Hello there, first time posting to an online forum but just happened to have purchased an EHX 45000 from Sweetwater and it arrived today. I was in the midst of still reading through the manual before even plugging anything in and wondered the same thing. Upon googling my question your question came up and I realized that I may need to invest in a mic preamp. Pretty small investment that may have a huge impact. I don’t have any direct experience with this yet, but I think it’s a valid direction to start searching out. Either way it’s not a big investment; I have seen them new as cheap as $20 – 30. I’m curious to see how your experience is with your looper as I am pretty inexperienced, but also very excited about the possibilities. Hopefully this will be of some help. Happy looping!! Keep me posted..