Worship Musician November 2018 | Page 102

GEAR REVIEW NUX JTC DRUM & LOOP PEDAL MINI | Bruce Adolph KEY FEATURES Adding a looper to your pedal arsenal can be a style you want the drummer to play along with win on many levels. It is a great practice tool, and you at. This is basically much more fun that a • 6 Minutes of Recording when used correctly live, can certainly multiple metronome. And just like a metronome, it will • 11 Built-in Drum Rhythms your guitar sound. The basic explanation of a show you where your timing is on, and where looper is that you can play a rhythm guitar part it is off. You can tell the drummer when to kick and the pedal will sample it and play it back for in and when to bud out. The drums have a Tap you. Then you can play another layer on top of Tempo feature that is easy to use. • 24-Bit High Resolution • True-bypass and Analog Dry-Through that and play it back. Then you can add a guitar solo part (either clean or with effects) on top of The joy of making music and not having to have that, and so on and so on, until you run out of a second (or third) guitar player hanging around memory. the house to pull off what you want to practice or play is a big bonus (there is even more food For practicing your guitar playing it is very left in the refrigerator when you are done with useful as you don’t have to imagine in the JTC pedal). your head the rhythm part while you play a guitar lead. You hear the rhythm part ANOTHER BRACE SECTION? looping back around while you practice This JTC pedal is the least expensive looper your riffing to make sure you are hitting pedal I know of, and it even comes with drums the right notes or you gain new insights (one less mouth you don’t have to feed). At while you attempt things you’ve never tried $89.00 MAP you look at it with one of those before. “how do they make it at this price?” kind of looks. BRACE YOURSELF… A sampler is akin to a tape recorder and its The JTC is 24-bit high resolution. The quality strength (and weakness) is that it records of the drums is fine as well (except for one exactly what you play into it. If you have crash cymbal on one of the settings – it comes a good rhythm part going and you are through louder than the rest of the kit). playing a solo over the top of it… it can be cringe worthy when you hear the loop I decided to give the NUX JTC pedal a test drive circle back again and there are wrong with the master musicians of looper players – notes ringing through. Yikes! Make it the one and only Phil Keaggy! You may say, stop! Ease up, you can peel off the last “You didn’t take Phil Keaggy a $89.00 looper to layer you added with a press and hold try in his own home-studio did you?” Yes, the of the foot. man whom Chet Atkins handed him a original JamMan as a gift… I handed this NUX mini This mini pedal will improve your practice looper. I told you to brace didn’t I? habits and make you play better. We plugged it in and in no time Phil was And amazingly this sampler is 24-bit high- laying down some really funky guitar parts on resolution audio quality! a telecaster. We took turns trying to read the manual to activate the drum sounds but the BRACE YOURSELF AGAIN… 102 font was way too small for us older gentleman The JTC mini pedal has 11 built-in drum to read. But the good news is that on-line NUX rhythms and you can set the tempo and the had everything we needed to know. November 2018 WorshipMusician.com