Korg 411fx Super Multi FX

It is very easy to use. It has all the info you need right on the pedal itself. It would have been great to allow Edit modes to have individual on/off switch. The reason for this is if I just wanted to use just the reverb as a send/return to and from my amp I am able to do so without worrying about the other edit functions

The manual is ok. Should have a FAQ quide but I don't remember seeing one. Maybe a user setting guide and a few other ways to connect the pedal would have helped. I love those diagrams or manuals that tell you how you can achieve something.

I believe all the sounds here can be used and sound above average. Like some comments, it is a matter of time of getting it through tweaking. It does well for what it offers. I really like the chorus, reverb, the phaser (some people love it, some hate it)

In terms of the sound it all boils down to the type of music and what you are trying to achieve. I just wanted something small to allow me to add chorus or reverb or other types of effects apart from wah and distortion which I get elsewhere for jamming and gigging purpose.

I have 5 different guitars and have only used this with 3 Ibanez which is a RG, JS and Universe. No problems with any of them as the input switch allows for either single coil or humbucker pickups. I used to use it with a small Marshall amp (can't remember the model) for bedroom jams. Today, I use it with a Mesa Dual Recto and Orange Tiny Terror. It works with any amp. I have used it at gigs with no problems. I mainly use the reverb with my other Volume, Whammy or Wah pedals. My main tone is from the amp which primarily is the Recto. For added gain, i use another distortion pedal (MXR DIme).

I don't remember getting noise from the unit as off yet. I do get noise at certain gain/distortion settings but other than that, it is ok.

Reliability is good. I can use this for jamming or gigging. I've even used it on a recording before but only for a specific chorus (I think) sound.

No opinion here.

I don't think you can get it first hand anymore. I have had this since 1998 and I still use it. I don't normally get rid of something unless it is spoilt. When you do music, you never know when something can give you a particular sound you want and that is why I don't sell anything I buy. Before I got this, I tried it out at the shop until I was certain. This pedal has something special in it apart from the size. The EQ is good. The Chorus and Reverb is good. The Compressor and Gate is an added bonus.

People say the distortion suck. I disagree. Back off the gain.

Pro: It is small, packed with important features or effects which actually sound decent, allows for 2 different effects on a programme, and CHEAP

con: Lacks the on/off function for each edit parameter. A switch to go trhough the programmes would have been great.

I would give this a 8. I dont know why Korg never bothered to improve this product like they do with most.

Takes some getting used to. Once yourve stored your presets on the
users banks, try using it for a live jam. You may need to do some
tweaking then.
I had the manual photocopied & laminated.

I have LOTSA guitars! Lets see...there are 5 in my display case, 2
in my hard case, one on the couch.. well all of them are modified/
hot rods with High Output Humbuckers on bridge like Duncans & Dimarzios, & all the other crap on the neck or middle. I have these
efx/stomp box in this order from guitar to amp. Dunlop Crybaby, korg411dfx, proel volume pedal, behringer eq & Boss LS2. As the Korg
has a stero out, I connected a stero jack out to my 2 inputs ot the
volume pedal & one vol pedal out to the eq & another, without the eq,
thru the Boss LS2. This way I could get a variety of sounds. I could
use the eq line, or the dry line, or I could combine both to get a very FAT sound for solos ect. If I have 2 amps for my disposal, I could use 2 lines out for some very delicous stero sounds. Bear in mind that with the Korg in the middle, you already have 2 presets & 1 bypass at your feet.
I could go on & rate the efx individually but whats the point? Maybe
zooms reverb is is tad bit better, maybe PODs Distortion is warmer,
who cares? The great BB King once said that , Its not how many notes
you play,...its how you play them. & if you apply that to efx usage,
I would like to say,..its not what efx you use,...its how you use them..
I mainly use the Distortion on one bank & Chorous/Delay on the other.
I store some Flanger & some other weired sounds on other banks, just
to f#$k around.
I play mostly metal & hard rock, & amongst others, Steve Stevens is my idol. I would like to state that I do not sound, or try to sound like any of my role models though. I like the idea of people comming to my gigs, wanting to listen to me, & see me play. It they want Vai,
they could always stay home & watch his DVD.

Had it for 10 years. Never let me down, never had a back up either.
I had used it to jam with my band, a 4 piece outfit & Im on vocals
and 2nd guitar. My 1st guitarist is using a Digitech RP2k & I drown
him everytime. Had to constantly odered to turn down my volume.
I had gigs with other bands too with similar outcome. Besides, I
could hammer all the other plastic coated multis with it to pieces
& carry on to do an encore.

I do not think that Korg wants any more association with this product, as I did not see it in its products archives. All for the better as Im the only few people using it in this region.If somehow
or rather it would die on me, I would send it to some pedal doctor, put a gun on his head & wait as he gets it repaired.

