Record output from pedalboard
 

Hi, I have a pedalboard of which the boss rc30 looper is the last pedal in the chain. I’m thinking of adding a recorder of some sort to record the output of the looper, while keeping the rig portable.

Currently I am sending the output mono to my acoustic amp. I hope to record the output from the looper in stereo (I have many stereo pedals) and at the same time send an output to my amp.

Is this possible?

Doubt it. That's just an analog electrical signal. It needs to be transformed into sound to be heard via a speaker.

Although maybe you could use a virtual cabinet in a DAW though after your record it, but it's not obvious how that would be done.

You output in stereo to what? A mixer? Do you use a DI? Some DIs have both XLR and 1/4 inch thru outs. Many mixers have recording or aux outs, so you could record from there. Two amps? Do the amps have DI out? You could record from there.

You don't need to, the RC-30 has already "recorded" the loop for you as 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo wav files.

At any point after you create loops you can download the wav files from the RC-30 to your computer by use of the USB port on the back of your looper. Connect it to your computer and it will recognize the looper as a external storage device.

Currently I only output to one mono amp. So I could record from the di out a mono signal. The thing is, my pedals do have stereo capabilities if I connect them in stereo.
So I was curious whether I could record in stereo to maybe something like a zoom H6 (which is battery powered) while monitoring with my mono amp.

It doesn’t record the feel style playing over the loop, right? Or does it ? Is there a mode to record like a daw?

Well, sure, you could run your looper into the Zoom, and then run the headphone out of the Zoom into your amp. You'd have to get to mono somehow, and I'm not sure you'd like the resulting live sound (*may* be degraded by the headphone output), but it's worth a try.

If you add whatever you play (including your "feel style") on top of your previous loop the recorded loop will sound exactly as you played it.

If you didn't nail the "feel" then simply use the looper's undo function and do it over.

A pedal looper is really just a type of field recorder that has controls that are geared to using it for loop work. You can set up any DAW to do the same loop record function, but it is much more complex.

It might benefit you from reading the manual and putting the time in to understand how your pedal operates.

So say I record a percussion loop of 4 bars, and the a 4 bar guitar loop over it ...
I can’t record a 16 bar solo over the previous 4 bars , right?

I suspect the issue is that he's looping, say, 12 bars, then playing lots of choruses over it, and wants to record the jam, not just add 12 bars of a 2nd part. There are loopers that will record overdubs longer than the underlying loop, tho time is limited by the memory. I don't know if the RC30 is one of those, tho - the ones I know of that do are dual loopers, like the Boomerang. Most will only overdub the same length of time as the 1st loop.

Yup I Guess this could work !

Yes this is what I mean Doug - I seem to be tied to the fixed length of the first loop for RC30. Hence I can only record anything for the length of the first loop. If there’s a hidden mode that can allow me to do so, that would totally solve what I want to do!

Use your looper to it's full advantage; chart your entire composition out so you will know the time flow of the constituent parts of your composition. It can be any structure you wish it to be... "verse / verse / chorus / verse / verse / bridge / verse" etc.

Your created loop will be your entire composition. Overdub your loops as needed, otherwise move your loops to DAW and just finish up the editing there.

Your RC-30 has one loop length, so if you don't want to go with a looper that has multiple loop lengths and more features you just need to get creative with what you have. A looper gives you the ability to "record" quickly and easily, but you have the limitation of not being able to edit individual parts once you're done.