Tonebone Loopbone

This thing is THE benchmark for making things easy and sensible out of a pedal board that may seem unsavable at the time. The instruction manual is extremely brief and helpful...leaving the very technical stuff to the website and staff. Mainly those are the things that you probably wouldn't want to try anyway without knowing whether they are going to work or not. This thing comes with sound quality embedded into it, so you don't lose anything at all in the form of tone in any setup your in.

Wow, all i have to say is IT'S AN EFFECTS LOOP, NOT A 400 EFFECT DIGITAL PROCESSOR POO TOY. By far took my setup to the next level and im not even playing my whole rack yet...it blew me away from the moment i turned it on. Pedals that used to be noisy are so quiet now that i can hear the hum from the tubes more than the hiss from the effect. So clear and ritcheous in it's tone preservation that it's totally transparent except of course when you hit that noisy pedal and you realize there is no noise anymore!!! i use a matchless independence and a shecter c1 classic with a les paul classic with the tommy iommi pickup and it just makes my jaw drop. the boost is so nice to have...i love this thing.

As far as this goes it's heavy and metal. the input jacks and controls are solid and as far as i can tell the warranty they give is just something they do cause it sounds better and they'll never have to back it up anyway cause it's built for PRO MUSICIANS. end of story.

I could imagine that dealing with them would be more easy than trying to tell someone at a jack in the box in houston texas that you don't want ketchup on your burger. TRUST ME ON THAT.

Overall, i need to say that this thing is awesome, and i can tell because my tone is very important to me, as i play a matchless and a les paul with 50 dollar cables and analogman, bad cat, fulltone, mxr, etc on the pedal board. This thing only reiterates the quality decisions you have already made, i don't know if it would make a radio shack amp with a danelectro pedal sound good cause i'd never buy em. i notice no difference in volume drop or tone loss when i hit my pedals anymore, and the ability to combine and switch and boost and tune on the fly just makes my day. Enjoy this thing to the fullest!!!

It's pretty darn simple. The layout on the pedal couldn't be easier to read.It een makes my pedal board easier to read. It's like a command center for your effects. I give it an 8 because some might find the options this pedal gives you a little daunting. It does require some planning ahead of time before you start plugging stuff up, if you really want to get all you can out of this.

I'm using my loop bone in my effects loop on my Bogner Shiva. I also use the slingshot remote for my amp's reverb. I use a little volume box to attenuate the hot signal that comes out of the effect send, then go straight into the loop bone.

Loop1:

Jacques Meistersinger Chorus (best little analog chorus out there)
Vintage MXR Flanger
EH Frequency analyzer (ring modulator)

Loop2:

Just a Boss CE-1

The output goes into my Fulltone Tube Tape Echo then into the Shiva's boost amp where the signal is boosted before going into the effect return.

It's great! The clean buffering lets me use all these pedals, especially those vintage ones that are quircky with signals, and my sound doesn't change! The boss CE-1 is espeacially wierd. Sounds wonderful when it's on, but kills my sound when off. With the loop bone, I just leave it on all the time and bypass it completely when I don't use it. The drag control is awesome too. Makes everything responsive and organic.

The slingshot remote has got to be the coolest features ever employed on a pedal! Shiva owners know that the reverb has a hard bypass in the circuit which is cool when reverb is off, but when you turn it on your level drops because the reverb loads the circuit. I use the slingshot remote in conjunction with the loopbone's boost, so when you hit the boost footswitch, it switches on your reverb at the same time! I can now have pure tone in my circuit when the reverb is off and completely out of my circuit, and have class-A buffering keep my signal level and quality constant when I turn my reverb on.

This pedal has solved all my problems in my rig. I can use old pedal, as many pedals as I want. I can use long lengths of cable. My reverb is the best I ever used. It is must to own this pedal if you need to run long lengths of cable, use dozens of effects, and want an easy way to trigger multiple functions at the same time.

It is a tank. No back up nessessary. It would survive a nuclear attack.

It's irreplacable. Nothing else in the market can do what this unit does. Radial is making some of the most useful and innovative products out there. I'm going to check out there buffer pedal soon. It doesn't matter what style you play. This thing is completely transparent! I wouldn't mind radial making a dedicated slingshot pedal. That would be awesome!

Very easy to use. I am using this with a single amp set up. The reason I bought it was to have the extra loops for my ever growing pedal board. Some of the are true bypass (Keeley Comp, Electric Mistress) but most of them, however are not i.e. mxr, dunlop etc. Set up was interesting and simple.

