Looper

[taeagan]

Anyone have any recommendations on a good looper pedal project? I'm looking to do one guitar, one amp, one pedal board - switch between multiple pedals as a "rhythm channel" and another group of pedals as a "lead channel". Thanks

[taeagan]

I think that something along these lines is what I'm looking for:

http://www.loop-master.com/mini-cleandirty-effects-switcher-wcombinable-loops-p-373.html?osCsid=5hrnh1runh584oggubtfg4gpu1

[jkokura]

Yeah, you're basically talking about a lead/rhythm switcher? It's very doable. I would normally suggest going with some sort of mechanical solution, with a 3PDT switch basically doing all the work to A/B back and forth. You need 2 poles to switch between the ins and outs, and one pole to switch between LEDs.

Search for A/B switching, and you should be able to find something that works.

Jacob

[Muadzin]

I've made many loopers. Simple 2 loop switchers, 3 loop switchers, A/B switchers, clean/dirty switchers, loopers within loops, stereo loopers. I think this was my piece de resistance:



It had a filter loop, pitchshift loop, fuzz loop, dirt loop, clean loop, lead loop and modulation loop. It had loops within loops within loops. Thing was I wanted to select between clean and dirty, to select between regular dirt and fuzz and between my clean or dirty rhythm sound and lead sound. The clean loop was basically an FX send/return loop that could pass signal if nothing was put into this loop, it also had an EP-3 preamp in it to spice the clean signal up.

The filter, pitchshift and modulation knobs were standard loop bypass switches. Because of that I used THCustom relay switches for them. No biggie. Dirt/Fuzz switch was an A/B switch that switched between those two loops. Dirt/Clean switch was also an A/B switch that switched between the clean loop and the Dirt/Fuzz switch. A loop within a loop. Because I wanted to be able to switch to a lead sound no matter if I was playing clean or dirty it couldn't be a regular loop bypass switch. So its another A/B switch that switches between the lead loop and the Dirt/Clean loop. Which is now a loop within a loop. And the Dirt/Fuzz loop a loop within a loop within a loop.

To reduce the risk of various hums and noises shielded wire was used on all the main lines going between the input and various switches. To further complicate things I later eliminated the filter loop in the main signal chain, as I'm just not a filter whore, and instead ran that loop between the Dirt/Clean switch and Dirt/Fuzz switch so I could put a phaser in that loop for distorted phase only. 

[taeagan]

Thanks everyone who replied. Here's my idea for a simple rhythm/lead effects loop switch with led indicators. One simple on/off switch with led that engages the loop switch or bypasses the whole thing. The other switches between the two effects loops and their respective LEDs.

Crude but I think it should work. Only weaknesses I can see are that I'm going with the most basic and direct switch wiring and that the effects loop LEDs will always be engaged even if the whole thing is in bypass.

I'd be interested to know what others think of this idea. Thanks in advance.

[jkokura]

You don't really want the Loop LEDs to ever be off, so that's fine. You want to know when you turn it on which loop you'll have engaged, so having those LEDs on is a good idea.

One idea I'd give you is to have the loop LED actually be a common cathode Bi-Colour LED. That way, you only use one LED, but you switch between Red and Green, or Blue and Red, or some pair of colours to tell you which loop is active.

Just a thought for you.

Jacob

[taeagan]

Thanks for the advice and for taking a look at it. I'm going to build this with parts that I already have and I dont have that kind of led handy. Thanks though.