Boss RC-3 Loop Station Review
Summary
- Pros: 3 hours of recording, 99 memory slots, stereo I/O, and a compact body.
- Cons: Only 10 built-in drum patterns, some noise complaints, noticeable gap when switching between phrases.
- Overall: Boss’s new compact looper pedal for 2011 packs a huge punch for such a small package. With 3 hours of recording and 99 memory slots, you won’t outgrow this pedal anytime soon.
- Guitar Center: Boss RC-3 Loop Station Standard
- Amazon: Boss RC-3 Loop Station
Full Review
The Boss RC-3 Loop Station is a compact looper pedal from Boss released in 2011, and replacing the older Boss RC-2 Loop Station as Boss’s top-o-the-line compact looper. The new and improved RC-3 Loop Station is powerfully equipped yet conveniently housed in a compact housing for musicians with an already crowded pedal board.
3 Hours of Stereo Recording
First of the improvements over the RC-2 Loop Station is that the RC-3 Loop Station gives musicians up to 3 hours of stereo recording time, as opposed to the RC-2, which only permitted up to 16 minutes of mono recording. That’s a heck of an improvement! Now you can load hours of your favorite backing tracks into 99 different slots. This allows you to jam to your heart’s content without getting bored, and prevents you from having to stop and load new jam tracks over and over again – just keep the creativity flowing. By the way, the Boss RC-3 is USB 2.0 compatible for quick loading.
Pre-Set Drum Tracks
One drawback to the Boss RC-3 Loop Station is that it only provides 10 drum tracks. If you’re the kind of musician who wants a large selection of drum beats for spontaneous inspiration, this may not be the pedal for you. This pedal is better suited to musicians who want to play along with jam tracks. Keep in mind that you can load pre-recorded jam tracks with your own drum beats so, with a little effort, the 10 preset drum tracks won’t necessarily stop you from getting the most out of this little pedal. The ten preset rhythms are in a variety of styles, including Rock, Pop, Funk, Shuffle, R&B, and Latin.
Inputs and Outputs
Guitarists who want to incorporate external stereo effects devices will be excited about the true stereo I/O. This is a big improvement over the RC-2 Loop Station, and let’s Boss compete with Digitech’s JamMan Stereo. Keep in mind that this pedal does add a bit of noise, so if you’re a real audio purist, you might want to spend a bit more money for a cleaner overall sound. If you’re just practicing at home, a little noise isn’t the worst thing, and it’s not all that noticeable.
Boss RC-3 Loop Station Control Panel
When using the RC-3 Loop Station for recording, there are two options. You can choose the Auto Recording feature, which starts the recording the moment you begin playing your guitar, or as soon as you start a connected audio player like an external drum machine or CD player. Alternatively, Count-In mode gives you one-bar of rhythm before recording starts. Like most looper pedals, you can Undo/Redo as you go.
A dedicated knob lets you adjust the volume of the rhythm, and you can set the tempo incrementally or via tap tempo. You can also specify the time signature. When you save a phrase, the rhythm type and time signature will also be saved. In addition to recording your guitar or bass performances and turning them into playable loops, you can also record other external stereo audio sources via the RC-3′s AUX IN. If you have an external drum machine, you can make new loops on the fly, or grab loops from your MP3 tracks and start jamming over them.
Beware that, as with the Boss RC-30 Loop Station, there is a noticeable 1/4 second gap when switching between phrases. While this may not bother most bedroom musicians, it’s certainly not suited for studio recording. Ironically, this was not a problem with Boss’s older RC-2 Loop Station and RC-20XL Loop Station. The Boss RC-300 Loop Station didn’t seem to develop this problem, but is significantly larger and more expensive than the RC-3.
Conclusion
The RC-3 Loop Station is Boss’s most compact looper in the RC-3x series, which also includes the larger RC-30 Loop Station and the massive RC-300 Loop Station. Overall, the Boss RC-3 Loop Station improves Boss’s compact looping pedal technology by leaps and bounds, and is a solid option to compete with Digitech’s rival compact pedal, the JamMan Solo. Beware of the time lag between phrases if you plan on using the RC-3 for recording, however.
Boss RC-3 Loop Station Demo Video
this rc 3 is not much good when you play lead over recorded material it drowns it out.and you you add distortion to your guitar it also distorts the drums garbage
My drowns out the lead & distorts the drums too. What kind of amp do you have?
Is there any way of knowing if/when Boss will or can release a firmware update that can overcome the phrase-lag problem with this pedal?
I received this pedal as a present, and was unaware that there would be such a serious time-lag when switching from one memory bank to another.
This flaw makes it impossible to use this pedal in a live context to go between the parts of a song (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) by smoothly switching from memory bank to memory bank.
This seems like a big problem.
I wrote to Boss about the phrase-lag problem and received the following response:
“We are aware of gap between phrase change but unfortunately are not aware at this time of any procedures to change this. For best live application with no gap in phrase change, we highly recommend the BOSS RC-300 with (3) “Phrase Pedals” you can use in “Multi-Layering” mode and “Single Phrase” mode for changing from a part to another part of your song as needed. The RC-300 features also tones of great “PRE and POST” BOSS quality FX and an expression pedal for multiple assignements.”
The RC-300 is also significantly more expensive than the RC-3. And therefor this isn’t much of a solution for most people.
Why did Boss release this “update” of the RC-2 if it has this major of a design flaw?
It still seems like a big problem.
I didn’t like this pedal at all…it the bypass totally kills the tone. Boss usually has decent buffers but this one made my gigging board (even my board at home which has short leads) sound dead like I turned my tone knob nearly all the way down.
The phrase-lag problem or “gap between phrase change” sounds like a fatal flaw. I have two questions:
1) What exactly is a phrase change gap?
2) Does this prevent live multi-loop performances? In other words, is there a gap between two different layers of recorded instruments (a fatal flaw)?
Think of a phrase like a sentence that you write with notes. Once you play a phrase on your guitar, you can play it back as a loop. Once this bottom layer is recorded, you can layer more notes on top of your looping phrase, which is called “overdubbing.” One you have a nice background loop, you can solo over the top of it, which is great practice, and what a lot of beginners use a looper for.
If you want to start using a looper for live performances and build more complex songs, you’ll naturally want to build multiple loops into your songs and be able to switch back-and-forth between them seamlessly. For example, you could record one loop for the intro portion of your song, and have another looped phrase pre-recorded for the chorus portion of your song. This works a lot better when you have a looper with at least two pedals so that you can tap a pedal to switch between phrases, such as when you are shifting from the intro portion of your song to the chorus. The RC-3 isn’t really designed for this since it only has one pedal, though you can buy the additional footswitches.
With both the RC-3 and RC-30, there is a fraction of a second gap when you are switching between phrases. It would be noticeable in a live performance or elsewhere, so if switching between phrases is something you want to do with your looper, you should look at pedals other than the RC-3 or RC-30. In my opinion, the gap would “prevent” you from seamlessly shifting between different loops within the same song. You can do it with the gap, it just won’t be seamless and you might cringe a bit. Hope that helps.