Boss RC-50 Loop Station

After I bought it a year ago I'm gonna sell it now! It messed up my gig last saturday night where I felt like 30 years before when I was a absolute beginner!
As already mentioned the biggest problem is the sync. I'm a guitarplayer playing with a drummachine and tried real hard to feel komfortable with rc-50 synchronising it but it's not possible.
How could it be that while you're playing the chances to be in sync are less than let's say 50%?! You just can't kick back and relax with this thing. No way! Somebody here said it makes you play less and I would absolutely agree to that.
The other thing is: it happened very often to me that I steped on the wrong pedal or even on two pedals simultaneously and therefore triggered something I really didn't want ... like stopping the playback! This is because the thing is to small ... there's not enough room between the pedals.
Roland Boss should discontinue this thing and bring out something new:
bigger and with a much better chip. I'll be the first to buy it.

Cd-Qualitiy, nothing to complain

looks solid like most Boss Products

excellent (in Germany) I send the looper back, they checked the item and send it back within one week

This thing is crap - dont even think about synchronizing this peace of shit to any Midi Clock Source, you will hear an untolerable timing gap between the external (in my setup) sequencer-soundmodul and the "guide tone" You dont beleave me (?): try to programm the same beat as one of the "guide tone beats" and let them play together - the result is horrible. I have tried diverent machines (E-mu Command Station, Yamaha RS-7000, even a Roland Fantom-S). I could not believe that Boss is putting something on the market that is NOT WORKING properly. Even a old BOSS DR-550 Drummachine (from 1980) has synced perfectly, but not the RC-50 !!! And be aware: you can not work without the "guide tone" because otherwise the autoquantize of the machine will not work.
Personally I can not see how to use this unit sensefully, livelooping is not possible because of the gap between the "punchout" and the first loop start, and in the studio you cant use this piece of shit because of the unability to sync properly to Midiclock.

Bought new a few months ago. I got the newest 1.01 firmware. I found it quite easy to use but I'm generally good with complicated stuff like programming and configuring, I played with the device as I read the manual and after 2 days I was able to do about everyting. It could be hard to use if you're the kind of person who has a hard time setting his vcr, can't use a computer or is a beginner at playing music..

Sound quality is ok, cd quality which is not the best for recording purposes but better than most loopers.

One problem is that if you play tracks at different tempo than recorded it distorts real bad and makes some features like changing the tempo of a track and when it automatically resizes your track at the same length than the others in single mode useless, very deceiving.

The biggest problem: like a lot of people pointed out there's a soundless gap the first time you replay a loop, and NO IT HAS NOT BEEN CORRECTED IN THE NEWER FIRMWARE and it will never be, the only way to avoid that gap is to play without the included beats (click track/guide), which makes the unit unusable if you plan to use the guide as a metronome to make sure you play in tempo or in live situations if you plan to use beats. Boss uses the good old "it's not a bug it's a feature" excuse for this but it's obvious that it's a flaw in the device, probably because of a badly conceived chip and then they rushed the product in mass production without noticing.

Also, there is not a lot of memory for recorded tracks, you'll run out of space very quickly, you can dump them on a computer via a usb cable, but still, there's not a lot of place in it.

Looks solid, I wouldn't hit too hard on the pedals though, and I would keep it away from dust because it might get into the device through the pedals. And there's a hard disk in the device, if you know computers as much as I do, you know that a hard disk is prone to failing after a lot of use.

Customer support is bad, it took them over a month to answer a very simple question via email and the answer was not satisfactory at all.

I play lots of stuff, Pink Floyd, MetallicA, SRV, Rock/Metal/Alt, about everything guitar-oriented. I've been playing for 16 years and got a few Gibson, Fender and Ibanez guitars and others, Fender and Marshall amps. If it was stolen I would wait to see if they put a new product out where they fix the soundless gap. I still like the device, it's very good when you compose stuff, you can play a track then improvise over it and try new stuff without a recorder or a computer.