I play mostly metal, covering Iron Maiden, Metallica, Deep Purple & mostly anything that drives a crowd into a mosh. Ive been playing for 17 years & our group had been around for 12. I also own 2 stacks which I bastardised from a Yamaha and a Roland bass amps. Those two could eat the JCMs around my town for breakfast.
If it were lost, I would find a medium, put a gun on his head & force him to find it back. If it were stolen, finding the SOB would be easy as all this time, I had seen nobody else using the dfx, & shove his guitar up his a*%. Yes, I would definitly buy it again, in fact, I would like to buy another. I would like to try putting 2 side
by side & use 2 banks simultanously. Its gonna be hard coz its no longer in production, so for those of you people, having it & hating it, please contact me at my addy below.
I would like to also add that I had jammed with numerous bands with another guitaris, & this thing always cut through! Furthermore how
many muti efx are out there with the size slightly bigger than a stomp box with a stero capabilities?
I also like its simple layout. I hate those bulky all in one multi efx that has 999 efx 999 models 999 banks type $%^&. If there is one guitarist that uses 60% of its capabilites, I would be amazed. If you see a drummer with & full rack of rides, crash, power toms ect, but only knows how to hit the snare, bass pedal & hihat, what would you call him?

Everything is pretty easy until you get to saving patches. It took me a little bit to figure it out, but once I did its super easy to use. All you have to do is set the first knob anywhere from 7-11, edit your sound on the green or red preset, once done hold down preset button till it flashes, when it flashes let go and hold down again. It should do I think 3 flashes then your done.

I use a Jackson Archtop Soloist Pro with a Bill Lawrence L500XL in the bridge, an Ampeg VH-140C halfstack, Boss NS-2, Dunlop Cry Baby and this the 411fx korg.

I will rate this pedal in two ways of use-

Effects only- This is the way I use it because for the longest time I was looking for a pedal that could add effects when I wanted them while having a great bypass. This does what I want, I have the green presets for my clean channel effects and the red presets for my solos. All the effects are great( some more than others but overall great ). I use to have some line 6 stuff and I had boss's multi fx pedals and even the korg Ax1000g but this little pedal beats them for using it right in front of your amps sounds. The effects cant be edited too much but I like that its very easy to find great effects to use on the fly. Here I give it a 10.

Distortions-These are only so-so. Only 1 of them are good. If the amp your using has a weak distortion then use it, tweak the EQ and rool off some highs. They are kinda trebley, but you could make them usable. The high gain one sounds more like a mix of boss heavy metal and a metal zone which is cool but use the EQ's. The others I couldnt get a good sound out of really. Here I give it a 6

Its metal and its badass. Gig without a backup. Plus I bought it used and it works perfectly.

These are worth way more than you can get them for and for what they do there a blessing. The big multieffects pedals always gave me a hard time when bypassing, kind of like forcing you to use its distortions. This pedal dosnt do that and the effects are transparent so it dosnt mess with your existing tone. I like this so much I am going to by a backup one just incase anything happens. I think this is the best Korg pedal yet, hands down.

The manual gave me a headache, and I have a ^%$#$ PhD! There are still some aspects of saving patches that I defy anyone to explain.
When it started going bad, it would save the same patch in all of the available slots (of which there were very few anyway).

Since I was running an electric singing saw w/ a Gibson(?) humbucker through it, I did not have a standard by which to judge it, so I cut it a lot of slack as far as tone went. I did have to keep the volume down and the noise gate at maximum, and even then I could not use much of any of the distortions w/out hellacious feedback.
I used it first w/ a Roland GC405, then a Univox U-155R and a Univox U-305R. The BEST I could get out of it was a fuzzy warm generic distortion.
I went to a # of music stores, and tried out PODs, Boss, Digitech, etc....effect pedals and mostly multifxs, w/out hearing anything I liked, so I thought that the Korg wasn't too bad- then I tried a Behringer X-Vamp; it did what I wanted it to, and I bought it.

"Both stores that carried it in my area reported many returns of the Korg FX in this family due to malfunction of the foot switches." I saw a # of comments like this in the reviews, but ignored them, to my regret. The progranm switch went out on me, and when I called Korg they didn't offer me a free replacement, they wanted $17-something, + shipping, which would have made a simple switch cost about half what I had paid for the entire unit. Therefore, I soldered ina switch of my own. When I opened the case to se what the deal was w/ the switch, I saw a piece of heavy wire crudely soldered from the front of the board to one of the chips- I don't know if this was a factory
repair, or something some previous owner had put in, but it didn't look proper(?)

They were there- they had the switch, for like $25- that was IT. TOTAL.

Luckily, there aren't too many of these left out there, but IF you come across one, be cautious!! Check it out carefully!!

Uncle Tom McCahill said once in Popular Mechanics that "buying a used sports car is like buying a used snake", and I think that the same goes for buying a used multifx pedal. Not only did I buy it used, but w/out listening to it. I might as well have bought land in Florida over the Internet. I got what I deserved. I don't feel as bad as the guy who said that he rued the day he ever heard the name "Korg", but I don't feel much better. IF anybody stole my 411FX, they would be automatically punished, over and over.

Great sound
Editing is ease with some IQ

I use a ESP LTD H-201,Danelectric reverb, and Danelectric Compressor.
It has a little too much feed back on a few settings.
I sound like Joe.(If you don't know his last name, slap yourself)

I stomp the shit out of this box and it still sounds great.
I would certainly use it without a back up.

Never had to think of any repairs.

I play everything and it works with it all.
If someone stole it i would kill everyone I saw till I found it.
Stevie Ray Vaughn played mine!!!:)

That's a crap product of KORG's lineup! Really! Good Sounds? Forget about it! It has some patches to save but they are not enough! The memory space is very bad, as is the handling! You almost always need the manual to know which parameter or sound you are editing!

