There’s a great in-depth comparison and review of four different looping pedals over at Guitar Player right now, and reading through it made me realize just how far the whole technology of looping has come since I first messed around with it in a very primitive form nearly two decades ago.
The pedals covered here include the Electro-Harmonix 2880, DigiTech’s JamMan, the Boomerang Boomerang+, and BackLine’s RiffBox––all very capable pieces of machinery, though the 2880 appears to be the real stand-out for live performance, MIDI integration, and reverse looping.
While my experimental days are pretty well passed, reading this piece really got me itching for some new toys… with features like MIDI slaving, CompactFlash storage, Stereo I/O, and the now ubiquitous USB support, the entire landscape of looping looks wide open.
Things have come a long way since my early days playing the guitar––back when a 16-second delay was considered the holy grail of modern effects, and a pre-CBS Strat still cost less than a house.
Anybody out there using a looping pedal? I’d be interested to hear what you’re using, and how you like it.
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June 21st, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Thats funny, I was just looking up looping pedals today.
I don’t have one, but I have wanted one for a long time. Mainly I just want something that I can quickly lay down a rhythm track on and set it to loop infinitely so that I can jam over top of it.
I know a lot of 2 guitar metal riffs too so it would be sweet to record the one part and play the other part over it.
Another feature I want would be to be able to interface with a computer or download your loops to the computer to share, but I think that is pretty common feature these days.
Thats a great article, thanks Cary.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I use the Boss RC-20 Loop Station. I’ve had a ball with it. It may not compare to some of the newer offerings, but it’s a great sketchpad for soloing and seems to offer limitless time to record (16 minutes I believe, much longer than most). It probably degrades my tone ever so slightly, but the bedbugs don’t seem to complain.
Great blog, btw. Just stumbled on it.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Don, thanks for the clip, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available any more. I’ll see if I can find it manually on YouTube.