Best Looper Pedal

[Jonah]

And I will say: Frisell once again...
all mentioned above do it with taste and skill but when Bill does it he handles it in a very special way...
somehow only with Bill i do not feel it is just a technical equipment to compensate fro and 'absent player' but it sounds really like a part of his guitar... it is so much mixed in the musical texture that mostly I do not feel that there is something looped...
I

[Jonah]

Bill is the master of musical pedal board

Check what's going on at 41:50 and the solution at 42:25

[Doctor Jeff]

One good loop deserves another:

I've seen Andrew Bird live, as well as Tash Sultana. They are both incredible and experts at looping

Tash gets special marks for playing a Tele, and Andrew Bird for his ES-135.

[P.J.]

Nels Cline is someone I associate with looping. Here's a video of him explaining how his vintage EH 16 Second Looper works. This was the same looper that Bill Frisell used before moving on to the Line6 loopers. Nels does a great job explaining.

[DustPrince]

I've always been enamored with folks who use looping in a more spontaneous, "free" manner that allows for hazard as well as a manner of improvising that treats the looping unit itself like an additional instrument. I feel like Frisell's practices reflect that idea pretty strongly - here's a classic example from '93 where he's using a Digitech PDS8000 Delay's infinite function to achieve a sort of "splice" looping that allows for speed/pitch adjustments:

Frisell introduced those techniques via an Electro Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delay to Nels Cline in 1986 (when they toured together with Julius Hemphill) - Nels has taken that process to its logical limit and thoroughly integrated it into his vocabulary. . .to the point that he regularly jokes he "can't play without it". This clip shows him employing that sound on a funky, electric-Miles type of groove:

Inspired by people like Terry Riley, David Torn has been doing similar things with rack-mounted, Lexicon PCM delay units for decades (in addition to exploring glitchy, splice-based units more recently):

When it comes to looping, it's a wide-open world out there!