Looper Pedals

Gear
1

Background
I’ve been doing research on Loop pedals recently. My son plays guitar and does a lot of looping. For the last 6-9 months he has been really limited by the gear he has so his mom and I put in money to get him one of the new Boss RC-10r Loop Stations. Unfortunately, all of the things I read about online that might make that pedal a bad call, he also had trouble with.

Going into this I knew their might be problems with this pedal and now I need to get my back up plan in order. Mostly I started with the Boss RC-10r because I wanted to play with cutting edge gear and I needed to get a feel for what he really needed/wanted.

As long as you stick with fairly basic loop pedals, they’re pretty straight forward. But, he isn’t doing strait forward looping. His stuff gets layered and complex.

What I’m looking for…
I need a pedal with at least two separate loop channels but if I can get more I would like to have four. If anybody has an EHX 2880, I’m in the market for one.

TC Electronic Ditto x4 has two channels but is kinda old and is missing some expected features like internal memory. It’s a rock solid pedal but is really ready for an update.

Electro-Harmonix had some really cool pedals like the 2880 and the 45000 that both had four loop channels but these pedals are 10+ years old. Even as old gear, the 45000 is out of my price range. The 2880 would have worked but it has been discontinued and finding them on the used market has been tough. The newest EHX loop pedals are simpler single loop devices that don’t fit what I’m looking for.

DigiTech has the JamMan Express XT and the JamMan Solo XT. These are pretty cool since they have a feature called JamSync wich lets you chain them together. So, if you need another loop channel you can buy another pedal and simply add it to the chain. Sounds cool but there’s no way to universally back up your work. Also, these pedals get fine reviews as individuals but finding anyone trying to make the most of this feature hasn’t gotten me anywhere.

Boss has the RC-300 which is supposed to be the most popular, professional loop station in the world. Even used, it comes in at the very edge of my budget. I’m hesitant because, once again, this is 10 (?) year old technology.

There are two or three (?) other companies doing multi channel loopers out there but, from everything I’ve read, they all seem to be suffering from being bleeding edge technology with lots of promises for software and firmware updates in the future.

Where does this leave me?
Loop pedal manufacturers seem to have gone through a time, 10 years ago, where they were making pretty serious loop making work stations. Then, customers seem to have asked, “Can’t I just get a simple loop pedal?” So that was what they started making. Now, interest seems to have swung back the other way (I blame Ed Sheeran) and companies are starting to make the super multi channel loop pedals again but they aren’t quite there yet with having the bugs worked out of their software/firmware.

Final
I haven’t figured out how to resolve all this yet but I do know way more about loop pedals than I need to. As I make my way through trying out different equipment with my son I’ll come back and update this thread with whatever I learn.

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Thanks for the wisdom and the experience here, @eric.kiser!

I have the RC-30 myself. The two pedals make things work out fairly well, but I’m sure there’s a better tool out there. This thing has its own squirrly issues.

Thanks!! It is possible to deep dive into every single teeny tiny corner of this bass universe! I love it when we diversify our resources and have different people out there focusing in different areas.

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@Gio Thanks for the kind words.

I don’t think I can claim real wisdom and experience. It was more about spending a few months doing deep research. I’m still missing a lot of practical experience.

The RC-30 loop stations are well respected. Depending on what squirrly issues your having you could check your firmware version. The last version was 1.6.

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I know you are looking for something specific, but given the generic thread title I’m going to say I’ve been hankering for one these - Mooer Groove Loop : Mooer Groove Loop - Sound Demo (no talking) - YouTube

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@matthew Absolutely, everybody is invited to play along. My long post just meant to be a conversation starter. I’m glad to see what other people are using or thinking about using.

That Groove Loop pedal is pretty cool and it’s packing so much in such a small package. If I was buying for myself, instead of my son, I would definitely go for something like that.

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I never came back to this topic, like I said I would.

What I ended up getting my son was this…
Boss RC-10R Rhythm Loop Station Pedal | Sweetwater

There were some problems with the firmware at the time (it had just come out) and was too fiddly for him.

We ended up returning it and he got this…
Electro-Harmonix 1440 Stereo Looper Pedal | Sweetwater and a floor model Alesis SR-16 drum machine.

