Continuing with our Boss Looper series, here is the first video about the RC-300 which is a 3-track looper. Each additional track you add to a looper complicates it’s operation exponentially, but Boss did a pretty good job keeping these possibilities under control yet allowing enough flexibility to take advantage of said possibilities.
Enter the setting for Single Track Play mode. As the video explains, the RC-300’s factory default allows all 3 tracks to play at once for layering. But sometimes you want only one track to play at a time, making it super easy to switch tracks with a single pedal press. Check out the video explaining how to do this and let me know what you think in the comments!
One of the most popular videos on the YouTube channel, this short & concise video shows using the pedals to select tracks including the lesser known feature of selecting both tracks simultaneously. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.
This video has an interesting back-story where I learned a few lessons about corporations and politics. Some of you may be able to relate…
I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but I think a customer called about an issue where the RC-30 wouldn’t get the timing right if you ended a recording by hitting STOP instead of Play or Dub. I tested this and verified that yes, something odd is going on here and it’s causing loops to record a fraction longer than normal.
I started the process of sending a bug-report which basically means I sent an email to the Product Manager describing the issue. He is the guy who actually communicates with the engineers in Japan and he passed it on. A day or two later we hear back that there was no bug, we were just using it wrong!
Now, knowing how this machine works is my job so I had read the manual front-to-back, trying all the functions it described. Plus I answered tons of calls and emails on this thing and previous loopers like it, but I have never encountered a issue where a looper behaved this way.
I don’t know how the message to Japan was worded (maybe it had a tone of extreme urgency and panic?), but it was conveyed to me that this sequence of events embarrassed us in the eyes of Japan because we – AKA me – sent a bug-report that just ended up showing that we didn’t know how our own product worked.
Well, I missed something that wasn’t in the manual called Simple Pedal Mode. This feature was printed on a single loose sheet of paper that came in the box with the RC-30. They called it an “addendum” to the manual because by the time the books had all been printed, they either added the feature later or forgot to include it in the first place.
To rectify ourselves in the eyes of Japan, I was to send them a video showing the feature proving that I understood how it worked. This is that video. ^_^