TC Electronic Ditto Looper Review
Looping (recording repeating backing tracks to play over) is great for practice and solo live work. There are a multitude of looper pedals now, varying in complexity, but sometimes simple is best. TC Electronic’s Ditto Looper falls in the simple category.
The Ditto Looper is part of the “mini” range of TC Electronic pedals. It is very small. It can easily fit in the palm of your hand. Which means it won’t take up much room on a pedalboard. It only has one footswitch and one knob that control all its functions.
The knob sets the playback volume level of the backing track. You will usually want to set the backing track slightly lower than your live signal. The knob allows this. Simple. The footswitch is not quite so simple. It controls all of the looping functions. Basically, you step on it once to start a loop recording. Step on it again to start the loop playing. Then you have the option of stepping on it again to overdub. You can add as many overdubs as you like. You can press and hold the footswitch to undo a layer of recording and press and hold the footswitch again to redo a layer of recording.
When you want to stop a loop you double tap on the footswitch. This is the weakest part of the single footswitch design. Double tapping makes it difficult to be precise when stopping a loop. If you use it mainly it at home to practice, it is not a big deal. If you use it live you might want to consider the Ditto X2 Looper which has a second footswitch you can use as a dedicated stop footswitch. Once you have stopped a loop, you can tap the footswitch again to start it playing again. You hold the footswitch down for 2 seconds to erase the entire loop, including and overdubs. But this brings up another issue with the single footswitch design of Ditto Looper. When you hold down the pedal to clear a loop, it starts playing the loop again (like it is designed to do) for those two seconds until it erases. Obviously, not a good thing in a live setting. I get around this by stepping on my PolyTune 2 noir mini pedal to mute the guitar signal before clearing a loop. Of course, you will need your tuner placed after the Ditto Looper for this method to work.
Here are the functions controlled by the Ditto Looper's single footswitch.
The Ditto Looper has 5 minutes of recording time. Plenty for most loops. It requires a 9v power adapter which is not included. You will need to provide a power supply for it.
The Ditto Looper packs a surprising amount of power in a small package. The audio quality is great and it has plenty of recording time. I bought the Ditto Looper to use in a live jazz duo setting with a vocalist, allowing me to loop parts of songs to solo over. After using the Ditto Looper for a while, I think I should have gotten the Ditto X2 Looper for its dedicated stop footswitch. Double tapping is awkward for me. I will likely upgrade soon.
If your looping needs are fairly simple or only occasional, or you are just getting started looping, the Ditto Looper is a great practice tool and a lot of fun. If you plan to loop a lot live, you may want to consider the Ditto X2 Looper for its dedicated stop switch.
Here is a video of Tore Mogensen from TC Electronic explaining the Ditto Looper:
