Cool to hear some history! :-) Over here I started looping in 1983 using two rack delays, one with 1024 ms rec time and one with 512 ms recording time. MIDI wasn't yet around, so the tempo was a challenge in performance. I used to dream about "a system where you could instantly synchronize loops you snagged live to the tempo you decided to play in". The 512 ms delay could also be shifted for a harmonizer function and when put into a send/return loop to the other delay I could make organically cascading pad loops ("shimmer" in today's fx pedal vocabulary) of up to 1024 ms. He, he... limited and great fun, but in the early nineties both boxes broke down. Then the JamMan came out, from Lexicon, and this felt like The Final Holy Graal, but no music store where I lived could get me one. I finally found a stage lighting and PA renting service that had a JamMan. They refused to sell it to me but I could rent it when going for gigs on the experimental side.
Then the internet came about and I found the LD and realized that there are many ppl like me that loves to make machines play along with them and pals. Until then I had only known about one drummer here in Sweden that had put together "a huge interactive jamming system in the garage" and that was an idea that didn't really inspire me much (good luck bringing a garage to a gig!). Later on, the EDP with a slave synched Repeater came to tic most of my boxes for a few years. Brother Sync (EDP) was such a great way to play together in a looping group. Learning about using programs in the EDP helped a lot when looking for a way to instantly adapt tempo, or replace loop´s content, when playing with live looping in an ensemble situation. And the Behringer FCB1010 MIDI Controller pedalboard was a kind of milestone. I wore out three of them, going exactly three years on each before it broke down. The summed cost of those nine years had me thinking that the more expensive Gordius (now obsolete) would be cheaper in the long run. That Gordius is still alive and well :-) even though I have learned that analog CV control plays better than MIDI for instrumental control. Lots of gear not mentioned, sorry for that and may you rest in peace, all you filthy floor boxes, hexadecimal beat-boxes, standalone arpeggiators, and dysfunctional cables.
