Can anyone recommend a good looper?

[Steve Conner]

Hi all

I'm working on a live set that is built up on the fly from loops. I started out using Ableton Live, but my laptop has started bluescreening randomly, and it's too old to be worth troubleshooting. (and can barely run Live even when it's working )

I was thinking of getting a Boss RC-20XL:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep0...bossrc20xl.htm

since I saw a friend using one and was quite impressed. It also seems to be a fairly good match to the technique I was using with Live. But I'm wondering if there are any similar stompboxes out there that might be better. In particular, I heard the Line6 Echo Pro also functions as a looper, has anyone tried that?

TIA, steve

[delb]

looper

i researched a bunch of phrase loopers for use in a live setting and for the money the one i settled on is the Digitech JamMan, it is loaded with fearures and can be loaded with memory cards and other hardware such as drum lines bass ect, almost anything, it also features an XLR mic input ,it is easy(i think) to use and i ordered mine with the footswitch(35$), it was highly recommended by a couple of companies i have delt with in the past,Tonefactor and pro guitar shop, I havn't gotten mine yet but feel pretty confident that it will be cool, i am not very good with electronic devices but this seems like even i can work it, i will post another reply after i check it out, it is reasonably priced for all the features ,but does not have stereo- outs, i don't think that matters much, but they are mono only, oh it has the lexicon chip and that is supposed to be the one to get, hope this helps, it is around $300 new.

[Steve Conner]

Hmm, I found a review of the Digitech JamMan here:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr0...techjamman.htm

I don't plan to use pre-recorded backings, so it seems like the extra memory of the Jam Man's CF card might be wasted on me, since it can't be written to on-the-fly while the unit is playing.

[Jag]

I answered a different post on this yeasterday. The long and short is, I'm new to loopers but returned a Boss RC-2 in favor of the JamMan. The RC-2 was great as a small footprint looper with basic functionality but I found that the JamMans extra features really expanded the usefulness of the pedal. BTW, with the RC-2, I had added an extra footswitch which negated the small footprint aspect of the RC-2.

I also considered the RC-20 but, in side by side comparisons, I thought the JamMan had a warmer sound. The JamMan's feature set was a little bit broader than the RC-20 and the ability to expand the memory with cards was a plus. BTW, my understanding is that the JamMan uses the memory card for on-the-fly recording as well as prerecorded loops. That would mean that installing a larger card gives you longer record times althougth I haven't tested that since I don't use prerecorded loops and the stock peadl gives me more than enough record time. Overall, I think the JamMan is better than the RC-20 but they are comperable.

If you want very simple operation and a small footprint, check out the RC-2 but it is fairly limited. I found the single pedal operation of the RC-2 to be difficult and after adding an external pedal the small footprint aspect was lost.

[Jag]

BTW, I looked at the EchoPro as well but didn't want something rack mounted. I also think I might ultimately find 60 seconds of record time to be too short.

I have an Eventide TimeFactor which also has a looper function but is limited to something like 12 seconds.

[GibsonLover]

+1 on the RC-20XL. It's what I have, though I went into it blind without a lot of looking around. You can download the manual for specific questions, but sound-on-sound, switching loops during performance, and controlling tempo in real time are all cool hands-free features. The Spec section does not say what the bandwidth is, though it sounds like the Boss typical 10KHz to me. Therefore I feel it's best suited for sampled rhythm stuff over some synth samples that may need more high end to sound live. 16 minutes of loop time is TOTAL time for 11 savable slots. I like it because it's kind of a Plain Jane feature-wise and eBay was my friend that day :-)

[Suburbanite]

I've been using a rc2 for over a year, and although I'm soon upgrading to the rc50 the rc2 has been perfect for live work, a great trick with this is to get a bypass pedal and put the loop pedal in that loop (looper's and loop's) that means you can turn off the loop in one stomp or just turn off the loop while it's still playing and bring it back in, great to pick out a vocal line and carry on without having to start at the beginning of the loop. only reason I'm upgrading is to be able to use 3 loops at the same time so I can drop the bass out or in or reverse it and still have a main loop running, oh and to record trumpet stabs, but I'll still keep the rc2 on the board. I play a lot of Ska so you can imagine the scope for bass lines. have fun

[Steve Conner]

Cool beans. Have you got any recordings online I could listen to?

I got the laptop working again, so Live with a home-made foot controller is back as a contender:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/0...ring-required/

I've never figured out how to use Live as a looper solely from a MIDI foot board. There don't seem to be any MIDI bindings for commands like "Delete this clip and immediately start recording a new one". But the approach with a hacked USB keyboard and Autohotkey seems to do exactly what I want.

(You can convert data from a MIDI footboard to keystrokes with Bome's MIDI Translator, but I already have a few sets of USB keyboard guts waiting to be turned into a footboard.)

[Suburbanite]

That looks sweet, great Idea, I've got access to these broken extra large keyboards that were designed for disabled kids that might work out well...
theres a couple of tracks on my myspace site but they are a few years old and pre looping... you'd think that having a recording setup would mean I might record myself

www.myspace.com/mattdaley,

got some live recordings I should put up when I'm not being lazy.

[BTBAM]

I do solo music and rely heavily on looping.

I have looked into several loopers and its really hard somestimes because of what others offer that different ones don't.

I settled on the combo of the rc-20xl and the line6 dl-4.

Now, from my experience one of the best pedal form loopers out there is the ehx 2880, because it has multi tracks, double time, reverse, lots of cool features.

Only problem is you can't save things like you could on the rc-20 and jamman for later use.

I always tell people the rc-20 or rc-2 are the way to go, but it really depends on what kind of looping you want.

I save things in the rc-20, can edit/undo, and reverse.

The dl-4 has interesting start/stop times, and can double/halftime/reverse loops.

really fun stuff.

Here are some videos I made about how I use loopers if you are interested:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...75880014423494
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICBxSRHKGk

[stevenk]

nothing but happy

I have been using (an ever increasing amount of) dl4's and rc2's 20's and 50's for the last few years and love them.

found this site today and am excited to explore and see what others are doing

www.myspace.com/thecloudsbelow

[bnwitt]

Wow! I can't believe no one mentioned Acid Pro. It is the defacto looping program and has never blue screened any of my computers I've used over the years. I know you said stomp box, but you'll get a lot more versatility with Acid Pro.

[banksyfan]

RC20! Seen many bands use these live to great effect. I own one myself.

[Suburbanite]

Just bought a korg chaos pad 3, a lot of fun and its gonna be tricky to use live (so far using big toe) but I think it'll be worth it- four independent loops in either 1-2-4-8-16 bars or just one time hits, and you can bounce on the fly and control tempo/pitch accuratly enough for a time/key change, need to get a rc 20 so I can link them up via midi for the time clock, and may look into seeing if I can use a midi controller for some functions, great fun and a lot of potential and with the different set loop times you can build up on loops on stage and get into the meat of a song a lot quicker, plus the effects are alot of fun too. down side is I need three di boxes for my "acoustic guitar"

[Steve Conner]

Just an update on this: I've had a loan of a Boss RC-20XL from a friend for a couple of weeks, and it's been great fun so far.

Good luck trying to work a Kaoss pad with your toes! If you succeed, you must shoot some Youtube clips for us

bnwitt: If you're still reading this thread, how do you work Acid Pro with foot pedals?

I experimented with Ableton some more, and it turns out I only need one footswitch, operating the Return key. I can do everything else by taking one hand off the guitar, but Return needs to be pressed with precision timing while playing. Currently working on a "USB Return Footswitch"...