X-Ray Spex wrote: ↑Mon May 20, 2024 11:30 pm
Could you explain this a bit further? I'm terrible at getting my loops in time so this sounds incredible.
It is, and I'm genuinely surprised more people don't choose Digitech Jamman products over Boss Loop Station ones, which unless they've changed anything in the last 5-10 years since I last properly looked into it are kinda notorious for making it hard to create perfect loops.
Digitech Jamman I've used (Solo and the successor Solo XT, really few differences between them) allow you to set a tempo either by tapping the Tempo button or using the footswitch to do the same - takes a little getting used to but it's a good way to hands free.
When the tempo is set you press the foot switch to start recording. It'll give you a one bar count in, so four clicks basically, then you record, and even if you press the foot switch again to finish recording
before the precise end of the last bar it'll just time it until the end of the bar and then begin the loop which is now perfectly in time, no abrupt end to pull the whole thing away from the tempo you set. That's usually a good time to hit the store button and save it.
Then you can overdub by keeping the loop going, pressing the foot switch again (the light is more orange than red for overdubs I think) and recording the second part. If you mess up you can press and hold the foot switch to undo it, and conversely you can press and hold it again to redo it.
When you change loops - say you have two complimentary parts and one is memory slot 09, and other is 10 - you can "preload" the loop so if you're on 09 you change to 10 and it'll wait until the end of 09 before switching to 10. If you think about the implications of this you realise you can switch between a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge when you're writing a song, and in fact any variations if you recorded them, like maybe verse 2 is heavier or has more instruments so you can switch to that, and the pedal keeps everything perfectly in time and won't stop playback of loops until you do a rapid double-click on the foot switch.
There's a separate three footswitch control you can get as well, to make all that stuff even easier.
I had that when I had the Solo XT but it ended up getting traded in when I got the Meteora, so with my current Solo it's not there but I might get one again if I start doing more looping.
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Oh yeah and another thing you can do is speed up and slow down the loop - time stretching, basically - without affecting the pitch, and in my experience if you're speeding it up there are barely any noticeable audible artefacts, which is pretty impressive considering it's basically doing this in real time. Hats off to the Digitech engineers who made this line of products, there's some top flight engineering going on. It's as simple as using a tap tempo and it'll adjust the speed - I think maybe the loop has to be stopped to do this, but it is possible, and I believe you can then store that either over the original patch or on another slot.
If the software still works you can import audio to it by connecting it to a compatible Mac or Windows PC, I believe. I remember for test purposes I put some vinyl rips on there as "single shot" (as in they don't loop - you can set this in software or on the pedal itself) and it played them back perfectly. So potentially as it has full range frequency response if you have backing tracks (or sections of backing tracks to move between) you could hook this up to a full range PA and not through guitar amps, depends how far you wanted to go with it.
I'd love to get more use out of mine because it's got loads of potential, including having synth loops going in my originals band where I can play completely separate lines over the top during full band songs, but even with a great rhythm section it's notoriously hard to keep stuff in time without a click track, especially if your loops are pad/verby swells and where the beat is isn't obvious. You're asking for trouble because at some point speeding up or slowing down is going to happen, most likely.
2003 CIJ Fender Jaguar, sunburst (SJAG-3n neck, SHR-1b bridge, 500K lead circuit pots/speed knobs, Mastery bridge, Buzz Stop, Squier JM JM vibrato plate, modified whammy bar)
2022 MIM Fender Meteora, cosmic jade (top mounted input jack added)
Basementing is a good use case for cool weirdness boxes.
and 
although I've just realised, they missed a trick there - if it were called ZX SpecDrum it'd be cheesy wordplay par excellance and the logo could fit perfectly in the rainbow stripe
I am very firmly in the camp of aesthetics-- especially when it comes to gear. I saw a few pictures of this version of the pedal and could not resist-- neither the original version or MKii's color schemes had much appeal.
