Re: Confused about Headrush operation

[Chris Chovit <cho@newdream.net>]

Scott Martin wrote:

>Greetings!  I'm a guitarist who's interested in getting into looping
>(force-feeding myself too much Torn, I guess), and I've been looking 
>around
>to find a good entry-level looper.  I'm interested in the Akai Headrush,
>but the descriptions I've been able to find about its operation leave me
>somewhat confused.  Maybe some of you can help me out.  Here's the 
>scenario:
>
>I'm ready to record a loop.  Following along with Alan Imberg's 
>description
>of the 'rush on the LD site, I press the left button to activate the
>looping function, and then the right button to begin recording.  I play my
>initial loop and click the right button a second time to close it.

No, you press te LEFT button to close the loop.   I didn't like this at
first, but now I like it, due to the fact that you can restart (recording)
a loop with a single button press (i.e. the RIGHT button), w/o having to
press a button in between (like UNDO on the Echoplex DP).  This
"single-button-restart" is convenient when you screw up recording a loop
right at the very end....with a single button press, you can hit the Start
again right on the ONE (Bootsy would be proud!) and be recording the loop
again on the next pass.  This doesn't happen all the time, for me, but the
feature is nice for the few times it does.

Also, after a while, I got used to starting and stopping the loop with
different buttons.

  This is
>where I get confused.  Does the 'rush immediately (1) go into overdub 
>mode,
>or (2) start to play back my loop in playback mode?

#2.  --- Once you end the loop with the LEFT button, it goes into playback
mode.

If it's overdubbing,
>can I stop overdubbing and then restart?  If it's playing back, how do I
>get it to overdub?

You get it into overdub by pressing the RIGHT button again.

 How does the "strip back to your initial loop" function
>work?

When you go into overdub mode (with the RIGHT button), you have to end it
with the LEFT button for the overdub to stay in the loop. However, if you
hit the RIGHT button (the second time) w/o hitting the LEFT, it will erase
ALL the previously recorded  overdubs (including the one you just played)
and begin recording a new overdub (the original loop is preserved).

Good luck,
Chris