where to get loop stations?

[zany_ama]

hi there. i wonder if anyone can help me with this since the people at yamaha is not helpful at all!! heres the thing... i have never bought any pedals before and am thinking about getting myself a loop pedal or loop station or watever u call it... the thing is.. i went to yamaha a couple of days ago and enquired about loop pedals and they just pointed me towards this glass panel with all these wonderful gadgets in it... like how am i suppose to know which is the loop pedal!??!!?!

so anyway... i am really interested in getting one but i just dunno where!!! i definitely am not going back to yamaha. i dun really haf a specific budget but nothing tooo expensive coz i just want to experiment with it... i was inspired by KT Tunstall and Jamie Cullum's live performance... hahahaha. i heard Boss loop station is great but its very expensive... i dunno... any comment guys? thanx many many!!

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

heh, first of, you gotta tell them the brand and the model you wanna. Not that yamaha not helpful...

loop station or looper in general, is really too general a term, without the brand and model name.

The looper which Kt was using and appeared in some show, is a akai headrush II. It is a delay effect as it mean function while the looping is secondary. It has only about 35 sec of looping time. But its enough for them to loop a phrase and play back when necessary

if you just want a device that looped, without the delay function. The smallest one with plenty of looping time, is the boss rc-2.

For more info, check out Boss pedal website, they have the RC-2, rc20xl and rc 50. All these 3 are for looping purposes only.

Other than boss, digitech also has its own looper, aka the jam man. For more info, google digitech website and see the spec

Electro harmonic has 2880 looper where its like a 4 track recorder in looper format. For more infor, check out electro harmonix site

There are also other brand of looper, but for more common one, are the above boss and digitech one

If you wanna a looper with delay as its main function and looping as secondary, there are also quite a number of product

1) Line 6 dl4
2) boss gigadelay
3) stereo memory man with hazarai
4) Akai headrush II(no dealer locally, gotta order online)

above just some brand of delay/looper where you can find locally, but you have to go to the right shop and let them know which brand and model you wanna.

 

[subversion]

BOSS' RC-2 is a no-frills looping device which is reasonably affordable...

 

[gsonique]

BOSS' RC-2 is a no-frills looping device which is reasonably affordable...

Thats why it sucks ? :???:

 

[vernplum]

I haven't heard that it sucks, but I have heard that it needs to be coupled with a seperate footswitch in order to maximise its usefulness, which makes me wonder why not just get the 2 pedal version... any one care to comment since I am interested in the RC-2 due to its compactness.

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

the rc 2 actually can do lotsa thing for the size and most prolly you cant find any other looper at this size in the market, i wouldnt call it no frills if we are looking at comparison to other looper within some of the delay pedals. It aint die die must get the footswitch to use with it

A typical looper usually will have these function, loop, playpack, overdub and stop.

since the rc2 is in single stompbox format, its really a miracle for boss to pack all the above 4 things in 1 boss pedal size unit. The only problem for it, is that in order to stop your looped sound, you will have to step 2x consecutively on the pedal. In term of people who are used to other looper, this, is an disadvantage. But not that it cant be remedied thru getting use to the format

So with the additional footswitch attach, what you can do is, step one time on rc2, you will loop whatever you wanna. Step 2nd time on the rc2, you will playback the looped part, anytime when you wanna overdub, step one more time on the rc2(3rd time). And when you have enough fun, now is the time for the additional footswitch to come in. Step one time on it and you will stop the loop playback. If without the additional footswitch, you will just need to step 2x consecutively on the rc2 to stop. It aint difficult, but sometime guitarer like to do one thing at a time, so this 2x to stop the playback, can be a hassle.

The above just one usage for the addtional footswitch.

The 2nd usage. Basically, within the rc2, you have total 16mins of looping time. This 16min is enough to create mass destruction, coz for some of the famous loopist, their machine can only do from few sec to few mins, but yet created a whole new chapter in thier music pursue. So anyway, for the rc2, you have total 16mins of looping time, and within the pedal, you can stored 11 looped material. But all these 11 settings, will be divided by this 16mins.

So if you used up all the 11 settings, with the additonal footswitch, you can use it to call up the different setting, without bending over to select.

If can understand, then roungly can visualise how powerful the rc2 can do.

Basically, you can divide your music into the "intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, ending"(for example) , prelooped into the various preset. When you play live, you can play you guitar as normal, and when you need additional sound, you will use this additonal footswitch to call up the various pre looped mateiral to company what ever you are playing.

Heh, the above might be a bit too disorganised, but its just a basic of what the additonal footswitch can do and will do.

 

[KennethC]

+1 to the RC-2. Really comprehensive for the size, and a breeze to use as well. Ed, could've let you try mine out, but we're a tad to late...it's no longer in my collection.

 

[Elias]

The idea of loopers is wonderful....albeit difficult to execute flawlessly (takes lots of practice and good timing). I feel that if you're playing with a full band, the most potentially problematic part is the tempo. You'll have to tap-tempo accurately along with the drummer's beat and execute/activate the loop at the precise moment. Then pray that your drummer's consistent/playing with metronome/or can hear the playback loop. Otherwise, damn jialat...everything will be a mess :lol:

Personally, being the only guitarer (heh, I like this term) in my band and having owned a digitech JamMan before, it's darn difficult to play whatever I'm playing, then step on a footswitch to scroll to assigned loop patch, then when it's nearer to the part I wanna loop, tap-tempo according to the drums, then wait for the precise moment, activate the loop...continue playing your part, and stop the loop after the desire number of bars and continue playing :-? Of course, this probably only applies to loops that you need to be in synth with the beat, etc... but I'm sure there are other applications of loopers

Don't forget to consult our LOOP-MASTER RANDOLF for his valuable input on loopers!

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

Plus 1 on Randolf's looping! Really make the whole process of looping a joy to watch, plus the music, its really a audio visual experience!

 

[subversion]

the RC-2 would appease the players who simply want a looped phrase to play along, nothing additional. in this light, the RC-2 would be seen as inadequate but that's the reaosn why BOSS has other looping devices in its catalogues.

the additional footswitch would aid in some start/stop applications, otherwise, user has to double click the RC-2's foot switch for certain applications which isn't that easy to execute.

 

[edder]

I'm still too used to the DL4 for looping. buttons are intuitive but only if they had more buttons like reverse and half/speed.

The EH 16 second delay with the foot controller has it all but i'd prefer a dynamic looper rather than a static one.

The RC2 is cool to have for starters and when they feel the need to for a footswitch, it wouldn't cost too much as well. I call it modular upgradeable! haha...

 

[zany_ama]

OH WOW!! i am truly impressed on how much you guys have taught me. hahaha! thank you thank you so much. especially to PatheinRaindropMoe. 3 cheers for you!!

oh and to the yamaha people.. im sorry for insinuating that you guys are not a helpful bunch... just that sometimes you yamaha pple have to realise that there are some dumb idiots like me who really, really, really want to buy something but have no idea how to go about saying it.. i tink im gonna start dropping hints to my friends that i wanna Rc-2 for christmas... hahaha!

btw.. who is master randolf?

 

[subversion]

the onus is very much on the buyer to acquire some pre-purchase info to make his/ her shopping fruitful.