Boss RC-50 Loop Station

Based on the previous reviews, I feel as though my definition of ???ease of use??? differs from others who have posted a review here. Make no mistake, there is a significant learning curve associated with the RC-50. Nonetheless, once you determine how to make this gizmo do what you want it to, accomplishing the desired task is generally quite easy. The user interface is logical and well thought out, and the pedals are firm, responsive, and supply good tactile feedback. Because I???m old and lazy, I purchased an accessory pedal to assist in changing patches and triggering the loop reverse function, thus negating any need to bend over at all.

The fidelity exceeds that required for most live situations.

Chassis is metal and use of plastic is minimal, so one would assume it???d last.

Haven???t used.

I purchased this looking for a looper, plain and simple, and was happy to find a surprisingly complex and versatile performance tool. Most of the negative comments I???ve read here appear to be associated with the frustration of dealing with the admittedly crappy manual. I, like the previous commenter, was also stuck on the verse/chorus/bridge thing, but once I did discover the secret, the solution was quite logical (Ervin, try the following: play mode = ???Single???, loop sync = ???Off???, and phrase change mode set to ???Loop End???). One thing the RC-50 will not do, however, is a traditional echo style loop where the repeated phrase reduces in volume over time. So for those of you looking to get your Fripp on, this is not the tool.

I haven???t experienced any of the timing issues mentioned, although I did need to adjust my playing style to something more loop friendly. The sound can be quite jarring when notes are cutoff mid-decay only to be followed by the first note of the start of your loop. Gain differences at the beginning and end of loops can also be quite ugly sounding, but again, these issues are a function of technique and not technology.

It's not the most intuitive i've tried but it works
the manual is rubbish, translated from mandarine or japanese and it's not pedagogical at all. its explanations are not clear.
i've upgraded the OS but still can't make it do what I want: Play Phrase A continuously untill I press Phrase B pedal at a random point WITHOUT the machine starting the Phrase B riff right away but at the END of the phrase A riff. Seems logical to me. Imagine you have a song with a verse and a chorus and you want to build up the song gradually without worrying about your foot's dexterity to hit the pedal at the exact time! Anyway what is bizarre is that the demo blues/jazz songs do this trick but I can't make it do it. If anyone out there has the answer I'd be very grateful. thx for reading.

Good Sound. No trouble so far.

It seems very solid and Reliable. Could use it for a gig.

I called them and they didn't know how to help me and they said they would call back, which they never did.

I play Jazz, folk and funk. 15 years of guitar playing. I'm not sure to buy this again coz it is not doing exactly what I want it to do.

bad interface not intuitive to use live at all. sorry, you can realy tell boss failed with this i mean if you look at how it is demoed in the video it just is basicaly a wav file player and recorder.
almost impossible to get a clean loop beacause of the horrible latency in the knobs.
not easy to use live and not easy to use period.
i bought this with the hope of being able to use it in the same fashion as someone like delila derbyshire however it just was not meant to be.
i kept it as long as i could and tried to get it to work but it never did properly.

ok how do i phrase this properly.
the sound going in comes out very nicely however it is almost impossible to get a clean loop due to the horrid latency and poor interface.
i am glad i never used this in front of anyone important.
this being said if you dragged loops from your computer you have previously edited it will loop but the way this box is sold is under the ilussion its going to work like the old electrix repeater or even a hardware version of ableton live.
its not either i am afraid.

well this is another major issue. during the week i had it the thing froze up twice. kept garbling the input.
i began to have doubts as to how long it would last anyways as the knobs particularly the main knob seems kinda wobbly and cheap.

dont know

this would have been awesome if it had done what it said it would wich was effortlessly create seemless loops in perfect sync with eachother. i suppose one could find worth in it if they were using it for loading backing tracks into it and playing along with them however whats the point in that. honestly i feel this is one of the worst new boss products to ever be realeased.
i am going to be going to england soon to work on a project based around live loops and i am sure glad i found out this did not work properly before i left.
not a good product nor a good value.
honestly despite the fact its not stereo the digitech jam man burries it.

First of all from some of the other postings I am not sure if we are talking about the same RC-50 This piece of equipment is a Train Wreck. For live use I have no clue how this thing could be used live. I have been using loopers for about 7 years now and there is no way I could use it live. The unit is Not user friendly at all.

The sound was not all that bad, however don't try to change the beat speed after you record, it will not sound like anything human. It will not sync with a drum machine, at least i could not make it work.

It appears built well but for me it was an expensive door stop. I suppose if you were just starting out it would be used for a learning tool. For gigging I think not.

