Stereo looper pedals - which ones split wet/dry (loop/live)?

[jamesmafyew]

This is long and overly specific, but I've read tons of threads on tons of forums and only come up with contradictions and misinformation, and checking various instruction manuals isn't turning up what I need.

I need a looper stompbox for live overdubbing. I've never used a looper before. I'm the only guitar player in my band and I currently use two amps - a stage left (amp A) that sends from its FX loop to the stage right amp's (amp B) FX return. So the preamp tone from amp A goes to both amp A and amp B power amps. Right now I have a 100% wet 7ms delay between amp A and amp B, to give a little bit of a stereo effect playing live.

I want to incorporate live looping into this setup, with the looper pedal in between amp A and amp B. Because amp A is only sending, it will be dry all the time and unaffected by the looper. What I want is for amp B to be "100% wet", that is, only play the loop, so that it sounds like two guitar players while I'm looping. But then I want to be able to switch it off and have both amps playing unison again... then record a new part on the fly and toss it to amp B again, rinse/repeat.

So I don't really need a stereo loop pedal, just a loop pedal that will do 100% wet mix on the output and not let any of the live sound through, but then go to bypass when it's off. Make sense? But I don't think any of the simple mono loopers (like the RC-2) can actually do this.

Seems like a stereo looper would maybe do it... sending dry stuff left and loop right, or something. So I could use the effected side and not the dry side to get what I want. But I've looked through instruction manuals for the RC-2, RC-20XL, JamMan Stereo, Headrush, etc., and can't tell how they route signal.

I know the EH 2880 will do what I need, but it's $$$ and requires an outboard pedal controller... way over the top for the simple functionality that I need.

Does anyone have experience with loopers that can split the dry and loop signals to separate outputs, or achieve 100% wet mix on a mono output? I'd rather not add an A/B box if at all possible, just the stompbox. Minimal tap-dancing and small footprint preferred.

Thanks for reading all that and for any advice you can give!

[jamesmafyew]

Just to follow up on this, I found there are two pedals that will do what I want: the DD-7 and DD-20, neither of which are actually looper pedals. Interesting.

[Steve Conner]

I've always struggled with getting loopers to work. I borrowed a few to try, but they never seemed to have quite the right combination of features.

I figured out that my perfect looper would be a laptop running Ableton Live, with a footswitch made out of the guts from a USB keyboard. I never got round to making the footswitch, but even by letting go of the guitar and prodding the keyboard, I found that Ableton did what I wanted better than any looper pedal I had tried. Probably the "Light" version would be plenty good enough.

[DrZohm]

Doesn't anyone need to use a looper with just the wet output (no original signal)?

I have a Digitech Looper where you cannot turn off the dry signal (original guitar signal) and I wish the wet output only. I don't know yet if the dry signal moves through the looper in analog mode but, if so, it could be switched (possibly). Does anyone have a schematic for the Digitech Jamman looper?

[DrZohm]

Answer to Jamman Looper with Loop Only Output

Well, I finally bit the bullet and traced through the part of the section that contained the output circuitry (no, it's not fun) and located the mixer op-amp where the Dry and Loop and Click signals are combined and desoldered the 10k surface mount summing resistor (R161) and verrrrry carfully soldered in a 1/16 watt radial on the summing side leaving the other side open, soldered a wire to that and another wire to the input side of the original resistor, fed the wires out (temporarily until I drill a hole in the upper face plate) where the memory card is, and it works beautifully. The switch has an 18mb resistor across it to maintain a dc path when the switch is open (to avoid pops). I might also add an LED to show the loop output near the loop level pot.
Now I have my looper feeding into a separate mixer channel. Tried it yesterday at rehearsal (Pezband) and it worked great.
If someone needs the partial schematic of the output section to do the same, I'll post it. Remember, the circuit is very small. The surface mount resistor to be removed is about 1mm long. I did much of my work under a binocular microscope using the smallest soldering iron tip and a surface mount hot air tool.