Having a little fun with combining licks from justin’s 50 blues licks and the beginner solo:
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Sounding groovy James.
Smooth and groovy. Great cover and improv 
Sounding great, James, good work on the licks, incorporating from various lessons, and liked the tone.
A tasty bit of improv James that had a very bluesy vibe to it.
Gone man, solid gone.
Nice and groovy! I’m sure you’re already doing this, but I would suggest pretty much always playing over a backing track. In isolation we, the listeners, have to “search” a bit for the pulse, finding that “one” beat. They way I’m hearing your solo it works out very nice, and you return to “home base” with the root note “A” on the one beat on multiple occasions. That being said, it’s a bit funny that you end your solo on the low 5th of the scale… normally you would have the solo “climax” on the root, usually a high note… but that’s of course open to interpretation from the player 
Anyway, playing over a backing track would probably make you target those chord tones even more, which is really the key to a memorable solo IMO…
Great stuff!
Kasper
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Sounds like a good foundation with recognisable licks and phrases. Difficult to put into context without a backing track, which I’d recommend using going forward.
Appreciate the comments re backing track and ending on the root - thank you!
Nice stuff James! One day I’ll be trying to emulate something like that! 
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Based on the comments from @Kasper and @TheMadman_tobyjenner here’s my first time playing to a backing track! Also went to back the root on the end 
I’d been frustrated with learning how to use my looper pedal, it turns out it’s not so hard once you RTFM. I played a simple 12 bar blues, let it go once around and then joined with the solo.
Solo kind of comes in hot in the mix, I’ll have to work on how to make the levels better (was using OBS to record).
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Another step forward, James. One step at a time is how we rock n roll.
Indeed. Aren’t manuals fabulous
How are you feeding the looper into OBS? How are you recording and feeding in the guitar?
Based on that could perhaps offer some tips on getting that balance better. As you said, the solo overpowered the BT.
Hi David, the looper is in the effects loop of my Katana amp. Guitar plugged into amp, effects loop send out to looper, looper back to effects loop “return”. Recording is done on my MacBook, connected to the amp via a single usb.
The looper has separate level settings for the backing track and the drums (Boss RC-2 pedal) - which is where I’ll start playing around. I had everything adjusted coming through my headphones - that was probably the issue.
Thanks James.
I don’t have any experience using an fx loop. So can’t offer any tips on how best to get a good tone on the looper, control it’s levels using amp controls.
As you suggest, playing with the looper output levels is what I do to get a reasonable balance. But in my case the chain is a simple guitar->looper-amp.
I set the amp up for the lead tone using the bridge pup turned right up and then switch to the neck pup for the backing loop and turn the guitar volume down to clean up the tone as best as I can. Once I have the loop recorded then I usually have to adjust the looper output level as it sounds a little different when recording vs playback from a volume perspective.
From a monitoring perspective, were your headphones plugged into the amp or the MacBook? I’d recommend plugging into the MacBook and setting up to hear the output of OBS. You’d do that in the OBS Settings by picking an appropriate monitoring output device on the Audio page.