first, i posted this the other day in another thread here, but wanted to create a thread for just this work around to see what other folks think.

i’m about to buy the 95000, i think. i currently have a headrush looperboard that i’m returning to zzounds.

i have the ehx 720 which i love. i perform with it and have used it to record an album of ambient loops. i had the ehx 25000 which i ended up selling because of the clunky interface (great for studio, not ideal for live use)

what i think i’m seeing with the 95000 is that there is the ability to have loops of different length in an unadvertised pseudo serial mode, which can be used in a similar way implemented in the the old and wonderful gibson echoplex pro serial looping units.

i sorta do this already with my 720 looper and an external footswitch that allows you to incrementally navigate through each of the 10 loop storage points, hands free. i’ll explain how i do it on the 720 and then relate it to how i think you can do it with even more functionality with the 95000 and end by suggesting a possibly doable firmware upgrade feature that could make serial looping fully functional.

so here’s how i do serial hands free looping with the exh 720 and an external 3 button foot switch:

1. create the A part loop (verse 1) at blank loop storage point #1

2. build loop 1 with overdubs and use live performance features like undo / redo and reverse to create dynamic changes in the layer / texture depth (number of overdubs).

3. when i’m ready to create the B part (chorus) i will press the stop footswitch (on the 720) and have it fade the loop out (i set fade out to max fade time as default so pedal is always in the mode to fade out tracks).

4. while the track is fading out (stopping) i play the riff of the very first loop layer in time with it so when it stops it seems like i just went back to the first layer (kind of like i “peeled” all the overdubs away and am now just playing the first recorded loop).

5. so, now i am playing live and there are no loops playing, but the audience doesn’t know that.

6. next i press the external foot switch button to go to the next loop slot in the memory bank (loop 2). if this bank is not empty, i’ll now delete it by holding down the stop button.

7. now i create my B part in this new loop slot. when i want to go back to my A part i have to do the same thing… press the stop button once so it fades out the loop while i’m playing on top of it so that when the loop ends, i’m still playing live for the audience which allows me to use the external footswitch to go back to memory slot 1 where i recorded my A part (verse) earlier in my performance.

8. you can create up to 10 parts of a song this way, and it works pretty good for ambient guitar music that can really use some dynamic quiet moments

i know that is a bit convoluted, but it works pretty great for that particular style of playing. the only thing that bums me out is that i can’t switch between my a and b parts with one click of a footswitch, because i have to do the fade out transition thing every time i switch from part a to part b or back again. also having only 10 memory slots is limiting because i like to save everything in a show so i can record it at home later by micing my tube amps.

i think you can do that exact process with the 95000 but it’s alot better for a few reasons but is not perfect for one reason.

here’s what i believe is improved and currently doable in the 95000 to make it so i can use the 95000 for my new performance looping tool…i have never used the 95000 so i’m going off of what the users manual says and from similarities it had with the 225000 looper.

95000:

1. the up / down loop footswitches are part of the base unit so you don’t need to buy an external footswitch like you do with the 720.

2. way more user bank memory slots. enough that i can save everything i create during a 2 or 3 hour looping performance.

3. there is a feature when you are in PLAY mode that gives us better serial looping functionality…. and that is if you press the “loop up” button while your overdubbed A part (verse) is playing back, it will automatically play the next already recorded loop in memory (loop 2) when loop 1 gets to the end of it’s loop. this is good and bad but better. (the bad is that it will not switch to a blank memory slot while current loop is playing). what this means to me is that i still have to do my fade out ending when i’m going from my A part to create my B part for the first time during performing the song. BUT…. once i’ve created it, i can seamlessly switch between the a part and b part with the touch of a single footswitch button (loop up / loop down) for the rest of the song .

as stated, the obvious issue with this is that if loop 2 is blank, then you cannot seamlessly move to that memory slot and you still have to trick the audience with the fade out loop A while playing over it live method that i use with my 720.

so the firmware feature idea that could solve all this, (i think, and of course i don’t know if this is possible)…but the idea is:

-make it so that you can seamlessly switch to a blank memory slot in a way where it will start recording as soon as it changes memory slots…. i.e., if you are playing your A part in memory loop slot 1 and you want to create your B part in an empty loop slot (slot 2), all you have to do is select loop 2 with the loop up button and it will put you in blank memory slot 2 in record mode as soon as the current loop you are in get’s to the end (it’s repeat point). if this was seamless without any audio pops then we would have full serial mode capability and each part of the song could be any length.

so, EHX, or other 950000 users, would my proposed pseudo serial mode work the way i am thinking it might?

and for EHX staff, is the seamless switching to a blank memory slot idea a possibility for a firmware upgrade?