Summary
• Pros: The TC Electronic Ditto Looper is a minimalistic, easy to use, great sounding looper pedal with a tiny footprint.
• Cons: Its missing many features found on pricier loopers such as rhythm backing and quantization. Also, a single footswitch can be difficult in live situations.
• Overall: The Ditto Looper is great if you’re looking for simplicity and excellent sound quality. It’s bare-bones in terms of features, though.
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Full Review
When you’re shopping around for loopers, you’ll undoubtedly see models with as many dials as the interior of a space shuttle. In that respect, the TC Electronic Ditto Looper is a breath of fresh air. It features only one dial and one footswitch, stripping down the overly techy looper layout to its bare minimum functions. You might be worried about lost functionality, but simple design and great sound quality still makes it an extremely appealing option. But can it really compete with the technological might of other, bigger loopers on the market?
The Ditto Looper Has the Features You Need, But That’s It
The entire philosophy of the TC Electronic Ditto is simplicity and sound quality. Instead of cramming hundreds of memory locations, a ton of features and a cacophony of controls into their looper, they aim to make a pedal that sounds great and is user-friendly. To that end, they have accomplished their goals. The pedal measures 3 5/8” by 1 5/8”. It has one clearly labeled dial, one multi-function button, an input jack, an output, a mini USB port and a port for the power supply. It’s hard to imagine a more basic pedal.
This is actually one of the core features of the pedal. It’s tempting to describe it as a stompbox-style looper, but that would be over-estimating its size considerably. It’s as small as anything you’d realistically include on your pedalboard. This means it should fit in very nicely.
Audio Quality
The TC Electronic has 24-bit uncompressed audio. Prior to the Ditto, most loopers only offered “CD Quality” audio which was defined as 16-bit audio at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. TC Electronic was one of the fist companies to raise the bar, and the difference is noticeable. On the older loopers, you can definitely hear a loss in fidelity when your loops play back to you. Comparatively, there is very little degradation of your tone when your loops play back on the Ditto.
While its true that newer loopers like Boss’s RC-5, RC-500 and RC-600 now boast 32-bit audio quality, the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit was far more remarkable than the barely perceptible difference between 24-bit and 32-bit. Suffice it to say that, as of 2022 at least, 24-bit audio or above is the new standard.
Easy to Use
Ease of use goes hand-in-hand with this minimalistic design. After plugging it in, you’re ready to start looping. You hit the footswitch (the only one, so no confusion there!) and start playing. When you’ve recorded your phrase, give the footswitch another tap and it will replay on a loop. You can adjust the volume of the playback using the only dial on the Ditto Looper. To overdub, you simply repeat the record procedure– tap, play and tap again. If you want to stop, you just double-tap the footswitch. You can give it another tap to start it playing again. Stopping and deleting is as simple as double-tapping but holding your foot down the second time. All this with just one footswitch.
Recording Time
Although you can’t store multiple loops to call up later, they’ve made sure you get plenty of looping time. You can record a loop of up to five minutes in length (which will only be necessary if you’re intended song is nothing short of epic). You can also add as many overdubs as you like. Plus, if you record something awesome and want to use it again later, you can just turn off the unit. Your last loop will be automatically saved so it’s there when you power back up, overdubs and all.
Undo/Redo
If you’re thinking the basic package could only possible offer this core functionality, you’d be wrong. You also get the option of undoing or redoing your previous recording, which opens up new realms of sonic possibilities. By holding the footswitch down for around two seconds, you undo the previously recorded overdub. This allows you to erase any mistake you made without having to start the whole thing again.
There’s more to it than that, though. If you’ve built up a good backing for your song but want to add an extra element on some occasions (a melody-line or a lick in the background, for example), then you can remove it and put it back in place at will. You could even record the first half of a solo, play it back and harmonize with it for the second half, and then remove it for the next verse. Plus, if you want to bring it back again, you can do it easily.
True Bypass
Finally, TC Electronic has ensured that the Ditto Looper doesn’t interfere with your signal when it isn’t in use. It has a true bypass mode so that your guitar tone goes through completely unaffected. Conveniently, this is activated anytime you delete your loop. There’s no hum, no latency, nothing at all.
Can the Ditto Looper Really Compete?
You shouldn’t think of the TC Electronic Ditto Looper to be in direct competition with the monsters of the looping industry like the Boss RC-300 or the newer Boss RC-600. TC Electronic’s aim was to make something that loops well and sounds great, without all the extras. If you’ve always been unsure about loopers because of the apparent technical expertise you need to use one effectively, the Ditto Looper should relieve those concerns.
Realistically, however, the Ditto still has to compete with units like the Boss RC-5 and the Jamman Solo XT. Unfortunately, those units both have more to offer for many people. Simplicity is great, but when you’re making a dedicated looper, some extra features really are quite useful. The main one of these is memory. There are plenty of loopers that are similarly easy to use and allow you to store loops. In fact, TC Electronic has more recently released the Ditto+ looper. This is basically the original Ditto with the ability to store up to 99 loops.