I wanted to use it especially for reverb-sounds and that's a thing this wacky machine cannot support! It sounds like a BAD spring-reverb! So I bought a Roland RV-5 instead! :o) There are a few nice Distortion-Sounds and the Phasers, Flangers and the rotating-speaker-effekt are nice... but not more!

Forget reliability with this pedal!! Nothing for the stage!

I've got no problem with the support! The fact that I'm working in a music-store makes the whole thing very easy! :o)

I sold it almost immediately after I bought it used! This was not a masterpiece of KORG!

Easy to get a good sound out of it.
Editing can be a bitch.
The manual helped a little.

I was using a Tele or Les Paul Deluxe to the 411fx and then to a Crate GFX65.
It wasn't noisy...when the Noise Suppresor was on.
The effects were too "over the top" for me.

Mine broke...along with a Poly 800 keyboard.

Korg sucks! Their marketing ploy is that there are new "better" products always coming out...friendly, in a way to where one is encouraged buy their wares. I don't consider Korg having good product support, let alone customer support.
It would cost more to get it repaired than buying a new different product.

I play just about every kind of music. The 411fx did help in certain music. I've been playing for 25 years. I also play bass, mandolin, drums, and keyboard(...speaking of which, I also had a Poly 800) that also broke down on me, which I also bought it new!) I know how to take care of my stuff.
I regret ever hearing the word Korg. If I had a million dollars, I wouldn't support Korg or any of their subsidiaries, i.e. Marshall and Vox. They couldn't even pay me enough money to be their endorser!
To be fair, both my Poly 800 and 411fx had decent patches. But it was just a matter of time before I realized that Korg wasn't worth putting money into. Save the cash for Yamaha or Roland products...it'll be worth it.

Once you download and read the 3-page manual, it's a doddle to program. Select which effect to modify, twist knobs to taste - NO MENUS. Without the cheat-sheet it'd STILL be simple, just play with it until it sounds good! Call me retro, but I love knobs and buttons.

I read all of the reviews here and decided to check one out.. while there's nothing in the box I'd call stellar, it DOES sound pretty decent - if you don't go by the presets! I have a 1988 Fender Heavy Metal Strat, into the 411fx, into a mixing board and then into my DAW.. no amp. Even the distortions, if you fiddle with the tone controls a while, sound fine - many of the distortion settings are top-end-heavy and can sound too brittle without EQing. If you're having noise problems, make sure the hi/low input gain switch is set right - set it wrong, and the noise gate doesn't function properly. You're not going to get EXTREME modulation out of this unit, but the echoes, reverbs, and phaser/flanger all are appropriate for real-world use. I personally like the tone out of this thing, it doesn't kill the sound of the guitar like my Digitech RP300 does. My worst complaint would be that the flanger isn't as obvious as I'd like, but it's servicable.

Once again - don't judge this by the presets! Sit down and twist knobs, you'll be well rewarded for your effort.

Had it two weeks, I don't gig (bedroom musician with my own DAW-based project studio), but I've stomped all over it and it just laughs at me. Nice metal case, and pretty well-built. I wouldn't use it to beat a groupie to death with, but it's fine for what it was made for (lol).

As others have said, getting info out of Korg about this unit is a waste of time. Plenty of Web resources, which is how I found the manual.

I play trance/rock, blues, and what I think of as darkambient/guitar (think psychedelia with old-school metal mixed in) and have been playing guitar off and on for 25+ years (yeah I'm an old man metalhead, deal with it hee hee!). I run this unit in parallel with my RP300 and it sits in the mix quite well - good straight-ahead distorted guitar tones, I can't complain. I *love* how easy it is to use, I can just sit and fiddle - unlike my RP300 where I always need the bloody manual to understand what's going on! If it were stolen I'd beat the thief to death with the box, clean it off, and take it back home! I'd certainly buy another one if it breaks/gets lost, it has a unique character that fits well with my other gear. I can't think of anything I wish it had, it's perfect in it's simplicity.

Note: DON'T USE IT WITH BATTERIES, GET AN ADAPTER. It sounds *very* different on batteries, you wouldn't think it was the same unit!

Pretty easy once you play with it for a while and don't make any sudden moves. I like the interface better than most I've tried.

I was using this pedal with an old '70's Peavey Classic which didn't sound too great to begin with. I liked it but got tired really fast. I just recently pulled it out again after about a year and plugged into my Peavey Delta Blues 2-10". What a difference. I've never been a big Peavey fan but the Classic line is pretty nice.
I was amazed at the full rich sound I got. A lot of people seemed to have a problem with tone on the distortions. That's why I put this pedal away in the first place. The cure for this is to not be afraid to back off on the gain. Almost every distortion you can do this without losing the power and get rid of that shrill feedback.

You also need to play with the countour and EQs. That's the hardest part but you can even make the fuzz (# 10) sound decent with the right EQ.

A lot of people didn't like the effects but I found them pretty rich and prominent. I never liked overkill on pedals anyway so the settings were pretty good to me. My first guitar was an Electra with built in effect modules and these effects reminded me a lot of that. Very simple and definitely adequate for live shows. The delays were set up nicely with plenty of different times and the echoes are very good and can be mixed heavily without becoming overbearing. You can even use them in place of the reverbs which are ok.

