HeadRush Looperboard

The HeadRush Looperboard is a four-track floorboard looper from HeadRush, announced on April 18, 2019¹. HeadRush bills it as "the world's first floorboard looper with 7\" touch display and powerful quad-core processor"², and it records up to four looper tracks, in stereo or mono, with no maximum loop length limits². It followed the HeadRush Pedalboard and the Gigboard in the company's lineup³.

Where a typical looping pedal gives you one or two footswitches and a single loop, the Looperboard is built around a 7-inch high-resolution multi-touch display and 12 footswitches, aimed at players who build whole arrangements live: guitar, bass, vocals and drums, each on its own track. It runs on a quad-core DSP system that HeadRush says was tailor-made from the ground up for the job³, with 32-bit floating 48kHz audio⁴.

A four-track floorboard looper

The Looperboard records up to four tracks, either 2 stereo or 4 mono looper tracks², and HeadRush states there are no maximum loop length limits². Internally it holds over 9 hours of recording, and recording directly to USB or SD storage extends that to what HeadRush calls endless looping²⁴. At launch, press coverage quoted eight hours of internal recording⁵⁶; the 9-hour figure came with Firmware 2.0 in July 2020²⁵⁶.

The unit is housed in what HeadRush describes as a durable, road-ready steel chassis², and the company says its audio circuitry is designed to capture the performance exactly as intended, without distortion or unwanted signal coloration³. It also includes click track and smart quantization features to keep loops tight².

MusicRadar's review coverage describes it as a deluxe looper with footswitches and a 7-inch hi-res multi-touch display, four tracks, MIDI/USB connectivity, built-in drum and percussion loops and effects⁷.

The footswitches, display and track modes

Control is split between the touch display and 12 footswitches, each with an individual RGB LED that updates dynamically to give feedback on what each switch is doing². The footswitches handle track record, overdub and playback status, and they also control the length and speed of the full loop, plus reverse, fade, transpose, bounce, undo/redo, peel and clearing individual tracks².

The four tracks can run in any of five track modes⁵:

Firmware 2.0, released in July 2020 as a free download for all Looperboard owners, added Tap Tempo with intelligent time-stretch and pitch correction⁴⁸, so tempo changes bend the loops to fit rather than dropping them out of time.

Power and connections: XLR inputs, outputs, MIDI and storage

The Looperboard's input section is what sets it apart from a guitar-only looper. It has four mono combo XLR + 1/4-inch inputs with switchable +48V phantom power, so condenser microphones can be plugged in directly². A 1/8-inch auxiliary jack accepts devices such as MP3 players or smartphones, and there is a 1/4-inch headphone jack for private rehearsal².

On the output side it provides four mono assignable XLR and 1/4-inch outputs plus headphone outputs². Note that HeadRush's own product page gives two different descriptions of the output configuration, so check the current spec before planning a rig around it.

For storage and expansion²⁵:

• 2x USB-A ports for importing and exporting loops, backing tracks or audio clips to USB flash drives
• 1x SD storage input for loop storage and audio import
• USB-B for connecting a computer
• Over 9 hours of internal recording, expandable via USB or SD

MIDI In and Out allow the Looperboard to receive MIDI clock and external MIDI control², so it can lock to a drum machine, a multi-effects unit or a DAW's tempo. The unit ships with 300 drum and percussion loops from the factory, and more can be added directly to USB⁵. A HeadRush edition of Pro Tools is included in the price⁵.

Where it came from

HeadRush announced the Looperboard on April 18, 2019, following the Pedalboard and Gigboard¹³. Details actually leaked a few days earlier through a print ad shared on the VGuitar Forums, ahead of HeadRush's official livestream on Facebook and YouTube⁹. It launched with a U.S. retail price of $899⁵, still quoted at $899 when Firmware 2.0 arrived in July 2020⁴.

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