Other features not on the Ditto are things like quantization (to help you stay in time), rhythm backing, and effects like reverse looping. Moreover, it’s always useful to have an extra footswitch. For example, stopping the looper by quickly tapping the footswitch twice might sound easy, but it’s easy to mess up when you’re also playing guitar. It’s great to have a separate footswitch you can just tap once to stop your loop. In fact, that’s why TC Electronic made the Ditto X2, which includes an extra footswitch.
Conclusion
The Ditto Looper offers more than you’d expect for such a tiny, unassuming looper. If you’re really looking to do some creative looping, however, it may be a little too basic. By stripping things down to just the basics, TC Electronic sacrificed some potentially valuable features. The lack of memory is also crippling if you want to create a set-list. Again, for that, be sure to check out the newer Ditto+ looper! However, if you’re looking for a no-nonsense looper that sounds great, the original Ditto is still an excellent choice.
NOTE: If you are looking for additional features, it may be worth checking out the Ditto+ looper (released in 2020), which adds 99 memory slots, the Ditto X2 looper (released in 2014), which adds a dedicated “Stop” footswitch, or even the much larger Ditto X4 looper (released in 2016), which is basically two Ditto loopers stuck together with MIDI synch and some fun effects.
Where to Buy the TC Electronic Ditto Looper?
• Amazon: TC Electronic Ditto Looper
• Guitar Center: TC Electronic Ditto Looper
TC Electronic Ditto Looper Product Video
I don’t have one yet, but the idea of no extra balogney is a good one. Leave the “live” looping for the rookies, my fans always prefer true improv when we’re onstage. Sounds like a good writing tool to lay down a new riff and sound out some licks on top before recording a final version during production. This would save a lot of time, a lot of money, and help keep bandmembers home with their families; which we can’t do if we’re experimenting during practice or having to spend more time in studio!
In your “Pros & Cons” section, you Note the lack of some features like a backing track, etc as a detriment. But you obviously missed the point. TC Specifically states in their videos & information that this is a stripped-down looper with excellent sound quality.
That’s exactly what it is.
When you review a product, you should probably take into consideration what the pedal was intended to do, not what you think every pedal of it’s kind should do.
Review it for what it is, not for what it’s not supposed to be.
Actually I think you missed the point. They’re not saying that it isn’t a good looper. They’re saying that it is so stripped down that you might be sorry later that you didn’t buy something with a bit more functionality.
The price, while cheap, is not that much cheaper than the Boss or the Jamman loopers. Plus you have to buy an AC adapter for about $30, which they don’t mention in the price. For my money, I would rather buy something a little bit more expensive, that has a few more features, and not have buyer’s remorse later.
I think I am going to choose the pedal rated dead last in this review! But I am concerned with tone and soul, not prepared video game soundtracking. Unfortunately much of the public is buying the latter and is oblivious to the former, so my princile may cost me income!
One BIG downside for the Ditto is that in order to clear the loop you have to stop it (double click) then hold the button. The problem being that it play the loop for few seconds and then clears it. Not exactly practical of you need to do another loop in the same song or if you want to clear the loop in bewtween songs.
I own the pedal and wasn’t aware that this would happen before I bought it. Make sure that this won’t ne an issue for you before you purchase.
If you double tap and hold on the second tap it clears the loop
The Ditto is hard to beat for the price. Personally, I chose the Boss RC-3 when I was in the market for a looper but I’ve also used my friend’s Ditto looper and it’s AWESOME at what it does.
But check out Amazon’s best seller list before plunking your cash down and decide for yourself:
http://amzn.to/1hQPmEx
Whether it’s the Ditto, Boss, or DigiTech…they’re all solid loopers.
I play with two amps and am looking for a looper to put in front of one of my amps after splitting my guitar signal. When you turn up the loop level all the way do you still hear the unlooped signal from your guitar or does it mute the input. That would be perfect for me but I guess that’s not the case.
It does what is promised, I bought it when it was the only Ditto out there, now I’d try the newer ones instead (of course). I love it for the sheer length it can capture – 5 minutes! That was the killer feature for me. I have only one gripe with it. If you have the loop recorded already and start the playback, then if you start overdub and then end it with long press, it will not only remove the overdub, but also the whole loop. If you do this while you’re initially creating the loop, it doesn’t do that. But if you stop and restart the loop, it starts doing it. I reported it in 2014/3, but there is no firmware update since 2013… so… you know. 😉
okay i bought this pedal and it works great, my only problem is when i loop a riff and then play it back to do a solo, it cuts off as i play it, it sounds distorted and its like the original loop is trying to surface while I play my solo with gain and without gain
any thoughts?