I kind of like the clean compressed preamp settings, you can get a lot of different tones, good rythm and with the gain up, it's pretty snappy and will overdrive just right. Like I said before, the distortions can be really great if you just mess with the gain and EQ's. It seems you might run into feedback problems with a crappy solid state amp, (Crate, Peavey etc.), I always found pedals like this are best suited for a more simple tube amp like the Peavey Delta where you don't have a gain knob on the clean channel. Also works great on a Marshall Bluesbreaker. The less knobs the better. Any amp I use with a multi-effect, you should be able to center all your knobs, it just seems simpler. I realize this doesn't have a lot of parameters to tweak, but most of the sounds are pretty good and I'm sick of Digitech and Zoom parameter searching, and pushing the wrong buttons. I think this is a very much underated pedal. It does a ton of shit and most of it well. I like the auto wah pretty much. It's volume sensitive and doesn't drop out on you. It's also very hard to even find an auto wah on a multi-effect unit. Everyone should have this pedal just as a backup if nothing else and you can pick one up on line for under $40.00 usually. That's less than a crappy Boss Chorus pedal.

Seems pretty tough. No problems.

I play most types of rock and you can get whatever you want if you work at it. Compared to Zoom crap, it sounds more civilized and doesn't color your tone. I've been playing over 20 years and I always wanted a pedal that could do all those cool things in the size of a single effect. I also use a Yamaha DG Stomp which I prefer over this, but if you're just going to practice and want something easy and good sounding, this is great. I was going to sell this pedal but after taking it out again for a test run, I will keep it, you won't find a better, more useful pedal for the price.

I got this because I ultimately found out how much the AX-1g sucks...
(I don't care if the Ax can let you use a foot-rocker/treadal to DJ-scratch a 1-sec sample of your guitar playing, the thing is a plastic piece of cancer, and it has a screen...it is for assholes...).

I bought this from a guy that ultimately traded me my ax-1 for a mint-condition casio sk-1 (...a fucking relic).

...hmm...in the world of multi effects there are two families: those that have SCREENS (to graphically navigate sub-menus), and those that do not (...having an LED matrix and/or a printed matrix to consult while looking at the manual)....
this fabulous box has NOTHING of the sort. just four knobs, which basically work heirarchically from left to right, and there is a small legend of the knob heirarchy printed right on the metal case....

thus...to me, it's frighteninly simple, because I step back and listen to the sound as I move thru the knobs...this unit may be a bit obtuse to those who defer their intelligence of sound to the skills of literacy (reading a sub-menu screen...ASSHOLES...).

many modern multi's out there today sport lotsa foot-buttons, allowing you to switch up and down banks with your feet, and or to independently engage the components (drive, mod, ambience...) of a given patch. this bastard-box works more the ZOOM 505 things, where you simply have a multi-effected sound ; setting the characteristics of each stage in a simple Drive-->Eq-->Mod-->Ambience-->level/gate chain system...then all of this is available at the push of a button...

the pedal has two switches (big metal pushbuttons...YAY), one for ON/Bypass (yellow light), the other two switch between the RED/GREEN Patch of the Bank that you are in (lights up green or red...yay...).
thus, while you can't move up and down banks like you can on a Zoom or any other modern multi, you also don't have to worry about that stupid push-both-the-up-and-down-buttons-at-once-to-engage SHIT...
this is a MAN's pedal : bypassing and bank switching get their OWN GODDAMN DEDICATED METAL SWITCHES....dammit I DON'T CARE IF IT REDUCES YOU TO PAIRED BANKS....my songs only have THREE PARTS ANY WAY....dammit...stop whining before I hit you again...
...so thus, this thing is really easy, because, with the foot-friendly metal pushbuttons, you don't have to so much look down at what you're doing and distract yourself (...not that it matters to me...).

the box has a mono guitar in, with a switch for hi- or lo-gain input...nice way to accomodate your shitty pickups...
the single output jack is actually TRS stereo, so get a splitter cable...quickly, before it's too late and you fail to experience the fact that this bastard can go stereo...).

use wall wart, or batteries (4X AA...they don't last...so use the wall wart)...

now, in regards to how to program this little hell box.
the first three of its four knobs are "selector knobs," with varying amounts of possible positions...these knobs are what navigate you around your patch. the last (rigth-most) knob is the only smooth knob on the bunch, usually set to edit a single important parameter of given effect selection...

the first knob selects one of 11 banks (11-position knob)...only 7-11 are user-writable, so you should only go to banks 1-6 (the factory set sounds) if you have no interest in making your own sound and/or just want to sound like Steve Vai (ASSHOLE) at the push of a button...

the second knob (6-position, labled "D-T-C-M-A-L") navigates which parameter of a patch you are editing; respectively, this knob navigates you to setting Drive, Tone (lo/hi), Contour (mid boost/cut), modulation, Ambience (reverb delay), and Level/NR (output level and post-fx gate). A parameter will be adjusted with the last two knobs, in a manner depending on what you're adjusting. as such..

the third knob (11-position) allows you to select a model for a given parameter (dtcmal) of the patch, choosing OFF/0, or 1-10.

the stipula

DRIVES- pick 1 of 10 drives,
2 compressions (only one seems to make a difference, smooth knob controls sensitivity)),
3 overdrives (surprisingly warm), 4 distortions (incl. fuzzies), 1 absolute-shit-feedback-monster-line-noise-heavy-metal-gain-thing (#6?)....where smooth knob controls gain on all the "boosters"...
as said below, most of these distortions are pretty weak and/or noisy, so it will be easy to sound like steve vai...but if you really work at building a sound, the drives can really work WITH you, not "do the work for you" (...steve vai...ASSHOLE...).