There is no sound and that is the whole point. It's seamless and clean and with boost actually puts a good strong signal straight to the front of my Tri-Axis. I have chose to run my higher gain items through one loop and my time shift effects through the other loop. This just makes it more manageable. I can run both loops at the same time so with a bit of forethought, I can click up the pedals I need for any given tune in a set lest and the switch between loop A and B with the ease of a patch with exception that it is pure bad ass analog quality. The switches do not make any sort of noice at all. The LED's make it very easy to see what is going on at a moment glance. So...here is the set up for those of you who are considering this unit for a pedal board command center:

I run my Keeley Compressor through the main input as it is a major component to my sound over all...it is always on and is true bypass if I ever chose to stomp it off. This never happens for me.

Loop 1: Fuzzface - MXR Micro Amp - EH English Muff'n - MXR SmartGate

Loop 2: MXR Phase 90 - EH Electric Mistress (I switch these back and forth from time to time) - Dunlop UniVibe

My Mesa Tri-Axis loop as follows:

Out - Dane Fish n' Chips - MXR Chorus - Alesis Quadraverb - Boss NS 50 Noise Supressor Back to the input.

The only reason I list all of this is to show you how nice it has been to lasso up all of these items between 3 loops as opposed to just one loop on my Boogie. There is still some pedal dancing but it smarter, somewhat proactive on the floor, and most importantly much quieter and organic when bypassing. By the way, the manual does not help in any way if you are using this as I have been describing. It is focused on a two amp system. At some point I will get a Fender Twin but for now, I have a fantastic pallet to chose from and the Loopbone has added to the dynamics and ease of use.

It's solid big time. I would not play with out it anymore. If you are as concerned as I am about loosing tone due to non-bypass stomp boxes, this is the unit for you and you will wonder why you didn't think of and invent it and market it etc.

Nice folks. I have been in email contact with and they are on top of it. Fast, informative replies and they even sent me a new users manual as mine was jacked up blurry and could not be read.

I play a number of different styles of music, Rock, reggae, some jazz, much blues and classic rock. Been playing for nearly 30 years. As listed above, I have gathered a number of toys along the way. I primarily play a US Strat with Classic 69's (nice nice nice). Have a number of other guitars, Les Paul 1960 reissue, US Tele, Zion Radicaster and on and on....There is really nothing out there that I am aware of that does what the Loop Bone does. It has been so highly rated that I decided to go with this one. The main things I like are being able to be a bit proactive with my stomp boxes for pre-song set ups and most of all, I can pull some or all boxes out the signal path and get all the juice, touch and feel of guitar to amp with no tone loss.

This unit is easy to use if you are knowledgable about hooking up effects, but the owner's manual is very easy to understand if you need help.
This isn't an effect per-say but it makes the best of the effects you have by making them work more quietly & having less negative effect on the dry guitar tone.

I use the Loopbone with older effects like EH Big Muff, TS-808, Ibanez WH10 wah, ect. these effects can suck tone when not in use & some even introduce noise.
It's great to experiment with different combinations, & in different order to gain different sounds.
The Loopbone works flawlessly in the way it switches effects chains in & out of the signal path without any pops or noise, & it even has a cool variable booster function that sounds great, but for my tastes boosts too much low end,it would have been nice to have an EQ switch or tuner mute like the Radial Switchbone has.
The drag control simulates a load on your pickups like a standard cord would, which is useful for those who don't like what buffering does to their sound, I play mostly single coils & I like a little treble rolloff & the drag control is the ticket!

I run my Loopbone in tandem with the Headbone to switch heads & the Slingshot remote option is a nice option to have to eliminate tap dance syndrome on stage, you can even asign it to switch channels on your amp at the same time you switch in a loop or the boost on the pedal, WELL DONE RADIAL!!

Overall, the Loopbone does what it's designed to do & that is to run vintage tone sucking effects that we purists can't live without, & utilize them in a package to were the noise & toneloss are no longer a problem.

So far so good, Ive had the Loopbone for a few months now with no issues.

Radial's customer support is tops, Email them or phone & they will indeed contact you & try to help you in whatever problem you may have.

I play hard rock & blues & this pedal has made my musical life alot easier, there are other loopers & switchers out there, some more pricey, some less, but bang for the buck, the Radial products are superior, the quality & features for the price are what sets these apart from the rest.

Simple to use, no deep editing or settings are needed to get up and running. Good manual.

Slingshot (cool!) feature switches are self explanatory.

One problem in actual use that I ran into the first time using in a band context, is the slingshot switch placement....right behind the loop 1 and two on/off buttons(???) I kicked them to different settings twice in one set. Since I have the slingshot set up to switch amp channels this is a bad live situation. The next time I used the Loopbone I put a strip of tape across the switches.

