Arteffect Zenith overdrive

The 5 knobs and the push-pull option on two of them make a great way to shape the sound and get many different sounds out of the effect.
The only down side is that I can't use two different sounds in one song cause then I would have to bend and re-arrange the EQ in the middle of a song... A bit difficult in the middle of a gig...

Great sound quality! I usually use Peavy Classic series amps (the 30, 50 and 100 models) and a Cort G270 guitar with this pedal but the most interesting setup is playing with this pedal with a Trace Elliot Bass amp with very high bass setting. It makes the room shake :)
Very low noise level and almost the same sound on different kinds of amps.

Strong box and quality switch makes it my favorite OD for gigs and rehearsals cause I can be sure that I will survive any Live concert abuse...

Never had a problem with it so can't really tell. But the warranty seems fair.

I play in a funk-Rock band so no distortion pedals are involved .This OD gives me all the rough sound I need from rhythm to lead.
I'm glad that I found this pedal cause the more I play with it the more I understand that this is the sound I was looking for...
Found it by chance when I was looking for sound samples of OD pedals on You-Tube and found this guy doing a review on it.
In overall view one of the most good sounding, greatly designed pedals I heard in last years.
Very nice! I like!

Awsome looking pedal with vicious graphics and a stout feel. Has 5 knobs for setting the distortion and tone, plus two pull-push switches. The presets suggested were very nice and manual was easy and effective.
Fiddling with the 5 knobs gives me tons of tones :)

SG standard into: Boss FA-1 booster, V848 wah, Zenith, T-rex Moeller, EHX clone theory, Mad professor DB delay, Loooper switch - all of these into a Mesa Lone Star (with 6L6s) or an Orange 15 watter.

When it comes to the quality of sound and noise factor - this thing is just great! very little noise at higher gains and volume levels. It has a VERY wide tone palette, and I use it anywhere from pummeling an amp's input ir on a clean channel to get that very English-like distortion tones.

Super pedal. I love it.

It has been a bit misued by a buddy of mine, and apart from paint crack here and there - it works just fine.

No need

As I said before - super pedal!

One thing though - it really is a bummer that it has only one channel. there are so many great tones from clean boosts, to mid or treble boosts, to tube screamer OD, to marshall grit and more... but - only one tone at a time... that the price of analog, I know - but it's a bummer.

I play on and off for 16 years or so now, with the current "on" period of 3 years with the occasional local gig here and there. I use it every where from Cream to Black Sabbath. I also like the way it interacts with my other pedal board inhabitants :)

I think the main feature of the Zenith is the ease of getting a good sound out of it! Even if you just play around with the knobs you will probably find great tones without knowing what you do! :) I used the setting in the manual to get a few starting points and they do help.

The Zenith is the best sounding effect on my pedalboard! I use it with a tube screamer to cover pretty much every kind of overdrive amd distortion sound I need. I will probably buy another Zenith at some point so I could run two of them in low drive mode one into the other - should sound great!

This thing is built very well. Enough said!

I bought this pedal about half a year ago and it quickly became my main overdrive. I use it in the studio and when I jam with friends. I can always get a proper sound out of it with a little tweaking. This is the nice thing about the pedal, does not matter what you need it for, it can work with your gear to fit the situation. I only wish it would have another boost channel of some sort since sometimes I need to push it a little harder (with the tube screamer).

The Zenith looks more dificult to use than it is, at first I was a little scared since I'm a "3 knobs max" kind of guy, I don't like to tune effects for hours to get the right sound. The manual was very helpful and there's logic in the layout of the knobs (which now I can understand). In short - read the manual!

This thing sounds incredible! There are about a million different settings that cover allot of spectrum and almost all of them are not only usable but sound good. Before buying the Zenith I used a Fulldrive 2 as my main overdrive but now I use the Zenith almost exclusively.

I only used the Zenith for two months so I don't know how it would act in a fewq years but I got to say that someone did some design work since everything on the inside in neat and looks like it will hold on.

Did not need it.

I just noticed how the drop down menu for the rating has "Fantastic value" written near the perfect 10. I think this describes the product very well! The amount of different tones you get for the price is amazing and almost all of them are good and you will use them! I could cut an entire CD with the Zenith alone doing all the overdrive and distortion parts easily! I don't think it really matters what style of music you play since you can get any sound you want from this thing (maybe not death metal distortion), I like to play blues and jazz and with my band (Firesticks) we play a mix of folk/rock and some heavier stuff and for rehearsal I only take the Zenith and a Shredmaster to cover the "dirt" section.

