NUX A/B ROLL – A Looper… and Quite a Bit More Than That

You can't be everything to everyone
At first glance, the NUX A/B ROLL looks like one of those pedals where the design brief was “how many features can we cram into one enclosure before someone tells us to stop?”. Looper, sub-octave, IR loader, auto-recording, OTG audio… on paper it feels like NuX pulled a handful of ideas out of a hat and decided to make it work.

Surprisingly, it mostly does.

Let’s start with the core of the pedal: the looper. This is a no-nonsense, very functional looping engine. Think original Ditto rather than some sprawling, multi-track workstation. One footswitch handles record, overdub, stop and erase duties, and once you get the muscle memory down it’s quick and intuitive. No fancy tricks, no menu diving — just hit record and get on with it. It gives you up to six minutes of loop time with unlimited overdubs, which is more than enough for practice, writing, or building up simple arrangements.

Where things start to get more interesting is the built-in IR loader. NuX have included a selection of cab sims covering the usual bases — small 1x12 combo-style cabs through to big 4x12s that are clearly aimed at higher-gain sounds. Annoyingly, they don’t actually tell you what any of them are in the marketing, but the important part is that they sound perfectly usable. More importantly, you’re not locked into them. Using the desktop editor, you can load your own IRs and tailor each one further with adjustable high and low cuts. At this price point, that’s a really nice touch.

Then there’s the sub-octave control. On its own, it feels like an odd inclusion. But when you look at it in the context of looping, it suddenly makes a lot more sense. Adding a subtle sub octave underneath a loop can really help fill things out, especially if you’re building layers with a single guitar. It pushes things away from “guitar noodling over a loop” and more towards something that feels like a full arrangement.

The real clue as to who this pedal is aimed at, though, is the OTG functionality. Being able to plug this straight into a phone and record or live stream without any additional interface gear suddenly reframes the whole pedal. This is content creation in a box. Bedroom players, younger guitarists, people experimenting with short-form videos, live streams, or quick demo ideas — this thing makes a lot of sense there.

With traditional live opportunities becoming harder to come by, especially for newer players, tools like this are starting to fill that gap. It’s a way to practise, perform, record and share without needing a full rig, a computer, and a desk full of cables.

At around £80, it’s also very easy to justify. That’s roughly the cost of a decent looper or a basic IR loader on its own. Getting both of those, plus a sub octave and direct-to-phone recording, in one compact pedal feels like pretty solid value.

It’s not trying to be everything for everyone, but for the players it’s clearly aimed at, the A/B ROLL is a surprisingly clever bit of kit. A little weird, sure — but in a way that actually works.