Guitar->Wireless->Tuner->Loopbone->50W Tube Head ->4x12

Loop 1 ->Dano Phaser->Dano Daddy-O->Sabine Overdrive
Loop 2 ->Johnson J-Station

The drag control can compensate for amp/pickup loading. In my set up it is barely noticeable, although I have it set to what the manual says will "darken" the tone rather that "brighten" the tone.

The boost is excellent although the way I ended up having to configure the pedal for live use, it just functions as the channel switch button (set to NO boost). because of this I seem to notice MORE noise when switched to the high gainamp channel so it seems like NO boost actually is boosting something.

I bought this pedal in order to switch the J-Station out of the signal path when not in use, and to bring it in in for special sounds while selecting them "off-line", as the J-Station has that patch change pause that all multis seem to. As a bonus I ended up putting my regular effect pedal set up in the other loop, and I like being able to turn two fx on or off at the same time.

The switching is noiseless, which is to be expected and is also very appreciated, (especially at the price point).

The placement of the buttons is good, with the middle button kicked forward a bit. You can easily hit two adjacent buttons at the same time. This lets me turn loop 1 on and channel switch at the same time or turn the J-Station on/off and my effects off/on at the same time. This in itself is a workaround...as I the slingshot doesn't have a "normally latched" of "normally un-latched" setting, therefore the boost switch needs to be "on" for my amp to be on the dirty channel. If there was this setting I could assign the slingshot remote to the loop 1 and have a clean channel with effects boxes and a dirty channel dry with one button push.

The first one I recieved, which was a "scratch-and-dent" purchase was D-O-A. It was quickly replaced.

The build quality and weight is all top notch, the buttons are very heavy duty and the input jacks are strong and rugged.

The D-O-A unit makes me a bit skeptical of reliability, like for example if you plug in the wrong adapter (it requires a 15V) will it fry? I am thinking the person who had it before me maybe tried it in their pedal board, hooked it up to a 9v daisy chain and it stopped working, then sent it back "unwanted".

I don't know but, I'm not exactly resting easy. I will rock it without a backup and update this review if it's good or bad in a year!

The company I bought it fom www.americanmusical.com was helpful as always and had no problem taking the defective unit back...they also shipped a new one immedialtely.

Good idea, great features, just a few things missing.

Everyone's set up and needs are so totally unique that it must be difficult designing this gear.

It's expensive. The slingshot remote makes it worth it, but the implementation of the sligshot is a disappointment. The set up switches should be moved to a "set it and forget it" location so they won't get bumped.

It will get mo going for now but I will be looking for a total solution, which I guess is part of the fun of playing guitar...right!

This unit is very easy to use. It is virtually a line selector (fx looper) ala the Boss LS-2, but with some fabulous new features and better quality sound. The manual is good and Is uggest you read it to get the most out of the unit. I has 2 fx loops and a bypass mode. It also has a boost built in. The boost can be used with either loop or the bypass mode. You can also run both loops at the same time. They would be in series, with loop 1 going into loop 2. You can even put a boost on top of the "both loops on" mode. A REALLY cool feature this unit has is the "slingshot" feature. It allows you control the amps footswitchable features at the same time as switching loops (or turning on the boost). Therefor, when engaging the loop that uses delay (or whatever), the reverb on the amp will turn off. Or, it could change channels on the amp. It's all selectable and can accomadate many common switching systems. There is also a "drag" feature which compensates for pickup load differences and the sound degredation from using extra long cable lengths.

I'm using this with an American Strat with CS-54s in it, through a '73 Deluxe Reverb or a '66 Super Reverb. It doesn't seem to add any noise to your sound and there is no noticable noise when changing loops. The boost is a class A circuit and sounds great. There is a pot to adjust the level of boost.

I haven't had it too long (2 mos.) but I've used their Hot British (great pedal) for over a year now with no problems. I always bring a backup for most of my pedals, but have never needed them.

Haven't needed to find that out yet.

This pedal is so useful that it would be hard to go back to using the LS-2. The only complaint I have about the unit is that you can't switch from loop 1 to loop 2 (or vise versa) with only 1 button. You have to turn one off and then turn the other one on. The same goes for the boost feature. You just can't go from, for example, loop 1 to loop 2 with the boost on. That would take turning off loop 1, then turning on loop 2, then turning on the boost....3 moves. This isn't too much of a problem for me because, when on loop 1 (Keeley TS-9 DX turbo --> Keeley compressor, I simply run it into loop 2 (Hot British set w/output at Lead levels) for leads. The TS-9 DX into the Hot British is AMAZING.