TONE - use the 10-position knob to set an estimation of lo-end, and set the hi-end with the smooth knob...simple....and it's actually a fairly powerful EQ-er..

CONTOUR - a variable mid control...anyone who's ever used a Metal Zone should have some idea...use the clicky knob to set the (approximate) position of the mid-band, and use the smooth knob to cut or boost (flat at noon...nice)....

...it is worth noting that, in light of this relatively advance capacity for custom tonality EQ-ing, this pedal hardly has "great tone"...it is a digital effect, and it's hardly true bypass: if you are anal about tone coloration, what the shit are you doing with a Korg product? it is nice, however, to have the capactity to roll of the high-end digital shit-noise that more extreme settings of this pedal can produce...

MODULATION...pick a mod...any mod...1-10...almost all modulations, the smooth knob controls the speed of the mod.
3 chorus (one does nothing, one sounds slightly milky, one sounds like a leaky vibrato pedal but it's the stereo)
2 phasers (one is "weak" , the other "whistles" too much),
one flanger (...WOW...an amazingly steep SCREEEEEEEEEEE when used with the "death-gain"...)
one trem/panner (panner if in stereo...)
and two more (...I honestly can't tell if one or both are vibrato or a rotary emulation...that is how weak these two mods are)
all these above LFO mods have a smooth/sine mod-shape (except that the trem-panner has a uniquely trapezoidal shape), and all LFO mods have the same speed range, which covers the ranges of "nice-n-slow" range to "fast-enough-for-cool-people-but-not-fast-enough-for-people-who-think-a-flanger/phaser-can-be-made-into-a-ring-mod-Korn-ASSSHOLE" range...)
then there remain two more in the MOD department...

and Envelope Filter (auto-wah,...where settings below noon set sensitivity to sweep down, and those above noon sweep up...sure it's no mu-tron, but it's damn flexible for ONE KNOB programming...), ...lastly, a
a pitch shifter (non-intelligent, where pitched sound is fixed at a mix-in slighly weaker than the dry signal...smooth knob sets the interval...just it to octave up or octave down and be happy that you sometimes hear octave resonance and digital chirping...this pitcher sounds just as "fakey" as a whammy, but with disadvantagesous mixing...it would've been more fun it they just hard-wired it to 100%wet).

AMBIENCE -
1-7 are echo, set at fixed rates (from slapback to about half a second), where the smooth knob gives you blend in (...not feedback...thus these echos will get 2 to 3 audible repeats, tops...and that just sucks...but then again, so does STEVE VAI...).
#8 is a ping-pong (...fixed at a rather fast, and still not too many repeats, but hey, it's included...).
9 and 10 are reverbs, where smooth knob mixes in the wet (...the first verb is just a terrible "roomy" tone, but the second is the sickest most clangly fluttery "hall" emulation I've ever heard, which will EASILY generate feedback and hum...but this wierd "too-hot" verb can actually be harnessed to make some of the most interesting squeals I've ever heard)

LEVEL/NR...use the clickly knob to set the cutoff sensitivity of a post-FX gate (to stop your stupid VAI-drive from hissing away while your "sccreeeee" flanger swooshes about

big fat metal body...metal switches, metal screws...metal jack housings...small, sturdy knobs...
lots of micro components and chips, everything soldered directly to the board (jacks and switches)...plastic battery case...

this could just as well be almost a decade old...
..but I've been banging it around my room and stomping on it with combat boots while stumbling around with a microphone (...I sing remember?) for some time now...

...you be the judge...

N/a....on this product...

korg rocks though in general..
kudos to them for making smart grooveboxes and synths...
poo-ey on them for trying to make something as lame as the pandora
(...just a handheld DTCMAL unit that can't be a stompbox...).

I play hateful music...
no no, not in the way that you think. we don't play ibanez guitars, use metal zone pedals, or have long hair or tattoos of women, nor do we write songs about pain,relationships, and or our massive drug habit...
so far, we've been using drum machines and live drums and FM-radio guitars to convince people that we're actually smart, and as such, they should want to be our friends....but our songs are also about how people are stupid, and why nobody should be our friends....so thus people think I'm a "punk rock visionary"...

I've been playing longer than you have...but I just recently started running my poop-microphone through this box (indestructable, small, and very sharp at the corners...all around good for fighting with...)

I compared this to other products, but the other products suffered from one or more of the following severe deficiencies:
having a screen
being made of plastic
being too big to fit in my jacket pocket
breaking under the strain of my rigorous gesturing...

I wish I had another...I want to run one "please stop" sound right into another...

this product doesn't really help me make music...but it certainly helps me make my music ...INTERESTING...

