Boss RC-20XL

Easy enough - but NOT enough features. Only 16 minutes of saved loop time - and even less if you fill up all 10 storage locations. Returned it and got the Digitech JamMan instead, which can store up to 6.5 hours of loops on Compact Flash media, 99 loop storage locations, USB to PC compatible, an XLR mic input, can use stereo headphones AND comes with the power supply! You can read the white lettering on the blue JamMan chasis compared to the white/silver-ish lettering on the RC20XL's red chasis.

Sucks - NOISY - NOT CD Quality. Get the JamMan instead with CD quality 44.1kHz sampling rate.

1 year warranty sucks. Digitech provides a full 6 year warranty for the JamMan.

sucks. Very limited (almost non-existent) customer support. NO email support - NO toll-free phone support - NO user forums or tips - NO real usefull information on their website.

It can't be lost or stolen - I got rid of it. I expected more from Boss/Roland being one of the grand-daddies of electronic musical gear - yeah, they have "some" decent products, but the RC20XL isn't one of them. For the same price, You'd be a lot happier with the Digitech JamMan (the RC20XL on Steroids!)

This pedal is very esy to use. The guy in the showroom spent a few minutes with me before and when I got it home I was looping right out of the box. I'm sure if I read the manual I could do more with it but so far I'm having plenty of fun with the basic loops, reverse, guitar input, mic input, save, erase and undue functions. I just recorded some C and G chord strums, with a simple melody over it. Then added a harmony melody, it's hysterical...too much fun. It's been looping playback here for 20 minutes, cracking me up.

sounds freakin great. not noisy at all. I'm using it with a Roland Micro Cube, Fender Stratocaster and a Shure mic. The loop I just made sound like a goofy country thing but I've had it sound bluesy and also funky. My favorite musicians are the old blues guys...howlin wolf, albert collins, lightnin hopkins, hendrix, elmore james, albert king, etc. and also acdc

Maybe stereo output would be nice. But on the other hand, the mono really requires you to make your loop layers very distinct harmonically....kind of like brian wilson's work with the beach boys in mono.

It's only been out of the box 2 days, so far so good.

the guy who sold it to me was cool, low presure sales guy at Guitar Center

I play blues and simple stuff, and I try to play jazz but I really can't do it well. The looper is great for blues, very easy to lay down 12 bars and get it to loop perfectly.

I've been playing for 16 years. I own a Gibson Buddy Holly acoustic, a Flea ukulele, a sony 4 track minidisc recorder, a baby Taylor, a Carlo Robeli resonator, harmonicas, blues tool harmonica rack, some mics and some other stuff in the closet that i'm not sure of.

I think I would have to get a replacement if this looper was stolen

I love the fact that it loops easily and you can pile as many loops on as you want. I hate that I have to use a this instead of having my own band (but i've never been good with a band).

my favorite feature is that it runs on batteries

i compared it to the digitech looper, but that one doesn't run on batteries. I chose this one cause both my Micro Cube and this can run outside in the park with batteries.

I does indeed help me make tuns of music.

I like to share some recordings made with this unit. I'll post them on this site http://mysite.verizon.net/vze359di/

two pedals, pretty simple, a baby could use it

The sound is not very good.
If you play jazz, if you just put some chords in and the do a chorus on it, it's really a cool thing, but don't expect the sound to be identical.
Boss did NOT use a 44 Khz sampling rate which I found pretty abusive, ther's nothing existing anymore under 44.1 Khz apart from this unit...
You can use it on stage, but still, the sound isn't a "CD" sound...

good until here, I have it for 6 months now, no problem

It is great, it is so usefull, it's such a wonderfull working tool...
but the sound should have been better

If you can't figure this thing out within 1 hour of skipping thruogh the manual, you should win the Darwin Award. It is so simple an educated chimp could use it.

I am using a duel amp set-up through a Keeley/Boss blues driver, Keeley compressor, Keeley modified TS-808 Tube screamer with a Time Machine boost. The amps are a Marshall studio 15 and a Peavy Basic for the low end. My Guitar is a Custom 5-string Multi-Plane headstock Celloblaster. There is not much information on how to play this guitar but I am obsessed with it and I have mapped out the fret-board
to the point of second nature. I also have two Schecter CB-2000's. I bought three of these guitars because they are not currently in production.

I have quite a few boss pedals with no problems. This, however is utilizing some higher technology. Time will tell.

