It’s been a few years since it was announced that DigiTech would be resurrected following its acquisition by Cor-Tek, maker of Cort guitars. Other than the DOD Overdrive Preamp 250, we haven’t exactly had the reissue number fresh guitar pedals guitarists may have waited. As a huge DigiTech fan, I still have my fingers crossed for a Space Station reissue, but it was with excitement that I got my hands on the all-new DigiTech JamMan Solo HD.
While there are many loop pedal around, not all are created equal. The JamMan in particular is sought after for its ability to preload loops making it great for adding some oomph to your live show. You can still get the XT second-hand, but at around twelve years old, it’s getting long in the tooth now.
If you prefer your pedals brand new, then now’s your chance to get one fresh out of the wrapper. Rather than being a complete reimagining 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 the JamMan Solo HD is the onboard connection time. Capable of 10-minute loops with a total of 35 minutes of loop time and 200 total loops, it’s likely overkill for most types of guitarists. If that doesn’t sound like enough for your needs, you can expand it with an external Micro SD card up to 32GB, giving you a maximum of 32 hours of circuit storage capability. It’s a ridiculous amount of storage and all nodes are stored at 44.1KHz, 16-bit which is equivalent to CD quality.
For connectivity, it has stereo inputs and outputs that allow you to use wider sound loops and better integrate with a wider variety of pedals. A footswitch is available for use with the DigiTech FS3X footswitch that opens a selection of ring memories via your foot, tap tempo and a pause and clear function. An 1/8-inch aux-in gives you the ability to connect an external music player while 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 limiting a selection of buttons. There’s a tap beat, a setup button for extra menu dives, a store button for saving your loops, and up/down buttons for cycling through loop memories. A single LED lets you know what mode the looper is in, with red for record, green for playback and yellow for overdub.
Finally, there’s a mini USB connection for transferring loops to and from your computer and a Micro SD card slot to the left of the pedal. There’s no SD card included, so you’ll need to buy one separately if you’re planning to use the extra memory capabilities.
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review: Performance
Armed with a strate and my HX Stomp, I proceeded to loop with patch one, only to find that it had a drum beat pre-loaded with it. Loopers are usually pretty simple to get started, but JamMan is built a little differently. The first 15 patches have built-in beats that stay on regardless of whether the beat level knob is down or not, which admittedly caused some confusion for me at first.
Once you hit patch 16, you get a clean slate to use, so that’s where I started my journey. Here JamMan acts like your typical looper, with one stomp engaging record mode and a second stomp starting playback. Another single tap allows you to overdub, with a double tap stopping playback. It’s instantly inspiring, like bumping into another player and I immediately found myself coming up with some nice melancholic post-rock inspired beats and lead parts.
A long press of the pedal clears the current loops, but you can’t activate this until the loop is stopped, and annoyingly, it restarts the loop while you hold it down. It’s a small thing, but something to note if you’re planning to use it for live looping, as you’re instantly reminded of your wrong loop or note when you go to clean the pedal.
Going back to the patch memory, I decided to give the tempo backed loops one more go to see how these turned out. Here, you need to press once to start the first cycle, and as I understood, pay attention to where the drum beat returns. If you start in the middle of the drum pattern, then your loop will only cover that particular part of the beat.
The patterns I tried all seemed to be in an eight-bar loop, and I actually ended up finding the flashing light on the rhythm button quite useful as I hadn’t set the levels quite right and my guitar was dominating the loop itself. Of course, something that can be useful at a peak on stage. It also allows you to chain rhythms together, as when you press the up and down button when a loop is playing, it cycles through the entire remaining loop before starting the next rhythm pattern.
JamMan isn’t the most intuitive looper I’ve ever used, and you’ll definitely want to hit the manual before you start. However – and I think this is where a lot of people have historically enjoyed the JamMan – for loading and triggering your loops it’s absolutely brilliant. Once you insert an SD card into the slot, you’ll gain 200 extra memory, on top of the built-in 200, and the ‘mem card’ LED lights up when you’ve engaged those 200.
It’s a little hard to get there, but you can hold the up and down buttons to make things a little faster. The pedal also remembers where you left it, so if you use it exclusively that way, then you only have to go through them all once.
Here, JamMan becomes that extra musician you didn’t know your band needed. I used it to release some annoying drones that I could then play heavy tuned riffs over. It’s fantastic in this format, whether you want to use it as a separate entity entirely from your guitar tone to send to the front of the house, or just add an extra touch of ominous tones by placing it in your amp’s FX circuit .
There is a dedicated key for use with the JamMan that unlocks some additional functionality, but out of curiosity, I tried my Boss FS-6 to see if it would do anything. I was only able to get one of the footswitches to work, but it allowed me to cycle through the presets in a way that might be useful for those who have an existing switch and don’t want to get down to cycling through the controls on the pedals themselves. .
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review: The Verdict
A welcome return to DigiTech’s stable of pedals, the JamMan Solo HD isn’t the most intuitive looper out there. However, once you get under the hood, you’ll find a feature-packed and powerful pedal with bags of potential in a variety of cycle scenarios.
I can see it being very useful for those of us in trios or power bands with a single guitarist, allowing you to easily add an extra layer to your live sound. The flexible, stereo connection allows you to use it in many different ways, while the addition of an aux-in and the ability to chain together multiple instances of the pedal will make it great for solo performers.
Digitech JamMan Solo HD Review: Specs
- A/D/A conversion: 24-bit/44.1kHz
- Maximum cycle time: 10 minutes (stereo)
- Internal memory: 35 minutes (up to 200 loops)
- External memory: Micro SD up to 32 GB
- External memory capacity: Over 32 hours (16GB SD card or larger)
- Controls: Pedal switch, loop level, tempo, setup, save, tempo level, up/down buttons
- Connector: 2x 1/4″ TS input, 1x 1/8″ aux in, 1x 1/4″ TRS switch, 2x 1/4″ output
- Power supply: 9VDC 2.0A
- Contact: DigiTech
