Impulse Buy of the Day

[syo]

I've had a loop playing in my head off and on that tells me to buy a looper. So today, after uncharacteristically (for me) doing no research whatsoever, I one-clicked at Amazon a Digitech JamMan Solo. It happened so fast that it surprised even me.

So, can anyone out there tell me if this is a decent impulse buy (if so, why) or not? Do any fretters use one of these? I thought to ask Ch0 as I know he is a bit of a looper fan but the button got to me before I could even re-read some of his threads. Oh well, I'm sure I can make fun with it until I decide I need an a Boss RC-50 instead...

[Ch0jin]

I don't personally know the Solo, but I have a Boss RC-2 and a Boomerang III, (and, my Strymon El Cap does looping, and I have a WIP pedal based on the LoFi Loop Junkie, so yeah I guess I am a looper fan haha) and in my humble opinion, a looper is a 'Must Have' pedal.

Honestly, I don't think you can go wrong with your first looper. The Lo-Fi one I have in development uses a crappy old answering machine chip, so the loops come out a bit AM radio sounding, but it is still heaps of fun!

A tip and a warning. The tip is, always try and have the looper as the last pedal in the FX loop, that way your loops are unaffected by gain, amp channel, pedals anything. I typically want my input to looper as diverse and crazy as I can think up, but I want the output to stay constant.

The warning is, looping is crazy addictive. My Boomerang gives me 4 loop "channels" that are stackable, copy-able and all that, but I often wish I had a few more to play with when I start looping bass, drums, guitars, and turntables all in real time.

[syo]

Thanks ch0.
one thing I do know about the Jamman is that it has an SD slot which is kind of appealing to me for ease of import / export . Otherwise, I would probably opt for Boss as I generally like their products.

Looking forward to playing around with it. I'll let you know how I make out!

Sent from my IS11CA using Tapatalk

[Eric]

I always thought that SD card feature would be a nice one. From what I know of the JamMan series, they're comparable to the Boss loopers. I think most loopers from company to company offer pretty similar performance, but one might have more features you like.

As a counterpoint to Ch0jin's post, I will say that I actually like recording a clean signal (looper at the start of the chain) and having it play back while I dink with pedals and settings and/or models as the case may be. It allows me to play something way I think I would play it normally and then tweak stuff to see how different settings affect the dry signal, and it's also pretty good for exploring different models on a modeling unit. Just another use for it, really.

One thing that kind of surprised me is that loopers don't always play well with every single amp. The Tech 21 TM60 I have generally likes all pedals, but when I try to use a looper and play over top of it on that amp, it gets a little testy and can sound kind of...farty? Point being, I have learned to use two amps if I'm using a looper. Not a problem, just something I had to learn along the way. Alternatively, I suppose I could just use the looper with a different amp but still do everything on one amp, but I find two amps to be kind of fun.

Anyway, congrats on your new purchase. It seems to be about as good of an impulse buy as you could have made.

[syo]

Thanks, Eric, for the congrats on the I.B. (Impulse Buy). Helps me to feel less impulsive and more in control...;)

Farty you say?! I've been after that sound for ages. This wasn't mentioned in any of things I've read on loopers. Jokes aside, I'm looking forward to playing with it, hopefully soon. Noticed after it was too late to cancel that this isn't sold by Amazon but a separate co. on Amazon. Here in Japan we usually get our Amazon purchases next day (definitely if expedited) but individual sellers usually take longer. Guess I should learn to be patient. But then if I do, I probably won't be so impulsive and where's the fun in that? :D

[bcdon]

Happy New Gear Day!! :dude

[Commodore 64]

