Assembling the ultimate rig can take years of music store shopping, hundreds of pawnshop outings, months of mailordering, hours on the internet (hello there!), and tons of time just plain tinkering around. The moment when your rig finally comes together can be nothing short of pure heaven. Just when you think that special combination of guitar, pedals, and amplifier is absolutely perfect, you realize that when the chorus of your song ends you'll need to turn off your vintage compressor, overdrive, and reverb pedal, and, at the same time switch on your chorus, tremolo, and analog delay for the verse. Yep, these type of pedal stomping scenarios are why many of us daydream at work and why some us even lose sleep at night.

Solutions to these switch-heavy situations are quickly becoming a thing of the past with eager young companies like LOOOPER around. Electro-wiz Dave Boggs has been building his customized LOOOPERs via his information-packed website for almost a year now and was kind enough to send us one of his LOOOPERs for review. Having done more than our fair share of pedal dances over the years, we were anxious to give all of our collective rigs a routing makeover.

Before going into the exact details of how we spruced up our setups with the Loooper, let's give you the exact details of the Loooper we were sent. The review unit we received was a gold Hammerite finished Two Loop LOOOPER housed in a standard boutique sized aluminum Hammond enclosure. All of Dave's units are built for true-bypass using Blue 3PDT Switches. All the input/output/send/return jacks are high quality Switchcrafts, LED's are protected in chrome plated steel bezels, and internal copper wires are hand-wired to ensure a pure signal flow. This is all very standard fair for most "boutique" pedals but still appreciated by detail obsessed pedal junkies such as myself.

What isn't standard fair for most boutiques, is how many amazing options are available for the entire LOOOPER lineup. From cool colors and custom finishes to tuner out jacks and parallel routing, Dave really seems to cater to custom orders and personalized routing requests. This custom approach to pedal-making may explain why clear laser printed function stickers are used on the unit's exterior instead of the traditional silkscreened descriptions we see on more conventional small run boutiques. The overall graphic look is clean and the durable function stickers, despite being stickers, aren't going anywhere (Yes, we unsuccessfully tried to peel them off. We later learned that Dave uses a triple-layer laminate label system for these stickers). One custom request we would make if ordering our own LOOOPER would be to move the LEDS from directly above the stompswitches to the top rear of the unit. We like our status lights in plain sight even while stomping. This is a very small gripe especially when considering that the cool violet LEDs in our test unit were so incredibly bright that they lit up a large portion of my side of the stage.

Speaking of my side of the stage, just how did I use my time with the LOOOPER? Well, for the past 6 years I had been using an old Boss PSM-5 Power supply and loop to isolate my old MXR Phase 45, a Boss FT-2 Dynamic Filter, and a vintage Ibanez PT-9 Phaser from my signal path. All three pedals have their own quirks that include, in order, slight tone-sucking, volume drop, and volume boost. I'm sure i could find true-bypass equivalents of these pedal in today's crowded effects market but I love the individual and collective sounds these vintage modulators make, despite their signal degrading shortfalls. I also use a small row of four overdrive and distortion pedals, in various combination, to achieve a wildly diverse amount of dirty and crunchy tones. These pedals consist of two AnalogMan modded TS-9 Tube Screamers, an old Marshall Guv'Nor, and a late '70s non-LED RAT. Mixing and matching all these pedals for various sections of songs requires a ton of toe tapping and, as fate would have it, my fair share of flubs.

These two separate strings of pedals seemed to be prime candidates for the two loop LOOOPER, and I was right. After patching my overdrives into the send and return oÔf loop one and the modulators into loop two, I was ready to roll. Within a few moments I was switching on and off between insane combinations of various pedals that were usually impossible for me to pull off live. This new switching system opened up more sounds for me, sans mistakes. The "double-tubescreamer-guv'nor-phase-filtered-tremolo" lineup was my favorite, with the "single-tubescreamer-guv'nor-rat-phaser-filter" combo coming in a close second. In the past, switching off all of these five pedals just to go to an un-effected clean sound was nothing short of a miracle. One available option that I would definitely request on my own customized LOOOPER, would the extra footswitch/LED that kills both effects loops at once. This would make for my perfect switching solution even though I had no problems turning off both switches with one single, well executed, stomp. Both switches aren't too terribly far apart although some people without a good heavy duty pair of black leather boots might not get so lucky.

Other Looper success stories among the GuitarGeek staff included David, our database/coding wonderboy, and Catherine, our alluring PR person / resident feedback queen (that's guitar feedback kids). David has one of those crazy Ibanez delay pedals with the LCD screens that allows him to scroll between presets. It's a fine pedal on its own but he likes to combine it with a tantalizing touch of good ol' Boss Flanging sometimes. Being the singer in his own band, along with handling soloing duties, can lead David to constantly scrambling around the stage to nail down his spacey sounds. He used the LOOOPER to patch his trusty Boss Super Overdrive into loop one and his dynamic delay/flanger duo into loop two. Like myself, David could have probably used that third switch option to kill both loops but, being the frugal FX spender he is, he got by by turning the LOOOPER sideways which allowed him to effortlessly disengage both switches like butter. Why didn't I think of that?

Catherine is also a singer in a band with an obscene amount of pedals and pedal switching duties to attend to. Singing and endlessly stomping led her to the brink of insanity a few years ago so she packed away her five favorite overdrive and fuzz pedals, and reluctantly went with a rack mounted multi-fx unit and midi-controller. This relieved her from her switching dilemmas but obviously left her with lackluster sounds. Within a day of handing her the LOOOPER, she promptly packed away the multi-FX unit and had her old pedals back up on the stage again. A lethal combination of Tube Screamers, Boss Super Feedbackers, and Fuzztones are now back in her arsenal compliments of just one loop of the LOOOPER. Her assorted delay and reverb pedals are ALWAYS on so I'm sure a simple one loop pedal with tuner output is on her current Christmas wish list.

As the routing wonders of the LOOOPER became known to us, the gift of true bypass also lent a hand to our collective tones. I've always had a problem with my MXR Phase 45 sucking guitar tone. It's my pet phaser but whenever I would pull it out of the signal path my sound always perked up a bit. Having the MXR routed through one of the loops kept the phase 45 out of my signal path until I decided to enlisted its wobbly duties. David noticed a nice bump in volume after routing his delay and flanger through the LOOOPER and Catherine commented on the brightness of her clean sound after her distortions were routed through the loop. The three of us aren't terribly picky about having the perfect guitar sound, judging from the amount of pedals we have strewn upon the floor, but I can think of a handful of purists who would use the LOOOPER if only to isolate a noisy vintage pedal or two from their signal chains.

Most of the sonic pitfalls we all experience take place onstage where switching, routing, or just plain noisy signals can take their toll on our tone and playing. Translating your true tone in various situations can be quite challenging without the right tools. With a customized LOOOPER in your pedal lineup you'll find endless possibilities instead of endless limitations. So whether you're trying to tap into the ultimate tone or just trying to manage a massive mess of pedals, the LOOOPER is one tough, well-built, switching solution. - GuitarGeek