Customer Reviews

Boomerang III Phrase Sampler (E-156)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Where to start...I guess with me. I'm a pro, over 30 years of guitar/vocals. I play 2 to 5 times per week. Bought my first looper a few years ago when my dad said I just had to get one (he's also a pro, but over 55 years of playin'). Without a doubt buying the phrase looper and using it is the number one thing I've ever done to improve my playing. Since then I've used
the Boss and Digitech loopers but i wanted to have more control and more loops and etc. so I started researching everything on the market , i.e. the Boss RC-50, the new Boss RC-30, the electro-harmonix 1440 etc. the Boomerang 3 seemed to have the best features for my needs. Amazon of course had it as cheap as it can be had for and i got it promptly. I've had it for a month and i have to say I'm not disappointed. Far from it I'm blown away! I have yet to make use of all the features but i will soon. Features and build quality blow everything I've seen and researched away! This thing is bulletproof! perfect sound. What really made my purchase over the top was the service i got from Boomerang. I had some trouble with the routing (it was user error, as you might expect) and called 'em. I had a call back in less than 2 hours from a principal at the company who explained my brain fart. Super nice guy!!! Can't beat that and it's an American made product from an American company in Texas. That also is not to be beaten (so few products these days are made this well, maybe because they're not made here!!!) These guys do it right, do it best and back it up with stellar support. I get more compliments on my sound now than ever before! Thanks Boomerang! I'm a fan for life!

This is one great looper. Have been looking at the Boomerang for several months. It's a little pricey. Finding it on Amazon Prime gave me the confidence and last bit of motivation to finally pull the trigger.
As is typical from Amazon, delivery and condition of product was stellar.
This is the cleanest and easiest to use looper I own. (as compared to the Boss looper and the Line 6 M13). Put it into the effects loop of my Mark Five and it does absolutely nothing to my tone. The foot switches are great (even in flip-flops or stocking feet).
As shipped from Amazon, it does have the latest software upgrade. It does come with a power supply so no need to buy the recommended spare.
Very happy with this purchase.
May try the Boomerang Chorus/Delay next. Would be good to see more reviews on it first though.

Feb. 2012 Update: It turns out the units I purchased in Dec. 2011 and early Jan. 2012 were both from a small number of pedals that had messed up microprocessors. I contacted Mike at Boomerang and he got me straightened out and fixed up: I've now been using a solid, working Rang III for a couple weeks, and I'm stoked. Mike said there were precisely 141 malfing units; I somehow ended up with two of them. I've now tried the Line 6, the Boss RC-30 and this Rang III and, far and away, the Boomerang is the way to go.

Contrary to my initial impression, the Rang is in fact built very well. The problem I had with the 2 duds was with the processor, not the way the unit is wired. This third units is sweet. Unlike other loopers built on the "stomp box" model, the Rang is light to the touch. The foot switches are precise, and there is no lag time in recording or play back.

There is tons to say about the logic behind the design of the operations of this looper but the one thing I've really come to love so far is that you can "synch" layers and tracks: unlike any other looper I've tried, the Rang III knows where 1 is. That is incredibly helpful.

The Rang is a cut above but, frankly, most loopers seem designed by geek-dorks who only want to make ear candy and do tricks (roll over and beg), so it only had to be smarter than mere audio bling to win top prize. A maker still needs people to be able to figure out how to use the tool, and that is where I knock the Rang down a star. Mike Nelson & Co. are funny tech writers, but they write like engineers: this button does this, and if you press these two in tandem.... That's wrong: tech needs to be written from the user's PoV. Write me sections on Quick Start (synch and free style), on how to split a single (reduced to a dorky table in the Rang's manual), on how to lay down a beat and then loop A & B parts over that.
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I've purchased two Boomerang III loop pedals in the past two months. One I bought from Musician's Friend, the other form Amazon. This pedal is exactly what I want: a performance level pedal with multiple channels that lets the player work with loops of multiple length. It has none of the gag-me special FX that Boss et al foist upon consumers who don't know how to make their ear candy the old fashioned way. Plus, it's made in the USA. Perfect, right?

But I returned both pedals because they simply did not work. I'm not an audio engineer but I know enough to be able to diagnose simple problems. And the Rang III simply is not built very well. The unit I got from Musicians Friend seemed to work, except for an annoying pop. After a few minutes of playing, though, that pop turned into a full-on howl -- like feedback, but full of distortion and grunge, like a cry from hell. NOTE: I tried different guitars, cables, amps, and power sources in order to try to isolate the problem to anything other than this $500 pedal. No dice. I contacted Rang customer service; I heard back from them, got a great friendly note, but five days had already passed and I had already returned the pedal for a refund.

As I told the guys at Boomerang, I wasn't giving up on their looper. I ordered another from Amazon, hoping I'd catch a different manufacturing batch that had missed the wiring problem that plagued the first one. Alas, this one was worse: one of the unit's buttons did not work at all (indeed, out of the box, this unit behaved vastly different from the earlier one) and it, too, had a bad noise problem. The second I hit Loop 2, a horrible clicking took over. Back it went.

I bought this unit because of the positive reviews from other users on Amazon. I've always wondered if some of the reviews we see here are "loaded": produced by people close to the business doing the selling. I don't know what Rang's story is, but I'm bummed to the max about not having been able to purchase a usable unit.

Another thing potential buyers should be aware of is the horror of the Rang III's user manual. There is a Quick Start guide that is anything but. Having spent many years as a technical writer, I feel I know how to compose this stuff. Rang, like Boss and all the rest, are strictly from hunger: they write the manual button by button, totally ignoring the way people actually use the product. And that's not just lame, it's insulting.

I hope users with a positive experience will respond to this review, especially letting me know where they got theirs. I recently talked to an industry pro who said these manufacturers only sell "B stock" on the large web retail sites; I think that was sour grapes, but my experience with this pedal makes me wonder.

Great Loop pedal. (The best on the market!) Great customer service. Made in the USA. Get one, you'll love it!!!!