Absolutely amazing practice tool

Very cool and feature rich device. As a standalone looper it's better than most I've tried:

• Dedicated Rec (doubles as undo/redo) and Stop footswitches, since the "band" footswitch acts as a master Stop function;
• Pressing Rec arms the looper and it automatically starts recording once you strum the first chord. Never thought I would appreciate that so much, since now I can use it with my hands on top the amp rather than on the floor;
• 5 banks for storing different parts of your song that you can both sequence or manually queue. KILLER;
• 12 song memory banks for saving your compositions. KILLING SPREE;
• Sequencing mode allows you to setup the exact order of each loop bank, and also the amount of times each one plays before passing to the next;
• Manual control of tempo, quantizing your recording to different tempos and keeping it's original pitch;

So far it's allready an astounding looper pedal. But then you also have all the Band in a Box features:

• Same level of control over sequencing, including different genres, tempos, bass lines for each bank.
• 12 different "styles" for each genre, 9 in 4/4 and 3 in 3/4 time signatures. Each one with two "intensity" settings, which makes 24 different variations for each genre, a total of 288 different band settings (12 genres x 24 styles)!
• Simple but effective "Simple Bass", "Alt Time" and "Guitar FX". Simple Bass does what it says in 3 different settings (normal, simple, simpler). "Alt time" also does what it says, alternative time, usually it doubles or halves the tempo of the drums. Guitar FX I believe it's meant to be used if you're just plugged to the pedal with headphones and no amp. It has 3 settings (off, 1 and 2) and while they don't sound amazing they are handy to "colour" different loop layers, so that they separate better from one another. These FX vary according to the Genre, but most of them are just overdrive/distortion, reverbs, and compressor.
• Dedicated "Bass" and "Drums" knobs for volume.

Overall the band sounds very good and covers a lot of different grounds for practicing, laying out some ideas, or just having fun gigging with your digital bassist and drummer. They both do a great job learning what you teach them, although you must adapt a bit to their digital algorithmic ears, playing in either whole, half or quarter beat and avoiding fancy chord voicings. Re-teaching the same idea in different ways has a big impact on their learning, as well as the style you have pre-selected. Bassist learns Major and Minor 7th chords with ease, although he doesn't really play the 7th note of the scale, he will play root, octave, perfect fifth, thirds and sometimes 9th and 11th and some chromatic passages. It's perfect to study jazz standards, I was able to teach them "Nardis" by Miles Davis and "Autumn Leaves" by Bill Evans (jazz style number 6 is my favourite) and boy these cats swing! Also gotta mention the audiolastic feature to slow down or speed up tempo is really handy to practice harder passages at slower rate, or test your with faster swing.

In conclusion: This is no toy or just a drum machine in stompbox format. I've had a LOT of different loopers , and honestly this one keeps up with the best I've tried and is now my personal favourite. The ability to record different parts and queue or sequence them at will is just killer. It's really a very well thought out unit, fantastic as a standalone looper, even better with the awesome Band in a Box capabilities, sequencing up to 5 different parts with different styles, intensities, bass lines... There's also a handy Trio Manager software for both Mac and Windows to import/export songs and manage your memory banks. I'm really impressed by the amount of R&D that must have went into making this pedal. Since it's so feature rich It requires a read of the quick guide at first, but then it's very intuitive and responsive. Very well assembled and sturdy, the controls give good haptic feedback, also has built in fx loop, external control... Mini SD card (Sandisk 16Gb) and power supply included... You really get a lot for you money.

Oh, and the cherry on top of it all: 80 ohms impedance headphone output with dedicated volume control! You can use it without an amp! It's really the ultimate guitar practicing tool. 6 Stars!!

Very Useable

This is great for practice, recording and even performances. It's takes a little time to learn to use it. But, once you do, it's really easy to program songs into it.

Wonderful machine

I have it for some months now and I like it more and more each day. I just created a cover of "Every breath you take" and I wold to share it with all of you. You can download it and play it in your own device (with the free Trio Manager software) from here: http://mauricioluque.com/digitech-trio-songs/

I hope you like it.

the solution

for me the best solution when you need of drum machine.

My buddies

If you don't have any friend to play, this is it...

Soloists dream

When you need a backing band but can't find one this pedal can help you out.

Love it!!

I've had this now for a few months. so easy to use and just very cool. Love the built in looper. If you play guitar , u need this.