There's one thing I wish the Zenith would have - another channel! So I can "stomp" into lead using it's built-in booster and not have to use anything external.

i haven't had the pedal that long, but in 18 or so years playing i've also never had a pedal i liked the sound of so take that for what you will. i love this pedal, and too be fair should probly rate it higher, but it just has too many nobs that make too wide a variety of sounds and they all sound too good so you end up twiddling knobs a bit too much for my taste. but if you are playing through a tube amp this pedal is best for pushing it a bit and has a nice clean sounding by pass that doesn't cut all the high end like lots of pedals. can't see the point for solid state really and people are in my mind going to be disapointed if they try this.

i'm running a 69 LP custom, antiquity bridge PU into zenith into 73 PTP marshall super bass, 41 super lead cab with greenbacks. the amp allready sounded awsome without the pedal but only got that nice distortion at a level that almost blows the windows of my house.... anyways long story short this pedal is friggin amazing and sound like my amp perfectly just a shade quieter and thicker, more ballsy. kinda feeds back when not playing but at that gain/volume most things do. pedal always sound great and is really invisable when turned off. amazing. does every sound a good LP/Marshall player could want. won't do fizzy pre lead like my mesa but hey good for clean boost, EQ, or mild to moderate overdrive. i play in a metal band and everything on the side and its awsome so far.

looks sturdy and solid. i'd say it would last awhile, looks really clean and neat inside, i'd bring a spare 9v. but yeah looks solid.

bought used.... so no opinion ser # 25

i play heavy techy type stuff, sludge/stoner metal, blues ect. playin pretty long now, and own a boat load of gear strat, lp 335, howard robert jazz box, 50w plexi, 73 super bass, mesa triple, mesa f30, silver face pro reverb ect. i love that this pedal is super clear and maintains all the high end detail and adds a whole lot of balls and some extra EQ for ANY tube amp. i choose it because it's the only pedal ive seen that looked and was expensive and botique and it was used so.... helps me get the sound i like and even improve it a bit(a first for me) and keep my hearing so all in all i couldn't be happier and would recomend it to people who think pedals take all the sound out of their amps. maybe theres other expesive rare pedals that are better but ive never tried one so i like it a lot.

Gain, volume, EQ and voice. DC adaptor. Straight forward. The instructions were nice and I liked most of the presets in it right away

Without a doubt, one of the most usable pedals I???ve got. My amp these days is a Vox AC30 (about ten years old). Guitars are a HSS Strat (2002) and a Hamer Studio, loaded with P-90 pups. Between them is an Arteffect wah, Dunlop Univibe, Keeley Katana boost, the Zenith, vintage ProCo Rat , MXR dyna comp, Boss phaser, Boss OC-3, T-rex Tremolo, Electro DMM (the new blue pedal). I use it as a dual purpose thing ??? both to get dirt and drive and to push my amp a bit. It has plenty of volume, so pushing the amp is a breeze, extra meat and sustain is always sweet. It???s not noisy, even when I kick the Katana in front of it. I can get a lot of good sounding drive tones out of it. With the voice I can dial the perfect sound for me with either guitar. Works good with the rest of my gear, so I???m very happy.

Metal box, knobs feel rugged and a standard looking true bypass switch. Seems well built and sturdy. I gig with it for the past 4 months, about once or twice a week. So far, not a glitch.

Can???t comment on this one

A wonderful piece of gear, I really like it. Nails some aggressive rock tones, Marshall-esque, but I can get all sorts of diverse sounds out of it with ease. I play rock and usually go on stage with both guitars, and I use it as my main drive-boost pedal with both. I play for about nine years now and this has become my go-to drive pedal.

Cool little thing, very responsive and can dial in many tones. 5 knobs, 4 self explaining and the fifth being the voice knob, which lets me get all sort of different angles. Manual is straight forward and has much info and sound setting suggestions. I use it with an AC adapter.

