Boomerang Loopers
These are just the best loopers if saving recordings isn't necessary. I've been using the version 1 and the plus version for some time now. The Boomerang lll looks too complicated to me. To my ears these sound virtually identical to live playing during playback and I really like the way the footswiches feel. Unfortunately the first two iterations are no longer available but can be found occasionally on the secondary market. The other good news is it looked as if they were going out of business, but a new owner was found and at least the lll will be back in production. I bring this up because I believe Jim uses these and thought there might be some interest.
Loop on!
Mark
Loop on!
Mark
Comments
I love the sound and ease of the Boomarang one and two ... That said, I've never tried the Boomerang three - I'd love to hear what folks on the forum think of it.
Boomerang one & two sound absolutely great upon play back and I like how the foot switch requires a light touch, making the downbeat seamless-as opposed to the RC 20 and the Jam Man where you have to clomp down on the footswitch pretty damn hard. Because of that, I miss the downbeat sometimes.
The Boomerang is huge and clumsy to carry (even with the case), the foot switches break fairly often and I have trouble finding anyone who wants to repair it. And yes, there is no memory. I can't tell you how many times my guitar cable brushed against the "record" switch erasing my loop. Additionally, when I put the Boomerang in a suitcase it takes up a lot of real estate, and I need to cover it with bubble wrap because of that little volume knob that protrudes out. I've broken those volume knobs twice- in transit.
Despite my complaints the Boomerang is my choice -the ease, the sound quality and the backwards feature are excellent.
Again- it looks like the Boomerang three might be the solution? Anyone?
Yep we love our Boomerangs despite the idiosyncrasies. Hopefully the lll will be back in production this summer. FYI there's an outfit in Nashville that has the schematics and services them. British Audio Service: 1-615-891-1788, service@britishaudioservice.com. I had a bad switch on one of mine and contacted Benjamin Wachter...nice guy.
Mark
My first looper was the original ditto, but since that only has one button it was really hard to use live (double tapping to stop the loop). Very effective as a practice tool though.
I have the Boss RC-20 which I have a lot of complaints about but have had it and practiced with it for so long now that I would be too sad to see it go. Just tape off the drum beat knob and spare your hearing from the surprise drum blasts.
I also have a DL4 that a buddy modded with better switches and added a switch to toggle between delay and loop so you do not have to lean over to the floor to get out of or into loop mode. I like that pedal a lot for ambient looping, more an effect than practicing a 32 bar standard etc.
My feelers are out for a boomerang, hopefully I can nab one in the future!
For me, it's a huge step beyond the functionality of the first two versions, and I was one of the people always struggling with the signal/noise ratio on the old design--the new one doesn't have any of those issues. The III pretty much replaced my Echoplex Digital Pro setup, which had more features, but was much bulkier (rack unit, large MIDI controller). For me, multiple loops is a must have, as is the ability to have one loop as the "base" loop and the others quantized on top of that. The III is deep, if you want it to be, but I found it easy to immediately use without delving into the manual. Plus, so compact.