The design of this looper sticks to the essentials, without special features such as amp switching or MIDI controls: you can connect effects pedals to its eight loops and store up to 32 combinations. This is a good thing, since it avoids unnecessary "messes" that end up causing noise and other potential problems. It's a lightweight pedalboard unit and costs less than €200.
Its design and architecture are intended for guitarists who don't want to complicate their lives and know what their sound is. The most remarkable thing about the Octobus is its sound quality, which is what interests us.
Finish
Built and finished in a sturdy solid steel housing, 11 cm deep. It has two holes for attaching it to the pedalboard, which also protect the protruding connectors.
It also has six footswitches and a display showing the memory bank, plus two switches for moving through the configuration options. It has a good set of LEDs that keep us informed about how many loops are active.
Rear panel and operation
The rear panel houses eight loops, each with its own ¼" TRS send and return. That is, 16 input and output connectors. As we anticipated at the beginning, it's a unit without excessive complications, so it has no stereo loops, switchable loops, MIDI functions, amp switching, etc.
The unit has 32 memories grouped into 8 selectable banks. We can program our loops and store them to recall whenever needed.
In summary
The Octobus is an austere machine in that we won't find great frills or complexity. We like the philosophy because it's simple but well made and, most importantly, it doesn't get in the way of the signal between our guitar and the amp at all. Sturdy, well priced and does what it's supposed to do well.
