I am a beginner and bought a Boss Katana 50 as something I can grow into without constantly buying new gear.
Now I’m looking to get my first looper that is easy to use.
Am I able to buy a looper that let’s me use one tone to loop, then solo with a different tone?
Thanks
Hi David, I just put my tone pedals before the looper.
One tone for the rhythm, get it going then switch to the lead tone (which for me normally just involves stomping on the overdrive), the lead tone should just pass straight through the looper or record over the top of the original as desired.
…although I guess if most of your tone shaping is done in your amp/software this won’t be very helpful….
If you are using your effects on the amp to differentiate between rhythm and lead tones then unfortunately you’re not going to be able to do that on the Katana 50. If you have pedals or a mfx that you are running into your katana then you would just put your looper between the two and then change your tone between the two using your pedals/mfx.
If you just want to use an amp with it’s built in fx then it needs to have a FX loop so that you can plug your looper into that. That would allow you to then have different “tones” for the Rhythm loop and lead parts.
There are a lot of threads in the forum covering this so maybe worth doing a search.
This is why I didn’t buy a cheap Katana 50 when I had the chance. I’ll get the 100 instead when I can, because that one does have an FX loop. Perhaps if it’s new OP, you could return it and pay the extra to get the 100?
Thanks for all the comments.
I’ll start with a basic looper and play over it with the same tone. Once I prove to myself that I could get the hang of it then I suppose I could get a couple of pedals mess around with different solo tones.
Narrowed it down to
TC plus
TC x2
Boss rc-5
David,
I have a TC Ditto Plus. It is a basic looper and works well. The x2 adds an extra button to simplify the controls for starting and stopping record and playback as well as deleting. People say it makes a big difference but I can’t say since I have only the single button version and find it easy enough once you have got the hang of it.
Tone wise I have no tone-shaping pedals and an amp without an fx loop, much like yours. So my approach is as follows. Firstly I dial-in my lead tone that I want to play over the to be recorded loop. I use my bridge pickup for this, turn up the guitar volume to max, and then set the amp up as I want it. Then for the loop I switch to the neck pickup and dial back the guitar volume. The amp settings remain the same. The change in pickup plus lowering its volume has the effect of cleaning up the guitar tone. Once the loop has been recorded I make final tweaks with the volume control on the looper.
I have got OK results with this approach. Obviously not as effective as either having a modelling amp with fx loop like a BK100 or effects pedals between the guitar and the looper, but for my purposes it has served me well enough.
Thanks,
This sounds perfect for my needs for now.
I can always get more pedals in the fire
Future.
I confirm that I got the Ditto as well since it is such a highly recommended pedal and found it works great, very easy to use
Good shout David 