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Ditto Looper mini review, pics & audio

This is a bit geeky but I bought this pedal today, and thought I'd share my first impressions, and post a recording of the first thing I did with it.

The pedal is tiny, and it takes about 1 second to understand how to use it. As you can see from the second pic, the instructions are basically what you see right there, there is nothing else to figure out. It really does nothing more than record your loop, and play it back. For me, if I want anything more complicated, I record to my Mac and mess around with loops there, and I wanted this pedal just for the sole purpose of jamming with myself late at night. For that purpose, it's perfect.

The sound quality, as far as I can tell, is totally unaffected by the looper, and there is no noticeable latency of any kind when in use. In other words, you get exactly what you put in, and exactly at the time you record it. The attached audio file was recorded straight to my Mac using the DI from a Fender Bassman TV15 with an '83 P Bass, with some very old Dean Markley Blue Steel strings, with the tone rolled down to about half way. It's nothing spectacular, literally the first thing that I played, 3 layers of sound in a 1 bar loop, but it should be enough to indicate the instant appeal of this thing.

The cool thing about this is that I came up with this in about half a minute, and then I had it looping for about an hour, in which time I played along on my bass, and some percussion instruments, then made some coffee, came back to it, then played some more, then recorded it, and the simplicity of the whole process meant that this was a really enjoyable experience. I'm used to recording on my computer and generally dealing with audio in software a lot, and the process of starting, stopping, saving files etc can drain your creativity a lot of the time. This pedal is pretty much the opposite of that, it's a very fluid and intuitive way to play and make music.

I'm trying to think of any negatives - the only one I have is that it needs a power supply to work, because it's too small to hold a battery. That's extra cables, which is a pain for me, but I'm sure it won't bother most people. The pedal also has a USB slot for software updates, and this might have been a good opportunity to allow users to transfer files direct to computers, and as far as I know you can not do this. (although I haven't checked).

Overall - cool pedal, I'm definitely keeping it.
 

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Cool appreciate the review and the pictures!

I went to GC and they didn't have any so I bought the Flashback (I've been a long time wanting it) so I'm gonna throw some loops with it til I can get the Ditto later on.
 
Love this thing, my local GC has em here in upstate NY
After seeing Janek Gwizdala demo one one youtube, I had to have one. Crazy simple and fun!

Op is right, you get out what you put in to this baby! Flaws and all! You better come correct when playing into this bad boy.

Would love to see that option to load your loops into and out of the ditto via that USB slot, or even via the TC Toneprints technology somehow. That would just put this lil guy over the top.

+1 to TC, I dream of being an endorser lol
 
It really is an intuitive little pedal.

Er...except for this one little quirk: I have yet to figure out how to flush the loop memory silently while the pedal is in Bypass mode (i.e., loop stored but not playing; green light flashing). It always resumes playback for a second before erasing the loop.

I'm sure there's something in the manual that I've just overlooked, but it's an irritating obstacle to what I would otherwise agree is a very straightforward UI.
 
I don't think there is a perfect solution for this^. However, you can turn down the loop volume with your foot, clear it and then turn it back up to where you like. I'm going to change the knob to be more foot friendly for this and other reasons.

If you're clearing it in between songs or while you're resting mid song, you can mute your board and do it that way too. Of course, that requires the ability to mute post-effects which is not all that common (especially post time effects).
 
I got one of these as a practice tool a few weeks ago. It is truly amazing. I'm able to play the changes to a jazz tune I'm learning,loop them, record a bass line, then listen back to it all and see how it sounds. It'almost like having a mini studio. Very cool little device!