TC Electronic Gets Loopy

Ease of use, no-nonsense functionality, and high quality signal processing has made Ditto Looper TC Electronic’s most successful effects pedal to date. The minimalist architecture (there’s only one button), true bypass, and analog-dry-through features make the unit highly functional, yet approachable, and Ditto Looper has already become a favorite with such big names as Joe Perry, Joe Satriani, and Paul Gilbert.

MMR sat down with the company’s product manager, Tore Lynggaard Mogensen, to learn about the design evolution of this deceptively “simple” stompbox and why he thinks it has connected with so many six-string enthusiasts.

MMR: The Ditto Looper has really taken off since its introduction. In the most basic terms, what do you think is behind the success?

Tore Lynggaard Mogensen: Overall, I think that the reason for the big success of Ditto Looper is that we listened to and looked at what the customers are doing and how they use their products. When we started the Ditto Looper project, we invited a bunch of guitar players into a room filled with all the different loopers on the market and then filmed them using them. Early on, it became pretty obvious that they only use a fraction of the features available to them. Furthermore, a lot of them struggled and got quite annoyed while trying to perform even the most basic tasks, because of the complexity of the products.

MMR: So the conclusion would be: make the pedal more stripped-down.

TLM: Even though it felt like a bit of a gamble, we just decided to start peeling features away until there was more or less nothing, but the very essentials left. On the guitar team we just instinctively knew it was the right approach, but – trust me – there was a lot of pressure to add more stuff. But we held our ground. [laughs]

MMR: Ditto Looper does what it does, and does it well – it’s just presented in a very easy-to-understand and easy to use way.

TLM: Exactly. In general, I think you can say that even though the “safe” approach is adding all the features you think your customers might want, oftentimes it’s actually better to really focus the product for one particular group instead. Ditto Looper is designed specifically for guitar and bass players with a feature set that caters to their specific needs and requirements. That’s why it has true bypass and analog-dry-through, which are things guitar players care about, but which most other musicians doesn’t even know the meaning of.

MMR: Do you feel Ditto Looper was, in any meaningful way, a departure for TC Electronic?

 TLM: In general, we try to create products that stand out and make a difference. Innovation is at the core of what we do, but even though most people associate innovation with new groundbreaking technologies, I’ve always seen it as a much wider concept. True innovation is making products that fit the target customer perfectly. Sometimes that means inventing something like Polytune or the TonePrint concept. Sometimes it’s just about distilling a product down to the core of what it is. That is what we did with Ditto Looper.