It sounds preety awsome. Chain goes like this: Big Apple Strat into - crybaby wah - Keeley two knob compressor - Zenith - OCD - polyphase - DD5 delay - vox volume pedal - all into a silver faced Band Master with matching cab. In one word - awsome! Lets me have a classic overdriven fender tone without head blowing volume and turning the voice knob a little pat the fat setting puts out a more "british" tone, with fatter mids and great pressence. I can have both Strangkehold type tones and Tonny Iommi stuff with this pedal on the band master - cool :)
The Zenith responds well to the humbuckers, even with the volume turned down a bit (unlike some ODs I had before - an SD-1, Arion tubulator, TS5). When I have the chance to play in earlier in the day, when my neighbours aren't around - I turn the OD's drive down and the volume up, pull the "punch" mode and let it push the bandmaster all the way up to heaven - and it is doing so superbly.

I have it for a short time now, but works perfectly.

I bought it directly from the company, but haven't really engaged in any conversation with them.

Whether I use it to push my amp, or get a sweet-sweet OD tone with a clean amp - this tattooed box delivers the goods. Been Playing since around 2000 and this is my favorite pedal yet. It works very well with my other pedal and gives me what my OCD (which I find awsome as well) can't - a variety of sounds for a variety of situations and I love it. I play mainly in the house with the occasional jam session. an 11 :)

although the zenith has 5 knobs it is very easy to get a good sound out of it, actually it is rather hard to get a bad sound out of it. 5 knobs seems a little scary at first but once you understand the logic behind the layout you can dial in tones in no time.

i'm mainly using a modern strat with humbucker in the bridge and a fender concert combo. i use a dunlop wah, vintage tube screamer, analogman bi-comp(sweet!!!), marshall shredmaster, electro harmonix polychorus and a boss ds1.

to my ears, my rig sounds great and i can get all the sounds i like! mainly classic rock or more alternative stuff. i thought i didn't need anything else but the zenith surprised me so much that it quickly became my main stomp-box. it can do a tube screamer-ish tone that actually sounds better than my vintage ts-808 tube screamer that i bought for almost $500 a year ago!!! this thing can really get you every overdrive tone you are after and as a bonus it can even produce some great soudning distortions as well with the gain set to max! and it can also act as a clean boost to push the amp into power tube distortion!

this thing is built very well. the box looks like a hammond box that most effects come in these days, the inside is very impressive with all the electronics being on the inside of the pcb facing the top of the box so nothing can get hurt while you change the battery.

talked with both tom and dan from arteffect before buying, both are very nice guys and they really did everything possible to make me happy (including the zenith). you got to respect that!

i play mostly older rock (cream, hendrix, led...) but like to spice up the sound from time to time to fit what is called "alternative" kind of sound. the zenith is simply perfect for everything i use it for because i can dial in any tone with a few turns of the knobs. it will fit every style of music and every guitar i tried (i also have a strat with all humbuckers). in my opinion this has got to be one of the best overdrives ever created and until i see something better this is my favorite effect! if it will get lost or stolen i will buy another one (i'm thinking about getting another one right now LOL). but the most important thing is that i enjoy playing with it because it keeps my basic sound the same and adds what i want it to add to it and that's something very rare with overdrive or distortion effects.

This pedal has plenty of knobs and really allows great versatility. The "voice" knob is awesome and really helps to capture the exact OD sound that I want. I mainly keep the treble and bass flat. The manual is nice and I like the fact that there are suggested presets which sound very nice too.

I Play a Gibson LP standard and a Tokai 80's Strat copy with a bridge stacked HB (SD) into a Fender Twin or Peavey classic 50 head (into 4*10 Peavey cab). My other pedals are a Vox V847 wah, an EH small clone, 69 fuzz, Maxon SD9 and a Bespeco volume pedal (which I should probably get rid of???)
The Zenith works great with my two guitars and my amps. It's easy to set it right when switching between guitars. I can get a fat creamy tone with it, with loads of volume and sustain. Pushing my Classic 50 it gets sweet "Mule" tones and switching to my Tokai and lowering the drive, cool "Skynard type" tones. I really love it. I kept the SD9 on my pedalboard as these two also work well used together. Noise is not a problem even with the single coils.

Look very tough and I see no problem with it

Overall, I really dig this one. Plenty of tones available on tap and it works great with my gear. I play for 8 and a half years now, mainly rock and some blues. If it was stolen I would be heart-broken and would get a new one fast. I love this pedal and it looks awesome ??? really like that the indicator light changes its color when pulling the drive knob.