All of our pedals that have MIDI use MIDI Type A (MIDI Standard). Same as Korg and Make Noise.

The looper can be a bit tricky to get going at first but once you get it set up things run pretty smoothly.  Remember the looper must be v30 or higher.  It will say v30 on the SD card. 

1.  When you try and enter looper mode by holding down the right and middle stompswitches what happens? 

     a. the first preset LED lights up blue - if so you are in looper mode

     b. nothing happens - looper mode has not been enabled or your firmware has not been updated, see the FAQ for updating the Reverb or Echosystem.  Read below to enable looper mode. 

     c. the preset lights flash red - the SD card cannot be read.  Will talk more about that below.

Enable Looper

- enter Advanced Configuration: hold LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches, hit SHIFT/SAVE 

- rotate MODE till PLATE /TAPE is lit GREEN

- turn decay/delay time all the way up, preset LED should go to #2 

- the looper is now enabled 

If you don't see a Green Plate/Tape option, then your pedal is not up to date and you need to instal the latest firmware to use the looper.

If the Preset Lights Flash Red

The SD card is not recognized or compatible with the looper.  Did you insert the SD card after booting up the pedal? power cycle the pedal and see if it works, the SD card is not hot-swappable and will flash red if you insert it after powering on the pedal.

A lot of off brand cards seem to give the looper problems, so I recommend buying a card from a brand you recognize.  
The looper requires an SD card that is V30 or higher and SDHC.  SDXC cards should work as well, it will say SDHC on the face of the card.  

The card does not have to be FAT32 and will corrupt any data on the card. Try clearing the card and  reformatting the card to FAT32 or exFat if you get red flashing lights.  If you format to exFat the looper will still work but it won't work for updating the pedal. 

A couple other things could go wrong here.

1.  The card is locked: There will be a switch on the left side of the SD card to lock it.  

2.  The Switch is broken: If the lock switch on the side of the card breaks the looper can fail while still working occasionally. I actually recommend the card pictured, it is a pretty good card despite the broken switch.

3.  The SD card is broken or failed.  Even if it worked previously SD cards can break or fail in various ways and I would recommend testing with another SD card.  Connect it to your computer to see if you can reformat it and try again. 

If you are running Reverb 5.00 or Echosystem 2.00 or greater, you can now import and export your presets from an SD card.

The SD card must be SDHC or SDXC type and must be formatted with a FAT32 file system.

These instructions are for the Echosystem. For the Reverb, just replace "echosystem" with "reverb".

To export presets to the SD card, make a directory in the root directory of the SD card called "from_echosystem". On startup, Echosystem will populate this directory with presets and the advanced config settings.

To import presets from the SD card, make a directory in the root directory of the SD card called "to_echosystem". Presets that are named NN_echosystem.bin when NN is a number between 0 and 35 inclusive will be loaded into Echosystem memory.

The V30 looper is available on firmwares Echosystem 2.03 and Reverb 5.03 and above. We've made changes to the V30 looper since those versions. 

The instructions below are for Echosystem 2.03 and Reverb 5.03 and above.

It's called V30 cause it needs an SD card that says V30 on it. If it says V60 or V90 or some other number large than 30, that's okay too.

The V30 looper records up loops up to 10 minutes.

 The V30 looper will corrupt any data on the SD card, so don't use a card with important stuff on it!

Please keep volume down for awhile while using! We've tested with a bunch of V30 cards, but probably haven't tested with yours, so stay safe!

If you find bugs, email us at support@empresseffects.com

** there has been some confusion about whether you need the SD card in the pedal to run the looper. The answer is yes **.  You need the SD card in the pedal when it boots up to enter looper mode

I recommend: 

updating the Echosystem to at least firmware 2.04 and updating the Reverb to at least 5.04

remove the firmware on your SD card

re-insert SD card

boot the pedal again and start the looper

 Enable Looper

- enter Advanced Configuration: hold LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches, hit SHIFT/SAVE 

- rotate MODE till PLATE /TAPE is lit GREEN

- turn decay/delay time all the way up, preset LED should go to #2 

- the looper is now enabled 

Effects Routing (making looper pre or post effect)

- while still in Advanced Configuration, rotate MODE to SPRING/ANALOG and rotate decay/delay time is lit GREEN

- looper before effect (counterclockwise) 

- looper after effect (clockwise) 

** I recommend starting with "looper after reverb/echosystem"; that way you can apply different reverb settings to each track ** 

- exiting Advanced Configuration

- press LEFT and RIGHT stompswitches together, pedal will reboot

Updating to Beta Firmware 

- put V30 SD card into pedal and reboot 

- if all of the LEDs blink for a few seconds, the SD card doesn't have a FAT32 file system on it 

- do a full format of the SD card to FAT32 and start over, Do not pass GO 

- when updating is successful, remove firmware form SD card, reinsert in pedal and reboot

Multitrack Looper Instructions 

Since the V30 looper corrupts the SD card, you'll probably get the pedal blinking red when you boot it up. This is okay. This is the bootloader saying the file system on the card is corrupt. The V30 looper doesn't need the file system.

Entering/Exiting Looper UI Mode - hold down MIDDLE and RIGHT stomps for about a second

Move Active Track Right - tap MIDDLE and RIGHT stomps together

Move Active Track Left - tap LEFT and MIDDLE stomps together

Start/Stop Recording - tap LEFT stomp 

Play/Stop - tap RIGHT stomp

Mute/Unmute the active track - tap MIDDLE stomp

Clear an active track with material in it - hold LEFT and MIDDLE buttons together for one second

Clear all tracks - move to an empty track and hold LEFT and MIDDLE buttons together for one second

Adjust looper playback volume - adjust output knob while in looper UI mode.

LED Colors

Green: track is currently playing

Blue: track is active but doesn't contain any audio

Red: track is currently recording

Aqua: track contains audio, but looper is stopped

Yellow: track is muted

Purple: track is recording but is muted

The bright track is the active track.

Notes 

- while in looper UI mode, the knobs still affect the reverb/echosystem sound, so you can change up the modes or the parameters while in looper UI mode. 

- the tracks still play when you exit looper UI mode.

- V30 looper will stay play with pedal bypassed, unless you have the pedal set to true bypass.

WHEN TRYING TO UPDATE THE PEDAL
If you are getting flashing red lights when the pedal boots up this means the SD card is not recognized.

5) Are you having problems with your computer reading the SD card?  If you're using a Mac with Big Sur installed there are a number of reports online about SD card read issues with Big Sur, a google search may be the best way to determine the latest fix for Mac card read errors. 

Here are a couple cards we tested that we know work:

UPDATE:  The Lexar card pictured will work to update the pedal but will not work for the looper

Also, we do have a SanDisk 16GB card (pictured below) that doesn't work, and we don't know why. And there's a couple other SanDisk cards that customers have reported not working. We haven't gotten to the bottom of that mystery yet. So if you're having issues after following the 3 steps above, and your card is a SanDisk, please try a different card if you can. Hopefully at some point we solve the mystery.

Email support@empresseffects.com if you have any issues.

This click is a preventative maintenance feature to work out the relays when switching bypass states in the advanced config menu. Don't worry, this is normal.

Yes! All of our pedals play nicely with bass. Check out the "Features & Specs" section for information on the frequency response of our pedals. We have lots of customers who play bass through our pedals!