I use this site very often to read opinions of others but I never made any review about anything, but I have been deceived with this device mainly because of the soundless gap that will never be fixed and I felt that people should know about this before buying the unit so I decided to make this rating.

It took me a few days to to land on the right bell of the curve, but once the lightbulb came on it became quite easy to use.
The whole midi thing doesn't really affect me as I am purely a live musician, and play all of the instruments, I won't make a decission about that until I have actually tried that feature adinfinitum, to see if there isn't a way round it; as most people here who don't like it kept if for a week or two, and just like their short attention spans, sold it with bad temper and malice.
Starting and stopping in time, takes a we bit o' practive, but give it as long as you need, have patience, as you should know already that this is not a machine (ironically enough) for the super instant world, it is NOT (read: NOT) and effects pedal, YOU DON'T just turn it on and off like distortion or chorus, or squiddilddy pumpkinlater, YOU HAVE TO U S E Y O U R B R A I N.
The manual often takes time explaining why and how someting does what it does, but sometimes it's a bit cryptic as to how it should actually be practally programmed to ennact that example; but it does if you keep reading! One thing you have to remember is the wheel control and the buttons under it are universal, you access which loop you want to edit on the right, and adjust it's parameters with the wheel and buttons on the left. Editing patches is really easy, but as others have said in this forum, it does have its limitations. But as an artist I perceive these just as as challanges in a new working environment. People like Eno have Fripp have said, if it doesn't do quite what it's supposed to then exploit those parts, or find new ways of using this technology to YOUR advantage. And this is a very creative piece of equipment. You know, some people prefer american cars, some people prefer Asian cars, personally I think they all do the same thing, just a bit differently. And besides, I don't even want to drive....I walk. Make sure you update the software, I bought mine 2 weeks ago from a new order, and the new ones don't even ship with the firmupdate, UPDATE, THIS IS A MUST! Lightbulb = Ease of use.

I'm using guitars and amps with tis pedal, I don't care to name drop, we're not looping elephants, I think can all agree; but in my case I have actually made an infinite monkey, which was real fun!
I have a few different electric gits, a few acousitc, a bass; I also like to use Harmoniums (that's a reed organ with belows), strange noises, BURP, drums, percussion...crackle, crackle, crackle, that sort of thing. It's great for creating that pseudo Gregorian choir vibe. IT IS NOT NOISY, reproduces what you put into it well; you can use the tap tempo feature to time in the drum feature really well, but it won't speed up or slow down YOUR recorded loops very well, it get's a bit garbled, but if u want to bring in the drums or percussion later, that's fine. Some people say the rhythm guides are useless, I find with a bit of creativity, isolating the out for the drums, and manipulating them further with delay. With my delay pedals I can go from standard time, to dounle time, or make it lurch, turn make a standard 4/4 quite funky. REMEMBER T O U S E YOUR B R A I N.

The reverse is so cool, can make your guitar sound like strings, or a synth etc, really working hard on getting the decay right for a cello, it is a challange! Fade in and out is the only other real "effect on here", which is really useful.

Can I get the sound of my favorite artists? Well, sometimes I sit there for a while, have a smoke with Four tet cranking, and I think yes, I get his sound, he's a human being creating music in his own special way, I can do that to! If you really want to SOUND like someone else, then good for you.

Um, don't know yet, time will tell, I have a DD3 from the early nineties (made in Taiwan) that looks like it's been thrown out of plane but still works great...

Damn excellent here in New Zealand. The first one I bought through one of them dodgy online retailers who removes all trace of serial numbers to get round import/export tariffs. Thus you don't get no Boss warranty.
So I contacted Roland/Boss New Zealand. They said that if the worst came to the worst I could send it to them for no charge so they could find the internal serial number, then would be able to give me a waranty. I got money money back on the scam, got a "proper deal" and Roland from a terrestrial shop.