I called customer support and they seemed helpful but we could not get the unit to sync with my Boss drum machine. After several weeks of messing with it I took it back. It just did not fit the bill for me.

Overall rating would be a 5 from 1 -10. Good learning tool but not for live use. I have been playing for over 25 yrs and was hoping this unit would help me out. I was mistaken. There are other loopers out there that are far better for live situation.

Compared to the Boomerang it's more difficult to use but considering the extra features it has, it's worth taking the time to learn how to use it for your looping needs. For example, if you add 2 foot switches and an expression pedal you can control most things this phrase looper does just using your feet: phrase recording, erasing, stopping, overdub undo, tempo setting, as well as shifting into reverse, patch changing, controlling playback levels etc.

Excellent sound quality except when you change the tempo of a phrase after you've recorded it. It loses all resemblance to a musical phrase and starts to sound artificial and gurgly. Also, when you try to return to the original tempo, it still sounds messed up...maybe I'm doing something wrong?

I love the fact that you have to "write" everything to save it to the machine. So accidently erasing a phrase is okay provided you don't save it...return to the patch and that backing track you recorded yesterday and moments ago just stomped over is magically back from digital heaven.

I haven't had any questions to pose to Roland so I cannot comment

It does everything I need it to do and I trust it on my gigs.

personally i find this product very simple and intuitive to use ..

seems fine to me....but maybe less than the source signal but its not obvious.

its a boss and its never revealed anything less than might be expected from the heap of boss products that i have used in the past...that have been rock solid.

they respond quickly on the us site but they admit that this product has some shortcomings that may or may not be corrected in the future.

i hope its in the near future.

ok lets take a rational view on this product. It does all it said it would do bar two things.

it cannot sync as a slave in midi with any accuracy.

it pauses when switching between patches which is frustrating considering it has settings and footpedals that would suggest that it can move between patches without a delay.Dont confuse patches with phrases...the three phrase loops do not have any pauses when played together or end on end.

in fact its obvious that this product was rushed out before these two areas were fully adressed and they are hoping that the public will be happy with the more basic functions that it does well.

the last post confused me...but maybe im using it in a different way...i set the tempo ...the built in drum machine sets the rythm and then i construct a perfect loop each and every time. In fact its just as usefull as my digitech jamman in that respect.

consider this machine as a three phrase looping machine with midi out in stereo plus a varied beat machine and you will not be dissapointed...in fact if thats all it was suposed to do i would still buy it.

hang on a bit longer and maybe the other two issues will be addressed with a system update.

normally i would give this category an 8 until the updates come through ...but given the hormonal responses of some of the previous reviewers i am compelled to give it a 200.....unfortunately it will only let me give a 10.

The manual was difficult to understand.

Sound quality is good though not totally transparent. It slightly colors the sound if you are a tone purist.

I've never called Boss.

Like many past reviews, the thing I hate the most about the RC-50 is the ~500ms delay of the loop audio kicking in when you mark the loop end point. It's not latency, but you have to play through to the first beat of the looped phrase the instant you mark the loop end point in order to compensate for this. So if I want to overdub seamlessly, I have to wait until the loop comes around the second time. As a result, I can't create the impact I'm looking in a live looping setting. I've been playing for 16 years. I'm a Berklee performance graduate, I also teach and play professionally. I haven't even begun with what a senseless waste of the RC-50's output's real estate is, or how you can't get it to do a simple headphone click for the drummer. For this price, it's a waste of money. Don't buy it.

The rc50 loopstation meets all the expectations but one: it doesn't sync as a slave with other midi devices. I stopped my trials after receiving confirmation from customer support that "At this time, it\'s not possible to have the RC-50 sync to an external device. It works best as the \"Master\" device"
It works fine as a master, and if you can do with that you will enjoy your loops.
To set up the device properly it's better if you read all the 90 pages of the manual, even if it's easy to start immedately with a simple loop.
My device has been updated to version 1.1

The sound of the loops is good. You can choose between mono and stereo recording. Don't try to change the tempo of a recorded loop, the sound will be metallic and distorted.

It seems solid enough to work around the world, but I will surely buy a beckup if my work depends on it.

I've soon received an answer from the email support about the midi sync problem mentioned above. I'm afraid they won't be able to address the issue, since I think it has no solution (at least with the current generation of microprocessors)

I use the station to loop with house music bands performing live, with sequencers. I play bass and upright. I wish they will improve the midi capabilities (why does the phrase start only in recording mode when I start the drum guide?).
This thing helps a lot in situations where the only harmonic/rhythmic/melodic instrument is your bass!

