So I’ve never owned a looper and maybe I’m just having a bad case of GAS but I’ve been feeling like a looper pedal would be a fun addition to my rig lately. I’m thinking it would be really cool to have one with at least two channels (the more the better) and sending the outs to different pedals to get some nice live tweaking going on.
I’m trying to pare down to only the OP-1 and Tempest (never thought I’d learn to love the Tempest more than my Elektron stuff) and thinking a looper would give me an extra layer of sound possibilities while freeing up my hands to work on the Tempest. I’m mainly thinking of feeding the OP-1 into it and maybe some pads/atmospherics from the Tempest.
I’ve been considering the following:
Electro-Harmonix 45000 – Love the interface but there’s no undo which I’d really like.
Boomerang – Full featured, plenty of tracks, limited sample time and no saving.
Pigtronix Infinity – Two stereo tracks, requires another pedal for undo, interface seems a bit convoulted.
Anyone have any experience with any of them? Really just looking to get an idea of how you’re using loopers since most examples out there are guitar-centric.
Also wondering if looper pedals fade or zero cross on the loop start/end points to avoid the OP-1 style clicks and pops.
Loopers are great. The limitations of a single loop track can be very inspiring. I currently use loopy on my iPad. Loopers work great for any audio source. I use the ditto/loopy for way more than just my guitar. I really wish I could control the op1 tape controls with midi. The op1 could be a very amazing looper. It already almost is.
I recently borrowed a dittox2 and productivity went up immediately as I seem to be less into programming things rather than just start playing and see where it goes. Now I’m in the market too and I’d like two separate stereo tracks - decoupled timing wise … so far I only discovered the boomerang which can do that… I’d appreciate if any owner could chime in should there be any other devices which can do that… also I’m not sure how midi is implemented? do loopers with midi quantize punch in/out? cheers
For me there is only 1 looper that I ever got on with, the Electrix Repeater, by no means perfect but much like the OP1 it is an instrument that will lead you to paths less trodden,quite hard to find and can be expensive, the memory cards have to be hi-spec industrial cards with hitachi chipset, and the noisefloor is a little high compared to modern DAWs, but it is the most hands on and creative looper by far, and that is why it is still sought after, you can send each track to its own output if you wish, and it can hold 99 loops each with 4 tracks, so you could easily do a whole liveset with it, each track has a dedicated fader so you can get a lot of mileage from a 4 track loop.
Oh forgot to mention is has midi too, so lots of fun to be had syncing it or controlling using midi, if you do end up getting one and want the latest OS hit me up as I have it (quite hard to find) and it adds a lot of midi stuff like chromatic play.
The other thing I love about it is the timestretch, it sounds quite incredible when recording at say 130bpm, then dropping the tempo to 1bpm, glitchy and a bit granular.
The other cool thing is you can slip tracks, which means that you can move them relative to how they were recorded in relation to the other tracks, also you can transpose, reverse each track individually and in realtime if you so wish.
Thanks for the info @darenager, I keep hearing people talk aout the Repeater as the ultimate looper. Looks like they do pop up on eBay. My only complaint is that its not available as a pedal since I have a bit of a thing for the stompbox formfactor. Those individual outs are pretty great. Plus Midi thru would be a real nice feature. Would be fantastic if someone made the modern version of the Repeater in a pedal.
@unflattered – That Boss pedal keeps coming up and has some nice features. I know this will make me sound like a snobby aesthete but I just hate the looks of it. Maybe if I see it in person I’d warm up to it.
I keep coming back to the EHX 45000 since the mixer/no-nonsense 4 track layout sort of makes sense to me. The problem is I suck at playing in time so the lack of an undo, which seems a GLARING omission on a $450+ device, might be a deal breaker for me.
@tasmansea – I’m right there with you on the immediacy of a looper. I easily get bogged down when I have the options of all sorts of programming and futzing with every detail. Just putting down some layers seems to be the way I work best. The results often get scrapped but for pure fun I really like the experimenting that a looper would offer.
i know its not the same as undo, but on the 45000, couldn't u just trash the track and record it again? seems like w/ 4 tracks u'd only be messing something up if u were out of tracks and overdubbing onto an existing one, which might not be that often depending on what your doing w/ it. u can also mixdown & free up some tracks too.
@tasmansea
not too many loopers have midi, only a handful of them, and they are mostly expensive.
ehx 2880/45000, electrix repeater, that other crazy rack one the echoplex, the big boss ones, pigtronix i think does too. there might be a few more, but they are mostly geared towards live playing and guitarists and stuff.
the small digitech ones have a sync jack that u can sync to other digitechs, i don't know too much about it, but wonder if u could sync it to something like a volca?
for me, i really dig that lofi junky. really inspiring looper
@docshermsticks – I think you’re probably right that with the 45000 and its four tracks there’s enough wiggle room that an undo isn’t totally a necessity. The stereo bouncedown track is pretty nice as well. But now you have me looking at the Lo-Fi Loop Junky. Wow! I love the sounds on it. Been watching YouTube videos. It may be a little too basic for what I’m looking at but the effect sounds awesome. Hmmm…45000 plus an Instant Lo-Fi Junky? Dammit, I was supposed to be paring down.
@unflattered – It’s just that Roland/Boss green and red lights, black plastic motif that I’m not a fan of. Obviously taste is totally subjective and people really seem to like the pedal. I’ll still be checking it out further since it’s really chock full of features and does everything I’d want out of a looper. I try to give my business to small makers when possible though I do love my old Boss FZ-3.
You keep throwing me off by saying “pedal”. The 505 is designed for vocals & other “tabletop” inputs. In any case, its features & functionality are legion.
Let’s face it, roland are a thousand miles south south East of anything decent but Boss (!) are hitting a homer with the RC-505… It looks like a Robocop sex toy but underneath the achingly shite design it packs a seriously usable looper, great fx and DAW compatible (sync, import/export and sound card).
Read the manual, read it and decide…
i like longer loop lengths, so if i'm locking up to bars. i usually do atleast an 8 bar loop on my tape. i usually start w/ 1 thing laid down that helps me keep the tempo.
sometimes i copy and paste that a bunch of times, so I can ghost jump around to different things or start over, etc.
if i'm not locking to bars, i just let it fly and press the loop end button when i want to end my loop.
seems to work good for me. i don't run into the zero crossing issue that alot of ppl complain about here, very often.
i usually try to end my playing before the loop starts over so that whatever i'm playing is atleast starting to fade out.
but even the best laid plans don't always work out, (sometimes you start playing your next thing in the middle of hte loop but u weren't aware)
i also am not that big of a stickler for clicks and pops (monome + MLR made me this way haha) so maybe i just don't notice it as often.
@unflattered – Yeah man, sorry, I just keep saying “pedal” since in my mind I’m thinking of it along the lines of a effects unit. I’m checking out the specs on it and it is a beast. The 5 stereo channels and the little screen to pull up stored loops sounds awesome. I still hate how it looks but it has everything I’d want out of looper.
Are the effects any good? How does the build quality feel?
