DigiTech JamMan

For a looper with a few more options it's fairly easy to use.
For two or three things I needed the manual. That's reasonable.

I use it with a roland cm30 (cube monitor).
I use it with a vioin when I'm trying to compose, and I use a guitar and a microphone when I'm teaching music in classrooms. I can record singing children and hear the result instantly.
apart from singing and playing instruments you can record all kinds of things: younger pupils like to record noises and create a house full of ghosts, a beach, a jungle or whatever.
the sound is good enough for all these things.

when you use it at several schools and it's still working after three years, it's reliable.
however, sometimes it does strange things (I too had the 'skipping loop' problem).

it's perfect for what I do with it: straightforward looping.
the undo/redo function is absolutely nessecary in a class room,
also when you compose crappy things from time to time.
and it's great to have an xlr-input.

I really have become a loop-lover so tomorrow I'm going to buy the boss rc50.
the possibility of playing a song that consists of three different loops is very appealing.
most songs have some sort of verse and chorus and a bridge, so being able to play that live would be nice.

the jamman will still be used in the classroom.

maybe this unit was defective from the get go, I had a hard time getting the ins and outs where I wanted them....but this was my first looper so I didn't have anything to compare it with. When it was working it was a blast and I am going to look for a better one to use in my act....something I can depend on...

using a new crate mixer for mics and into the aux input with out going into a BOSE LT-1 I was getting some pretty bad distortion...before I could sort out the problem it quit working all together ....see below

it works and then it dosen't...6 months old...extremely frustrating...just played a gig in front of about 1000 people and it quit on me in the middle of my set,,,aaargh! can't find any trouble shooting info either so I guess it's going in the trash...it was fun while it lasted.

I found this pedal pretty easy to use. I found the more relaxed you are with it and the more you trust it the better it performs.

I spent a couple of nights a week for two months in a rehearsal room playing around with it and eventually i actually started to compose songs based around it. Ultimately the opening and closing songs in my set which I took on tour around Europe were based purely around compositions I had created on the Jamman in rehearsal and I just used it sporadically in between (for some percussion or to have a long droney bass note).

I put a Casio MT70 old skool synth through it to lay down a live drum beat then added bass guitars and loads of stuff. It is tremendous fun and when you pull it off live it is an absolute treat. But you obviously only get one go so practise like hell before you take it out in public.

The sound quality is fine. If you play around with it in advance of performing live with it you get to know what it can and can't do and what it's strengths and weaknesses are. Then play to the strengths of it.

Once you work out the levels for all your equipment that is to go through it the possibilities are endless and i often found myself getting completely lost in it. In a good way.

Hmm. I bought mine from ebay. It worked fine for a while but then i did have a couple of problems with the rec and stop buttons stopping working.

Thankfully a girl I work with was confident enough to open it up, find the problem and perform some DIY repairs that worked a treat. For a while, then I had to open it up again and perform some similar repairs after which it worked great - until I had it stolen a couple of weeks back :-(

Basically we fixed it with a pair of scissors and a standard pencil eraser. the button wasn't clicking on and off so we added a bit of rubber to bridge the gap.

It was second hand and that is the risk you run I guess. Am going to buy a replacement next month and hopefully first hand I will have less problems.

It is a charming pedal. Get to know it really well before you take it out live.

Before I got this I spent some time on YouTube watching videos of people using it - it appeared very straight forward there, and after reading the manual which is online available at the DigiTech website, I had no concerns regarding the ease of use. If you have problems playing along with a metronome or any timing issues, you may have a hard time getting a clean loop. Apart from this, there are no problems to be expected when using the basic features of this product.

The hard time starts when you take the Jam Man onto stage. Without the optional footswitch it is not possible to change over from one prerecorded loop to another, so you are pretty much stuck with one. No drama as you can still ape around on that one until wisdom come, but the crowd will get bored if your performance consists of jams based on a single groove template. Might work once or twice during a show, but that's about it.

But even with the optional footswitch you will not be able to, lets say, start with a verse part, then move on to a NON PRE-RECORDED bridge and/or chorus as the device is unable to store any data while playing a loop - so once you have moved on to a next patch, all unstored stuff from the previous groove will be lost. Baaaaaa. So the footswitch in my opinion is only useful if you use the Jam Man as a "Band-in-a-box", a backing band with (how I use it) a 12-string and acoustic bass. I use the switch to go from song to song, nothing else.