He never got along with the EHX 1440 because he was trying to use it in tandem with his other loop pedal to try and get control of the loops the way he wanted to. It never worked out. With different manufacturers you have to learn to hit the pedals slightly different to record your loops and going back and forth between became frustrating. That doesn’t even get into the fact that using three unconnected digital sources (2 loop pedals and a drum machine) that would fall out of sink with each other and it would just sound like crap.

I could have bought some MIDI cables to connect them all together but the frustration had already set in.

So, the EHX 1440 now sits dusty on a shelf but he has enjoyed the drum machine.

In the end, I found out what he really wanted was this…
Electro-Harmonix 45000 4-Track Looper Pedal | Sweetwater It does everything he wants out of a loop pedal. Also, it’s almost $650 if you get the foot pedal with it.

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Did you ever look at the Aeros loop studio? Not cheap but it’s pretty amazing. Goes well with a beat buddy.

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Yes, I did but this thread is two years old. I think they were really new at the time and still in the process of promising great features to come. Also, about twice the budget I had at the time.

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Yes it’s pretty pricey, you have to be pretty dedicated to live looping. I’d much rather use a laptop for that stuff.

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Tbh. Ableton (even Lite version) with two mapped pedals is really good for looping. I used it for drum loop recording and it worked like a charm.

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Boss loopers are quite good imo. I didn’t like that RC-10R either but the Boss RC-500 seems more versatile and ofc you have the king of loopers Boss RC-505.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC500pedal--boss-rc-500-loop-station-compact-phrase-recorder-pedal
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC505Mk2--boss-rc-505-mk2-loop-station-tabletop-looper

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Dumb question …

What is the benefit of using these loopers than simple Garage Band?

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You don’t need a computer to do loops, you can easily use them in a live setting.

Here is an example what you could do with a looper:

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Also loopers are a bit more common while playing guitar. It’s just for good fun. I personally am perfectly fine with the TC Electronics Ditto looper.

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And another

Keep in mind all that sound is coming from just one person.
Loop stations can turn you into a one man band.

Of course, if you can not afford the money for a good looper, you could just turn yourself into a human loop station. Watch this and be amazed.

And you thought Billie Jean in the B2B course was difficult :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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+1 this was my first looper pedal. Relatively cheap and works like a charm. Pick them up used all day for not much money.

Upgraded later to an RC 3 because it had a built in drum machine.

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I just went straight to the RC-30 because of the 3 hours of recording time.
Sadly Boss discontinued it.

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@Paul I looked at the Boss tabletop loopers as well. That RC-505 is pretty cool and pretty pricey.

@jpartogi I think it’s about ‘work flow’ as much as anything. How are you comfortable, as a musician, creating and get your ideas out there and recorded. I fully expect to see the computer take over the place of the looper and plenty of other duties in live shows as we move forward.

For example, most multi effects are just specialized computers and software that is trying to bridge the gap between what can be done with computers using traditional instruments in a live setting. Then you get into products like Ableton Live and using triggers for virtually anything.

Some of it also comes to down to ‘barrier of entry’. Meaning, how much do I have to learn to do this thing I want to do. Do I learn a piece of complex software or do I spend a $100 and plug in this little pedal and get going.

Yeah, either the Ditto or a Zoom B1Four is probably more than enough for any bass player. A lot of the high end loopers I was looking at in the original post were well beyond anything I would buy for myself.

@Celticstar Oh yeah. James Hill is pretty amazing. No looper needed.

Yes, it had already been discontinued 2 years ago. Lots of people loved that pedal. I never understood why they didn’t just put out an updated version.

My favorite, at this point, is the Boss RC-1. Sturdy, not too expensive, and it has the visual display for seeing you loop coming around for timing purposes. I am talking out my butt on this since I don’t have one and the light ring may just be an unnecessary gimmick.

For those of you that use the B1Four for looping, what do you think of it?

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He was/is a high school music teacher from British Columbia, Canada.

I have been to several of his workshops over the years and he was saying, at one of them, that it took him 7 months, of several hours a day practicing, to put that version of Billie Jean together. Again practice, patience and time.

I do not think that the average individual realizes what goes on behind the scenes to get a song to a level that others enjoy the performance of. I’ll bet you @howard @Gio and few others here on the forum do though :slightly_smiling_face:

For me I enjoy the challenge and before Covid was spending 18-20 hours a week to get the lead sheets to a level that everyone was happy with. :+1:

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I’ve done a lot of agonizing over songs but not to the level that that guy pulled off with that Billie Jean performance :slight_smile:

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