Summary
• Pros: The Digitech Jamman Vocal XT looper is clear and simple. It has a user-friendly layout, great sound quality and all of the key features you need to get looping.
• Cons: No spots to store your loops, no auxiliary input, no USB connection, no rhythm backing.
• Overall: Could be a great first looper for vocalists and singer-songwriters, but other options have more features.
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• Amazon: Digitech Jamman Vocal XT Looper
Full Review
For most of their history, looper pedals have been largely aimed at guitarists. The appeal of looping for a guitarist is easy to understand. Having a tireless jamming companion and being able to turn yourself into a one-man band opens up a wealth of possibilities. But if you sing or play an acoustic instrument, many of the available looper pedals don’t have much to offer. However, the Digitech JamMan Vocal XT is one of the few options – also including the Boss RC-202 and the TC Electronic Ditto Mic Looper – created with vocalists in mind. The question is: does the looper offer enough to make it worth the investment?
The Classic JamMan Style, For Vocalists and More
The JamMan Vocal XT looper has the classic blue coloring, a microphone decal on the body and a less cluttered control panel than many of Digitech’s other loopers. It’s a lot like the Express XT but designed with vocalists in mind. Standing a couple of inches off the ground and having a 4.8 by 3.4-inch (12.2 by 8.6 cm) face, it’s pretty compact. It has just two dials and one footswitch on the front face. The result is a looper pedal that doesn’t look too daunting for newcomers to looping.
The pedal is so simple that most of what you’ll need is in the first 10 pages of the manual. Experienced loopers won’t need the manual at all. And for any newcomers, the key points can fit into a short paragraph. You plug in, set your mic level, and then press the footswitch to record your first “phrase”. Hit the footswitch when you’re done and the loop will start playing back. Then hit the footswitch again to record an overdub, which you can do as many times as you like. To stop playback, just double-tap the footswitch. This is really all you need to start looping.
Getting Connected
The back of the Jamman Express XT has all the ports you need to get connected up. There is a jack on the side for the included power supply. Then there are XLR ins and outs on the back for a microphone. These include phantom power for anyone using a condenser mic – the switch labeled “+48 V”. There are also two jacks for the input and output for JamSync, which is a way to link multiple Digitech loopers together.
You connect your mic to the Vocal XT using the in XLR jack, and send the output to your mixer. Setting the mic level is pretty painless. You adjust the control (to the right of the “Loop Level” dial) until your very loudest notes make the LED turn red, with most remaining green and the slightly louder ones turning orange.
You Don’t Have to Just Record Your Voice
Although Digitech designed the Jamman Vocal XT for vocalists, you can use any instrument you can record over a microphone with it. So you can incorporate anything from a violin to a trombone into your loops. This gives the pedal a lot of potential for multi-instrumentalists. Unfortunately, there is no 1/4 inch jack that would have also opened up the pedal to electric guitarists and bassists. Digitech has plenty of other loopers for those instruments though.
The JamMan Vocal XT’s (Limited) Features
The JamMan Vocal XT is all about the simplicity, but this keeps it pretty light on features. The most crucial feature that not mentioned above is the undo/redo feature. This allows you to remove the most recent overdub on your loop. You do this by holding down the main footswitch for two seconds while the loop is playing back. This is great a great feature anytime you make a mistake and don’t want to start all over. You can also use it for composing songs, since it allows you to bring the top layer of your recording (your last overdub) in and out.
JamSync Is What Sets the Vocal XT Apart
The only other real feature on the Jamman Vocal XT is JamSync. This is basically MIDI but without as much compatibility. Your Jamman Vocal XT can work as a master or a slave device, and you can connect it to other Jamman Vocal XTs, Express XTs and JamMan Solo XTs. That way, you can have more than one musician looping at the same time. While this is an awesome feature, I have to point out that adding MIDI would have been more useful.
24-Bit Audio Quality
Although not exactly a feature, one great thing about the Jamman Vocal XT is the sound quality. Your loops are recorded in 24-bit, with a 44.1 kHz sampling rate, and it has a dbx mic preamp, which combine to give the whole pedal crystal-clear audio. Many loopers of this generation are 16-bit, so this is a definite positive point for the Vocal XT.
