Chorus Pedal

Having toyed with the idea of owning a looper pedal for the longest of times, I finally decided to take the plunge. There are so many loopers out there on the marketplace; all with varying degrees of sophistication and of course, prices to match. The ones I’d seen and read about had loop maximums of 30 or 40 seconds, some slightly more, some less, and then I came across the Donner Triple Looper. The Donner Looper is about as simple to operate as they get, but what really had me hook, line and sinker, was that, not only did it have three separate recording banks (hence the ‘Triple Looper’) but boasted of unlimited overdubs. With these credentials, and given what I’d gleaned from the specs of other pedals, I was genuinely expecting something in the region of 100 quid. Well, not a bit of it, this wee beauty tips the scales at a penny under 56 quid and I reckoned I’d have been insane not to grab this looper – and so I did. Power to this pedal is via a 9 volt power supply which is not included in the purchase, but bear in mind that, apart from the low cost of this looper, if you have other pedals then the chances are you already have the power pack and your other pedals are daisy chained together. This is a true bypass pedal so that when the pedal is off (bypass mode), the signal from the guitar is routed directly to the amp without interference. It is also a very small pedal which in no way detracts from its capabilities as a looper although some might feel, because of its size, that the bank selector switch and the volume output control, are a bit on the tiny side. Me? I just think they’re perfect. As small as it is, the screen is very readable and definitely bright enough to see even in the dimmest of venues. Entire control of the looper is down to the solitary footswitch and works as follows; Stomp: 1st Starts loop record 2nd Plays loop 3rd Records overdub 4th Plays loop By repeating steps three and four you can build up an unlimited amount of overdubs and by applying two rapid clicks you will stop the loop playing, one more click starts the loop playing again. If during an overdub you should make a mistake, you can undo that overdub by clicking once whilst in play mode and the screen will read ‘UNDO’, if you change your mind and want to reinstate that overdub press the switch one more time and the screen will read ‘REDO’, but remember you must be in play mode for this to happen. If you intend to completely clear out all overdubs from a track you must stop the looper, hold down the switch for 2-3 seconds and the screen should then read ‘EMPTY’. Travelling around the circumference of the small screen, during playback and overdub, an animated indicator shows you where the loop starts and where it ends. This adds greatly to the accuracy when laying one track on top of another. On any one of the three tracks, which you can select from using the right hand switch, you can have a recording time of thirty minutes, giving you a total of 90 minutes. This is incredible specs for a 56 quid looper especially once you’ve heard the clarity with which this pedal reproduces your sounds. In summary, this looping game takes a fair bit of practice and I’m getting there, although I don’t think I’ll be showing off my skills with the pedal on stage anytime soon. I’ve been playing guitar as my main instrument for half a century and it’s been a long time since I’ve had this much fun with a pedal. Go get one, you know it makes sense. Recommended.

Excellent analogue chorus. Great value, very small pedal which means that it is easy to kick about on the stage but it will not take up much room in the leads case.

A great looping pedal overall, fairly easy to use, but setup can be a little confusing when running through multiple devices. I can confirm it works on my iPad air using amplitube, Tonebridge, and an irig 2. The recorded loops are also very easy to upload to my pc. I have had some issues with playing back certain loops through my amp though, so would recommend backing up important recordings. Drum loops are ok. Will give it a solid 4 out of 5.

