I am interested in is the Akai Headrush; it emulates tape delay, and has 4 amp outs- one for each virtual tape head. The sound we got at the store demoing it was quite surprising, very full and quite nice. We plugged into 4 really cheap practice amps so that made it even more shocking. Biggest surprise? The price is WAAAY lower than you'd think.
The Jam Man is cool and has a lot of great features, but the sound is a bit processed to me, I really dislike the digital-ness (digitality? Digification?) in the tone. Digitech products all share that problem for us analog heads. If they ever get a handle on that they will have a great line of stuff. |
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Cliff Kane
From:
the late great golden state
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 9:45 am
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The Line 6 DL-4 delay modeler pedal has a looper on it. I don't recall how long the loop is (I think the Headrush is longer), but I think it plays the loop in reverse, too. The king of loopers is the Gibson Echoplex (kind of pricey).
Here's a great loopy site: http://www.loopersdelight.com/loop.html
My friend Amy is a very cool "performance artist" out of Oakland, CA, who does live music/sound sculpting with loops.
Check her out: http://www.isproductions.com/amy/ [This message was edited by Cliff Kane on 20 August 2006 at 10:52 AM.] |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 12:42 pm
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| I have a Boss RC20XL that I like a lot. I bought it basically as a practice tool and for the simplicity - I can't ever see myself being one of those pedalboard tapdancers, I get confused enough trying to play the right notes at speed. What Keith said above about the "fidelity" of the Jam Man also applies to the Boss, alas. It tends to compress the signal and squash the frequencies, especially in the bass. It's tolerable when you've got it going through your amp and signal chain, but I don't think you'd ever want to pull a loop directly off the machine to a CD. The other dig is that there's no bypass, it's always on. Of course you can build a bypass for it (and every other darn thing down there); see "tapdancer" comment, above. |
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Pete Burak
From:
Portland, OR USA
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 1:09 pm
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After doing a trial by error balancing act between the loop volume and guitar volume on the JamMan, and input eq/volume on my Stereo Steel, I find I don't have much problem with the fidelity issue for the purposes I am using it for (basically home practice/entertainment).
I don't plan to gig with it (although I'm wondering if I can record a gig with it and dump it to PC using the USB, something I can't do with minidisk).
I look forward to trying some of the other models you guys mention.
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KENNY KRUPNICK
From:
Columbus, Ohio
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 5:57 pm
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Pet, I bought a JamMan,and haven't had a chance to play around withit, but it seems to the oneavailable with the most time you can get out of it time wise.
Do you have a 2G Compact Flash withyours yet? |
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Pete Burak
From:
Portland, OR USA
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Posted 20 Aug 2006 7:41 pm
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Kenny,
I don't have the 2GB card yet, I'm watching for a sale on them, or for one to come up on Craigslist, or maybe a relative has an extra one, or something like that.
It has a microphone in jack, so I was thinking I could record a gig with it (2GB CF=6+ hours of recording) and save it to my PC with the USB out. I understand there is an editing software available too, but haven't followed up on that yet.
For the guys who didn't like the tone, I'm wondering what you are running it through, and if you are using the "Full Range Sim" (which equalizes full-range audio for playback through a “less-than-full-range” guitar amp).
I am running it through my Walker Stereo Steel rig into two JBL PA speakers (12"+horn).
Here is a review of several Loopers I found: http://www.guitarplayer.com/story.asp?storycode=14246
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Twayn Williams
From:
Portland, OR
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Posted 21 Aug 2006 10:55 am
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Live looping is my main artistic discipline, and has been for the last 20 yrs. I'm in the Fripp/Torn/Frisell school of looping. My current loop tool is the Line 6 DL4 (28sec loop time) which I prefer because it acts as a long-line delay. Other loopers available, like the DigiTech JamMan and the Boss units are phrase samplers, which lack the most important requirement for me, which is decay in the loop. With a phrase sampler, each interation of the loop comes back at the same level as it went in. Additional loops stack up but do not fade out. This makes them a fabulous practice tool, and useful on stage for the "one-man-band" thing, but not so good for building large evolving soundscapes.
I eagerly await the new 'Rangn with updated specs and loop time. |
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Pete Burak
From:
Portland, OR USA
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Posted 21 Aug 2006 6:38 pm
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Twayn,
I saw a Bill Frissell and Greg Leitz show where they used that type of looping.
Yes, that was very impressive how they layered and layered, starting with just very short phrases.
They were both using a big green unit with several knobs on top (can't remember the brand).
Now I have to get one of those too?!?!
Hey, please shoot me an email if you are playing locally. I'd like to check out the Looping.
Pete B.
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 21 Aug 2006 10:04 pm
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After reading this thread, I thought a bit and reconnected my Boss RC20XL into the auxiliary send and return jacks on the mixer at the bottom of my rack. It fixed up most of the complaints I had about the thing - now, I can send a processed signal (overdrive, reverb etc.) into the Boss so the loops sound good independant of where I send them, and it has it's own volume control on the mixer. I would still like a magic box that would let me record a guitar track as a loop and send it directly to my steel set-up, without having to think or work or unplug anything... but, I've looked at the setups of people in Guitar Player and at guitargeek.com and it seems as though we're still a few magic boxes away from perfection. http://www.guitargeek.com/
THE $400 HEADPHONE AMP:
 [This message was edited by David Mason on 21 August 2006 at 11:13 PM.] |
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Jay Fagerlie
From:
Lotus, California, USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2006 5:35 am
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I have an Electrix Repeater. Four channel looper with full midi control, memory card, etc.
These were out a few years ago, then went out of production. There are 99 memory locations for each of the four loops, and it's retained in memory when the power is shut off. The smart card is for offloading the loops. It has all sorts of bells and whistles and I only use a few of them. Stereo in/out, digital (SPDIF) out, footswitch control for rec/play/erase last loop. I built the switch myself-no big $$$ footswitch needed, or you can use a midi footpedal and do real whacked out things with it....like slow down/speed up without changing pitch, change pitch, harmonize based on midi note in, etc.
Very feature packed unit, and it sounds great.
They come up on eBay from time to time.
Jay |
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Pete Burak
From:
Portland, OR USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2006 6:37 am
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David, Glad you got the Boss working better.
I didn't think the Boss or the Digi sounded as bad as some reviews, and many reviews say they sound steller, which is closer to my expierience with them (basically, no complaints in the tone dept).
Jay, That Electrix unit sounds cool! I like the idea of a 4-channel Looper. The Boss RC-50 is basically a 3 Channel unit, but after checking one out, it seemed a bit to intense for my needs (and the reviews weren't that great). Maybe the RC-50XL will be better (when it comes out in a year or so?).
I have the patch up/down pedal for the JamMan, and have made a loop of three different chord progression jams using my guitar with a Boss OC-3 in Poly mode (adds an octave below to the 3 bass strings of the guitar). It's been fun switching between the 3 segments and soloing on top of them.
I am going to work on getting my drum machine into the mix (the rhythm presets leave a bit to be desired after a while).
edit: I found this link the Electrix Repeater:
http://www.loopers-delight.com/tools/repeater/repeater.html
[This message was edited by Pete Burak on 22 August 2006 at 07:47 AM.] |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 22 Aug 2006 1:47 pm
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| I think the big difference with the Boss in tone was that instead of plugging a guitar into the "instrument" input, I am sending a balanced, EQ'd, compressed and processed line-level signal into the "microphone" level input. Boss tries to be all things to all people - just buy it, please - but some equipment just behaves more hi-fi if you feed it better meat. |
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