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ZVex Hand-Painted LO-FI Loop Junky Guitar Effects Pedal

7 ratings | read 1 review

Low-fidelity hiss and lots of it without digital compression.

The Lo-Fi Loop Junky loop pedal from ZVex really is low-fidelity-the recording of your guitar is filled with hiss, moan, distortion, and warped-record strangeness, but everyone will be...

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15 Artists Use This
Chris Martin

This blog post from Coldplay's official site tells about Chris Martin playing with Noel Gallagher. Noel plays a loop through the ZVex LO-FI Loop Junky, which Chris Martin thinks is "the most amazing thing he’s ever heard." Noel later gives the pedal to Chris.
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Owl City

Pic taken by Owl City on Instagram
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Moby

In this home studio Instagram photo posted by Moby, on the left of his M-Audio controller keyboard you can see a small effects pedal. The four stacked knobs and two button switches indicate it is the Lo-Fi Loop Junky by ZVex.
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Danny Lohner

In this photo, posted by Lohner on his Instagram account, we can see the ZVex Lo-Fi Loop Junky.
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Chris Rosenau

It's pretty tough to see but the ZVex Hand-Painted LO-FI Loop Junky Guitar Effects Pedal can be seen fourth from the left in Chris' pedal setup.
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Kim Gordon

"I have a couple loop pedals. It’s a very lo-fi loop, so it only holds one loop—you can’t save it, really. Or you can save it, but you can only have that one loop on it then. It sounds more like it has a cassette sound to it," mentions Kim Gordon, in [this interview]( http://sheshredsmag.com/blog/im-not-a-musician-an-interview-with-kim-gordon), in which this photo of her pedalboard, with her ZVex LO-FI Loop pedal can be seen.
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Bad Suns

Bad Suns lead singer, Christo Bowman, posted this photo to his instagram account and said, "We got all these today. Guitar player's Christmas morning. #PinchMe." Bowman and guitarist, Ray Libby, each use one of the two ZVex Junky pedals shown here.
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J Mascis

J Mascis discusses his LO-FI Loop Junky Pedal in this Rig Rundown from Premier Guitar. At 16:44 he says, “It's a LO-FI Loop Junky just to make noise or if I break a string, I can just make a noise and make a loop while I’m switching guitars or just make a loop to play too or something.. Certain guitars are just make a loop to play to or something.”
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Kevin Shields

This photo from the pedal board of Kevin Shields from [My Bloody Valentine](http://equipboard.com/band/my-bloody-valentine) displays a ZVex Hand-Painted LO-FI Loop Junky. This photo is taken from an [effects bay article](http://www.effectsbay.com/2011/08/kevin-shields-my-bloody-valentine-pedal-boards/#prettyPhoto_).
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Stephen Carpenter

At 3:00 of this Rig Rundown for Stephen Carpenter of [Deftones](http://equipboard.com/band/deftones), he shows off some of his gear, including a ZVex Hand-Painted LO-FI Loop Junky Guitar Effects Pedal.
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Peter Holmström

The LO-FI Junky can be spotted at 3:22 in the video from this [*Into The Woods* post](http://intothewoods.tv/learning-curve/episode-6).
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Alan Sparhawk

"Right now, it’s a Les Paul with P-90 pickups & a bigsby trem into a Z-Vex Octane 3, an SIB Mr. Echo, a Z-Vex Lo-fi Loop Junkie, & then a Z-Vex Super Hard On. Amps vary, but I like the 1965 reissue Fender Twin with the 15 inch speaker, &/or a Traynor Bassmaster head into a 1x12 cab. With Low, I’ll use smaller amps - a Carr Mercury, Fender Vibroverb, or just a Champ."
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Geoff Farina

In this picture you can see an early ZVex Effects Lo-Fi Loop Junky on Geoff's board.
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Jason Simon

This foto shows the ZVex Hand-Painted LO-FI Loop Junky on Jason's board.
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David Bryant

Shown alongside El Capistan on Strymons site
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More Looper Effects Pedals

Details

Description

Low-fidelity hiss and lots of it without digital compression.

The Lo-Fi Loop Junky loop pedal from ZVex really is low-fidelity-the recording of your guitar is filled with hiss, moan, distortion, and warped-record strangeness, but everyone will be able to tell the loop from your real guitar. Because the processing of your direct guitar is done with a specialized bootstrap circuit with the very highest impedance circuit ZVex has developed, your direct guitar will have detail incomparable with anything you've heard before. The juxtaposition of your direct guitar against the smashed, distorted, shimmering, warbling recording of the loop mechanism will make it clear once and for all who is the guitarist and what is the machinery.

There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to this tiny, battery-saving looper pedal. You may only record one loop. There is no sound-on-sound available with this technology. But, if you unplug your cables, take out the battery, and bury it for a hundred years, the last loop you recorded will still be there when you drag yourself out of the grave and plug it in for the centennial resurrection gig. That's because the ZVex Lo-Fi Loop Junky uses really bizarre technology that literally crams analog signals into static digital storage cells without analog-to-digital conversion. It's pure analog storage, just like the old bucket-brigade technology, for 20 seconds straight.

Note: Due to the nature of each hand-painted Lo-Fi Loop Junky pedal, there may be a slight difference in design from the posted image.

Specifications

Hand-painted artwork
Records up to 20 seconds of your performance
Allows you to initiate and finish a recording at any moment with a stomp switch, when activated
Begins looping a few thousandths of a second after the record process is finished
Remembers your loop even when unplugged or with the battery removed, for up to 100 years
True bypass
The true-bypass switch initiates loop playback from the sample's beginning at any time
vibrato with speed and depth controls, allowing a vibrato/chorus/Leslie-like shimmer
Very slow vibrato speed for warped-record effects, to very fast for jiggly playback
Real clocked-analog recording with no analog-to-digital conversion
Records using velvety compression for a smooth organ-like sound
Allows overdriven recording of storage cells using "record level" control
a tone control that rolls off hiss and other annoying artifacts for burbling, mellow samples
Gorgeously transparent guitar preamp built-in to give your direct guitar a glistening finish
Really small footprint, like a fuzz factory
Draws as little as 2 mA from the battery when in bypass mode, and about 12 mA when activated
Features aliasing artifacts, distortion, hiss, out-of-tune effects, strange behavior, and long battery life
Allows loop erasure during bypass, resulting in a looping hiss sample
Never sounds like what you played into it—always alters the original tone and dynamics
No learning curve—5 simple knobs, 2 stomp-switches for bypass and record, and a safety switch
Hiss—and lots of it
Simple LED status indicator

1 review

rothhandlestudios

163

Supercool looper

I love the sound of this and I have more or less created an entire album around it.

Videos from my studio with it.

https://youtu.be/d4UotqtnCdI

On a Glockenspiel

https://youtu.be/DUwl0wkRM2M

https://youtu.be/_nzl4CGp418

+1

about 3 years ago
- 0 Comments
- edited about 3 years ago
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