Radial Loopbone

The Radial Loopbone is a high-performance effects-loop switcher that lets a guitarist insert, remove and combine pedals in two effects loops at their feet, in the order they choose¹. It is a switching pedal from Radial Engineering's Tonebone line, built around the maker's 100% discrete class-A buffer circuit, with Drag Control load correction, an adjustable gain control, a boost feature and a tuner-out jack¹².

What it does

The Loopbone sits between the guitar and the amplifier and holds two effects loops. Radial describes it as enabling the guitarist to insert, remove and combine pedals¹. The two loops are wired in series, which Radial says is "to enable the first loop to be fed into the second"¹, so a pedal in loop one can feed a pedal in loop two in a fixed order rather than running side by side.

Vintage Guitar's Bob Tekippe, reviewing the pedal in the August 2005 issue, listed its connections: "The Loopbone has two sets of effects send/receive jacks, and the Slingshot jack."² The Slingshot jack is Radial's connection for remote switching of amplifier functions, letting the Loopbone pass switching commands along with its audio routing².

Buffer, Drag Control and noise

The design begins with what Radial calls its "award winning 100% discrete class-A buffer circuit for the very best audio fidelity"¹. On top of that sits Drag Control, which Radial describes as "a load correction circuit that allows the user to reintroduce the natural tone and feel of the guitar as if connected directly to a tube amplifier"¹. In practice, that is a control for dialing back the signal loss a player hears when pedals and cable runs load down a guitar's pickups.

Radial also addresses switching noise directly. In a support article, the maker wrote: "The Radial Tonebone Loopbone eliminates switching noise because it employs active class-A buffers and photocells that ramp up the signal level"³. Photocell switching means the audio path is ramped rather than hard-switched, which is how the design avoids the pops some loopers produce.

Gain, boost and bass

The Loopbone carries an adjustable gain control, which Tekippe listed alongside the Drag control and tuner-out jack². The review also singled out the boost feature:

Tekippe described it as producing a transparent volume boost with a slight edge on the clean setting and an equally transparent, searing solo boost on the distorted loop².

For bass players, Radial says the buffering suits low-tuned instruments too: "The Loopbone's 100% discrete class-A buffering will deliver your full tone without affecting the bottom end"¹. Players pairing it with other low-end gear can also see the site's bass pedals page.

Where it sits in Radial's switching range

The Loopbone is one of several switching devices Radial has made for managing pedals and amps. Others covered on this site include the BigShot ABY amp switcher, the BigShot I/O instrument selector, the Switchbone amp switcher, the Twin-City and the JX44 guitar signal manager. The Loopbone's specialty among them is series effects-loop switching with a built-in class-A buffer and Drag Control¹.

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