N/A

I can't stop playing with this thing. It is totally addictive. I play blues, hippie jam, and classic rock. I also play bluegrass and blues banjo. I am taking up blues harmonica. I have been playing 16 years. Now that I have tried one of these I can't imagine not having one. Like others have stated, I wish it was in stereo. I would have to say as a pratice tool, it is indispensible. I feel it will make any competent musician more so.

More complicated than the Line 6 by a factor of about 5, but then again, that's ALL this thing does, so you would expect that. I didn't the manual for the line 6, but I did for this thing. It's pretty well constructed though and you'll the hang of it eventually.

Sounds good to me, some people have complained of noisiness, and I had the same problem initially but I tried increasing the volume level of my guitar (to around 9) and it improved tremendously. So make your input gain levels are high enough or you will get hiss.

Just go it, so not sure, it's Boss though, they are usually pretty reliable.

never had to deal with them.

This thing is a godsend. I was using the Line 6 for a while and it was pretty easy to use, but limited as a looper. The biggest limitation is that it's very difficult to create perfect loops. So unless you have the tempo control of a metronome, your loops will be out, then trying playing with a drummer, good luck! I saw a guy playing with an rc-20 so I decided to try it out. It's perfect! Finally, somebody got it "right". The biggest thing is that it quantizes your loops, although that is misleading. True quantizing aligns every note to fit into a specified beat map. What this does is just ship the end of your loop so it fits into a perfect length loop. It even has a built in metronome, genius! Added to that, it can store the loops, so you can spend a lot of time creating your perfect base loops, and then put everything on top of that. I create really layered loops (sometimes 7 loops) so the base loop has to be perfect, otherwise it throws everything off. I just spent tonight creating all my loops, so I have become quite familiar with the unit. One thing that through me off was that it creates a lead in bar before on the initial loop, beware of this!

Anyway, I love this thing, the only drawback is that it's not in stereo. Why, Boss, why? I had a great 2 amp stereo setup and now it's all screwed up, kind of a bummer. Other than that, this thing rocks.

Very easy to use. Manual is much better than most Boss manuals.

I can't compare it to a similar product such as the Boomerang. Overall I am happy with it. It has caused some irritations. At times, I can hear an audible click or glitch at a point where I either began or ended a loop. I also detect a digital haze coloring the overall sound. Obviously it records any and all noise from cables and pedals that are in front of it. I use 11 pedals in front of it and do get quite a bit of noise. It DOES NOT like my Q-tron, nor do my amps. The sound of the loop stastion is a bit brittle.

Any problems with sound quality are not an issue for live scenarios. It causes me stress while using it for recording, which is primarily what I do.

Seems very reliable. It does have a glitch here and there though. Very minor. All my Boss pedals have small glitches from time to time...effect getting stuck on even though I press pedal off etc...

No idea

I love this pedal. I think it would benefit from the following:
1) Stereo output. The mono out is extremely annoying. In order to get anything interesting recorded, I need to run it through a stereo pedal,various pedals and into two amps that get miked.

2) Lose the stupid click function. In its place should be a knob-controlled temp adjuster. The push button tempo adjuster is very difficult to use.

3) In place of the push button tempo adjuster should be a digital counter. Not knowing where you are while the loop is playing is maddening for recording purposes.

Otherwise, I love this pedal and would replace it immediately if it broke.

I feel Boss did what musicians really wanted eventough Les Paul was the first to play/record/overdub live with his device in the "50's".
Since the RC-20XL is out,What I really want now does'nt exist yet.Which is 3 hours total recording time with 40 phrase banks instead of 11.You could do a whole gig.

I use a Line6 flextoneIIIxl into RC-20xl to a 1966 fender pro-reverb
les paul special/plus, Fender 62 reissue strat. The sound reproduction was better than I expected.

I would gig this without a backup.Even if they made it with 3 hours and 40 phrase banks

havn't had to call

I've been playing 39 years. I'm still learning the timing of starting and ending loop. I'm 60% successful rightnow (3 months).

I bought this unit, with the visions of laying down some thick tracks and soloing over them?.SORRY.
I am running a PRS>RCxl>Triple Rectifier.
This machine can do clean on top of clean, but try and distortion and distortion and you will see that this thing craps out. I would lay down a rhythm and it would sound sweet. The problem came when I went to overdub the solo. It would either be un-audible, or if I would raise the instrument volume either from the unit or guitar it would lower and cut out the rhythm part and/or you can barely hear the rhythm layer.
I figured the best way to use this system was to Guitar> A/B switch> A to amp one(for solos) then B to RCxl> amp two (for rhythms).
Doing this will let my solos be audible over the loop since they are separate amps, however in this configuration you can not record the solo.

