The Sheeran Looper + is one of the friendliest loop stations you can buy, but the first hour with it is still the hour that decides whether you enjoy it or shelve it. This is the walkthrough I'd give any new owner: powering it up, getting your microphone and guitar sitting at sensible levels, understanding the four pedal modes, and recording your first loop without fighting the thing.
Power it from batteries or a 9V supply
There are two ways to bring the pedal to life. Remove the battery cover, drop in the four AA batteries that come in the box, and you'll get around six hours of real-world use — genuinely useful for busking and anything outdoors. Alternatively, connect a 9V power supply to the rear of the pedal for unlimited runtime, which is what I'd want on a festival stage.
The part worth knowing is that you lose nothing by running on batteries. Some loopers drop audio quality when they're not on mains power; this one sounds identical either way.
Set your microphone level on the combo jack
The XLR input is a combo jack, so it takes either an XLR cable or a standard guitar cable. For a microphone, plug in and use the dedicated gain knob to set the level, then watch the LED meter as you sing. As long as you're sitting comfortably within the green LEDs, you're good — the moment you're pushing past that, you're clipping.
Plug in your guitar and balance two gain stages
Round the back you'll find two instrument inputs. It supports stereo input, which is handy for something like a piano with a left and right output, but if you're an acoustic guitarist working in Ed Sheeran's style you simply put one cable into the left mono port.
Here's the bit people miss. You have gain control on the pedal, but your acoustic almost certainly has its own gain knob too — usually inside the sound hole or on the side of the instrument. That's two stages to balance, not one. Set them so your chords sit at a healthy level, then hit the body of the guitar the way you would in a real performance and watch what happens. On mine it clipped instantly, so I brought the guitar's own gain down until both the chords and the percussive hits sat cleanly.
Tip: Always set your gain while playing the loudest thing you'll actually do, not while gently strumming. If you set levels on chords alone, the first body hit of the gig will clip.
Choose mono or stereo out
For most setups, one cable into the left out is all you need, and that gives you a mono output. If your rig is more involved, run two cables and take the pedal out in stereo for more flexibility with routing. The output options themselves live in the master menu — turn the big encoder to reach Master Menu → Output.
Start in stomp mode with a single track
Straight out of the box the pedal is in stomp mode, running as a single-track looper. This is still my personal favourite way to use it. You get one dedicated footswitch for record, play and overdub, and a second footswitch to stop — and press and hold that same switch to clear. For single-track looping, and for anyone getting used to a two-pedal layout, it's about as intuitive as looping gets.
Record your part, let it play back, then press the overdub switch — it goes orange — and start stacking. You can add as many layers on top as you like.
Undo and redo a bad layer
Play a wrong note into an overdub and you don't have to start again. Press and hold the play footswitch to undo that layer. Press and hold it again to redo, which brings back the layer you'd just removed. It's the single most forgiving feature on the pedal and worth practising until it's automatic.
Stop, restart and clear
Press the stop footswitch to end your performance — useful for dropping out and bringing everything back in on a chorus, which you do by clicking play and joining back in. When the song is finished and you want a clean slate for the next one, press and hold the stop footswitch. That wipes every loop and returns you to default, completely erased.
Open the mode menu
To reach the other loop modes, press and hold the large encoder button, then scroll round with the knob to Master Menu → Mode. Inside that submenu you can choose between single, multi, sync and song.
Multi mode gives you two tracks of equal length
Multi turns the pedal into a two-track loop station. The display shows A and B — loop track one and loop track two — and you can layer on both.
The important rule here is that all the loop layers are the same length. Track A and track B will match measure for measure, so if the first is a four-bar loop, the second is a four-bar loop too.
Switch tracks without killing your loop
This one catches everybody. If you double tap the record button to move from track A to track B, it stops the performance you already have running, which is exactly what you don't want mid-song. Instead, double tap the play button. That jumps you across to track B with playback continuing, and you'll find the same footswitch layout waiting — record, play and stop — ready for your next layer.
Sync mode allows different loop lengths
Sync works the same way as multi, with one crucial difference: your loop tracks can be different lengths. You might make track A a two-second loop, then jump to track B and keep recording for six or eight seconds — four times longer than the first.
That's the mode I reach for when I want to lay down a quick drum beat and then build a more complex chord progression over the top. You get to the interesting part far faster than if you'd had to play the beat out over the full eight seconds.
Record straight into your computer over USB
The Sheeran Looper + doubles as an audio interface over a single USB cable. On a Mac it needs no additional drivers at all — it's plug-and-play into GarageBand, Logic Pro X, or whichever DAW you use. On Windows you'll need to download drivers first. Either way, it makes capturing a performance for songwriting or filming genuinely easy.