ElectroHarmonix 2880 vs. Repeater

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

The short answer is: yes, you can.

You'll need a MIDI pedal (or controller of whatever type) for this, there 
is
no jack for controlling feedback with an expression pedal. That being said,
about everyone controls the Repeater with a MIDI floorboard (I use a
FCB1010).

I never found the 3 or 4 minutes (don't know myself) limiting. Some (but
only a few) people have a different opinion on this; you might search the
archives for the looperlative discussion which happened recently and
included a lengthy side-thread about maximum loop size.

The Repeater has a few limitations. Some (like the maximum loop time) do 
not
affect that many people in their playing. Others are more of a problem. To
sum up the biggest drawbacks:

 * maximum loop time limit: you have to decided for yourself (no problem 
for
me)
 * you can't go into overdub when closing a loop:
This is a drawback for many people (including me). You can work around this
by first recording an empty loop, closing it, and then overdubbing into it.
But it's not the same.
 * S/N ratio. There are some hardware mods to improve this. Again, search
the archives
 * Its internal MIDI clock is quite unstable. This is a problem either if
you want to be extremely tight or if you want to MIDI-sync some delay
effects to it (which causes clicks). Workaround. Sync the repeater to an
external MIDI clock.

Then there are things that no other looper can do. As Mark mentioned,
syncing to a changing MIDI clock is among this. Then there's the
timestretch/pitch shift feature. I personally enjoy varispeed very much.

A pity it's discontinued.

        >"Being able to control this feedback level (usually with a pedal)
is
        >obviously a major boon to loopers.  It turns the loop into a 
living
        >entity, growing and changing over time versus a static loop with
        >overdubs (and perhaps undos)." Please tell me, can you do this 
with
repeater ?
        >And how dont you find the 3-or4 minutes looping time as limiting ?
Do you have any other loopers or is the repeater enough to make those
>greate loops ?