I purchaced this unit brand new at Guitar Center. And with out a doubt, this is the most confusing and dificult to use effects device ever made and the manual that comes with it is nearly useless. I have used many effects devices during my time and I speak from personal experience.

Out of the many sounds this box can make, few are any good at all.
Out of a total of 11 banks, 6 are PERMANENTLY preset with some really spaced out and strange settings leaving you with only 5 useable banks. Each effect that it produces is "Just o.k." with some being downright awful. Of the 5 Modes, only the Modulation and Ambiance modes are passable. Everything else is really sub-standard.

I've heard that these are VERY unreliable, but this thing is so unuseable that I NEVER use it so reliability really does'nt matter on this unit. Also,if your batteries are even slightly low, the unit will not operate correctly. You must get an adapter.

Never dealt with them and since I dont like thier product, I probably never will.

I was very excited when I went to buy this unit and was expecting to have a lot of fun with it. But since day one, this thing has dissapointed me. I do'nt like this unit and I would not reccomend it to anyone for any application. It's really just a toy that can only make a few "neat" sounds. I really dont feel that I got what I paid for. This is a perfect example of putting too many things in too small a package, with too few controls and ending up with a near useless piece of equipment.

Ultra-easy, I bought this at a local pawn shop for 35$, so of course it didn't have the box or the manual or anything. But after sitting and playing with it for about 5 minutes I had it all figured out, except for how to save, All I can manage to do is make the program light blink to no result. Either my unit is broken or there's some different method to save, somebody please add a little footnote to their reveiw helping me out. Thanks...

All the stereo sounds on this box are amazing. They're deep and warm, bringing to mind late 60's acid blues. Beautiful crunchy blues tones with subtle echo could keep me occupied for hours. The tremelo function paired with overdrive sounds just like Jeff Beck's Flashing Lights. Personally I would never use this unit for anything other than some drive settings, tremelo and delay/reverb. All those are amazing in tonality, being individually equalized and contoured. Sadly the modulation effects (except for the tremelo) are adequate at best. Being a blues player I think the chorus settings lack a world of depth, they're too mechanical and tinny sounding. And as for the stupid phase and flange effects, they make me want to cry. They sound like something off a casio keyboard, there's truly nothing musical about them. Maybe you'd like them if you're one of those "sound effects" players who have banks of crap for every show, but if you actually care about your playing as a musician avoid those presets.

I haven't really owned it long enough to know, the metal constructio is reassuring however.

It's horrible, I don't have the manual, so I figured maybe I could see it online on the company website, Korg won't even admit they made the 411. So PLEASE HELP!!! someone add a footnote or something telling me how to save!

Running it into a GK stack (runs torroids, not tubes) with wah always on (for that vintage 60's EQ sound) I get sweet tones using this pedal. Even though I'm using a bottom of the line Washburn with worn strings right now, It may as well be a 70's Ibanez blues guitar. If the chorus was deeper this pedal would honestly be the only thing I needed (asides from wah of course, auto wah is what's causing society's decline, I refuse to give in to the machine when it comes to wah)

this thing is totally rock on man, i would recomend it to anyone

it is sweet with marshels, all the effects rule the planet

hell yeah

never dealt with them

i like lots of music like anything that is in the minor mode im down with, one thing i like about this pedal is its abliltity to transform itself from a pretty echoeing sound to hard rock with suych smoothness i would reckomnend this peice to everyone becasue it is so down to earch

If I haven't used it in a while, the functions come back to me pretty quick , but it can be a bit of a puzzle at first. With a unit like this (when you've got so much stuffed into a small package) you've got to know what all the flashes mean, etc.

My rating is based on the way I use this pedal, not on every single feature available (though I will comment on a few features I don't use).

I use this pedal ONLY for chorus and phase, and for this alone, this pedal is superb. From this perspective, it's nice to not only have a chorus/phase multi-pedal, but to also have an EQ section, noise reduction, etc. very cool. I use it with a custom Strat into a variety of amps, but primarily a Line6 Flextone or an off-name 120 watt tube head.

HOWEVER, (this is the part of the pedal I DON'T use) I would have to agree with most of the reviews here that state that the overdrives and distortions in this box are pretty weak/lacking/NOISY. I would only use them if every other source for these kinds of sounds all broke at once and I'm sitting at a gig where I NEED distortion... it's definitely tweakable, though, so decent sounds are there, just hiding.

One other comment... I only use this pedal with an adapter, because it has a different tonal character when using batteries (and who wants to go through a bunch of AA's, four to be exact? I always thought it was weird that this pedal uses those instead of 9-volts). It is more stable/better sounding with an adapter.

well, I had a shop check it out, because it pops when you switch it on/off, but not always with the same intensity. It's as if some sort of capacitor were sitting in there charging up randomly, ready to discharge when you turn it on or off. But, the shop said it's alright and the pedal's working as it should...kinf of a bummer. But it's pretty solid, well constructed and has a nice heavy feel.

only dealt with them second-hand when the shop I sent it to tried to fix it. When they asked if I wanted this pedal or a newer one back, I went with the newer one (AX1G), but ended up buying this pedal again (the 411fx). I thought it was pretty cool for Korg to send me a brand new multi-FX pedal that cost more than the one that broke.

