Beginner questions

[Rob Martino <martino@ctron.com>]

After a couple years of knowing about looping devices such as
the JamMan and Echoplex with little interest, in a sudden
moment of revelation this week while playing guitar and thinking
about my composition style I realized that these sort of devices
are perfectly geared towards a lot of the musical things I do.

So to start off, I wanted to get some basic ideas about the type
of equiment/cable configuration I would want to start with.
Playing Champman Stick, I have at least three outputs (bass, melody,
triggered synth), yet I understand the JamMan can only process
one of it's stereo inputs.  So would the easiest thing to do be
simply having a small mixer to mix down from three or more to
one?  Does the Echoplex allow multiple inputs?

Since I've hardly begun to get into this looping business,
the first thing I was envisioning myself doing was building up a 4 
or more layer loop (bass, rhythm, percussive sounds, synth), save that
off, solo over it for a while, start and build up another 4 layer loop,
save that, and maybe do this a few more times, then be able to
switch between the already constructed, layered loops as sections
of the song.  I assume either the JamMan or Echoplex could do this?
Geez, the funny thing is, this is the way I've been writing music
for years on a MIDI sequencer (build up layers into sections, then
use these section blocks to structure the song), but I didn't think
of using a looping device to do all this live until now!
 
Is there anything else I need to consider in terms of configuring
inputs/outputs, or looping device features?

Thanks,

Rob Martino