sergiodeblanc
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2012
- Messages
- 28,605
ZOOM finally won me over with this pedal.
I had owned a few pieces of ZOOM stuff over the years; a headphone multifx thing and a rack mount thingy that I bought as a cost effective vocoder. They did their job I guess.. but they didn't exactly wow me or anything, they were meant to be cheap.. and there's a need for that in the world, no judgment,.. But this thing is Bangin'!
I hate carrying gear, let me state that upfront. I also spend the majority of my time (like everybody else) switching back and forth from a rhythm tone and a lead tone, occasionally I'll step on a modulation effect but it's pretty much just lead and rhythm.
What do like in a lead tone? For me I want some gain/distortion, a little bit of delay, a compressor thats always on and a volume boost. On a traditional pedal board that would be like, three pedals to turn on and turn off... doin' the tap-dance kinda sucks and it doesn't look all that b!tchin' either, I just want to go from rhythm dude to ROCK GOD in one step... Oh, and screw you delay pedal! When I stomp on you to turn you off you turn off the delay mix rather than the input, thus cutting my delay repeats off... That ain't cool buddy! That is so unsexy of you.
This thing has something ridiculous like 150 different effects with up to six at a time. You can only turn on or off the effect pedal that is showing on the display but the rational-minded people at ZOOM have made one of those effects a "Line Selector". You put this effect module before the rest of the stuff you want to toggle on and off and Bam! That's where the awesomeness starts.
I go from a nice cleaner than clean tone to a lead tone with a faux ADA MP1 model into a booster and delay, I then proceed to widdley-widdley and wank all to turn that sucker off and listen to my distorted delay repeats continue to decay over my clean rhythm that I picked up again...Bangin'! All with one step.
I mean I'm not tryin' to say every effect is a winner... The "Intelligent" pitch-shifting is more like tryin' to get it's GED, some of the amp models are janky, and the acoustic simulator is about as convincing and as useful to me as a piezo... but nice try...I guess in a pinch.
There are some stand-outs for me though. The ADA MP1 model is impressive, I've owned the real deal a few times in my life and while it doesn't have the same range of controls, it does emulate the overall vibe of that piece astonishingly well, and sounds "tube-y".
The tuner works nicely, the Vintage CE sounds dead-on to my ears, the Bit Crush is cool, the Analog DLY does a convincing Memory-Man, the reverse delay is well done, as is the spring reverb. There are so many effects on this thing.. I could see getting a few of these for an incredibly powerful pedal board, and it's like... a hundred bucks!
I'm really impressed, it seems as solid as a Boss pedal too! Even if you throw this guy into your loop and use your amp for its gain you could still wind up with a one-shot solution for a processed lead tone. Probably great for metal dudes who just switch between rhythm and lead; put a clean boost and some delay... save yourself two steps.
Bangin' job ZOOM! I didn't add this to my pedal board... It is my pedal board.
I had owned a few pieces of ZOOM stuff over the years; a headphone multifx thing and a rack mount thingy that I bought as a cost effective vocoder. They did their job I guess.. but they didn't exactly wow me or anything, they were meant to be cheap.. and there's a need for that in the world, no judgment,.. But this thing is Bangin'!
I hate carrying gear, let me state that upfront. I also spend the majority of my time (like everybody else) switching back and forth from a rhythm tone and a lead tone, occasionally I'll step on a modulation effect but it's pretty much just lead and rhythm.
What do like in a lead tone? For me I want some gain/distortion, a little bit of delay, a compressor thats always on and a volume boost. On a traditional pedal board that would be like, three pedals to turn on and turn off... doin' the tap-dance kinda sucks and it doesn't look all that b!tchin' either, I just want to go from rhythm dude to ROCK GOD in one step... Oh, and screw you delay pedal! When I stomp on you to turn you off you turn off the delay mix rather than the input, thus cutting my delay repeats off... That ain't cool buddy! That is so unsexy of you.
This thing has something ridiculous like 150 different effects with up to six at a time. You can only turn on or off the effect pedal that is showing on the display but the rational-minded people at ZOOM have made one of those effects a "Line Selector". You put this effect module before the rest of the stuff you want to toggle on and off and Bam! That's where the awesomeness starts.
I go from a nice cleaner than clean tone to a lead tone with a faux ADA MP1 model into a booster and delay, I then proceed to widdley-widdley and wank all to turn that sucker off and listen to my distorted delay repeats continue to decay over my clean rhythm that I picked up again...Bangin'! All with one step.
I mean I'm not tryin' to say every effect is a winner... The "Intelligent" pitch-shifting is more like tryin' to get it's GED, some of the amp models are janky, and the acoustic simulator is about as convincing and as useful to me as a piezo... but nice try...I guess in a pinch.
There are some stand-outs for me though. The ADA MP1 model is impressive, I've owned the real deal a few times in my life and while it doesn't have the same range of controls, it does emulate the overall vibe of that piece astonishingly well, and sounds "tube-y".
The tuner works nicely, the Vintage CE sounds dead-on to my ears, the Bit Crush is cool, the Analog DLY does a convincing Memory-Man, the reverse delay is well done, as is the spring reverb. There are so many effects on this thing.. I could see getting a few of these for an incredibly powerful pedal board, and it's like... a hundred bucks!
I'm really impressed, it seems as solid as a Boss pedal too! Even if you throw this guy into your loop and use your amp for its gain you could still wind up with a one-shot solution for a processed lead tone. Probably great for metal dudes who just switch between rhythm and lead; put a clean boost and some delay... save yourself two steps.
Bangin' job ZOOM! I didn't add this to my pedal board... It is my pedal board.
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