Suggestion about looping gear

[weaviestonder <weaviestonder@hotmail.it>]

Hello everyone,

greetings from Italy!

I am new to this mailing list because I have discovered Looper's Delight 
only recently.
I don't know if it's ok for me to start a new thread about looping gear, 
but since I havent been quite able to quite find an answer to my 
questions in the archive, I thought I'd give it a shot. If this post is 
redundant, please excuse me, I promise I'll behave in the future :)

Ok so here is the thing. I have been working with loops for a while, but 
always at home, never live. I play guitar and use Acid on my PC: I build 
soundscapes with variously processed bits of guitar riffs. So basically 
I just loop my stuff with Acid.
Now I am going to do a few live gigs, and I need to loop phrases in real 
time to build layers of sounds on stage. In the future I am considering 
using a laptop with a MIDI foot controller, but for now I think I'd just 
like to go for a pedal. I have read thousands of reviews, but I thought 
I'd ask advice from this community, since I am more likely to find 
people here who have a similar approach to looping - I mean, elsewhere I 
have often read reviews to find out in the last line they were written 
by people who would use loopers just to practice their solos, which is 
ok but I need a different perspective.

So, I was going to go for a Line 6 DL-4, or a Boss RC-20 or Rc-20 XL. 
Yet, it doesn't seem they are quite my thing. Line 6 pedal is deemed to 
be not very reliable (see the appalling reviews on harmony-central.com); 
Boss's pedal seemed to be mainly used by people who like to store loops 
in advance, rather than looping in real time. I also thought I could buy 
just a simple delay, but my question here is how long will a phrase be 
repeated by a "plain" delay? Can I overdub more than one phrase with a 
delay?
What is essential to me is that the loop is accurate with timing, very 
precise (some loopers I have tried were not quite quick enough in 
responding to my hitting the footswitch for "rec" or "stop"). 
Unfortunately, it's not easy for me to find these pedals in stores near 
me, so I'll have to drive a couple of hours to a bigger store, and I 
would like to get there with clearer ideas you know.
So what do you guys suggest? Is there something that you think is 
suitable for what I need?

Thank you all folks very much indeed to everyone, sorry my post is so 
long! 

Have a nice day

Lorenzo