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Sheeran Loopers Looper X Review: Create Your One-Person Tour
Looping was once the domain of boundary-pushing rock musicians and left audiences in awe. There's an enduring history of recording and layering riffs in a loop in this way, like Robert Fripp of King Crimson’s infinitely repeating tape-dub ambiance, Ian Williams of Don Caballero’s dueling Akai Headrush pedals stacking knotty guitar lines against propulsive math rock, and Dave Knudson of Minus the Bear’s unorthodox use of multiple Line 6 DL-4s as glitchy one-shot samplers. Not everyone is a visionary, but anyone can now buy a looper to build their own arrangements with ease.
Ed Sheeran has sold more than a reported 170 million records worldwide and could support a robust touring band. But the musician typically goes it alone while playing sold-out arenas across the US and abroad, bringing to life his deep catalog with little more than his own guitar, voice, and Looper X. A looper you, too, can get.
Looping is an incredibly personal art form that can bring a song to life in myriad ways. Each person’s idea for the best way to do it is disparate. A one-size-fits-all looper is a technical impossibility, though Sheeran’s $1,300 girthy hunk of plastic and metal makes a commendable effort at being just that.
The 16-pound Looper X is the flagship model in the Sheeran Loopers lineup, occupying a 13-by-22-inch footprint. It features an average-sized pedalboard with a sturdy plastic-and-metal chassis. The eight rubberized foot pedals are well-spaced in a four-by-two grid. Each pedal's slight upward-sloping angle allows you to easily click without worrying about accidentally bumping something else. A rotary push dial cycles through items in the menu, though you’ll probably use the handy touchscreen to drive the menu. Four gain knobs boost the signal from each of the four XLR-quarter-inch hybrid input jacks on the back, and a pair of knobs control the volume going to the main and headphone outputs. There’s also a gain knob for the eighth-inch auxiliary input, which is a simple throughput that does not route to any of the looper tracks—one of the frustrating quirks of this machine.
Getting started without the manual is simple enough. Plug a microphone, guitar, synth, or whatever else you want to loop into one of the four inputs on the back. The clearly labeled track buttons on the top row dictate the virtual track you’re looping on.
By default, each input feeds each track, but you can change this in the routing options. Press the Record + Play button to start recording, at which point the halo around the rotary knob will turn red. Press that same button again to enter Overdub mode, which turns the halo orange. Press it one more time to stop overdubbing, and the halo turns green to indicate you’re in Play mode. Select another track and repeat until your power ballad about the stars or the ocean or whatever is ready.
To maximize the key powers of the Looper X, you’ll first need to learn a few terms and workflows. Looper X uses the term “loop” in a way that similar pedals may use “preset,” “song,” or “project.” So when it’s time to switch from “You Can Call Me Al” to “Collide,” you’ll click the Function button, select “load,” then choose the loop named “Collide.”
To understand how your loops behave, you’ll want to be well-versed in the settings, which you’ll find by pressing the small grid icon in the top-left corner of the screen. The default setting is Multi, which is allegedly Sheeran’s personal preference. In this setting, your first loop's length dictates the maximum length of other loops in your track. If your first loop is two bars, for example, then the next loop you record will immediately stop recording and enter playback mode after two bars.
In Sync mode, your first track serves as the primary, and the other tracks function in multiples or divisions of the primary. So, if I started with a two-bar loop as my primary, a subsequent track could host a double-length four-bar loop or a half-length one-bar loop, and so on.
The Song