Christoph's Live Looping Rig: Pedals, Picks and Practical Know-How
When Christoph pulls a cable from his pack and the first kick drum thump rolls out of the PA, the room knows something different is about to happen. Live looping has become the spine of his solo work, a one-person band built in real time that swings between folk-tinged balladry and deep house textures. The rig is part workshop, part instrument, and a long way from a casual stompbox setup. It is the result of years of gigging, broken cables, and quiet nights spent rebuilding the chain until every layer lands cleanly.
For anyone listening at a bar in Fitzroy, a brewery in Fortitude Valley, or a festival in the Adelaide Hills, the gear behind the sound is half the story. Christoph has refined his rig to survive long-haul flights, sticky summer arvos at regional pubs, and the technical quirks of Australian venues where the power runs at 230V and 50Hz and the stage patch sometimes feels held together with gaffer tape and good intentions.
The Core Voice: Guitar, Bass and a Stubborn Twelve-String
Christoph begins most sets with either a hollow-body electric or a Taylor 214ce acoustic, depending on the room. The acoustic gets used at intimate venues like Brisbane's The Foundry or Sydney's Lazybones Lounge, where the natural bloom of the spruce top cuts through without much help. For louder rooms such as Melbourne's Howler or Brisbane's The Zoo, the electric does most of the work, fed through a Fender Blues Junior or a Victory V40 Duchess that keeps the low end warm without overpowering the vocal.
His twelve-string is reserved for closing numbers. A twelve-string is harder to loop because the doubled strings create phasing issues when overdubbed, so he uses the trick sparingly, often only on the last track of the night. The bass duties fall to a compact Squier Classic Vibe P-Bass that lives in a small case beside the amp. A real bass rather than a synth layer keeps the low end grounded when the loop stack thickens.
Loop Stations and the Heart of the Stack
The core of the looping setup is a BOSS RC-505mkII, a tabletop unit with built-in effects and five stereo tracks. It replaced an older RC-300 that had been with him through more than a decade of shows, including sets at Woodford Folk Festival and a memorable late slot on Sydney Road. The RC-505 gives him enough headroom to stack vocals, guitar, percussion and ambient pads without the timing drift that plagued the older unit.
He runs a second compact looper, a TC Electronic Ditto+, as a safety net. If a glitch or accidental double-tap kills a phrase on the main unit, he can punch in a clean overdub on the backup and keep the song moving. The Ditto is small enough to live in a side pouch of his gig bag, which matters when he is sprinting between an arvo soundcheck and a midnight slot in a different postcode.
Microphones, Monitoring and the Quiet Stuff That Matters
A Sennheiser e835 handles vocal duty for most shows. It is dynamic enough to reject stage noise from a rowdy pub crowd, which is a real concern at regional venues where the front bar spills onto the stage. For quieter sets at galleries or listening rooms like Melbourne's The Toff in Town, he switches to an Audio-Technica AT4040 condenser that picks up the softer details of his voice and any hand percussion.
In-ear monitors come courtesy of a Sennheiser EW IEM G4 system. Floor wedges are rare at the smaller venues on his circuit, so the wireless pack keeps the mix honest when he is twenty metres from the PA. He has lost count of the times a wireless system has rescued a set in a venue where the engineer could only spare one monitor mix for three support acts.
Power, Plugs and the Australian Touring Reality
Australian stages run on 230 volts at 50 hertz, and the plug is the chunky Type I, not the European Schuko or the British three-pin. Christoph carries a Furman SS-6B power conditioner with Australian outlets, plus a spare board for the longer regional runs. The conditioner is not a luxury. Tour-quality power from regional generators can be noisy, and a single spike has killed a power supply on more than one occasion.
A small UPS unit sits beneath the loop station during festival sets. If a generator hiccups mid-song, he has enough time to finish the phrase and bow before the rig dies. Festival organisers in Australia are generally good about stable mains, but rural shows at places like Port Fairy Folk Festival or a privately run fundraiser in a shearing shed still require a margin of safety. A quality IEC cable and a roll of gaffer tape complete the kit, because nobody wants to be the act searching for a power lead at 4.30pm on a Saturday.
Software, Sounds and the Layers You Do Not See
When the set needs deeper textures, Christoph triggers ambient pads from a MacBook Pro running Live 12, with a MIDI footswitch sending scene changes between numbers. The computer is usually hidden behind the amp, but it is running for roughly a third of any given show. Soft synths like Omnisphere and Output's Signal fill the gaps that a pure pedalboard cannot reach, particularly when a song calls for swelling, cinematic washes underneath a fingerpicked verse.
He keeps the laptop off the stage at festivals that frown on extra gear. In those cases, the RC-505 handles everything, and the laptop stays in the green room for editing later. The flexibility to scale the rig up or down has been useful during quick dashes between a Sydney Opera House forecourt set and a late-night bar gig in Surry Hills, where load-in time can be tight.
Touring the East Coast Without Losing Your Head
Playing a national circuit in Australia means long drives between capital cities and a fair chunk of time spent explaining the rig to unfamiliar sound engineers. Christoph packs the loop station and the laptop in a custom Gator TSA case that clears airline security without drama. He labels every cable, carries spare batteries for the wireless units, and arrives at sound checks a full hour before doors whenever the promoter is keen to let him in early.
The payoff is a live show that sounds like a small band but travels like a solo act. Audiences at the Byron Bay Brewery, the Gold Coast's Soundlounge, or a Sunday session at the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Adelaide get a layered performance built in front of them, with every overdub laid down cleanly. For the next leg of the tour, Christoph is eyeing a new pair of condenser mics and a smaller, lighter loop station that will shave a kilogram off his carry-on.
| Piece of Gear | Model | Why It Is in the Rig |
|---|---|---|
| Main loop station | BOSS RC-505mkII | Five stereo tracks, built-in effects |
| Backup looper | TC Electronic Ditto+ | Compact safety overdub |
| Wireless IEM | Sennheiser EW IEM G4 | Reliable mix without floor wedges |
| Acoustic guitar | Taylor 214ce | Warm projection for quiet rooms |
| Bass | Squier Classic Vibe P-Bass | Real low end without a synth layer |
| Power conditioner | Furman SS-6B | Clean mains on regional Australian stages |
| DAW | Ableton Live 12 | Scene changes for pad layers |
The next step is to bench-test the RC-505mkII against the newer RC-600 in a real rehearsal setting, running identical overdub chains on both units to see if the upgrade is worth the back-of-van space.
