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Loop/Sampler Pedal Pecommendations?

#24
I got an RC-2 last week, still need to spend some time with it but I really like it so far. :)

I've only gotten one chance to use it "live" at a jam last week, seems simple enough. Our blues group has been without a guitarist lately so I wanted something to help liv'en up things a bit. Playing something like "Standing On Shaky Ground" or "Louie Louie" for example, it was very simple to throw down a simple bass line and have fun with some licks over top of it.

Practicing alone, the drum tracks are fun to work with, and the unit has tremendous potential for solo work, especially with the ability to load and save samples of pre-recorded tracks.

I do think I'll need to pick up an external pedal (FS-5U maybe?) to be able to "tap tempo" on the fly. Very awkward to try to stoop down for such things while playing with a live drummer, so there's that.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

BossRC21.jpg
 
#25
Hi, please help me. I need a live friendly looper that A) doesn’t loose tone B) wont loop off beat C) has tap tempo control. I use a DD-7 now but my drummer has a real hard time following it if I end the loop just a hair off beat. Boss says the RC-2 has “Loop Quantize” for perfect loop timing, could this fix my dilemma? Does the Headrush have something similar?
 
#28
No one has mentioned the Digitech Jamman.
I'm assuming there is a very good reason why and I'd like to know please.

I was thinking about getting the Jamman because of the ability to store up to 99 samples on it. I think it would be great to throw in a sample in the middle of a song or have some already built loops on it.

So why does no one use this piece of equipment? Please please tell me.
 
#29
Hector_G said:
No one has mentioned the Digitech Jamman.
I'm assuming there is a very good reason why and I'd like to know please.

I was thinking about getting the Jamman because of the ability to store up to 99 samples on it. I think it would be great to throw in a sample in the middle of a song or have some already built loops on it.

So why does no one use this piece of equipment? Please please tell me.
Click to expand...

I can only speak for myself. I wanted something for live use (like the OP) and originally bought the Akai E2 Headrush...then started thinking about saving loops, samples..etc. I returned the Headrush for a Jamman. It's a cool piece of gear, but my timing sucked with with the foot switches on the jamman. Also once I finished a loop and hit save, there was this milisecond write delay. You can only undo the last track, I prefer the on-the-fly editing of the Headrush. For my needs as a live looper, the Headrush won out - ymmv
 
#30
phillm47 said:
I can only speak for myself. I wanted something for live use (like the OP) and originally bought the Akai E2 Headrush...then started thinking about saving loops, samples..etc. I returned the Headrush for a Jamman. It's a cool piece of gear, but my timing sucked with with the foot switches on the jamman. Also once I finished a loop and hit save, there was this milisecond write delay. You can only undo the last track, I prefer the on-the-fly editing of the Headrush. For my needs as a live looper, the Headrush won out - ymmv
Click to expand...

Ah, very good reason. I see. Well I'd better start reading up on the Headrush. Really gotta start comparing the two looper's features.

As far as sound quality though, what did you think? How is the bypass? I heard it's not too great, and for this reason I was going to put it into a true bypass loop.

Sorry about the hijacking.
 
#31
Hector_G said:
Ah, very good reason. I see. Well I'd better start reading up on the Headrush. Really gotta start comparing the two looper's features.

As far as sound quality though, what did you think? How is the bypass? I heard it's not too great, and for this reason I was going to put it into a true bypass loop.

Sorry about the hijacking.
Click to expand...
By pass is just o.k. IMO. Feature wise, I imagine the headrush has the least. I guess it depends are your needs. I would say use plastic, get the ones your interested in and try them, return what you don't want. To be fair, give all the units a couple of days of use to truly see what works for you.
 
#33
Hoover said:
I can't think of any product where this isn't the performer's responsibility.
Click to expand...

The quantize feature on some loopers like the Boss ones will "correct" your timing to a small extent. There are also loopers that you can set the bpm or a MIDI signal so it will loop to that exact timing.
 
#35
Bryan R. Tyler said:
The quantize feature on some loopers like the Boss ones will "correct" your timing to a small extent. There are also loopers that you can set the bpm or a MIDI signal so it will loop to that exact timing.
Click to expand...

But it's still the performer's responsibility to start & end phrases exactly where the looper has decided to quantize to, or else the entire process fails. I don't know of any looping delay that can quantize individual notes within a measure (or sequence of measures), so the only quantizing it's doing is moving the loop point relative to the start point in some absolute time reference which can be completely unrelated to the musical passage the performer has played.

OhulahanBass said:
Does the quantize feature correct your timing to a previously set bpm/tap tempo? If not what does?
Click to expand...

You do. (See above.)

In other words, even if the loop start/end points are perfectly quantized to some metrically rigid atomic clock, if your playing isn't perfectly metronomically precise -- say, if you played the last three notes of the passage a bit behind the beat they're always going to loop behind the beat, & then when the loop restarts it'll sound like a timing glitch.
 
#36
Hoover said:
But it's still the performer's responsibility to start & end phrases exactly where the looper has decided to quantize to, or else the entire process fails. I don't know of any looping delay that can quantize individual notes within a measure (or sequence of measures), so the only quantizing it's doing is moving the loop point relative to the start point in some absolute time reference which can be completely unrelated to the musical passage the performer has played.-

You do. (See above.)

In other words, even if the loop start/end points are perfectly quantized to some metrically rigid atomic clock, if you're playing isn't perfectly metronomically precise -- say, if you played the last three notes of the passage a bit behind the beat they're always going to loop behind the beat, & then when the loop restarts it'll sound like a timing glitch.
Click to expand...

He asked if there's a looper that won't loop off beat. That doesn't mean you won't play off beat :D Playing with perfect timing won't matter much if you can't get your foot to end a loop right on time- quantization, or other features like cued record and cued play that you can find on the Looperlative can make the timing of your stomps not matter, or at least not matter so much.
 
#37
I had the same questions about a month ago, and after reading and checking out various youtube clips, I got the Boss RC-2.

For my very basic, and limited purposes, it's great! I used it live within a day of having it as a solo performance. I used one of the canned beats, laid down a groove, some chords over that, and played some choruses of soloes and the head over that. No problem, and very simple to do.

There aren't a lot of bells and whistles, but it's solid, accurate, and it's great for practice. There's a line-in so you can load in parts of tunes that you want to learn. I'm not sure f you can manipulte the tempo of those line-in loops or not, but thta'd be a great feature too.

For a first pedal, I think it'd be hard to go wrong. Plus, it's the standard size.
 

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