Another thing that makes me almost sure that the Jam Man had never been intended for live use is the fact that both the microphone and the guitar signal get mixed down to the guitar signal, so while there are seperate inputs for mic and guitar, there is only ONE mono (!) out for both together. Now I thought I was wise and split the mic signal before the Jam Man, sending one line directly to the stagebox while the other went through the Jam Man - bad idea, as the microphone input of the Jam Man can not me muted when not recording, meaning that the vocals now eere arriving both via the voc channel AND the guitar channel. The ONLY way around is to have a seperate mic with a switch (!) connected to the Jam Man and to turn it on ONLY when you want to send a signal to the Jam Man.

Next: there is no reverb/delay option for the mic input, forcing you to use the same effect for both the guitar and the microphone. I therefore have a Digi Verb pedal between the mic and the Jam Man.

Last, the entire thing is MONO, so whatever stereo fx you might be using on the guitar will get mixed down to mono.

More on this and other thoughts below.

I am using quite expensive gear and would not tolerate anything down the lane to the mixer to have a negative effect on the sound. What I found out was that if you set the input levels correctly and unless you use more than 8-9 overdubs you will get very little negative impact on your sound. The included drum sounds are not very convincing, but then again, these are only meant to be used as a metronome, so why bother.

On stage things are a bit more tricky though: while there are no problems when using ONE guitar and ONE percussion instrument, as soon as you change gear (e.g. grab a bass guitar to lay down a bass line onto a loop) it will become neccessary to re-adjust the input level of that instrument, otherwise it will be either too loud or too soft on the loop. It might be easier to crank up the input of the Jam Man and adjust the instruments output instead (can be done before the show).

When using various percussion instruments via the microphone you must keep in mind that they too have various volume levels, so keeping the correct distance to the microphone becomes very important in terms of matching volumes in the mix. I use my own in-ear monitoring system which helps a lot to get the volumes right.

You definitely have to spend some time with the Jam Man under live conditions (rehearsal room) before you can take it on stage.

One reads occasionally that the Jam Man sometimes tends to "stumble" while playing a loop. I had this occur once so far in the very beginning. I have read than users had their devices sent in for repair, and when it returned it still had the same flaw - but as I said, there are only a few such incidents reported on the web, and I didn't have this happen ever since.

The unit looks and feels very sturdy and weights as much as a brick.

Never had to deal with them, however the official German DigiTech board is very well organized and issues seem to be looked into very quickly and friendly by the staff.

What I liked A LOT about DigiTech was the fact that my unit came with a 1GB DigiTech Memory Card instead of the standard 128MB. All other companies I know still ship their products with poopy 128MB or 512MB cards. Thumbs up!

I play acoustic rock (when using the Jam Man), and the Jam Man is mostly used as a backing band for another guitar and a bass. I record the tracks using Cubase and send them to the Jam Man via USB. The reason why I use Cubase is because it offers a better control over the volume levels.

The Jam Man is great for practicing as it offers speed changes without pitch change, and it helps big deal in tweaking riffs and difficult lines. If you have the optional footswitch, you can also check out a certain chorus with various bridge versions etc. Much easier to set up than a multitracker, but then again also very limited (why no headphone jack? why no bpm readout for the metronome? arrrgh!).

Live on stage it *can* be a real weapon, but as with every weapon you should really, really know what you are doing. Practice every little thing you intend to do - the art is to let things *look* improvised. This box bears a lot of slings and arrows, it can embaress you in no time but also let you shine like the star you are. Learn how to use it and adapt your show to overcome it's little flaws.

You have to understand how this thing works. That's the secret. I've heard about problems with reliability and I can't comment on that but some of the problems come down to the sequence of operation. If you want to start from the beginning by playing directly into it then when you lay down the first track, you need to tap out the tempo and make sure that the tempo beat is audible. From there, when you step on the record pedal, you need to wait one bar before starting. It makes sense but it is not obvious. When you overdub, you have your original rhythm guide. Here is a typical exercise.

. Turn up the tempo metronome volume.
. Choose a new track.
. Tap the tempo with the stop/tempo pedal.
. Press the record pedal and wait a bar of tempo beats.
. Record your masterpiece.
. Stop pedal to stop.
. Undo is press and hold the stop pedal.
. To overdub, press the start button then when your loop comes around again, press the start pedal again (there are other ways too).

