For over 50 years, guitarists have been trying achieve a balance between the flexibility of having multiple presets and dialing in the perfect tone for a particular song. Manufacturers have responded with some pretty nifty devices like modeling and digital FX pedals. These technologies, although wondrous, always seem to fall short for the purist and seem to somehow disconnect the player from his instrument. The end result is that serious guitar players inevitably yield to the allure of the venerable tube amplifier.

The holy grail of tube amps is in itself a misleading notion. As any player will attest, the closer you can get to connecting the guitar to the purity of a simple tube amp, the better the feel and the more inviting the tone. But without flexibility on stage, how can you get the job done?

For world-class concert-level performers, the only solution has been expensive custom-made pedal board controllers. These allow a series of preset effect loops to be engaged using a combination pedalboard and rack controller along with the prerequisite full-time guitar tech. But even at this level there are shortcomings – the more complex the system becomes, the greater the chance of it becoming a technical nightmare. The demand for smaller, more flexible systems forces engineers to use chips and op-amps which result in less than ideal tone. The fix becomes the problem and you end up chasing a point of diminishing returns.

This of course leads us to ask a few simple questions: What is it that guitarists really need? How many different tones are required to perform on stage? If the tones sway too far and wide, will the guitarist’s personality get lost? How much noise is acceptable? Where should there be compromise?

Back in 1979, we invented the world’s first 3-channel tube amplifier. It solved a problem. It provided the guitarist with a clean tone, a crunchy rhythm channel and a solo channel. Fast-forward 25 years and for the most part, this is still the most basic yet useful set-up. The Radial Loopbone goes back to our roots and brings forth a design that truly accomplishes what it was set out to do – provide a simple tool that allows the guitarist to achieve flexibility without compromising tone.

Basic Guitar-Pedal Setups
Consider the most basic guitar set-up: A guitar, a good distortion pedal and guitar amplifier (fig1) will give you a clean tone, an overdrive and with a second channel, you can likely get a pretty good solo tone. The problems arise as soon as you introduce more pedals
(fig. 2).

The natural tone and relationship between the pickup and the amplifier is lost – all kinds of noise creeps into your signal path, the guitar level changes and for a fleeting moment those ‘do-it-all' pre-packaged modeling systems that just sound 'good to average' become very appealing. Then you give your head a shake and ask yourself, "...is there not a better way?"

The Loopbone Solution
Yes there is a better way, and that way is Loopbone. We designed Loopbone to solve all the above problems by creating a master control interface that provides alternate signal paths for your “love-them-and-hate-them” effect pedals and we've added what has been called 'the best sounding power booster on the planet' to boot. This clever bit of design accomplishes the prerequisite ‘clean-rhythm-solo’ setup multiplied by two. Check it out: with the Loopbone, your original guitar-to-distortion-to-amp set-up is suddenly transformed into a powerful tone control center (fig. 3). Effortlessly add 4 more tonal variations by simply clicking in the versatile variable-gain Class-A power boost. Add effect loops and you can create two completely different signal paths: one dedicated to the ultimate solo patch for example, the other to weird effects. Best of all, when they're not needed, you can remove the noisy pedals from your signal chain with the click of a footswitch. Lovely!

The Loopbone is small! It fits in nicely right on your pedalboard along with all of your effects. Did we mention how you can turn on and off various pedals to get set for a particular musical passage without actually hearing them until the loop is engaged? Now that’s foot power!

Drag™ Control
When you add effects, your guitar's pickups are no longer connected directly to the amplifier. The effects are usually active devices that buffer (amplify) your guitar signal to some degree and the impedance load that your pickups would normally 'see', when connected directly to the amp, is lost. Your tone seems thin and brittle. To solve this problem, we developed a feature called Drag™ control, which lets you to dial-in the right amount of pickup loading that was lost. With Drag load-correction, your guitar feels 'right' again.

Slingshot™ Remote control
If the Loopbone is truly going to be the center of the pedalboard, it should be able to control other aspects of your guitar system. This triggered the concept of MIDI control without actually having to resort to taking a university course on programming. We call it Slingshot™.

Slingshot is a remote control that employs the same basic functionality of the time-tested channel switching found on most guitar amplifiers. On the Loopbone, you can assign the Slingshot remote to any of the two effects loops or the power booster and when depressed, can cause a remote device to change status. You could for instance have your amp channel change when effects loop-1 is engaged (fig. 4). If you have a Radial Headbone, you could switch amp heads or with the Radial Cabbone, you could switch speaker cabinets and go from a 2-12 open back to a 4-12 half-stack.

The Loopbone is truly a marvel that opens the door to tonal flexibility without introducing any noise or altering the natural tone and dynamics of your favorite instrument.