Summary
• Pros: The Pigtronix Infinity 2 is easy to use, has an intuitive verse/chorus layout and an affordable price.
• Cons: It’s missing the capabilities found on bigger loopers. Notably, no option for storage, no MIDI or XLR jacks and more.
• Overall: The Infinity 2 is a fantastic looper for practicing at home and doing simple on-the-fly compositions. For anything beyond this, you’ll need to invest more.
Compare Prices
• Amazon: Pigtronix Infinity 2 Double Looper
• Guitar Center: Pigtronix Infinity 2 Double Looper
Full Review:
There is something of a divide among guitarists that use loopers. Either you want something simple and stripped-down to practice with at home, or you want something the size of a lunch tray with more controls than the international space station so you can access as many functions as possible without bending over and breaking the flow of your play.
But it isn’t strictly one or the other. The original Pigtronix Infinity Looper found a middle-ground, offering an intuitive looper with extra features like MIDI support. But it wasn’t perfect. For one, you could only undo or redo the last loop layer if you bought a separate footswitch. At the time, most loopers had so many buttons and dials that they didn’t need the extra footswithch.
Pigtronix has decided to change up the approach for the Infinity 2. First, the MIDI sync is gone. But where that might be a deal breaker for some guitarists, the new incarnation more than makes up for it with features for more casual players. The Infinity 2 strips down the original formula. It offers a more minimalistic pedal that still provides flexibility in terms of features and allows for a seamless workflow.
Getting to Grips with the Infinity 2
The layout of the Infinity 2 is undeniably simpler than the older version. There are two metallic footswitches in the bottom corners, two dials on the top, a button on the left and a few labeled LEDs. That’s it. If you’re used to monstrous pedals like the RC-300 from Boss, you might balk at this, but let’s be honest, most of us aren’t trying to compose a rock opera live on stage. And, furthermore, we don’t want to spend hours looking through a manual before we can actually use a pedal.
The benefit of this approach is pretty easy to see. Want to start recording a loop? Press one of the switches. When you’re done, hit the switch again and it will start playing back. Hit it again and you’ll start an overdub when it loops around again. Want to start a different loop, say for the chorus section? Hit the other switch. Then you simply keep building the second loop in the same way as the first.
There are some complexities here. If you press the second loop while one is recording, you stop the first and start recording the second immediately, but if you do it during playback or overdub, it will transition at the end of the current cycle. But that’s basically it. You can also stop either loop with a double-tap. If you hold on the second tap, you can erase what you’ve done. You can also erase the other loop while one is playing back, using the appropriate footswitch.
A Tool for Sketching Song Ideas
Here the big benefit of the Infinity 2 is already clear. This intuitive core operation is enough to produce some pretty awesome compositions. The pedal is perfectly set up to create a basic song structure while still working like a basic looper. You can switch back and forth between song sections, or even create an endless progression of different sections by deleting the loops as you go, all while playback continues.
Simple Connectivity Options
NUX has also stripped down the back panel of the Infinity 2 compared to the old version. It has stereo ins and outs, a jack for an external footswitch, a DC-in and a USB connection (for firmware updates). That’s all you really need, but if you were hoping for XLR, MIDI or anything else, you’re out of luck.
Going Beyond the Basics
Of course, you can do more than the bare-bones operations on the Infinity 2, and Pigtronix has done a good job of making things accessible. The key is the Loop 2 footswitch and the small button above it. Pressing the button cycles through the available options for the switch, including “Stop,” “Once,” “Octave” and “Undo/Redo,” before going back to standard functionality.
Most of these features are self-explanatory. “Stop” gives you more control over how you stop a loop (including a fade out option if you press and hold the switch). “Once” is a one-shot playback (including stuttering the start). “Octave” shifts the sample rate down an octave. And “Undo/Redo” (which you have to press and hold the button to activate) allows you to remove and replace the top overdub layer. Unless you activate “Secret Mode,” when you switch to “Undo/Redo” all your current loop audio is deleted.
The downside here is obvious: you can’t have two sections for looping and octave mode active, for example. But as always, there is a trade-off between easy access to functions and simplicity in terms of pedal layout. Here, Pigtronix have sided with simplicity. There are definitely benefits to that approach, although a third footswitch wouldn’t have overcomplicated things much.
The “Decay” knob at the top also opens up some additional possibilities when it comes to your looping. If you keep the knob fully turned clockwise, the Infinity 2 works like a normal looper. But if turn the knob fully counter-clockwise, the loops effectively play in one-shot mode. Of course, the real magic comes between these two extremes where you can have loops gradually decay and your composition evolves organically over time.
Playing with the Infinity 2
All of this comes together well and it’s an enjoyable looper pedal to play with, overall. The simplified layout is a big part of this. It is pretty intuitive to compose song-like loops after you get used to the system, and the flexibility gives you plenty of options for composition. Also, the sound quality is also hard to fault, and you don’t have to worry about precisely-timing your pedal-presses because most of the actions automatically wait until the end of the loop to take place.
A Few Gripes
The downsides are mainly necessary evils. Of course you don’t get weird effects like reverse or handy little extras like tap tempo, time-stretching and things like that – it would take away from the simplicity of the pedal. I would have liked an extra footswitch so you don’t have to choose between the effects and the verse/chorus function. You do get used to it, though.
One annoyance is that you only get five minutes of looping time, with no storage slots or even the ability to export a loop. This isn’t a huge deal for casual players, but it seems like an easy thing to add and it would have complimented the verse/chorus structure well. In fact, Pigtronix decided to add memory slots on the newer Pigtronix Infinity 3 Looper.
Overall, though, the Infinity 2 is a really fun looper and has certain benefits even over the Infinity 3. The price is pretty reasonable considering the functionality. If you want something more serious, you’ll need to spend a lot more and it won’t be as easy to use. This is the ideal looper if you want to try out some songwriting ideas or just jam at home while minimizing how much time and money you have to invest to get started. Objectively, even mid-range loopers like the JamMan Stereo have more functionality, but if you’re more interested in simplicity than bells and whistles, the Infinity 2 is a great option.
Where to Buy the Pigtronix Infinity 2?
• Amazon: Pigtronix Infinity 2 Double Looper
• Guitar Center: Pigtronix Infinity 2 Double Looper
Pigtronix Infinity 2 Product Clip
