Boomerang III quick review

[Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com>]

I've been playing with Boomerang III for a little over an hour now, so 
this is not a terribly deep review.

The size and build of the thing are great. The switches are really nice. 3 
stereo loops with a lot of playing styles is fun and it's easy to start 
thinking in terms of song structures using the various serial loop 
options. It's nice to have all of the key knobs for things like loop 
volume and decay (feedback) on the front panel.

I haven't really been able to evaluate sound quality in depth. It doesn't 
seem to have obvious problems. I'm not loving it's octave down as much as 
the Line6 looper's. I'm not sure why. It may just be the material I put 
in, but it sounded a bit thinner than I expected. Maybe I'm just not in an 
octave down mood this morning.

It does so much that the bonus buttons only access part of the 
functionality and can feel a little overloaded. The forthcoming sidecar 
may make that better though it won't be as compact then. Even so, I found 
it pretty easy to get around after skimming the manual (and it comes with 
a reasonable configuration out of the box, so you don't really have to 
read that much of the manual in order to get going).

And now for the one real annoyance... If you want to record seamless 
loops, you really want a way to go straight into overdub (stack on the 
Boomerang) when recording. You can do this, but it's a bit of a foot dance 
at the very time you are potentially trying to focus on what you are 
playing. This is much easier on the Line6 loopers, the Looperlative, and 
the EDP.

Did I mention how compact this thing is for the amount it does?

Mark