If you’ve never used a looper pedal before, you’re missing out. They can be a great practice tool, improving one’s timing and rhythm. Plus they’re great for exploring creativity and are just plain fun.

Over a decade ago, the revolutionary Line6 DL4 delay pedal included a 14-second looper, which for some was just enough to make a quick phrase. And with that, loopers began to evolve, offering more loop time, more features, and higher fidelity. Many of these dedicated looper pedals were larger, some fairly complicated, and most were not inexpensive. In the last couple of years, demand has increased for smaller, more affordable and easier-to-use looper pedals.

Line6 DL4

The last big splash in Looperville has to be the TC Electronic Ditto. Very small, and very simple, the Ditto offered five minutes of loop time, unlimited overdubs, and uncompressed CD-quality audio. It featured only one footswitch, which controlled starting, overdubbing, stopping, and erasing—all for around $129 ($99 now).

As great as the original Ditto was, its lack of features left many users wanting more—we’re never satisfied! This roundup compares what is available in the sub-200-dollar market today. Besides comparing features, the other important aspect I wanted to examine was audio quality. Earlier versions of the original Boss RC-2 and DigiTech JamMan had some owners complaining of “tone suck” and whether that was as a result of pedal’s buffer or the audio-digital conversion process. I wanted to know, is this still a problem today?

I’m happy to report that in testing out each looper pedal, I found the audio performances of each pedal, no matter the type of digital/analog processing to be quite good. I demoed each pedal directly from guitar to looper pedal to amp, with no perceivable tone suck. I then tried out each looper pedal as the last pedal in my pedalboard chain, to see how they would react, again they were fine. I used a Radio Shack SPL meter to make sure each looper pedal had the volumes set equally.

Today’s roundup includes: Boss RC-1 and RC-3, DigiTech JamMan Express XT, JamMan Solo XT, Electro-Harmonix 360 Nano, and the updated TC Electronic Ditto X2. The additional chart outlines the basic features, power requirements, and preset capabilities of each pedal so you can compare them directly.

Boss

The Boss RC-3 is a newer version of the original Boss RC-2, one of the first compact looper pedals on the market. The revamped RC-3 contains an ESC2 chipset for high-powered digital processing. The RC-3 also boasts a USB 2.0 port for swapping and managing .wav loops with your computer. The RC-3 features the most internal loop time of any of the pedals here—up to 3 hours, and other than the DigiTech JamMan XT Solo, it’s the only looper pedal that offers different drumbeats and rhythm patterns with tap tempo. I found this to be a great feature when practicing alone. Unlike the JamMan, it’s quite simple to figure out without need for consulting the instruction manual. If the tone of the original RC-2 was an issue for some, the RC-3 sounded bright and clear, with no audible tone loss.

The Boss RC-1 is a new stripped-down entry from Boss without the massive loop time, presets or drum tracks, but it does have one unique feature to the group. It has a large 24-LED display that incrementally counts down to when your loop is almost complete, so you can better time your overdubs or precisely stop the current loop. This might seem like a gimmick, but I found it worked well, and it is very helpful for users new to looping. Both the RC-3 and RC-1 feature true stereo ins and outs and they feature an input to add a BOSS FS-5U footswitch for a dedicated stop/erase function. Without it, the Boss loopers have the same annoying glitch as the original Ditto: When you go to erase the loop, it briefly plays about a second of the loop before erasing. It’s not ideal in a live setting, but the additional footswitch does eliminate this problem.

DigiTech

I owned an early version of the DigiTech JamMan some years ago, and found it a little more complicated to use than it should have been. I also thought it was one of those pedals that sucked a little treble from my tone, but it could have been other factors. I didn’t find this to be an issue this time, although it’s still more complicated than it should be. You will need to consult the lengthy manual at times, especially as you try to program the different drum tracks and memory presets. There’s a lot packed into this pedal, but it’s not a simple plug-and-play type.

It’s also the biggest power hog by far, requiring 350 milliamps of power, but it does come with its own power supply, complete with wall-plug adapters for use all over the world. While the JamMan does not offer the same amount of recording time as the Boss RC-3, by using an optional SD micro card, you can record up to a staggering 16 hours.

The newer entry from DigiTech is the Express XT. Its feature set is similar to the Boss RC-1, in that it offers no other features other than stereo ins and outs. But I will say this: I found it refreshingly easy to use, and it sounded great too. Interestingly enough, it has a higher audio sampling rate than its more expensive brother. The other thing about the Express XT I liked was in erasing a loop, you simply hold the button down, and the loop is gone, without any of it playing back at all. I really liked the footswitch too—a soft touch design, but felt really sturdy at the same time. If you want a good, simple looper pedal for a stereo setup for under $100, this would be the one. Both DigiTech loopers can also be synced with one another via a separate cable for increased flexibility.

Electro-Harmonix

Until recently, EHX’s contribution to loopers was the multi-talented 45000 with separate footswitch controller, but it’s both expensive and large. That changed with the recent release of the 360 Nano. Like the Boss RC-1 or DigiTech Express XT, the 360 is simple to use with just one footswitch that functions like the others; on, overdubs, off, erase. The 360 is the only looper in this group that is not stereo, but it does offer something else: the ability to store up to 11 presets with six minutes of total loop time. The unit can be programmed in advance, so this is the perfect looper for a small gig where you might only be playing a short set list. I did find compared to the others, I had to turn up the volume more to reach unity, but in was never lacking overall. I wouldn’t be surprised if EHX rolls out other versions of the 360 in the months ahead that might offer more features and loop time.

TC Electronic

While the Ditto has been a smash hit, it does fall short in the feature department. And while its small size is great for some, I found it hard to attach to my PedalTrain pedalboard; there’s not enough surface space to grip the Velcro very well. However, the Ditto X2 fixes some of these shortcomings. For one, it’s about the size of three Ditto pedals—almost portly now!

It features stereo ins and outs, and the jacks are all mounted on the top of the pedal, which is unique to this group. The X2 also features a dedicated stop/erase button—a welcome feature and the only one in this group to have it. The unit has a couple of other tricks as well—if you don’t need the dedicated stop button, it can be changed via a small toggle switch, to either set a loop at half-speed or set the loop in reverse. I actually liked how some loops sounded in reverse, it is a very cool, trippy effect. The half-speed was a little odd to me, and probably not something I would use often, but others might find this useful. You can also set the X2 for a loaded preset or use your computer and load looped samples from TC Electronic’s large digital library, and store them on your X2. It’s too bad you can’t store more, and five minutes of loop time seems a little stingy to me now in comparison to the others.