Lack of Memory Is a Bummer
Similar to the Express XT and the Ditto Mic, there is no memory for loops on the Vocal XT. It gives you up to 10 minutes of recording time, which is twice as much as the Ditto Mic. But without memory slots, it’s hard to imagine when you would need to make a 10-minute loop unless you’re working on the most epic song in history.
The benefits that would come from something as simple as adding a handful of memory locations, doubling the maximum recording time and adding a USB port so your loops can be saved to your computer are hard to overstate. It seems this was a missed opportunity.
As it stands, the JamMan Vocal XT offers you an audio “whiteboard” to express your creativity. This can be great fun. Like a whiteboard, though, if you want to draw something else you have to erase your old creation. Offering dedicated storage spots is more like giving musicians a collection of canvases. Once you’re done, you can either switch to a new, blank canvas or dig out something you worked on before.
Dropping the metaphor, if you want a practicing and jamming companion, the Vocal XT is great, but this limitation means you can’t build and save a catalogue of loops for a set list. You can only use it on-the-fly.
Does the JamMan Vocal XT Beat the Competition? Is it Worth Buying?
Just as the JamMan Express XT was in competition with TC Electronic’s Ditto series, the Vocal XT’s closest competitor is probably TC Electronic’s Ditto Mic Looper. I’d say the Ditto Mic has the same basic focus and style, but for a better price. This alone is a bit of an issue for the Vocal XT, because the Ditto Mic offers essentially the same set of features, has similarly crisp and clear audio and is just as easy to use.
Comparing the Vocal XT to the Jamman Stereo
But the problems really start when you go beyond the direct competition. Consider the JamMan Stereo also from Digitech. The recommended price (as of March 2017) is only $20 more than the Vocal XT.
And what do you get for your money? Four footswitches, which makes things a little busier on the looper but makes hands-free and live use much easier. You also get 99 internal memory locations (with 35 minutes to play with, which can be expanded via SD card and backed up to computers), rhythm sounds built-in, an auxiliary input (so you can play tracks from your MP3 player or cell phone), features like reverse mode, one-shot playback, and dedicated switches so you can change to a new loop hands-free. And it also has an XLR input. There’s no XLR output and it isn’t phantom-powered, but I trust you get the point. If you aren’t using a condenser mic and can live without the XLR output, even Digitech offers a superior pedal (in terms of features) for a little extra money.
Comparing the Vocal XT to Boss Loopers
Similarly, Boss has designed several loopers such as the RC-202, specifically for vocalists. It has a ton of more features than the Vocal XT. It might not have the XLR output that the Vocal XT and the Ditto Mic offer, but the difference in price isn’t much.
Conclusion
The overall point is simple. Considered separate from anything else on the market, the Vocal XT is a pretty solid looper. It sounds great, is easy to use and handles the core functions of looping really well. But as soon as you start to consider the alternatives, the benefits quickly vanish. The Ditto Mic is incredibly similar. Its a minimalist pedal but with great sound quality and is very user friendly – but about half the price. And many looper pedals have XLR jacks – at least inputs – but come with tons of storage locations, more memory and more features than you know what to do with.
Also, if you’re looking for something easy-to-use and uncluttered, the Ditto Mic beats the Vocal XT on price alone. So, unless you have friends with other JamMan pedals and JamSync is an important feature for you, you might prefer to look at other pedals. If you’re just looking for a looper pedal you can use as a vocalist, there are so many great options that are suitable (albeit usually intended for use by guitarists) that you should seriously consider how many features you’re willing to miss out on for the sake of saving $50 or so and having a dedicated XLR output.
The Jamman Vocal XT is a solid looper, but it really falls flat in comparison others on the market.
Where to Buy the Jamman Vocal XT
• Amazon: Digitech Jamman Vocal XT Looper
Digitech Jamman Vocal XT Video
Several months ago, Digitech was closing a bunch of these out–they were available for $30 each on Reverb. At that price, this pedal is a no-brainer: a simple phantom power injector would cost about that. And the JamSync feature is more powerful than people give it credit for: you can link up a bunch of pedals and essentially treat each as an additional looping track.