Polyend Loop is a new idea machine for musicians with four loopers, a drum machine, and a multi-FX processor with 100+ effects.
As a solo musician, you can approach music-making in different ways. You can work “in the box” within a DAW, using an audio interface and real/ virtual instruments. If you prefer a “DAWless” workflow, you can record your instrument straight into a digital mixer.
Or put a looper in between to help with composing. Polyend unveiled a new pedal called Loop at Guitar Summit 2026; it is a performance looper and an idea machine for hardware-focused musicians.
Polyend Loop
When making music with your instrument, you come up with ideas you want to immediately capture and develop further. The new Polyend Loop pedal is designed for these special moments.
Loop consists of four independent loop tracks, a 4-track drum machine, and a flexible multi-FX processor that help you shape sounds and explore new directions. More importantly: three elements that are always in sync.
It has a pedal format, yes, but it’s not primarily for guitarists. According to Polyend, it’s designed for guitarists, songwriters, and electronic musicians. Everything starts with the looper.
Each loop track is either mono or stereo and can be a live loop or a loop playback from a microSD card. Loop accepts instrument, line-level, and dynamic microphone sources, including two mono sources simultaneously.
The loop engine has three distinct playback modes: forward, reverse, and ping-pong. For each track, you can also choose whether it’s tempo-synced to the internal tempo or a free-length loop.
With Varispeed enabled, loop speed and pitch follow tempo changes while drum pitch stays unchanged.
Loop Shaping & Programmable Rhythms
You can shape a loop during playback. This enables the built-in multi-FX processor. Each loop track can use one independently selected effect, from reverbs and delays to modulation, distortion, and filters.
Each effect has several parameters. It hasn’t been confirmed, but it looks like you can record parameter movements into a sequence—much like with the Polyend MESS pedal.
Alongside the four loop tracks, the Polyend Loop also features a four-track drum machine with 500+ drum kits, 350+ beat patterns, 2000+ drum samples, and 180+ ready-to-use loops. Alternatively, you can program your rhythms just like on a drum machine.
And if the right kit isn’t included, you may want some experimental drums; you can also build your own. Either import your own samples into the hardware via the microSD card or sample into it via the external input.
A pattern can have up to 16 steps, and a project can house 16 patterns.
The drums are also in sync with your loops. A library of 180+ audio loops provides further starting points. The hardware has space for up to 1000 scenes to store loops, drum patterns, tempo, and effects.
You can export individual loop tracks as separate WAV files via microSD for further editing and mixing in a DAW.
Connectivity
The front panel features a color display, four endless encoders, two potentiometers for the input and drum level, three footswitches, 16 buttons to program the drum machine, and four for the loop selection.
On the backside, you have a 9-18VDC power supply input, a reset button, a USB-C port, a microSD slot, MIDI IN/OUT on 3.5mm TRS sockets, an expression pedal input, a single stereo input, and stereo output connectivity on two 6.3mm mono sockets.
The TRS MIDI and USB MIDI provide clock synchronization and external control options, including transport, MIDI CC, and program change.
Polyend Loop First Impression
A very exciting product. There are several loopers on the market—such as the Roland Boss RC-505 MKII or various in pedal format —but pairing a loop station with multi-effects and a drum machine is new and clever.
It runs a loop station into an idea machine with a very direct workflow. I can easily picture this in small synth setups – connected to a mixer which acts as a router to determine which signal is sent to the looper.
You could get very creative here with relatively little gear, especially since you have a drum machine and an effect for each loop right in the same box. A great product idea. I hope it works as smoothly as shown in the promotional video.
Polyend Loop is now available for pre-order for $ 599/€599, with shipping scheduled to begin in October 2026.
More information here: Polyend
Available from my partner
I’d wait for the Polyend Loop+ to also not buy it. Polyend is iPhone X’ing the hell out of the cost-to-value ratio, aren’t they?
Its the same price as the RC505 Mk1 and 2 on release. I think most of their products are reasonably priced and align with the market. Not all but most. Given that everything coming out in th epast 2 years has either been marked up on release or after, this is not a bad price.
Polyend advertises Loop as an idea machine where loops, drums, effects, and external MIDI gear stay synchronized. However, imported loops aren’t truly time-stretched to the project tempo while preserving pitch; it uses varispeed, so pitch changes along with speed. So the “everything stays in sync” claim is somewhat misleading
Varispeed can be turned on or off according to the manual.
I wonder how long it will be before the “something-something, polyend-plus” bandwagon loses speed…