UNCHAIN MY HEART
In practical terms, the Loopbone is a device which lets you select between two discrete effects loops, and there’s also an adjustable clean boost for giving your signal an extra kick for soloing. This is handy if you have pedals that are noisy in bypass mode or just for giving you more foot control in tighter quarters. There are individual foot switches for each loop plus one for the boost. The connections include input and output jacks, send and receive jacks for each loop, a tuner output and a Slingshot Remote out. Slingshot is a remote control that can be used to simultaneously change channels on a guitar amp, turn on an effect, or activate another Slingshot-equipped pedal like the Radial Headbone, and there’s a set of Remote Output Assign controls to configure exactly what this jack will do. Internally, the Loopbone’s design starts with Radial’s award winning, 100% discrete, class-A buffer circuit to ensure the highest quality audio signal and the lowest noise. They augment this with Drag Control, a proprietary load correction circuit that lets you reintroduce the natural tone and feel of the guitar as if connected directly to a tube amplifier.
STEP ON IT
The Loopbone is designed with the two loops wired in series so you can feed the fi rst into the second, meaning that not only can you turn on one effect or the other, but you can carefully funnel the signal from one into the other for specific sonic effects. For instance, I have an old Rocktek phaser pedal which I got when I was 14 years old, and not only is it not true bypass but when it’s switched off you can still hear it swooshing in the background. With the Loopbone I was able to put this pedal into Loop 1 so I could take it right out of the signal chain when not in use, but I could also use it to feed an Envelope Filter in Loop 2, with the sweep of the phaser able to cause the envelope filter to exaggerate its sweep. GIVE A TONE A BONE This is a tricky pedal to use since it doesn’t change your sound (well, the boost does) so much as ensure it’s perfectly clean and authentic no matter how out-there you go with your switching. In the right rig it can give you a surprisingly high level of control over your signal chain.