Radial Engineering Loopbone

Ok so I don't think radial's website properly explains what this device really is. To keep it simple, it's basically a 2-looper pedal with a tuner out, a clean boost, a buffer and an amp switcher all in one.

The loopbone allows you to have 2 sets of loops for your board. Say for example Loop 1 would be my chain of effects I use for the distortion channel, which would be a noise gate and an overdrive. While Loop 2 would my set of effects I use for clean like a delay and compressor. The Loopbone allows me to set these two loops up so that I can at anytime kick them in for each channel, the Slingshot allows me to change the channel and get the effects all in one stomp, so no tap dancing required. The DRAG is the buffer, which is adjustable and brings back any loss of tone from the pedal runs. The clean boost is just another option added to it.

So, it sounds good right? But there are some faults with this device. First off, the slingshot is a great idea so it's an external amp switcher and I can use it to switch the amp channel and engage a loop, awesome. However, the slingshot itself doesn't work on every amp. It works only on certain amps which use a generic footswitching type (can't remember the type) however, they definitely don't work on marshall amps, as I've tried. This sucks because now the pedal is limited to certain amps with that type of footswitching design and the only thing you can do is mod the loopbone to have it work for one type or the other, not both. I've looked into this and talked to radial for a few days about this problem.

Second fault, is that when you engage the loop 1, and you want to switch to loop 2. You can't just click loop 2, if you do, loop 1 will still be engaged and you will thus be combining both loops together and add a wall of noise basically. So therefore you have to do an extra 2 stomps to switch from each loop. I find this very inconvenient as it's basically eliminating the purpose of single stomp functionality. I had to basically just use 1 loop, and have the 2nd group of pedals out in front of the loopbone to make this work for my board situations.

As for the boost it sounds great, however, you cannot engage it all together with the slingshot and the loop. You can engage either the slingshot and a loop, or a loop and the boost. You can't have all 3 kick in at the same time in one stomp.

So overall it's a great idea, I just wish it had these inconveniences fixed and it would've been the perfect pedal for controlling your effects!!! Otherwise, if you don't plan on using the loopbone like I wanted to, you'd be well off with this well made piece of equipment.