Firstly, a word of warning. I watched YouTube videos of the pedal while I was waiting for delivery day, and they all said the right footswitch was for undo/redo and the merger CTRL button was to delete the whole loop. Not quite so: while the loop is playing, pressing the right footswitch for 2 seconds will undo the last recorded overdub, same again will redo it. But if you press the right footswitch for 2 seconds while playback is stopped, it will clear the whole memory slot. So bare that it mind, if you want to just undo the last dub make sure the unit is in playback mode. When playback is stopped and you are in memory mode, the LED for the right footswitch flashes, so consider it a warning. I've had lots of fun with this Looper. I initially had a 30 second looper on a Zoom pedal which whetted my appetite and this unit is brilliant. I have enjoyed making jamming songs of a few minutes in length. Sound quality is perfect and the drum patterns are very good with a nice sound to them. I connect my pedal to a guitar amp and just use the left input and output, so everything is in mono, but it sounds great. It's giving me the urge to buy a digital recorder, as I don't have a PC anymore. And this pedal would be ideal to compose and demo songs. So it's a lovely pedal, sturdy and robust, simple to use and gives very satisfying results. If you want a looper pedal with a quality build and decent length loops, this is the droid you are looking for.

I've used looping pedals for some time, but always found some features missing, or loops were hard to sync on the beat. Then I saw the Circle Looper with a built in drum machine that syncs to your loops, I'll give that a try I thought! Ordered and arrived very quickly, it was nicely packaged, with a small but simple manual. After a quick (30 second) read of the manual, I plugged in my guitar and started looping. The circle looper is really simple to use, if you want your loops in time with one of the many decent drum patterns press the merge button, choose a drum pattern with the drum knob, then choose a memory location with the memory knob, press rec foot switch to start recording, press stop foot switch to stop recording. Its that easy! You can control the volume of loops and drums, there's a fade option, and the drums have a bpm/tempo option. There's also a neat display in the center that shows you the time of your loop and a progress bar that runs around the outside. It doesn't come with a power adapter, so you'll need a standard 9v type to run it, but considering what features are included with the circle looper its very good value for money.

Bought this as I was getting a bit tired of the awkwardness of working with my TRIO+ pedal which cost an arm and a leg and it felt like I had a lot of cash stuck in it for such little functionality. Never been too fond of the bass patterns on the TRIO+ so I just wanted something simple that will act as a looper and drum machine. Tried the Donner Circle as it promised to do just that and I think I made the absolute right choice. Features: - Built like a tank, all-metal with proper sturdy foot switches although the settings knobs you need to be careful with and not step on them - Comes well packed with manual and everything you need to get going. Powers at 9v. - Excellent looper function with volume and fade out functions as well as 40 slots for loops at 4 min each. You will never fill this up! - Drums sound natural and you can link the two to your looper to save both for your practice tracks - With so many features I thought I was gonna get option paralysis but honestly it's so intuitive to use that you don't fell the complexity gettin in the way. Would have liked: - A choice of black as the colour but I'm just being picky. All in all a great practice beast that I feel confident I can take down to pub to jam with my mates when the drummer is on strike. Excellent buy!

Pros: Easy to use and reasonably good value; I tend to use it for quick jams on my keyboard when I don't feel like opening a DAW. Requires a 9V PSU (same as many other pedals use). Cons: Some of the rhythms aren't particularly useful (or maybe I'm just not inventive enough to find a use for them); the "merger" functionality seems a bit buggy (e.g. recording a loop against the "Jazz 5" drum rhythm seems to periodically go in and out of sync) and the PC software for editing loops is... clunky.

Initially I was very impressed by the looper functions and sound quality. However the rhythm section sounded terrible, distorted and basically a real disappointment, until I turned down the volume to 6, from 20. I guess the default volume is maxed out and it is quite bad initially. After turning it down, it fit better in the mix with the guitar and had a much clearer sound. Bought during the Black Friday sale which made this pedal a real bargain. Its awesome for practice and putting ideas together, the rhythm / metronome options are pretty good, and I especially love the light up circle which massively helps visually in knowing where you are in the loop. Its the first looper pedal I've used but with the added features it makes it a lot of fun, easy to use and is very durable, with excellent build quality. Apart from the initial volume problem, I can't fault it, haven't managed to use the usb and download recordings on a pc, nor the stereo channels, but look forward to exploring these added features more. Instructions could have been a lot worse and in all are pretty well written, managed to get going on it pretty quick.