Bottom line, I am very disappointed and will return this unit tomorrow.
I tried tweaking the level volume and instrument volume, and came up short.

What Boss did was boil a multitrack recording studio into an easy 2 pedal looper. They succeded. It took me zero time (3 seconds) to make my first loops (some of which are still on my looper after 2 months). Once I figured out how to use the tempo track and the undo function, it became obvious to me that you can make FLAWLESS loops with a little time. Im talking stuff that movie soundtracks and really long The Cure (Facination Street) songs are made of.
The tempo track is something that you can turn on or off even after you have recorded overdubs. Pretty neat.

Very good. There's is obviously some kind of compression going on, but it is hardly noticeable. I use it through a Fender Blues Deluxe so its hard to guage just how the frequency response is, because the amp is so tonally colored. I use a Rocktron Hush noise gate with my drum machine, guitar, and bass, so even if I leave the record button on, there is no noise whatsoever.
Something that must be noted is that in a performance or pretend concert (thats me!) it is important to know that when you create loops with this, It is extremely beneficial to have a equalizer right before the input. With professional multitrackers you can record and then separate the tracks sonically afterwards with volume and equalization. With the rc-20xl, you should do this at the point you record the track because after a while you will realize that your next overdub will not be audible unless you turn up the instrument volume (inst input). So before you know it, the loop that you started with becomes completely inaudable because you have incrimently made your following overdubs louder and louder in order to hear them. I actually enjoy this, but it is destroying my hearing (especially with the digitech whammy at high pitches), and is unpleasent for an audience to endure a performence that starts nice and ends earslplittingly.

Silly question. Boss pedals last forever.

Either you keep it or you return it. Customer support is for dorks.

I play like Nine Ince Nails, The Pixies, The Cure, and movie soundtrack music. But eversince I got this pedal I have really gotten into really deep movie soundtrack music. Creating a guitar track with over 50 overdubs can create some of the most amazing sounds ive ever heard (especially horror movie sounds).
Ive been playing guitar since I was 10 and im 27 now. Been playing drums since I was 4. I had four or five years of guitar lessons between the ages of 10 and 15. After that I took drum lessons for about 9 months.
And now for the reason im writing this review, this product is changing my life and im socially becoming my music. I don't know if people will understand, but when you create a loop that you really dig, it STICKS IN YOUR HEAD FOR DAYS AND DAYS, ITS BEAUTIFUL. Its actually starting to creep me out. Right now my big favorite is a drum machine run through a Hughes and Kettener Tubeman distortion with noise gate, Severely reverbed guitars, and a Casio sk1 piano SEVERELY reverbed. And then I top it all off with some EBOW on my guitar to give it that really astronomical effect.
Guitar playing and music to me was always kind of a doodle that never really materializes into anything substantial. The RC-20xl is turning me into a socially weird musician who has loops running through his head while he is buying Pampers at the checkout counter. I can honestly say that I enjoy being a musician now without the hope of making it big. I never really understood how people could say that they didn't really care if they made it big, but I understand now because if you really get into the music, its like free love.

Easy after a quick stroll through the manual. The bottom of the unit even has silkscreened instructions for those on the road. The only bummer is that it's only hands free with additional pedals to change patches. Although the Boomerang was limited to 2 loops, at least you could switch with your foot. You also need to set you levels well or you can have extreme volume differences between patches which can only be remedied by bending over and turning the level knob.

Much better sounding then the Boomerang which I previously owned. You need to take care in setting your levels between the instrument and aux inputs as there is -10dB of gain difference between them. It doesn't sound like much but it does require some fiddling around with to get the right balance. I like to run my keyboards, CD or DAT into the aux and build my own loops. The mic input is very cool and sounds good as well.

Built like a tank. Unless you leave it out in the rain, it should last a good long time.

Fast service unlike Boomerang who made me wait 1 month for an email reply. Roland has a nice 800 number and hip hold music so there you go...

I'd buy another one in a heartbeat as I really dig it's functionality. As a previous Boomerang owner, I put the Boss heads and shoulders above the Rang both in price, features and (most importantly)...sound!