New Digitech JamMan Loopers

I’ve long been a fan of looping with guitars.   I had the original Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro, before it was co-opted by Gibson.  Great looper, but mono and always frustrating that after creating a great composition, there was no way to save it other than just recording the combined analog audio composite.  I sold the EDP when I started using Native Instruments Guitar Rig, but was never quite satisfied with the experience of being bound to the computer.

The previous edition of the Digitech Jam Man was nice, but also mono.  The Looperlative LP1 and the Boss RC-50 are both stereo but are pretty expensive.  I saw a new Looperlative LP2 prototype at NAMM which is much cheaper than the LP1, but it’s mono.

JamManStereoAt this year’s NAMM show, Digitech announced their new Jam Man Stereo and Jam Man Solo products, list prices $299 and $199.   With 4 foot switches, the Jam Man Stereo becomes much more useable.  The new Digitech pedals support both SD cards and USB audio transfer to the new JamManager Loop Librarian.   Some more cool new features: more onboard memory, reverse, click output, SD instead of CompactFlash.   Some features that jump out as obviously missing from the new Jam Mans are multiple levels of undo, redo, and the ability to slow down a loop with pitch change (although it does support speed change while preserving pitch, which is much harder to do well, so I’m surprised there’s no way to simply change speed/pitch).

I asked Rikk Beatty at Digitech’s NAMM booth to give me a quick demo.  Sorry for all the extra noise- other demos were happening in the room at the same time.