Got both. Never use the Wire Tap. I played with it for a week after I bought it, and it's been in the closet ever since. I actually bought it to replace the my old looper. It's not a looper. TC Electronics advertises it as a tool to add to your pedal chain so that you can record a riff/song/musical idea/whatever and then be able to easily share it and distribute it to your bandmates. I wish I had seen their ad copy before I bought it. After a week with it, imho, it doesn't really work well for that either.
A looper is usually as simple as step on the switch, play, step on the switch to playback, add loops until you're out of memory. And, it's all done with your foot so you can do it on the fly. Easy peasy lemon lawnchairs. Some loopers have multiple save slots so that you can save what you layed down. I think one of the JamMan options even uses an SD card.
The riff recorder lets you start and stop the recording with the foot switch, but to play the loop back you have to reach down and hit the play button on the pedal with your finger. Not as easy as the looper. If you want to offload the musical idea, you have to either use usb or bluetooth. The usb connection doesn't seem to be the most stable, and the app to use the bluetooth is glitchy on its best day. In my use of it, it seems to be more of an ordeal to use as intended than it's worth. It'll probably be the next pedal I stick up on Reverb.
If you can get the riff recorder to work like it's supposed to, you can cycle through the riffs you've saved using the skip buttons and play the one you want on the pedal. That seems to work, except that it's a pain to have to reach down and poke the pedal every time you want to play something different. Or, if all the stars are aligned, the moon is full, and the planets are in your favor, the bluetooth piece will work and you can find the riff you want and play it from your phone. When it works, it's really cool. However, my experience has been that the bluetooth/app part of it is a lot more miss than hit.
My initial thought after having bought the Recorder and having so many issues with the usb and bluetooth was that I just got a bad one and needed to swap it out. Then I started looking online, and there are either a LOT of bad ones out there or a lot of folks that were having the same problems as I. At this point, I don't think it's because I got a Friday afternoon version of the pedal. I think that the pedal is a great concept. just wasn't well executed. And have I mentioned that it's not a looper?
What are you looking to use the tool for? Keep in mind that the Riff Recorder is not designed to be a looper. It's a recorder. You can use it to loop, but it's not nearly as efficient at doing so as a looper. If you're looking for something simple and efficient to use as a practicing tool, I'd advise that you not get the Wire Tap. If you're looking for something to record some musical ideas or riffs or songs for passing along to others or to chronicle your progress, I'd still say to avoid the Wire Tap and get a handy recorder (Zoom makes some good ones) or just use your phone. have I made it clear that imho the Wire Tap is pretty useless?
Sorry for the length, I just believe that the Wire Tap would be a total waste of money and my experience has been that it's more frustrating than anything because it never quite works as advertised. However, as with anything that you read on the world wide interwebs, ymmv.