I had a BOSS RC20XL, that I traded for a Godin guitar, that I traded to Eric for an SX guitar and some pedals. I began to miss the RC-20XL. So I bought a Digitech Jamman complete with the external pedal. I soon learned that all the new, extra stuff I could do with the Digitech was not as cool as the stuff I COULDN'T do with it. Which is auto-start recording when I hit a string and auto-quantize the end when I stop on the pedal, (which the Boss RC-20XL did) . I could not for the life of me figure out how to do that with the Jamman. I consistently wished I had two pedal layout like the Boss, and the external pedal on Digi was beyond useless. It just allowed you to scroll through tracks/loops, which I could never figure out how to save anyways. And I was consistently messing up the sequence of stomps needed to save a loop.
I tried to use the SDcard to load it with songs I wanted to play against, but it was a ginormous PITA and sounded like crap too. You have to load wav files, which I finally did after much trouble, and I was completely underwhelmed when I tried to use that stuff.

I finally got pissed off and sold or traded it, I don't even remember. I may have run it over in my driveway just to teach it a lesson.

Then I began to miss having a looper again...So when I saw someone selling an old RC-20XL at TDPRI, I bought it for $150. And I'm not getting rid of it. All I want to do is easily lay down a few chords to practice scales against. That's it, period. I guess I am sort of a Luddite when it comes to looper pedals.

[Eric]

And I'm not getting rid of it.
Uh huh. Sure. I recall someone repeatedly buying LP guitars and then getting rid of them.

BTW, I think you sold that JamMan on here to guitarhack.

On that note, I miss having my guitar jawn set up, particularly the looper. It was lots of fun, and it helped me explore ideas for leads/solos/assorted wankery and to practice some technique/written solos for any of the musical outlets I had at the time. Someday soon...

[Ch0jin]

@ Eric, Good point about having the looper first. I can't believe I forgot to mention that, given I've posted several FX pedal demo's online doing exactly what you describe. It's an awesome way to demo pedals.

@C64, Dude, you are clearly NOT a Looper Luddite, if you were, you'd have a Boomerang like me. No saving, No quantise, No auto start, No built in beats or anything. Just a bunch of foot switches and awesome sound. :)

Seriously though, the hardest part of transitioning from my RC-2 to the boomerang was giving up quantisation (sp). Without it, you have to punch in and out of loops pretty accurately or the loops sounds clunky. What I don't miss is only having one loop channel. Having four is awesome!

[Commodore 64]

I'm pretty sure the Digitech Jamman is great, I was just to lazy/blockeheaded to figure it out. I certainly think that a looper is a great impulse buy, it makes practicing a lot more fun and useful when you can lay down a quick progression and play scales/patterns/modes whatever against it for a while.

[FrankenFretter]

Congratulations on that impulse buy, Michael. I'd be surprised if you don't have a lot of fun with it.

I've often thought about getting a looper. It seems like a good tool for someone who doesn't have many opportunities to jam with others. But now I look at my pedal board and wonder if I can even fit another pedal in there, once my Large Beaver is on the board. I just keep thinking; I have everything I need...almost...

[Tig]

I have everything I need...almost...

Reminds me of an old song. Here's a Blues Brother's version that is fun that gets going about 35 seconds into it...


http://youtu.be/W9TAFH4Jkvs

[Ch0jin]

Congratulations on that impulse buy, Michael. I'd be surprised if you don't have a lot of fun with it.

I've often thought about getting a looper. It seems like a good tool for someone who doesn't have many opportunities to jam with others. But now I look at my pedal board and wonder if I can even fit another pedal in there, once my Large Beaver is on the board. I just keep thinking; I have everything I need...almost...

Just get one!

If you don't have the opportunity to jam with people, then I'm assuming you don't have to cart your gear around all the time, so you don't really need to mount the looper on your board. When and if you do go jamming with friends, you probably wont use the looper, so just take your board mounted stuff. Problem solved :)

Right now my boomerang -is- board mounted because I took a whole bunch of pedals off my board for my last jam, but when my board is configured for maximum sonic mayhem I have the looper hanging out off to the side with my wah.

[FrankenFretter]

Reminds me of an old song. Here's a Blues Brother's version that is fun that gets going about 35 seconds into it...


Exactly the song I was thinking of when I typed those words, Doug. Good stuff!