The Steel Guitar Forum

What model is user friendly and easy to operate? It may be interesting to jam along with one of these unit.

Looping is an important part of what I do on all of my instruments. I have recently migrated from hardware to a software solution - I'm running SooperLooper and Ableton Live on a Mac with an mBox 2 for looping. I still have my Boss RC-50, as well.

In terms of easy to use, you might check out the Boss RC-20XL and RC-2. Plug 'em in and go. In both cases you can overdub an infinite number of passes in real time. On the RC-50 you can have three separate loops, which I need for my work, but it is a pretty complex device. For ease of use and something to "jam along with", the RC-2 and RC-20XL will do a great job.

I have a Boss RC-20XL and I love the thing. I have a mini-mixer wired up with two different preamp setups coming in. Then, the "FX send" goes out to the looper, and it returns back to it's own channel on the mixer. I can loop a guitar, bass or steel part, then play over it with - guitar, bass or steel, about as fast as I can stomp on things and change guitars. I can offload a track to a cassette deck if things get interesting... I could wire the computer in, but it's already pretty exciting, you know. I don't even use "Band-in-a-Box" anymore - why? There are some minor level-matching issues, but so what.

The looper has an instrument/mic level switch on it, but I've had little luck sending a signal direct from an instrument - it's much tonier to send a processed signal to the mic-level input. I don't use it live, I know Dave Easley does solo PSG gigs with his but I get confused easily, and I'm no Dave Easley, that's for sure.

I have the RC-2 and it's a really cool tool. I did a wedding recently and had to do the feature song. I recorded the backup tracks in Sonar and loaded them to the RC-2 as well as the wedding march and the exiting song (I forget the name). Also the looping feature is a blast. As soon as I master the RC-2 I plan to upgrade to the RC-50. It's like 3 RC-2s in one with stereo capability and a few more inputs (including xlr) as well.

I have a few Electrix Repeaters. For "art music", I can loop a couple stereo tracks in each. Usually, what I'm going to play is all written out before I start. That way the stuff lines up better and I don't have to sit there and wonder what I'm going to do next.

Thanks for the info and insight. The C-2 and RC-20XL look interesting.

Chas, very impressive setup and rack you have.

Len thank you, that was a few paychecks.

One of my sons is deep into the looping, and I have tried most of the looping pedals he has bought, and the easiest for me to use so far has been the Boss RC-20. I don't get artsy with it yet, but it is great as a practice tool: lay down a quick backing track and then practice solos over it.

@ Chas Smith, man that's a admirable rack there You can buy a nice used car for the price of the eventide alone even if it's an older one which I can't make out the model so it could be a newer one and in that case you could buy a nice used car plus a nice steel to boot.

I've not seen those brand of loopers before are they mainly loopers or will they handle other duties?

Well anyway nice rig!

Bob Martin

Bob, thank you. The Eventide is an 8K which truly is a "talent simulator". Years ago, when I was "working", I had a cascade of three H3000's in the rack and I could do some pretty interesting stuff with those puppys.

The Electrix Repeater came out in the summer of 2001 and was discontinued a year later. I had two, at the time, and I ended up getting several more for backups. The main attraction, for me, was 2 stereo tracks per unit at 16-44.1 and a lot of minutes.

I've done a few solo concerts where I had to do 20 minutes up to 50 minutes and with these things, I can do real-time loops.

Here's an old article on them:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_electrix_repeater_2/

I think the Digitech JamMan is the best bang for the buck, feature wise.
Get the foot pedal to switch loops on the fly.