At the time I purchased this pedal, I was specifically in the market for a multi-FX modulation pedal (has both chorus and phase/flange). I looked long and hard at the TC Electronics chorus pedal, but it simply cost way too much, and BOSS didn't have anything exaclty up my alley. I am very happy with this pedal (for how I use it) and would buy another if it were lost/stolen, but I don't think they're even available anymore. It's also nice to know that if I was even in a real bind and needed to tweak out some distortion/OD effects, it's available.

This pedal has good and bad qualities. One of the things I like about this pedal is that it is easy to get a Satriani sound out of it. On the distortion stage of it, hook it up to distortion 5 and mess around with the equalizer to get that bluesy, shred sound. Then, give it an echo of any kind that you are happy with, but set a little more than half way. The bad thing about it is the hi/lo switch. On the low, it causes a lot of feedback that isn't too pleasant. On the high, i tcauses more feedback, but you can hear your sound better. Don't use guitars with humbuckers. They still hum and you can't hear what you are doing. The manual is very informative. It's a trusty manual for three different languages. I support the foreigners in our country. What if you were in Germany and had a pedal you didn't know how to use and they had no English translations? You wouldn't get anywhere with that. This was my first pedal I got for Christmas when I was 14. It opened many doors to my imagination in music creation. I am 17 now and plan on purchasing my 7th pedal. I didn't know how to work with this pedal when I first got it, so I read the instructions. I recommend this pedal to anyone looking for some good blues sounds.

I can depend on this pedal only for blues gigs. Other than that, if I ran out of my other resources, I would not recommend this as a backup.

I've never had a problem with this. It's sturdy and has a good metal chassis.

I play a lot of styles. Blues are the root of my solos and a lot of what I do.

Yes! It may seem difficult to learn how to program this baby but hang in there. The "learning experience" will turn out some awesome sounds from this little box.

The manual is or isn't very helpfull. Depends on how much you understand and your past experiences with "programable" boxes. I got fed up with it within an hour or so. Kept going back to it and expermenting. Much later, I can tune in just about anything I want.

I play "Strats," "Kramers," "Washburn," "Westbury," and "Acoustic" guitars through this pedal. Single pickups running around 6-7.5ohms sound good. So do my "Humbuckers!"

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I am pretty satisfied with nearly all settings after I tweek each one in to my liking.

NOISE! After making your last adjustment, turn the third knob from left, all the way to "TEN" then back to the "OFF" position, then to the "TEN" again! Your "noise" should drop completley out! If you are using a Strat or single coils, use the 2 or 5 position (hum canciling).

What kind of amp do I use? Any choice of twelve! I have seven "Tubers" and five "Trannys!" I always run two amps in stereo or split them and go single by using a homemade A/B or both switchbox.

411 FX...Always to my 65 Q-Tube amp using a clean, very light chorus, with a touch of delay. I also play my "Washburn" Spirit, solid body, acouistic, through this setting which is the most lush, beautifull sound you will ever hear. Try using this pedal in "TRUE STEREO!" That means two amps. The rotarys, flangers, delays, and echos can make you melt!

Once again...Q Tube 65 for my clean only side and my 1960 "Omega" tube amp set up with the Zoom 2100 for other effects when needed. I have been using this setup for the last three years and the sound is just amazing.

Mine takes a "crash" when using batteries. Go to Radio Shack with a $20 bill and get the METAL HI rechargable AA batteries. Comes with the charger. You can play yer ass off for two or three days with these in before it takes a crap. Mine's not noisey on batteries. Not as much electrical noise as when using adapter.

I sometimes find that using the Adapter (9 volt) sets you up for interference from motors, some light fixtures, and TV or monitor noise so then I will use the batteries and have no problems.

It has been reliable for the three years or so that I have owned it.

Don't usually bother with repairs or replacements. If I spend my money on someones product and I am not happy or it does not work properly, why should I expect the replacement to work?

Pay damn near every style for 35 years.
I can live with this product.
EXPERIMENT with this pedal! It is worth the bucks you paid for it after you figure it out.

Thanks for reading or cussing my review!

A Great pedal if you are starting out.. Easy to program, Manuel in several different languages so it's easy to read, plus, it includes a parameter table so you know what dials create which effects.

Currently using a Squier Strat and Epiphone Les PAul with a Crate amp. I get some feedback or fuzz with the distortion through the Strat but every other effect is fine and the Les Paul is very quiet when you click on the distortion. The sounds of musicians are pretty accurate. You can adjust the depth of the effects so you'll eventually get the right sound you want. Personally, I go for the sounds of Deftones, Machinehead, Biohazard, etc.

Vey dependable. Personally, I would gig w/o a backup (Considering I have not had a first gig yet but you get my drift)

Never had to molest the folks at Korg

For the style of music I play, it is a good pedal because I can get some pretty heavy distortion out of it. However, the one effects I'm not too crazy about is the Auto Wah. After all, nothing beats the sound of an authentic wah-wah pedal (which I also have) This is one peadl that if it were lost or stolen, I would get another. One thing I wish it had was a record/playback feature but seeing as it's not a floor processor, that is not going to happen anytime soon.

If you can read English you can use it...
for the many parameters in such a small space -
I'll give it at leat a 9.

Again, this box has so many features yet they are all cramped into this little tuny space -so I didn't expect a "lexicon" sound but I was surprized that the sound was realy cool and in real stereo.