Am as happy as a pig in sh.t......heh

I play pop music, I love singer songwriter stuff; I play ambient stuff, metal stuff, classical stuff, jazz and blues stuff, oonst oonst stuff. Guitar stuff, read, guitar stuff.

I have been playing for almost 20 years.

Lost or stolen, I'd buy another.

My favorite feature on it is that it makes my tiny little brain work really hard, that is always a good feature.

I compare to the people playing it and how much patience they have to manipulate its many wonders.

I wish it had raindeer nose and yellow loco pantyhose.

I've had it for 3 weeks, and I'm already a much better musician for it.

This is not something you just turn off and on and use, well at least not intially, it get's that way. If you need a calculator to use your brain, can't appreciate how good knowledge takes a bit of time, and you can only talk/spell in TXT (sms) lingo, then don't bother buying this.

Anything else you'd like to share?
When I was a child I fell over and hurt my knee, I now have a scar. When I get older, I may need a walking stick as old joints tend to get arthritic easlier than younger.

"I am the Anti-Christ, I am the Walrus". Donny Tourettes on "Nevermind the Buzzcocks".

ok here is my third review ,ease of use is a 1, whata turd of a product, I am sorry but they really didnt think this out well,its har as hell to get it to sync to samples and that is just overdubing?!?!!

excellent soudn quality,about all they did right,dosnt sync via midid worth a darn, they should have done stmpte and midi clock,lamers, they dont knwo anything about looping or how to buold a decent unit sadly, they got bad advice, the whole looping principle is lost when using this unit.specifically, the entire midi sync section doesnt work worth a darn, a boomerang would tear it apart as a free stand9ing looper, it hardly syncs to itself and that is in overdubbing on the same track, LAME!!!!

I am returing it, even if I lose $100 in restocking fee, better than wasting more time with this turd or a product. Its such a shame I had such high hopes for it and they cant even copy lexicon's 20-30 year old design for syncing to midi clock which works without a flaw. now that is super lame!! When i tried to sync from acid, the lexicon just kicks butt and syncs perfectly every time!!, the rc-50 was totally non functional, haha, I mean one second it would loop at 120 then next couple of beats 75 then 150 then 80, pathetic!!!!!!!!!!!!! STEAR CLEAR of THIS $500 doorstop,IT GIVES LOOPING a BAD NAME!!! Why couldnt they get someone who knew something about looping help design this?!?! instead of someone immitating and getting it wrong!!! toally dissapointed, no digusted!!

lousy support ,1 update so they could get a few flawed units out the door

ok, after a long time with this turd, I basically have a $500 door stop, usually when I get a new piece of gear ,it makes me play more, this thing makes me play less, I have other looper s that totally rock, I wish they had consulted a real looper like myself when trying to build thi unit, becasue they got an imitation of a decent looper, it syncs to nothing, hardly itself,I mean, that is totally weak, my lexicon jamman looper rackmount, now that unit SYNCS!!!! totally easily with no thought, but the midi jack are for looks,lame

ok, I want to revise my earlier review, ok, the deal is this, it is a gereat stand alone looper, but forget syncing via midi,but I did find that internally it can be a really great looper, I mean the loops snc to each otehr no problem,but for drum samples i use a PC software like acid,ableton,etc...,it jsut wont sync to it, but I have to admit it has some amazingly col sounds if you sync internally,in other words as a stand alone looper.I just did some recordings and am amazed at the sound quality.I was totally less thrilled with recordings where i tried to sync to an external source though,but that aside and it's really a great sounding looper for tangerine dream type stuff or fripp/belew king crimson stuff,but that is the catch, internal sync only,midi sync is sad tempo wise and the guide is ok for practice only, sounds like a $20 crap drum machine (my digitech rp-50 for $39 soudns better).but you could load in some drum samples.

