THE ANSWERS

This should be fairly simple to work out if you think about it logically, Tristain. The looper pedal is a recording device that records and plays back whatever you put into the input.

01 This diagram shows two potential positions for your looper. Let’s look at position A first. Say you play a rhythm part using your TS9 and DD-3. Because the looper is placed before those pedals in your signal chain it won’t have recorded the TS9 and DD-3; the effects are simply happening in real time, after the output of the looper. If you switch them off during playback, the overdrive and delay will disappear.

In position B the looper is placed after all of your effects. Let’s assume you switch the TS9 and DD-3 on to play your rhythm part. The loop will record the sound including whatever the pedals are doing to the tone. So, hit record mode, play the part, then enter playback mode. Now if you switch pedals on and off before the looper, they won’t affect the tone of the playback at all. They will affect the tone of any new loops you choose to play, however, enabling you to build up multilayered parts using different sounds.

When placed at the end like this, the looper will record whatever sound you play into it, without affecting the loop(s) underneath. The main challenge is balancing the levels of different loops in the first place as you play them in.

02 You can indeed use a loop pedal in your amp’s effects loop. Just keep in mind that if you want recorded loops to be affected by all of your pedals, it needs to be at the very end of your signal chain.