Both pedals are different enough sonically and workflow-wise that it’s hard to make direct comparisons. Blooper is simpler in operation, imo. Since you already have one, you know that at its core it’s a looper that you can add sample manipulations to. I think its workflow/design allows for it to be more controlled and predictable (not in a bad way)
The Mood mkii’s design makes it more complicated. It has two distinct sides that are both controlled by the same clock and can be routing into each other, or run parallel. The Mkii version also allows the two sides to sync to each other, which makes things a little less wiley. Even with its ability to sync both sides though, the Mood’s looping is more experimental (less predictable) than the Blooper, which allows for it to work better as a live processor, “texturizer,” happy accident box. The fact that one of its sides is a delay, reverb, and pitched delay takes it further away from the Blooper’s functionality.
When I’m using them together, I find that I use the Blooper more as a simple looper that I process through the Mood. The Blooper is putting out a continuous loop (with maybe some subtle manipulation happening) and the Mood is catching little bits and pieces of it to loop and process. Since the mkii can also spread the signal and add panning (depending on which mode you’re in) it makes even more sense for it to run after the Blooper.
I hope some of this helps. I imagine you’ve probably already listened to a lot of examples of what the Mood does to a sound, but I think without hands on experience, it’s hard to know how people arrive at those sounds. It’s workflow and design will take you in other directions the Blooper can’t.
another possibly useful way of considering them - if you had to choose one, choose the blooper because you want to loop & layer, choose the mood because you want to effect.
I’ve both, and the habit - and whilst they do provide you with very different routes, you can get to similar (sometimes surprising) results, its the path to get there that differs. So I would say think about preferred workflow before you think about outcome.
Mood II being stereo does distinguish it, but aside from that all 3 are different ways to mangle and surprise yourself.
If you aren’t a mangler, then I would say another lens to look at them through is what specific effects are they each best at for more conventional use - say if you were a guitarist, you might choose the habit as fundamentally a delay, perhaps mood as a capable reverb, perhaps blooper as a multi-FX in the destructive vein.
Thanks guys - I think I was wondering if the Mood’s FX sound of similar enough quality / type to the Blooper’s Modifiers but I guess they’re quite distinct (except maybe stretch mode).
I do like the Blooper and some of the modifiers but sometimes feel like it degrades the sound I’m putting into it, not because they’re bad effects but rather the sound I’ve developed before it hits the Blooper is already sort of what I want.
I may need to move it further up or just not use those FX. Specifically it gets recognizably grainy in a way the works for a lot of current aesthetics but not necessarily mine (I’m finding out the hard/expensive way haha).
I use the blooper the other way around - as a start of process mess box: put guitar, samples/drums or keyboards into it (in a haphazard way) mess about to transform it over some layers, then resample to a more pristine (usually PC) environment with a mouse and edit facilities.
I’d find the blooper frustrating later in the process as I prefer more control when trying to pull decent ‘motif/riff’ pieces out into something worth keeping.
It’s the stretch setting I love the most tbh. Used to use that early on and get a sort of rhythmic drone going and then build a track from there. I always ended up using the blooper as a simple looper that I could switch through the layers on so seemed a bit OTT at £500 lol.
Oddly, I’ve not gelled with the mk2 mood like I did the mk1?! Can’t really work out why but not spent the time with it.
If I’m honest, listening to what you’ve made above, I’m not sure what you’d gain from a mood. I’d guess it would all get a bit congested maybe? Or would need to be used sparingly to add another layer here and there.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I like what you’ve done
Thanks again both - and thanks for the comments @brucegill , that’s my thoughts too…sometimes enough is enough! and in some ways the Blooper may have exceeded what I needed or at least where it’s placed.
On the other hand the Count to Five is more limited but man does it sound good and it’s really effective at what it does, so you never really know until you get the thing and try it in your system.
I really struggled getting the CT5 to work for me but thought I could see/hear how it worked well for you. I’ve tried twice now, and agree, sounds so good.
I can totally get that. It does have a couple of things it does really well but I sense that after a few pieces / releases / a year of gigs, it’ll need to be switched out for me. Until then I’m enjoying it though.
I’m finally diving in to synth mode on the MK2 with the digitone keys controlling it. Making sure to get the right notes in initially to transpose correctly is important but I think it will be very useful the more different sound sources I throw at it. I REALLY like the option of the three modes (drone, on/off, adsr). I have a feeling it’s going to lead me to finally buying a lemon drop though as some polyphony would be great. I’ve always just wanted to ability to to play the mood clock from a keyboard. This really was a great way to implement that feature. Probably 95% won’t ever use it on theirs, but I’m glad they did it.
So I’m very much honeymooning hard with Mood 2 just now and as a result have recorded some guitar improvs that are just Mood 2, Dark World (Flint instead on one track) and Gen Loss mk2 just recorded straight out into an ancient zoom H4 (and then lightly EQ’d in reaper afterwards). MISO makes it super handy for just plugging a stereo recorder into the end of the chain.
Finally had some more time to play around with the mood and get into the dip switches and extra knob functions. Setting the microloop to fade and latching the overdub footswitch transforms the right side of the pedal into a wonderfully weird delay, especially on the env setting. Feeding this into slip on the left side gets pretty wild.