I currently use the RC- 50 as the brain of my band by sending a click to the drummer and timecode to every musician, my keys, and an Electribe pattern sequencer. Sometimes I use it in single mode with backing tracks extracted from protools, and sometimes I use it as a straight ahead 3 phrase looper. The RC- 50 is fairly easy to use if you know about loopers in general. The modes take some experimentation to get used to them. It's very important to know which mode you need to use in order to get your desired loop. Since this device is complicated you might have to stay sober in order to not mess up your whole show. As for the gripes of some of the previous reviewers, I think they don't know all the ins and outs of the pedal and are misusing it. Some more practice might suffice but this does display the fact that the RC-50 is not easy for everyone to use

I run all my instruments, including a vocal mic (I cannot give an opinion of the built in mic pre since I do not use it) into a mixer and route the signals accordingly to the RC 50 via an Aux send. The output of the looper is then fed back into the mixer. Used this way, the looper sounds great. In the future I plan to change this setup adding to it 2 more loopers in sync with the RC- 50.

Very reliable. It does what you ask it to do. If it isn't responding to you the way you want, forget the manual. Do some serious experimentation and learn what this thing does.

I'd say this is a great box. I would only compare it to other "MIDI" loopers since it's intended to use with a fixed tempo in mind. It sends a very stable clock and slaves very well to other devices. I want to note that if you send it a bad time code you will experience problems such as a few other reviewers have noticed. for example, My KORG Electribe has a very unreliable clock and I know to never use it as the master, but the electribe slaves to the RC-50 perfectly.

There is one thing this device lacks though, and that is the ability to sync different length loops in the multi mode. BOSS should have designed it so that the audio quantizes to the nearest beat but so hat it will create a loop of any number of beats not corresponding to the other two loops in the program. Such as, one loop of 8 beats, one of 16, and one of 6. Currently all the loops will record to the length of the first recorded loop. To me, this is a very limiting factor since I cannot load up a backing track, record a rhythm track , and then loop an instrument a whatever # of beats I choose in the heat of the live performance.

Maybe the upgrade will fix this problem (if anyone knows email me).
To do what I need to do, I will continue to use the RC-50, but only for my backing tracks and loops. I will sync 2 Lexicon jam Man's for my other instruments.

One last thing for the wishlist. I wish the undo button would allow one undo from each phrase so I could break my loops back down in a more complex fashion. This though, is splitting hairs compared to my previous gripe.

All in all, I hope this is the first of a long line of MIDI loopers from BOSS. I hope this is the beginning towards the creation of a looper that more easily fits into a band situation where tempo sync, monitoring and flexibility are all of the utmost importance.

Many people complained about some uneasyness of use. I don't confirm that. I think the unit has got a quite clever concept combining a lot of useful features in one sturdy floor pedal. Once you've understand the basic procedures this thing is a breeze to use. There are three system levels: system itself to tweak global settings, patch (i.e. kind of project) settings and finally phrase settings (while three phrases are a patch). You can set up things either globally or individually, even combining both. This way it's a very flexible system. Menues aren't too deep and all the main functions are available by knobs on the front panel. I have to admit, that I don't use guide and tempo features, which are a bit confusing here (also the manual), since there are some different ways to keep tracks (phrases) in sync. I try to use my internal clock or some external drums instead as often as possible...
One more thing: the glitch and hiccup issue is gone, there's a new OS out and available on the Roland site.

Sound quality is excellent, CD-like and stereo, which makes it even usable for hifiesqe synth stuff. That's where the fun is, I can record the looping stuff to my straight forward multitrack projects on the laptop and/or digital recorder, thus getting together two totally different approaches of creating tunes AND keeping the high quality level. By the way, a pair of sub outs provide some further possibilities like external effects or also loop feedback control (leading the sound via y-cable from the sub outs to the stereo AUX-in, then using Replace mode), which can be an important feature in the looping context.

Sturdy as all BOSS gear. Never had any serious problems with my BOSS units.

Several years ago I had damaged my SE-70 multieffect. Dealt with the service and things went easy and fast.

This is a piece of music equipment which definitely gives that kick I'm always looking for when getting some new gear. Partly it's that specific kind of making music using a looping device which really is a kind of magic and a lot of fun, and partly it's the RC-50 Loopstation itself providing the features and the reliabillity. It's fun and that's what it's all about. There are only two minor complaints: 1. I would prefer a unit as a combination of foot and hand control, since I don't like too much bending over to the floor for tweaking things. 2. The whole tempo and guide thing is somewhat confusing, there could be more/better explanation in the manual - I'm using external drum timing if needed.
Apart from that the RC-50 is a great looping device, providing excellent sound and some unique features in a sturdy case.