ok, again, forgt using it to sync to anything but itself, it is then that the unit shows its stuff I have fouund. The sereo sound samples sync to them selves great. so, it i unqiue in a way. I wanted to incorporate it into my exisiting looping setup that syncs to middi,software,etc..no way wont work. but by itself it does then work really well and can be used for some really cool looping stuff. so, i wont return it for this very reason.Also, by itself the soudn quality in recordings is great, when i try to use it with my exisiting loopign gear ,it sucks and sounds lousy. when i say alone, i mean run your instrument/effects into it, but dont ty to sync it with a drum machine or software,it jsut dosnt work for that.,interesting.I have to admit I made some really cool recordings that are super clean with jsut this unit (no drums), i could nto do that before becasue th loopers i us are a bit noisy,so this fits the bill.hmmm, I am dumbfounded by this revelation. It's actually cool to have a pure rc-50 track ona looping album ,as most of my recordings are drums,bass,lead guitar,loops etc..., so in a way the rc-50 is quite a simple device and a very cool one if you don;t try to force it to do what it jsut cant do (like syncing to external devices via midi,you casn check this by trying to sync and then hit the tempo button and look and see hwo the tempo fluctuates instead of being steady).

this unit frustrated me to no end until I sat back and jsut tried it as a standalone looper and then the potential of it came out,it is growing on me . so if you jsut bought one of thes and cant work it nto your sstem, dont get rid of it jsut yet, try working with it by itself and you will find that it is vey cool. Man, for movie soundtracks it is just perfect!!! you know ,like brooding pantymelters and so on.....haha

they will never fix the midi sync issue in my opinion and I guess I expected too much in a way, but by itself as the sole looper it does do some awesome things. so, I wont return this unit as I had planned.

ok, just did a track with rc-50 with just loops turned the "guide aka cheap ass drum machine good for practicing" sound off and just loops with no external midi /tempo syncing to other units except within the unit and man, it is totally awesome~~ I was about to return this pup,but I see some uses for it.It doesnt replace my main looping stuff (which does sync),but is a great alternative to it as a stand alone looper, i can live with that as I could never loop with no drums as I would always get a hiss or a mono sound.if your not set in your ways (as I was) ,the rc50 can be a really cool device,but you have to adapt to it and nto the othe way around.

the boomerang completely dogs thsi unit, it is so easy and musical compared to this pedalbaord. Though, its really nto that tough tofigure out, but has alot fo useless bells and wistles

excellent,though i cetianly cant say i heard a difference beteen the mono and stereo options

roland and boss stuff is good

total crap, they only sell the crap, the actual engineers are in japan

the midi implementation is a total disgrace, the thing wont sync to sqwat!!! not even with midi clock. Not only that it varis the midi clock tempo, useless!!! This is why I bought this and then i find out it DOESNT WORK!!! They need to erdo the midi implementation totally. what a bunch of boneheads. I would be happy to loan them my lexicon jamman rackmount looper, now those guys new how to sync to midi!!! Midi sync works great ,but the rc-50 is a turd, the midi jacks are for looks basicly. I was really dissapointed!!! Why didn;t they jsut rip off lexicon and copy their midi implementation,it works great, suprised at how lousy the midi sync was, returning unit because of this, I wish the rackmount jaman was still made, it worked, midi was spot on, so hwo could booss screw this up this badly, LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if I wanted a standalone looper I would get another boomerang at least those are simple and sound musical and amazing!! and of course for syncing they only usd midi clock and not MTC!?!?! lame again!! bascially if you want it as a stand alone looper its decent, but any midi syncing ,forget it its crap and doesnt work,also it loses sync and worse you need a start midi message for it to sync, what kind of idiot thought that one up, totally lame,its going back,I wasted days on this turd

I had the Boss RC-50 Loop Station up and running and could use most of the basic functions less than thirty minutes after bringing it home. There are a lot of set-up and playback options, though, which will likely take some time to master, but tossing some sound on it and using it for a loop is pretty easy. Due to the complexity of this beast the manual is pretty intensive, and I would strongly suggest downloading the Workshop booklets from the Boss website. They're much more straight forward about how to jump in and start working this thing, while the owners manual will provide the fine details about the nuances of setting this up to meet your personal preferences.

