Help Finding a Foot Sampler Please

[Carl_Hungus]

Hello all

Have some upcoming shows coming up. I think I want to incorporate some live sample use, without a laptop or rack gear. Are there any footpedal like samplers that ideally would have maybe 6 buttons, or fewer with bank buttons I suppose, that let you store samples that you can then fire off one shot style during a gig? Not really looking for a looper, and in an ideal universe it would Mac linkable, or USB slottable, to just load pre-made wavs into (not looking to record guitar and capture that. have a looper in mind for that).
With the cost of SD memory so low, I find it hard to believe no one is making something like this, but maybe I'm dreaming.
Thanks for any help!

[htsamurai]

Jamman springs to mind, RC20 and DL4 but not as much
I too am curios as to this, id say maybe the tsp but idk if you'd be willing to pay so much for one (whats the average price right now, like $600?)

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

doesnt boomerang make one or maybe thats whats it called? i forgets exactly

[Carl_Hungus]

Thanks guys. The Jamman and Boomerrang are both good loopers, but that's what they are. Buttons designed for looping, not triggering, regrettably. I know Knudson from Minus the Bear/Botch uses 4 DL4s live just to fire off samples, but seems like a bit excessive for me. I've been hunting around and it boogles my mind that something so simple doesn't exist. Line 6 has their JM4, which would be great if it wasn't a stupid jamming tool more than a sample bank. I may have to use the laptop after all with some midi switches. Sigh....

[SirBlend12]

I was gonna use the example of MTB using DL4's, because that's what I thought you meant by sampling (and I was right!). I've been looking for exactly what you are... the DL4 loop/sample section, without delay, times maybe 4 or so, in one box? That would be ideal for me, and sounds luiek what you're looking for, too. Sadly, I have yet to find anything like that. The closest thing was this one Maneco looper (it was actually a sampler, for one-shot stuff), but it was $$$$$$$ and didn't even do sampling the way I had hoped.

Best bet would be to harass builders that are interested in making something like this. I've drawn up many a circuit for just this purpose, but none have been... err... efficient. It's easy as dirt to make a 30 second looper... not so easy to make a one-shot sampler.

Maybe, just maybe, there is something that could be done with one of those Arduino consoles. There are plenty of codes out there to program them with, so maybe somebody has thought of a way to get one-shot sampling out of them. It's definitely worth checking out.

Another way that you may be able to get what you want is to see if there are mods that can be done to simple loopers (RC2, Digitech Hardwire delay) that would turn them into effective one shot samplers.

I'll see if anything new has come up anywhere, because I want something like this, too. Hopefully I can find it!

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

roland sp series? not a footstomp type (maybe if u had tiny toes) but it samples, does one shot, has lots of banks, etc.

maybe u could hook up a midi foot thing to it to trigger the pads?

[Carl_Hungus]

well, that's a bummer then, since we're both looking for the same thing and it makes me less optimistic that I just missed something. Might have to consider the Rolands but I'll need a footswitch anyway. Blarg.
I mean really, with all the DSP garbage that I'll never use, why do they make all these overly tricked out, dorky samplers when they can just make it simple like I want? Sheesh....

Thanks for the replies anyway. At least I'm not looking for something that doesn't exist.

[SirBlend12]

I'm sort of looking at the idea of taking a tabletop sampler and just rewiring the switches into a strip box with spdt's to activate them. I think most switches/buttons in samplers like that are basically momentary switches to allow a voltage to go to a gate circuit and activate the record/playback/loop functions and whatnot. I'd have to find a sampler I could do this with, though, but I bet there are plenty out there that work on these sorts of logic circuits.

I don't know if you DIY it at all, but if you do, and the above were the case in the sampler you had, it would be a decently easy mod.

[Carl_Hungus]

No man, not a DIYer at all. Something I really should learn as I"m an FX player and I love my stompboxes, but I just haven't found the right learning tools I guess. Its like jogging and not eating potato chips. I know I should make the effort but.....

[SirBlend12]

Hahaha. Don't sweat it. It's not something you just know beforehand. Though, when I started out, I found that it's not actually as hard as it seems it would be, and don't get me wrong, electronics seems like one of the most harrowing things on earth before you know what you're doing. You just have to start small and gain the marbles to take on the bigger, scarier schems. Once you get good at reading them, though, you start to notice more and more how stuff all works together by seeing patterns in how circuits are assembled (like how to bias, get different tones out of different combinations of components, etc.).

I mostly learned by hanging out on DIY Stompboxes and Beavis Audio, reading schems and figuring out how it all worked, and I'm just a kid with NO previous electronics experience. And trust me, once you get the hang of it, it's hella fun, especially when you decide you wanna try something you came up with. You'd be addicted in no time