M303 Clone Looper

112
GUITARIST JANUARY 2020
IMAGES TO BE SHOT
W
hile looping has been
instrumental in a successful
musical career for Ed Sheeran
and many others, a looper isn’t exactly
an essential pedal for every guitar player.
It can, however, be a pretty useful one: a
looper is a great home practice and ideas-
generating songwriting aid, and can also
be used as a creative substitute for a band
behind a solo act’s live performance.
Having a looper almost seems de rigueur
for the modern busker.
Somewhere between the tiny single-
footswitch models and the do-it-all
looping behemoths, MXR’s first looper
pedal aims to offer the most practical and
useful range of features while keeping a
compact footprint. And it does so in an
ingenious way: the company has turned a
standard-size MXR pedal (think Phase 90)
sideways so that it can have a footswitch
at each end, but has also furnished it with
a volume knob that additionally works as
a switch with three different functions
depending on how you press it.
IN USE
MXR is keen to stress the high sound
quality of this pedal – and the 88.2kHz
operation does mean that you get out
what you put in without any noticeable
sonic degradation. There is six minutes
of storage time available here and you can
add an unlimited number of layers with
no worries about building up an intricate
composition and losing it when you power
down, because the pedal will store it when
the power is off.
Two footswitches, clearly defined in
their roles, make operation dead simple.
To start recording a loop you simply
press the Rec/Dub footswitch and play
for as long as you want. Hitting the Play/
Stop button will end the recording and
simultaneously start playback. Recording
is indicated by a red LED; playback lights
up a green LED. Recording another layer
is just a matter of pressing the Rec/Dub
footswitch again, with the green LED
helpfully flashing four times before the
beginning of each loop cycle. If you mess
up a layer or just want to lose the last one, a
press and hold on the Play/Stop footswitch
will take care of that. There are simple
procedures for clearing a whole loop, too.
It really doesn’t take long to get up
to speed with the basics of this pedal
MXR turns looping on its head with its first foray into this versatile pedal
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Neil Godwin
PEDALBOARD
MXR
M303 Clone Looper
CONTACT
WESTSIDE DISTRIBUTION 084 4 326 2000 /
WWW.JIMDUNLOP.COM
MODEL
M303 CLONE LOOPER
PRICE
£159
MANUFACTURER
MXR
GIT454.peds_mxr.indd 112 27/11/2019 14:48