Boss RC-5 Loop Station Effect Pedal

I purchased this loop pedal in July for my birthday and Bax Shop was the best deal I could find! Extremely trustworthy shop, plus the pedal arrived much faster than I expected (maybe 2 days after I purchased it). Really pleased with the service and will definitely check out Bax when I need to make more music related purchases.

I recently purchased after owning the RC-2, the RC-3 and for a brief period the RC-500.

The RC-3 is a substantial improvement on the RC-3. The only thing missing is the aux in but I suspect it is a connection that not many will miss.

One the greatest strengths of the RC-5 is the MIDI control via the 3.5mm mini jacks. In spite the poor documentation and the quirks of the Boss implementation, the RC-5 is a huge step forward compared to its predecessors. Almost everything can be controlled via MIDI. The MIDI settings are part of the unit's general setup and they are not stored in the loops/memory locations like with the RC-500. Some people may like the flexibility of the RC-500 approach but personally, considering the compact size of the RC-5, I prefer the RC-5 system.

The audio quality is excellent thanks to the 32 bit D/A conversion and 32 bit floating-point processing. Personally, I never found the conversions on the previous versions problematic but, on the other side, I never on record more than one or two layers.

The drums is another huge improvement on the RC-3. If on the RC-3 drums were closer to a metronome than a drum-machine, on the RC-5, there are 57 drumbeats each with A/B variations and 7 drum kits.

The display shows the position the bar and the position in the loop. The colour indicates recording (red), overdub (yellow) or play (green).

Is the RC-5 the perfect compact looper? Not quite. There are few things that would make it a killer unit:

- USB-C instead of USB-B connector. Not the end of the world but it would make sense for a unit introduced recently.

- Save while you play. The only way to save a loop is to stop the RC-5, save the loop and restart it. There are cases where it would be great to save a loop (e.g. a verse) switch to another memory location, save another section (e.g. chorus) and switch back and forward between the two without stopping the music.

- A software utility that allows the rename of the memory locations and the setting of the level of imported audio. If you use the standard RC-5 Boss software, everything works fine except one thing: the output level of the looper is going to be so high that, if unmanaged, it will likely damage your speakers. I had to lower the audio by -32dB before importing it to the RC-5.

- Extended Loop Mode as implemented by the TCE Ditto+. In a nutshell, the unit multiplies the recorded loop as many time as necessary to accommodate the current recording. For example, if the loop has a 2 bar drum loops stored and I am recording a 4 bar chord progression, the unit doubles the recorded loop automatically while recording the chord progression. A very clever trick that any looper should have.

- A better manual. The description of the MIDI implementation is laughable. Especially, considering that Roland has been designing and building MIDI units since the beginning of time. The only way to control the unit effectively via MIDI is with a mix of trial and error and Google searches.

Overall, the RC-5 is a great unit that I recommend without hesitation - in spite the space for improvement.