Sabine BT-316 M

Easy.

No wonder the guy sold it on eBay! I echo what the others have said about the poor sound quality when slowed down - mine get muddy with tons of slap-back echo on the 2/3 speed - very hard to discern notes. The slower you go, the worse the sound. Can't really believe Sabine is making the claims that they are. I haven't heard other loop samplers, but I can't imagine them sounding worse than this thing!

I rarely give bad reviews, but this unit deserves it. The 3/4 speed is "ok" at best, then sound quality gets worse. I mean, if you can't understand the notes, what's the purpose??????

This entirely depends on what you want to do with this pedal. I use it as the cheapest phrase sampler in existence, and not as much for it's intended purpose of slowing down prerecorded stuff. For that I suppose it works pretty well. I, however, wanted to hit something with my foot, play some lines, and then have it loop it immediately: no changing plugs or anything. Unfortunately if you want to play through it you need to be in a different jack than the one for phrase input. So you either have to change your plugs every time you screw up or want to change your phrase, or you have to rig up a complex series of switches to do it for you in order to keep you fingers on the guitar (which is what I did). This is orders of magnitude better, but not best. Also the buttons for recording and playing are definitely not meant to be foot-activated. Until I slightly modified mine I couldn't possibly stop my recording without erasing it and starting again accidentally. I continue to work on this problem form time to time. But considering it costs about a 5th of what most other phrase samplers cost, it's not bad (though the 30 second limit is short for playing along with anything other than a quick blues riff).
Overall, it is simple to use. The buttons are fairly obvious, but DON'T UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO PLAY WITH IT IMPROPERLY WIRED UP. IT WILL MAKE HORRIBLE LOUD AND DAMAGING NOISES COME OUT OF YOUR AMP. Bad. Very bad. Solve with crazy switching patterns. You can email me for schematics if you like, I'll scribble some up for you.

Uless I spend inordinate amounts of time playuing with the recording and playback thresholds I get substantial amounts of static out of this thing. This may be due in part to my homemade switching rig, but I doubt it as al parts are grounded. I will note that when I am at home (from school) I live neer high-tension power lines, and the amount of static the Sabine (and my amp) pickup are massively increased compared to the static detected in my dorm room. I am led to believe the Sabine just doesn't deal with interference well.

Slow playback sounds okay for CD recorded stuff, terrible for me recorded stuff (is this a hardware/software issue, or a Dave can't play for beans issue?).

Not really a gig item, more for practice and training, and it hasn't broken yet. If it had 'd be pretty pissed. After dealing with the crapy input setup and the short power adapter cable and the hiss I'd sell it right off. But for now, it's great screw with when it works right.

N/A

Good for learning solos, recording chord progressions to work on improvisation. I play pretty weak jazz and blues stuff, occasionally rock and folk music. It's a good tool for the jazz musician who needs to work on your improvisation. Not as usefull to the rockers, unless you need to disect a Van Halen blaze or notes. Useless to the folk dudes.

Very easy..patch in a source, press record, press play to play, press speed to slowdown...

decent for the purpose...

so far so good....has a 2 year warranty....

don't know

for the purpose this machine is great...anyone gripping about the sound has obviously never tried to slow down a 45 record to 33.3.....this isn't a stereo system designed for pleasing listening...its a musicians tool....for that purpose it is quite worthwhile....

This phrase sampler is very easy to operate. That is one of it's strongest points. Just plug it in and push Play and Record just like a tape player. It automaticly loops the sample, and will store it even after the unit has been turned off (if desired). Easy.

