MXR Clone Looper, Pigtronix Infinity 2 £160, £199

We’re in the mood for looping in this issue. After all, it was good enough for Jaco, right? Let’s send loop lord Steve Lawson off to review two of ’em...

Looping is all the rage among bass players, so let’s send loop legend Steve Lawson off to review two of ’em...

Over the last couple of decades, no area of music technology has become more ubiquitous than the loop pedal. From looping’s esoteric beginnings as an extension of musique concrète to Ed Sheeran playing Wembley Stadium with nothing but a guitar and a looper, the times have a-changed.

While many of the recent developments in looping technology have involved ever bigger and more elaborate looping devices, let’s take a look at two brand new units designed to fit snugly onto even the smallest of pedalboards – the MXR Clone Looper and the Pigtronix Infinity 2.

MXR Clone Looper

The Clone Looper is MXR’s first foray into looping technology. Using the same form factor as their classic stomp boxes, they’ve set about squeezing as much functionality into a tiny pedal as they can. The basic loop functions of record, play, stop and overdub are instantly accessible via the two buttons, with the record button allowing you to go from the first loop into overdub, so delay and reverb tails don’t get cut off, or jump straight to playback if you want to play melody straight away over the first loop. It’s a useful, musical distinction that’s missing from a lot of loop pedals.

The extended utility of the Clone Looper includes the option to go double speed or half speed and reverse the loop, as well as undo and redo the last layer with a long press of the play button. Long presses can be problematic for time-specific interactions with the music, making it tricky to have things happen on the exact beat where you want them to – in this case appear or disappear – but such compromises are to be expected on a looper this compact, and the trade-off is more than worth it.

Accessing the half/double speed and reverse functions is done either via a push button mounted under the central volume control, or via a far more gig-friendly external footswitch. MXR’s own Tap switch works perfectly and takes up the tiniest amount of extra pedalboard space.

One of the most useful additions to the Clone Looper is an expression pedal socket that controls the volume of the loop. Being able to fade loops in and out is such an obvious musical interaction that it can be really frustrating when loopers miss out this option.

The expression socket can also be used with an additional Tap switch to trigger a ‘play once’ one-shot sampler function.

In use, this pedal is a dream. The audio quality is very high, the pedal is as robust as we’ve come to expect from MXR, and the range of interactions with any looped material makes for a deeply satisfying musical experience. The option to record at half speed and then switch to double speed, giving you four times the playback speed at two octaves up, is an effect that gets really addictive.

Pigtronix Infinity 2

Unlike MXR, Pigtronix have been in the looper game for quite a while, with their flagship Infinity Looper offering a very comprehensive suite of looping tools and even MIDI control over so much of the process. Condensing the best of what they’ve learned about looping into a stomp box form factor was never going to be easy, but the focus they’ve brought to the task shows just how much musical thought has gone into this design.

The footswitch layout of the Infinity 2 looks similar to the Clone Looper, but differs in some very significant ways. In keeping with the emphasis of the original Infinity pedal, this updated version is designed to create two separate loops and switch between them. The ease with which you can lay down an initial groove, layer on top of it, then switch to Loop 2 for the chorus, record that, layer it, and switch back again, with all the switching happening seamlessly at the end of each loop, is hugely impressive. If what you’re looking for is a songwriting and arranging tool – which is useful for stripped-down performances – the Infinity 2 is a godsend.

It’s also significant here that the Infinity 2 can either be a true stereo pedal – which is great for preserving the ping-pong delays and rich reverbs you may have on your pedalboard – or it can be used to split the main signal and the loop signal to separate outputs. The uses for this are many and varied, offering the possibility to record the loop to a separate track in your DAW; to add postprocessing to the loop or the clean signal without affecting the other; or even to have the loop go to a completely different amp on stage. This enables the option to have a bass part looped through a bass amp, while your melodies and additions over the top go straight to the PA, or through a second amp.

Again, like the Clone Looper, the Infinity 2 has a load of extra ways to interact with the loop via hand controls. The Mode button offers the possibility of dropping the loop to half speed, switching it to ‘play once’ mode, or having an extended range of ways to stop, including a really nifty ‘fade out’ option. Again, the musical origins of Pigtronix’s design process shine through, and all the additions have an immediate and obvious creative application. There’s also an undo/redo mode that works the same way as the Clone Looper.

An extension footswitch is advisable to access the ‘play once’, stop and octave functions without bending over, but the Decay knob will have you reaching for the pedal with your hands anyway, offering the possibility to add to your loops as the existing layers gradually fade away. It’s a deeply musical and useful way to interact with the looped material and evolve between sections.

Conclusion

Complaints? There are very, very few. I’d love to have the Decay feature on the Infinity 2 available via expression pedal, and the Clone Looper is sensitive to the kind of power supply you use with it. Running it off one of my existing pedalboard power supplies yielded some undesirable noise, but with a Dunlop power supply, it’s absolutely silent. Beyond that, the features and build are top notch.

Both products focus on performance, avoid extraneous practice tools such as metronomes and stored loops, and both offer a distinct set of tools that will enhance any looping musician’s performance. The Infinity is the solid choice for song structure and arranging as well as the side-chain routing option, while the slightly more affordable Clone offers more in terms of interactivity and that oh-souseful volume pedal option. Make your choice, and get looping!