As far as loading wav files via the PC is concerned, you must copy one of the .xml files into the same folder as that which you want to transfer to. Secondly, in order for the wav to synchronize properly, you need to open it up and edit the tempo value. Yhe way to do this is simple and requires a simple use of a calculator but a superb dewcription of how to do this is found at the following web address: http://www_dot_normbowler_dot_com/jamman/. No, I don't know the guy. Thirdly, you must convert any stereo wav files to mono or you'll have problems. Use a freeware program to do this.

Well, here's another thing. 44.1kHz...fine if you allow a little headroom. You see, if you are maxing out all the time then you will meet some distortion. The manual says that you should just let the input peak LED flicker occasionally when you are recording. I disagree. I believe that you should just turn the volume down enough that you barely DON'T clip at max strumming power. Maybe others have had faulty gear but thankfully, I haven't. I'm actually really happy with the sound.

Here's one I can't answer yet. All works fine so far.

Can't comment, as it ain't broke. Here's a hint though. Buy a Laney amp. Their quality of customer care is 10/10. I had a problem with the FX loop and also (seperately) whinged about my reverb being too quiet. They fixed the FX loop problem and as a personal touch, changed the balance on the reverb. Fair play (I appreciate their work).

So far, I'd buy it again if it was stolen. It's a nice bit of kit. One thing I like is that it doesn't have amp modelling to mess you about. Also, in a parallel FX loop, it doesn't seem to suffer from phase cancellation. It's solidly built too. My gripe is that it doesn't have an On/Off switch.

I bought a Digitech 'JamMan' looper/phrase sampler after selling an Epiphone Les Paul Custom about 15 months ago. As far as using it, recording loops and over dubbing new tracks onto the original was fairly easy. the manual is pretty clear, and explains what all the buttons do. I did find that quite a few had several functions, which made it difficult to memorise without having to refer to the manual. This thing didn't work long enough for me to really explore its settings.

Originally, I was using a Washburn w-166 pro through a boss ME-50 effects processor, into the Jamman, and output to my VOX AD30-VT amp. "Is it noisy?" it's the opposite, after just over a year there's no sound whatsoever coming out of it!

Ahh, this is the catagory I was waiting for!!! I bought this thing just over a year ago on an impulse buy. I'm just learning how to play guitar and couldn't really get much out of this product so it went into the cubbard ready for a time when I could actually play and make use of it. I'd say in total I've used this maybe 10 times in all.

I can play a little now so I thought I'd have another go with it, only to find when I got it all setup there's no output coming from it. If I turned the loop level right up full and my amp right up I could just make out the saved loops, that was when I first tried it... now it's dead completely! I got in touch with Digitech by email explaining it was just out of warranty, they give me an address and number for the UK which turned out to be a probation service!!

This thing cost me ??250 just over a year ago, Ive hardly used it and now all it's good for is the bin! I'm finished with anything Digitech, I'll never buy another thing made by them.

As stated above.. dunno about if it had still been within the warranty period, but now... I tried to get it repaired by taking it back to my local dealer, he had no luck with contacting Digitech either. An address I was given by Digitech for their UK distribution turned out to be a Probation Service! all I can assume here is the firm has changed address and telephone number, or shut down.

I play moslty classic rock/blues, and have been playing for a couple of years. I've changed my gear more times than I can remember. At the minute I own a new Michael Kelly Patriot Premium with EMG's (its the guitar I'll be burried with!), a no name plywood Les Paul look alike with a bolt on neck!, and a no name Parlour acoustic. a VOX AD30VT amp, Boss ME-50 floor effects, just bought a Boss BR-600 8 track recording studio and I also own a VOX 'JamVox' guitar/computer interface.

I would pay someone to steal it! and put the insurance money towards a Boss GT-10. I love nothing about it and hate everything. (Q: "Does it help you make music"?) pah yeah right... "Anything else you'd like to share?" yeah DON'T BUY ONE, IT'LL BREAK JUST OUT OF WARRANTY!!! there are far better products out there for recording/looping, I can't see me ever recomending anything made by Digitech based on my experiences with this product.

Loopers aren't nearly as straight forward as other pedals but this is easy enough once you figure out the process. The LCD display is something the Boss RC-20XL doesn't have but I wish it did.

