What's hot in 2021: PAINT ME LIKE ONE OF YOUR FRENCH FUZZES

[dubkitty]

somebody gave a price in Euros that works out to over 500 USD. i think it was in the Loopers thread.

[whoismarykelly]

I'd def pay $500 for that. Looks like it has loads of killer features and all the readily-available switching to take advantage.

[dubkitty]

i just can't see spending that much for a pedal when i could buy a whole Telecaster or a Marshall Origin 20 head. as to the options, i kind of like the limitations of not having loads of features to mess with/up. like my policy of only using guitars and pedals for my loops, it keeps me focused. i've found the reverse and half-speed options on the Ditto+ to be entirely useless. in general, i avoid pedals that require menu-diving and programming skills...yeah, they're feature-rich, but my little mind can't juggle 400 options from a medium-sized board. and i despise programming stuff scrolling endlessly on a tiny LCD screen.

[whoismarykelly]

i just can't see spending that much for a pedal when i could buy a whole Telecaster or a Marshall Origin 20 head. as to the options.

This seems like a weird comparison to me. Why is a cheap tele or cheap amp OK at X price but a top end music making device of another sort is not OK at the same price? This looper is a vastly more complex product than a tele or inexpensive tube amp. I just don't get the wall put up here but I guess pedal must cost less than X and guitar or amp is allowed to cost more than X.

[dubkitty]

because at that price point i demand utility, and a looper is by definition less utilitarian than a guitar or amp which can be used without a looper, which even with my looping obsession would be at least 65% of the time. and the looper is not more complex than an amp head if you take manufacture into account. it's just microprocessors crammed into a smaller package. if you counted them they probably have the same amount of solder joins. people have been cranking out pedals from their basement for years now, some of which (e.g. PLL) are very complex; to build a guitar or amp that's affordable for non-upper-class humans requires enormous supply networks, multiple factories, and far more capital investment in both materials and equipment. you're talking about paying for features; i'm talking about value for money. i wouldn't buy a Lamborghini, either, no matter how many features it had that i would never use. if you're willing to pay that much, mazel tov. i think it's both exploitative and fucking nuts, and will inevitably add to the price creep generated by Chase Bliss et. al. for gear which is useless for 99% of the market and of limited utility even to the 1% and which will inevitably trickle down through the rest of the industry.

[whoismarykelly]

because at that price point i demand utility, and a looper is by definition less utilitarian than a guitar or amp which can be used without a looper, which even with my looping obsession would be at least 65% of the time. and the looper is not more complex than an amp head if you take manufacture into account. it's just microprocessors crammed into a smaller package. if you counted them they probably have the same amount of solder joins. people have been cranking out pedals from their basement for years now, some of which (e.g. PLL) are very complex; to build a guitar or amp that's affordable for non-upper-class humans requires enormous supply networks, multiple factories, and far more capital investment in both materials and equipment. you're talking about paying for features; i'm talking about value for money. i wouldn't buy a Lamborghini, either, no matter how many features it had that i would never use. if you're willing to pay that much, mazel tov. i think it's both exploitative and fucking nuts, and will inevitably add to the price creep generated by Chase Bliss et. al. for gear which is useless for 99% of the market and of limited utility even to the 1% and which will inevitably trickle down through the rest of the industry.

I can assure you as someone who has been making music gear for 20+ years that this looper is at least an order of magnitude more complex than a one-channel tube amp. Its certainly not comparable to a PLL, which is a rather simple circuit that just looks complex because many of its parts are potentiometers. You really cant lump people hacking together BYOC kits in a basement with manufactures designing elaborate digital looping devices and Im fairly certain GlouGlou aren't building in their basement. Everything you think is true of making an affordable tube amp is true of making effects pedals.

Value for money is a personal issue. There are hundreds of options for inexpensive tube amps. When this looper comes out there won't be more than a few readily available options, if any, that can compete with it, and they are all expensive. If you don't think you would use the product then that's one thing. But I don't think that translates to it not being justifiable at a premium price for plenty of other people.

[coldbrightsunlight]

^^^^

Designing and building complicated stuff... is complicated. Surprisingly.

Value for money is in the eye of the beholder. I'm with you that this pedal is too complex FOR ME and so would be poor value. For a person who wants to use the extra features it offers? Might looks like decent value.

[manymanyhaha]

Definitely would be poor value for me cause I'd need 16 of them to do what I do with Mobius, and couldn't keep them in sync.

But if I was looking for a two track looper, I would seriously be considering it.

[dubkitty]

i don't deny that it could be useful for a small subset of looper users. a lot of it is that i have a problem with the idea of $500 pedals in general. for me there's no such thing as a pedal that's worth $500. $350, maybe. and is a looper really more complex than the plethora of sub-$300 Behringer synths? you're being gouged. if you're OK with that, very well.

[whoismarykelly]

I don't understand the repeated comparisons to the cheapest products on the market in categories other than pedals when we're talking about a small company's boutique looper made in a country with a high cost of living. Marshall Origin amps and Behringer's synths are entry level products made by massive companies. Glou Glou is a few people making prestige gear. They're not going to meet comparable price points and they also make products that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It seems like you fixate on one issue like complexity or cost when there are many facets to how products are priced. If you like cheap gear that is fine. Everyone loves a bargain. But none of the products you are comparing to are loopers with loads of features not available elsewhere.

[dubkitty]

the point, as you well know, is that you cannot justify a $500 looper on grounds of complexity when far more complex gear sells for less, including in the world of effects. nor can you justify it on grounds of utility unless you loop 24/7. it's not that i "like cheap gear," it's that i don't like boutique companies ripping people off, which increasingly seems like many companies' business model.

[dubkitty]

at this point i think it would be wise to agree to disagree. neither of us are going to change their minds, and i'd prefer not to have a bitch fest. i'm trying to learn when to stop.

[Seance]

i don't deny that it could be useful for a small subset of looper users. a lot of it is that i have a problem with the idea of $500 pedals in general. for me there's no such thing as a pedal that's worth $500. $350, maybe. and is a looper really more complex than the plethora of sub-$300 Behringer synths? you're being gouged. if you're OK with that, very well.

Behringer is pretty well known to be a company that takes what other people have spent money and know-how creating and then make a cheap knock-off.
If you're okay with that, very well.

I think whoismarykelly makes a very good point about comparing similar things to similar things.

If a used Gibson Echoplex Deluxe Pro is around $500 and this Glou-Glou is about the same price,
then they can be discussed in tandem. The EDP has a separate foot controller and is rackmount.
So there can be a size difference right there. And many people don't have things set up with the
rack gear paradigm in mind.

Poly Effects has a looper program in development for their Beebo. The Beebo is also about $500
and so therefore relevant in a conversation about capabilities and drawbacks. Except that the
looper program is still being worked on and hasn't even been beta-tested.
http://www.polyeffects.com/
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index. ... s.2206824/

The Chase Bliss Blooper is $500 and already out. It is a small pedal and seems to benefit from MIDI or
external control unless you are okay with some amount of fiddling.


So how much user-accessible, foot-controlled stuff is worth what to a person who wants dynamic looping
capabilities? Of course the phrase-sampling verse/chorus consumer is far more numerous than the delay-line
looper, and so perhaps these complex(ish) products of limited(ish) cache are priced accordingly? If it isn't
for you, then not buying it will certainly help send that message.

[Paul_C]

The Zoia has a looper module, and there are loads of different looper patches already available on patchstorage.

[Seance]

The Zoia has a looper module, and there are loads of different looper patches already available on patchstorage.

And also costs $500.