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Looper's Delight
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High, Everyone!
This stands as my first submission after years of lurking. I've spent
a while deviating between a studio based and battery based setup,
depending on situations, and have come up with a pretty useful setup for
kickin' it subway stylee!
The main problem with the "unwired" systems (headrush, dl-4,
echo-plus) is threefold. 1. their inability to do multiple loops 2. the
fact that they only have one or two inputs (fine if you're layering guitar
cacaphony, distinctly not fine if you want to add drums, then bass, then
guitar, then keyboard, then solo, then vocal harmonies on the chorus) 3.
no midi
What I've done to get avoid this problem has been aided greatly by the
Crate Limo battery powered amp. This is the ultimate outdoor tool, with a
built in DSP with reverb/chorus/delay/rotary sim or combinations of each,
a sturdy constuction, even a distortion channel (solid state crate
distortion, but distortion nonetheless!) This features an effect insert
which sends all of it's inputs (two line level, one set of stereo rca's,
and one xlr, with two separate eq's and DSP mixes!) out to an effect, and
returns it in mono (there's only one speaker anyway, you stereo freaks!).
So, I've got the drum machine going into the rca's, mic in the xlr,
guitar/bass with effects in one line in, and keyboard (battery powered, of
course!), in the other line in. I use a digitech echo-plus going into a
line6 dl-4 on the insert. Now, any signal gets added to either loop, and
I can then build a verse loop and a chorus loop, (one on each unit)
usually adding to each one after the other. Th!
is has the effect of making the
song build as it goes (which you generally want to have happen, anyway)
I usually sample and loop the drum machine, because there's no way to
synchronize the units like you can with rack effects, but this is a good
skill to master, as it forces your foot to have perfect punch timing. The
echo plus has no endloop, but time is set at 2, 4, or 8 seconds at maximum
within the individual timing settings, so you can set the drum machine
accordingly, and it'll be pretty accurate. Another good feature of this
unit is variable speed control, which, when tweaked after looping, (and
sent into the delay of the DL-4 looper setting) sounds very very very very
very twisted. If the Electix can do this, look for tons of outdated
looping equipment from yours truly on ebay soon!
Anyway, I've only taken this setup out twice, once here in NYC, and
once at Burning Man, but it does compact nicely onto a small pushcart, so,
conceivably, I could take it to Zimbabwe and play to the zebras with it.
Anyway, however you want to do your outdoor looping extravaganza, I'd
suggest STARTING with the Crate Limo. Yeah, the Maxi Mouse does sound
better for guitar by itself, but once you start adding sounds, and
especially when drums get in the mix, it gets muddy awfully fast. Believe
me, if I had the choice, I'd rather carry the Maxi Mouse than the 28 pound
Limo, but quality is quanitiy in this case, so, oh well.
Here are some useful linx, by the way:
This one's about the Echo-plus. The second submission is mine, from a few
years ago, before they started selling for 500 dollars. Sorry, everyone.
Maybe I hyped it too much!
http://www.harmony-entral.com/Effects/Data/DigiTech/PDS_8000_EchoPlus-01.html
This one's about the limo. Back up to their front page for a charming
picture of the most celebrated of all Crate endorsers, Mr. Fred Durst, of
the Limp Bizkit Chamber Orchestra. (Okay, if you want to be a purist,
feel free to march all over Central Park looking for somewhere to plug in
your Silverface Pro-Reverb. In the meantime, I'll be proudly playing the
Limp one's favorite amp)
http://www.crateamps.com/stlmusic/crateamp/tx50db.html