Sublime experience looping --warning: no guitar content!

[<Russell_Gorton@CreatSvc-Ada.CCMAIL.CompuServe.COM>]

Nutrition Facts:
Looping fun and technique content: 60%
Looping gear-specific content:     30%
Guitar content:                     0%
Boring, pretentious filler:        10%

Latest Echoplex victim: my buddy Dan's Fender Rhodes Model Seventy-Three 
stage
piano.

When I picked it up to loan...Dan is a ReallyNiceGuy(tm)... I didn't 
realize
that these old things were totally passive electronics.  Duh.  I was 
looking for
the power cord for, like, 3 whole minutes before I took the top off and 
examined
the innards.  No power supply.  "Must work like one of them eee-lectric 
guitars
all these kids are playing nowadays..."

It sounds wicked with some effects (mild overdrive, chorusing) but somehow 
even
better (for looping, at least) just dry:

Rhodes --> Echoplex DP --> SWR Baby Blue II (smallish studio bass combo 
amp)

Looping several different short 8-10 second chord changes; think "Kind of 
Blue"
riff or something... then use NextLoop w/SwitchQuant=On to walk through 
them.  
Then, play various inversions and diminished variations of same over the
loops...solo notes wash over the transitions between loops.  Overdub when 
the
urge strikes!  

As with other things I loop ('cello, analog synth), I'm getting about an 
85%
success rate with noiseless startpoints.  What seems to help is selecting a
dominant note that is slowly decaying over each startpoint, trying not to 
attack
that note too near the startpoint.  Each small loop is overdubbed once to 
wash
over the startpoint with that same note (end Record with Overdub, or end 
Record
with Insert in Rehearse mode until I get it near how I want it...)   Get 
the
startpoints of all the small loops within a range of similarity and it is
surprisingly easy to step through the loops without any abrupt 
changeovers. 
Loving that Echoplex...what a box!

The overtones and room resonance are mind-blowing.  Absolutely gorgeous!  
The
"tines" (is this what they're called?--the little tuning-fork metal bar 
guys
that vibrate on the Rhodes' sounding board) set up washes of 
eardrum-buzzing,
underwater-landscape-on-quaaludes-with-Milt-Jackson-on-vibes that put 
everyone
(even the dog) into trance mode.

The interaction between the instrument's sounding board (sustain pads 
raised)
and the amplified looped versions is phenomenal.  A great instrument for
looping!  

--Russell Gorton, loop user