Gasalcoholics anonymous? whoever said this was a help group?

[dubkitty]

i wound up delving farther into cheap cases when a Temu ad fed me a blue flat case with brown trim that i can use for the Hopf. i like to color-code cases when possible which it often isn't. while ordering that they fed me a green Fender-style "thermometer" case that'll be perfect for the Gemini Tele or the Es-Squier. like sixty bucks each. the blue one is probably about as funky as the brown one i got for the Kondor, but the green case looks promising. the blue case is supposed to arrive today, but i don't think that's going to happen because it's only gotten from Boston to Maryland so far. gradually closing in on having enough cases for everybody...some of the others will take Les Paul cases, including the Supro and M-75.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

My use case doesn't generally require precision in starting/stopping loops, so that makes my opinion less valuable for other folks, but generally speaking, all of the Chinese brand loopers I've bought have ranged from "fine" to "surprisingly good".

Solid cases I can't comment on, though I bought a couple soft cases for my lap steel from Ali Express. The first one was lousy — the zipper pulled down to the bottom, so when the weight inside pushed down and loosened the zipper, the lappie could just fall right out. The replacement has ben serviceable.

[dubkitty]

i’m curious about the looper’s drum and metronome functions. i very much doubt that i’d record using the drums, but it could be handy for practice at playing im time. i gather that the metronome does like 8 or 12 different time signatures, but probably not odd meters. i literally haven’t even plugged it in yet.

[dubkitty]

the blue flat case from Temu arrived and turned out to be a Glarry brand case. if you’re familiar you know that means cheap but not poorly-executed cheap. much better than the brown flat case i got off eBay for the Kondor. i’m really curious what the thermometer case will be like. it’ll go with one of the Teles.

[dubkitty]

note: the Hopf was a bit of a squeeze to fit because its elongated body is too wide and long, and it has to compress the padding pretty much totally to fit. i don’t know if i’d want to use this case to transport it out of the house, but will have to consider after it’s sat in the case for a bit.

[dubkitty]

i got to monkey around with the Donner looper, just testing the drum and metronome functions. the drums aren’t great, but there are a few patterns i can work with. there’s 80 patterns divided into 8 genres. some genres are entirely unuseable; DISCO and HIPHOP use dreadful artificial synth-snare sounds, and METAL is largely dense kick/tom patterns with no air in them at all. the FUSION settings are way too clever with their fills etc. but POP, ROCK, BLUES, and JAZZ have some decent patterns. the greatest fault of the patterns is that they try to be more clever than needed with little 8th-bar fills and shit.

the metronome, however, is badass. contrary to my expectations, it not only does 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and 12/8 but also 5/4, 7/8, 9/8, 10/8, and 11/8! learning to play Grateful Dead songs in odd meters would have been much easier if this thing had existed in 1975. i’m genuinely impressed.

i might get to playing through it today. i’m sure the looping functions are fine.

i think the Hopf will be OK in the case…there’s about half an inch of padding between the body and case where it’s tight, and i don’t chuck guitars around like i work at an airport or something.

[dubkitty]

i’d have chosen a darker shade of brown for the trim and handle, but it’s not obtrusively bad so i can live with it.

[dubkitty]

after parsing several demo videos i'm not convinced that the Towers does much that i need, or rather not much i couldn't do with reverb and other effects i have. the Parting intrigues...there's one demo where the guy hits a "Ambient" patch that literally made me drop what i was doing and look at the video which was running in the background. still trying to find Moonbeam demos that make sense to me.

update: i found a decent Moonbeam demo and remain on the fence. it does some great things, particularly a faux harmonic tremolo, and could conceivably replace the Ibanez PM7 as it does the kinds of things i like in the PM7 but has a much wider range. since it's mono in/stereo out i could run it after the tremolos and delays and get a stereo signal, but it'd probably work better at the end where it could merrily mangle everything that went by. am i getting more picky/resistant, or are these things not that overwhelming?