Sound quality starts at fair ,at best, and then gets progressively worse as the sample is slowed down. On the slowest setting (1/3 speed) the sound is absolutely terrible. To get an idea of how it sounds at full speed listen to a RealPlayer sample of your favorite CD at CDNOW. The sound is a little better than that, at full speed. Maybe twice as good as a RealPlayer sample and less than half as good as CD quality sound, if that makes sense. From there it gets much, much worse. To get and idea of 1/3 speed, punch holes in your speakers and then listen to the music at full volume with your head inside a big metal trash can.
There is a moderate whirrr and clicking noise with both the volume and record control set on high. But it is not very noticable while playing the sample. I have been using it to polish up solos from the likes of Eric Johnson and Allan Holdsworth. Very speedy stuff for those of you that don't know. If you have the transcribed solos and a CD that breaks them down so you can here just the guitar part, this tool can be helpful and useful. It works well is conjunction with Wolf Marshall Signature Licks books because the solo is isolated.
I had imediate success decoding the fine points of the into to Cliffs of Dover (Eric Johnson) directly off the CD. This is a piece that even Wolf Marshall didn't quite get right in my opinion. However, on the album, the intro is an unacompanied guitar. When I tried catching the solo from Fred (Holdsworth/Williams) I hit a wall. The other instruments just overloaded the poor little box, and at 1/3 speed it is almost totaly unusable.
However, if you already know the notes and are just working for fluidity and authenticity, I feel the machine can be used. If you don't have the TRANSCRIBED SHEETMUSIC and just want to try to pick out the solos, FORGET IT! the sound is much too digital and muddy.
(unless the part is slow and easy)

I have no idea how reliable it is. I just got it.

Same deal. I haven't decided if I'm going to keep it yet.
It's a coin toss.

The strongest feature of this machine is that is can loop up to thirty second samples and play back very short sections of complicated solos. This way you don't have to follow the music from the beginning of the track just to get one bar, or try to rewind over and over- punching buttons on a CD player with your guitar in hand. That can be very frustrating to say the least. This machine can isolate just the part that you need to work on, and play it over and over so your hands stay where they need to be. Very handy.
At full speed the sound is fine- totaly usable. At 2/3 the digital sound starts muddying things up a bit, but still very usable (stay away from deathmetal sounds) At 1/2 the sound is usable with a little effort. And at 1/3 you really need a sample with an unacompanied part for your instrument and need to already be familiar with the notes you must play. 1/3 really sux. You must keep in mind this is not a high end sampler. It is a learning tool, and not much more.
If Sabine were to either follow through on the sound quality on all speeds, or drop the lower two speeds, cut the price in half, and call it a sample looper, it would be totaly awsome.
ALSO!!
You can run the CD player into the machine, plug in your headphones, adjust the headphone vol.,and the recording vol. to achieve the best possible sound before and while you make the actual sample- so you can here exactly how it will sound. You can plug in your guitar and and jam over the sample or use it as just a headphone amp, you can also split the channels and send your guitar to one side and sample to the other but I haven't tried that yet. No batteries. Must use the adapter that is supplied.
If it were stolen would be pissed off -I payed $100
I would probably look for something a little better, but the price skyrockets for digital samplers and they are mostly geared toward DJ's not guitar players.
This is a highly specialized piece of equipment-not much selection out there.

It's easy to use. Plug in a cd or tape player and record the sample.

It sounds horrible! I used my cd player and there is an enormous amount of hiss, even when the recording volume was set for it's maximum useable volume and playing back at normal speed. When the sample is slowed down, it get's even worse. The sample gets very muddy and distorted (in a bad way) when slowed down to 2/3, and is useless when slowed further. The sample I used was a violin solo, and if that couldn't be slowed down cleanly, nothing else could.

The first one of these I got didn't work at all, so I sent it back and the second one I got worked, but sounded so horrible it was only used for about 45 minutes until I packed it up and sent it back.

Never dealt with Sabine customer support, but Musician's Friend was good about the return.

Overall, I would give this a 1. It doesn't come close to what they advertise it as. Don't waste your money.
I've used some demo software (Slow Gold II) that worked quite excellent, but I'm going to try out some stuff by Reed Kotler in hopes that it's better (which shouldn't be too tough).