The LOOP delay story

The original propaganda

The original manual in English
The original manual in German

Credits and history of development

No manufacturer was willing to expand an existing delay with the specific looping functions I discovered while living as a musician in Rio. So we had to go the hard way and developed the LOOP delay, with little experience, including all programming, graphical and mechanical work and part gathering.

Loopers in Frankfurt

To create something really new is very different from an industrial development with a defined aim or a university research on facts.

I often felt solitary and considered CRAZY because I was not able to explain what I was heading for. A lot of crazy things really happened on the way, like the bug that caused this beautiful waveform on the scope:
Scope art

Chalet

Discussion with looping musicians (I recognize Matthias Becker) at the PARADIS booth in Frankfurt, '93.

 

 

 

Here in Biel, Switzerland in '92, I worked 14 hours a day. We had no secretary and I used to rush to the post office by bicycle...

Lab table
The table where it all happened...

Sometimes it took weeks to find a bug, since we had very little test equipment and often did not know whether we had to fix the hardware or the software.

I often felt helped by destiny, especially when Eric appeared out of nowhere to take over the programming. Also, some things we had planned wrongly ended up coming out right in rather miraculous ways.

In the original design there was a key called "suprise" because we felt we were going to need it for some function. We really did because it was not practical to operate Overdub as a long press of Multiply. But we had a lot of good times phantasizing what we could do with it otherwhise, like calling a bass drum sample...