It’s been a few years since it was announced that DigiTech would be revived following its purchase of Cor-Tek, the maker of Cort guitars. Other than the DOD Overdrive Preamp 250, we haven’t experienced so much reissue and fresh guitar pedals guitarists might have expected. As a huge DigiTech fan, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a new space station release, but it’s with some excitement that I got my hands on the brand new DigiTech JamMan Solo HD.
While there are many looper pedals around, not all are built the same. JamMan is particularly sought after for its ability to preload loops, making it great for adding extra flair to your live show. You can still get an XT second hand, but at around twelve years old, it’s starting to get pretty old.
If you prefer brand new pedals, then now is your chance to get your hands on one fresh out of the box. Rather than a complete redesign of its predecessor in the JamMan Solo XT, the Solo HD is actually pretty much the same pedal with a few extras added on top. So is it worth your hard earned money? Let’s find out…
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review: Features
The main feature of JamMan Solo HD is the on-board loop time. Capable of 10 minute loops with a total of 35 minutes of loops and 200 loops in total, it’s probably overkill for most types of guitarists. If that doesn’t sound like enough for your needs, you can expand it up to 32GB with an external Micro SD card, giving you up to 32 hours of loop storage. That’s a ridiculous amount of storage space, and all loops are stored at 44.1kHz, 16-bit, equivalent to CD quality.
For connectivity, it has stereo inputs and outputs that allow you to use larger sounding loops and better integrate with a wider range of pedals. For use with the DigiTech FS3X footswitch, a footswitch is available that opens up a selection of loop memories via the foot, tap tempo and stop and clear functionality. The 1/8-inch aux-in gives you the ability to connect an external music player, while the Jam Sync in and out lets you connect to another JamMan.
The front panel is quite busy, with two knobs for loop level and rhythm level rounding out the button selection. There is a tempo tap, a setup button for the next dive in the menu, a save button for saving loops, and up/down buttons for scrolling through the loop memory. One LED lets you know what mode the looper is in, red for recording, green for playback and yellow for overdub.
Finally, there’s a mini USB connection for transferring loops to and from a computer and a Micro SD card slot on the left side of the pedal. No SD card is included, so if you plan on using additional storage options, you’ll need to purchase one separately.
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review: Performance
Armed with a Loss and my HX Stomp, I continued looping with patch 1 but found that the drum beat was preloaded with it. Loopers are usually very simple, but JamMan is built a little differently. The first 15 patches have built-in rhythms that stay on regardless of whether the rhythm level knob is off or not, which I found confusing at first.
Once you get to patch 16 you get a clean shield to connect to, so that’s where I started my journey. Here, the JamMan works like your typical looper, with one tap to engage recording mode and a second single tap to start playback. Another single tap allows you to overdub, while a double tap stops playback. It’s instantly inspiring, like jamming with another player, and I immediately found myself coming up with some nice post-rock inspired melancholic rhythm and lead parts.
A long press on the pedal clears the current loops, but you can’t turn it on until the loop stops, and it annoyingly restarts it when you hold it. It’s a small thing, but something to be aware of if you plan on using it for live looping, as it will instantly remind you of your mistimed loop or boom note when you go to release the pedal.
I went back to my patch memory and decided to try the beat-backed loops again to see how they fared. Here you have to press once to start the loop first, and as I found out, pay close attention to where the drum beat is coming back from. If you start in the middle of the drum pattern, then your loop will only cover that particular part of the time.
All the patterns I tried looked like an eight-bar loop, and I actually found the flashing light on the tempo button quite useful because I didn’t get the levels quite right and my guitar was dominating the loop itself. . Definitely something that could come in handy on stage in an emergency. It also allows you to chain rhythms together, because if you press the up and down button while a loop is playing, it will go through the entire remaining loop before starting the next rhythm pattern.
The JamMan isn’t the most intuitive looper I’ve ever used, and you’ll definitely want to consult the manual before getting started. However – and I think this is where a lot of people have historically enjoyed JamMan – for loading and running custom loops, it’s absolutely brilliant. Once you insert an SD card into the slot, you get 200 extra memories in addition to the built-in 200, and the “card memory” LED lights up when you plug in those 200.
It’s a bit of a struggle to get there, but you can hold the up and down buttons to speed things up a bit. The pedal also remembers where you left off, so if you use it exclusively this way, you only have to go through them all once.
This is where JamMan becomes the next musician you didn’t know your band needed. I used it to launch some creepy drones that I could then play some heavy drop-tuning riffs on. It’s fantastic in this format, whether you want to use it as a separate entity entirely from your guitar sound to send to the front of house, or just add that extra touch of ominous tone by placing it in your amp’s FX loop.
There is a dedicated footswitch for use with the JamMan that unlocks some additional features, but out of curiosity I tried my Boss FS-6 to see if that would do anything. I could only get one of my footswitches to work, but it allowed me to cycle through the presets in one way, which might be useful for those who have an existing footswitch and don’t want to reach down and cycle through the controls on the pedal itself. .
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review: Verdict
A welcome return to the DigiTech stable of pedals, the JamMan Solo HD isn’t the most intuitive looper out there. But once you get under the hood, you’ll find a feature-packed and powerful loop pedal with bags of potential in a variety of looping scenarios.
I can see this being very useful for those of us in power trios or single guitarist bands, allowing you to easily add another layer to your live sound. Flexible stereo connectivity allows you to run it in many different ways, while the addition of an aux-in and the ability to chain multiple instances of the pedal make it great for solo artists.
Digitech JamMan Solo HD Review: Specifications
- A/D/A conversion: 24-bit/44.1kHz
- Maximum loop time: 10 minutes (stereo)
- Internal memory: 35 minutes (up to 200 loops)
- External memory: Micro SD up to 32 GB
- External memory capacity: More than 32 hours (16GB SD card or larger)
- Management: Footswitch, Loop Level, Tempo, Setup, Save, Rhythm Level, Up/Down buttons
- Connectors: 2x 1/4″ TS input, 1x 1/8″ auxiliary input, 1x 1/4″ TRS footswitch, 2x 1/4″ output
- Power source: 9V DC 2.0A
- Contact: DigiTech