I see that others on this site stated it's not capable of doing certain things (like change patches while playing), but if you spend enough time digging through the Owner's Manual and Workshop booklets you'll see that it can indeed do these things.

The sound I'm getting after running all my gear through the RC-50 seems to be, for the most part, basically the same as it is without the looper hooked up. My main instruments are a Fender Strat or a Fender acoustic-electric 12-string run though a boatload of Boss and Electro Harmonix pedals, then into the RC-50, then either into a Fender amp (usually an FM212DSP) or directly into a mixing board. I also run my Korg synth and some electronic drum machines through the RC-50 and everything sounds pretty clean. It doesn't eliminate the usual amount of buzzing I get from using so many pedals, but it doesn't add to it either.

While I can agree with thoses that find the variety of drum beats a bit cheesy, I also think they give you a nice variety to work with and many of them are very usable as building blocks from which you can add more complex percussion patterns. I keep a Boss FS-5U remote switch hooked up so I can easily turn the guide pattern on and off, which is a feature that can also be easily re-assigned to one of the on-board foot switches.

It seems pretty tough as do all Boss products, but at the same time it's pretty lightweight and for $500 I'd be pretty nervous about letting it get banged around too much. It'd be nice if they made, or even included, a nice protective carrying case for this thing.

Even though I own at least a dozen Boss pedals I've never really had to deal with issues through their service department. I do know that there are English-speaking people available by phone if I need them, which is more than I can say about many other companies.

I actually went out and bought the Boss RC-20, but after using it for about a week I could already see that I wanted the most deluxe version of this thing that Boss makes! All-in-all I'd say this is the coolest, most creative, most useful effects pedal I've every purchased. It was worth every penny, especially considering that most other decent pedals are still almost half the cost of an RC-50. If you have the desire and ability to be able to layer multiple musical ideas, or if you're generally just a creative person, then don't even think twice about it, just go pick one of these bad boys up.

I found the user manual well made. The Workshop papers they have online is a very good complement. You need also the internet to figure out things that are not documentation, especially limitations of the unit.

No issues.

No problem up to now but I'm just a casual user.

I delt with them through e-mail. Always responded promptly. Although they are very Company oriented. For example they won't say that something is a limitation or makes a feature useless, they will say that "there is a slight delay".... As far as I know, in music, a slight delay is a major problem!

In the first 2 days of owning the unit I discovered 2 limitations that prevent me from using the unit for some of the songs I want to play with it.
1. The minium track duration is 1.5 second. So if you have a bridge that is shorter than that, it will add time to fit 1.5 seconds.
2. There is documentation that shows you how to switch patch while your playing. In reality, there is a delay when it switches, so it's of no use because of that pause. So this unit, by itself, is limited to 3 phrases per patch, can't switch to another patch without delay.

I've never used a pedal of any kind... ever, and I had this thing up and running in about 30 minutes. Granted, it will take many months to figure out how to use the bazillion gadgets that come with it, but right out of the box, I plugged it in, stepped on record, and started jamming with myself.

The sound is incredible. I run everything (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, mic) into a Mackie mixer, then out to the Loop Station and back to the mixer in stereo. I literally create a whole band all live. You get exactly what you put into it. Drum patterns are good and flexible. Preset back up tracks are great for lead practice, if you're not getting good sound quality, it's not the loop station.

Only had it about 6 months, but anticipate good reliability.

Never dealt with them.

I play multiple styles but mostly classic rock and acoustic mellow stuff. Been a musician since I was 10, about 30 years. If I lost this I would have to replace it, it would be like losing a loved one. If there was one thing I wish it had, it would be more jacks to plug in mulitple instruments, but that's what I use my mixer for.

The little glitch everyone talks about is the one second mute when you first begin playback. I found this to be easily overcome by continuing to play over it. I use this Loop Station live with complete confidence, and highly recommend it.