This was the first looper I bought (I ended up returning it for a Boss RC-20XL) and I wasn't very excited about the sound quality. I know it has 44.1 kHz sampling but the playback from the JamMan just sounds lifeless to me. On top of that, I also had a lot of trouble matching the beginning and end of a loop - a problem I haven't really had with the Boss looper. And unlike the Boss looper, the JamMan doesn't seem to have a "fade out" stop mode - just "stop when I press stop" and "stop at the end of the loop". I have two more gripes about this pedal but I'll get to those later.

I didn't keep around long enough to find out. When you register your pedal, DigiTech extends your warranty to 5 years. I assume you could rely on it.

Never dealt with them.

In addition to my sound quality concerns, I was also disappointed with the actual build quality of the looper. Maybe mine was a fluke but the blue paint job was inconsistent and the pots had a lot of "dead space" in them. You had to turn the loop level up to 3 or 4 before the audio actually started to come in. And that problem wasn't just with the loop level knob, it was with all of them.

My final gripe is the XLR input. When I first bought this pedal, I thought that was a nice feature but now that I have had a chance to fool around with loopers more, I prefer having a second 1/4" phono input. That way, you can connect more than one instrument at once. Bass or keyboard anyone? If I ever want to use an XLR mic, I'll connect mic->mixer->looper. If you have an XLR mic, you probably own a mixer or some sort of converter.

On a positive note, I do like that the JamMan is expandable and comes with 24 minutes worth of memory. I also think the rhythms might be a little better than the ones built into the Boss loopers and I think the time signatures are more flexible too. Too bad those were the only redeeming factors for me. I had high hopes for this pedal.

I own both the JM and the Boss RC20XL. Interface design is very similar. 90% of what you want to do can be done with the 2 footswitches which control loop start/stop, tempo set, play/overdub, undo, and erase. I also have the optional footswitch for the JM which lets me change loop numbers with my feet.

I give it a 9 instead of a 10 becasue loopign can get complicated and you need to read the manual to use all the advanced features. But ease of use overall is great.

It also has a missing feature -- the Boss pedal has an auto fadeout which the JM lacks and I miss.

Sound quality is excellent. The JM samples at 44.1kHz, which is CD quality. it has a low impedance (XLR) mic input in addition to the instrument input, so you can do high quality vocal looping.

I gave it a 9 instead of 10 because it is mono, not stereo. Stereo would be perfect!

Metal case, built like a tank. I have had zero problems.

Digitech offers excellent customer support through their website. http://www.digitech.com/products/JamMan/JamMan.htm

I love the JM and recommend it highly. Check out my web article on advasnced looping techniques using the JM. Includes explanation of some of the mysterious settings in the LOOP.XML file.

http://www.normbowler.com/jamman/

10 This unit is very easy too use. I agree with other reviewers that what you put in is basically what comes out. I have the optional pedal which allows you to scroll up and down between loops. You can also press another loop before the loop that is playing ends and that loop will play when the first loop finishes.

I had the Boss RC20 and I compared it with this unit when I first got it. I thought that the loops were alot clearer on the digitech. I also found the pedal easier to get a more accurate loop. If you find that the unit is changing your sound then you may want to look at how you have it wired up. If you set the levels correctly you will get the same sound you put in. I use this with electrics and acoustics, vocal mics and electronic keyboards. It is a great way to do backing tracks with a keyboard. For a mono unit your loops remain amazingly clear dispite several overdubs. I recently did a show where all the backup tracks were on the looper. It was in a church. It worked great. Another use for this unit is transfering old records to your computer. Handy

So far so good. I have the 2 gb card and that opens up alot of possibities.

I am a music educator as well as a gigging musician. This unit is a must have tool for a music teacher or for any musician. There is nothing like having the ability to instantly hear yourself. A great learning tool.

Once you start and get comfortable with this product it can be invalueable

I have had problems with two units, both same problem. In the middle of practicing I will lose my guitar input. I can play with the amp for months and never have a problem and then when I start using my Jam Man more frequent the input from my guitar will be lost while the background loop will continue playing.It doesn't happen all the time just enough to piss you off.

The company doesn't really see your product they send it to a contractor to fix it

I wish I could do something about it, I payed $300 and I just want it to work like its supposed to.