NAMM Update: A new looping unit from BOSS was turning heads at the recent Winter NAMM Show. BOSS calls it “the most feature-laded looper in the company’s history.” (We’ll take that as feature-laden!)
The RC-50 is housed in a seven-footswitch floor unit, and allows three stereo loop tracks to be manipulated simultaneously. Each loop track supports multiple overdubs, so phrases can be stacked one by one on each track, resulting in a monstrous layer of looped phrases.
For bands that incorporate digital audio tracks, sequences, drum machines, and/or video elements into their live gigs, sync is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. For scenarios such as these, the RC-50 can be locked to an external MIDI clock source, ensuring that its loop performances are absolutely locked to the rest of the show. Internally, the RC-50 offers Loop Quantize for easy loop recording, plus Loop Sync (which enables all phrases to start in sync), and Tempo Sync (which matches the tempo of multiple phrases during playback).
To make recording as fun and inspiring as possible, the RC-50 provides a total of 376 play-along Rhythm Guide Patterns using real sampled drums in a wide variety of time signatures. Why record to a stale click track when you can jam with rockin’ grooves instead?
The RC-50’s rear panel is well stocked with connectors, offering a variety of inputs (stereo Inst ins, XLR input with 48V phantom power, mini-jack aux), outputs (1/4” stereo, 1/4” sub stereo outs, headphone out), and USB for importing WAV files from computers. MIDI in and out jacks are provided, as are 1/4” TRS inputs for accommodating an optional Expression pedal and footswitches; up to four footswitches can be used simultaneously.
Guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals — whatever instrument or input device you chose to plug into the RC-50, it can record it, loop it, synchronize it, and put it all under a feature-filled, user-friendly control surface.
No pricing information has been provided at this time.
More information is available at the BOSS site.
I purchased the Rc 50 specifically to sync this machine to another Rc 50 and a keyboard. Roland does know about the problem and is supposedly working on a fix. There are two main problems that I can see with this unit. One is that the Rc 50 does not like to be a slave in a midi chain, only the master. Some times the loops between two RC 50’s will stay in sync no problem other times they will slowly drift apart. This for me is a big problem. This is why I bought this looper in the first place. The second problem is that the Rc 50 can only accept certain CC messages from other midi devices. I wanted to be able to walk around to other instruments and be able to start and stop the looper remotely. This you can do. What I can’t do is RECORD from a ctl pedal or midi control pedal. This is another big pain in the a**. You can only record a loop from the pedal. I don’t want to have to drag the pedal to the other instruments or have a bunch of instruments right next to each other. If you plan on using this by yourself it is the best pedal to date. Having three phrases is absolutely great. Also having multiple outputs makes routing options very nice. If you try to use this as a slave prepare to be disappointed. Hopefully Roland will have a patch on their web site soon to fix this problem. Until then I will be looking at the Gibson echoplex Pro.
And they call it feature laded!