As Far as "Noise" - there is a noise cut on the last parameter, use it and you will have no Noise.
also, check your input signal b4 you blame this box.

so far so good on my unit .
but I don't abuse my tools.
It does eat batteries qyickly.

never tried them.

Here is the secret:
many musicians gave it a 10 and some gave it 4 ???
How can that be ? you ask.
well,
I decided to check it out for the "flaws" that were written here and
I came up empty handed.
My unit is 100% great.
maby the bad units are just broken ?

I love the Comp/Dist, modulation and the delays/reverb, the EQ and the Noise surpressor and I also used it on old analog keyboard that have no sound.

The most importent thig is this:

USE IT IN STEREO !
Wow, what a difference when you use the stereo out.
It is a real Stereo and you'll get the L-R ping-Pong effect.
when I switched back to mono, at least 50% of the sound was gone...

Now, you can get everything in one box to be perfect,
but if you want all in one -this box will do it for real cheap !

So, I'll give it a 10 for the amount of greatness and the Real Stereo
sound puring out of this little box...

This pedal very easy to use (BUT SO WHAT ! It should be easy to use!)once you get through the "one photo copied instruction page" I was expecting a little bit more for $120.00. but it doesn't take long to do quick changes after decyphering the instructions.

I have had this pedal for over 2 years and use it with a strat and a Fender hotrod deville 2x12 and I would have to say the overall sound is NOT THAT GOOD. There is a lot of noise on the overdrive functions and you can always hear the noise gate coming in and out. The adjustments for the individual sounds are very limited, such as vibrato depth, the auto wah is a useless as well as several of the other of the sounds it generates. The chorus sounds OK and the reverbs are pretty good. The overdrives suck. The vibro setting from the factory sounds pretty good. Overall I was disapointed with this thing.

I had a little bit of a problem finding a wall wart for this sucker and finally found one on an ATT answering machine that was headed for the trash. Batteries do not last but 2 or 3 hours per set if you are playing alot. After a year the bypass foot switch began to stop activating the bypass circuitry and it seems to have a mind of its own, somtimes it works, sometimes it don't. Also after leaving the pedal in effects mode for a while and then switching to the bypass produces a very unpleasant and rather loud POP!!!! not what you want to have at a gig.

I have looked for Korg info on the net and found little, and the local music stores are no help. I think Korg owners are on there own!!!and SOL.....

Most people who buy a new pedal for $120.00 will tell you only the best things about the toy they just got, but not me!!!!I bought this thing just to have fun with,and I have not had as much fun with it as I hoped. I have been playing for 25 years,I mainly bought this for the chorus, but find that I only use the room reverb now and wish I had went for the TC Electronics chorus instead. Another thing that stinks about this pedal is that there are two sets of factory presets, 6 on each level, that cannot be reprogramed, and all but 3 of the 12 suck. If you make the mistake of stomping the right foot switch to the dirty side you get assaulted by some pretty wicked metal drive with massive amounts of noise, this is the thing I dislike most about this box. So...FORGET ABOUT THIS P.O.S. and save up for a high quality device that sounds good. Mine is going on E-Bay ASAP. Don't bother

Very very Easy.......

I don't know english... -_-;;;

distortion ..... good...but noise!
overdrive ... not bad
fuzz ... not bad
chorus .... wow! good...but very thin.. not depth nob ...
echo .... hmmm... normal...
delay .... hmmm... good...
autoway ... suck...
flanger .... normal..
phaser ... good...


totally....Good pedal...

hmmm...

I don't know..

I play... alternative rock..Grunge...Brit pop...etc
this effctor is very useful...

For some reason I found editing very easy on this thing. I've learned how to do it fast and I have everything memorized. But then again I've had it for a year and a half. It beat the crap out of anything by Zoom. I had a zoom for about 2 days.

My Setup > Very, very modified Fender Strat 40th Anniversary with Hot Rails > Vox wah > ToneWorks Real Tube Distortion pedal > Korg 411fx > Alesis Midiverb > Marshall JCM 900 50 watt head.
Before the addition of the marshall I was playing through Solid state heads and combos and so the 411fx was very useful for eq, distortion with compression, etc. I think the flanger is pretty good like someone else here said and I also thought the tremelo was pretty killer if you don't mind it very bright. I also use an Alesis ADAT XT20 for recording and found that when I was too dang lazy to set up my whole rig that the Korg 411fx made a great recording processor. I found that it was quiet enough to record with the patches could be edited quickly for another take and the it was great for just quick little sweetening notes with tremelo or a little delay or what not. Bad effects . . . the chorus sucks and I don't even like chorus but I know you can do better than that. and the reverbs are terrible ? alot of hiss and noise.

It was reliable for me after I bought it and one of the switches broke and I had to send it off for a replacement switch that took 8 weeks to put it. I think they had to take the slow boat to china to get the switch. It's been reliable ever since.

As I just said, repairs take fooooorever!

I've been playing 5 years and I think that if you are just starting out and want to play with alot of effects for not much money or you have a really crappy amp then this thing may really make you happy. I have to say one more time please get this instead of a Zoom 505 . . . please . . .

Edititing is easy, but you have to tweak it just right. The manual need not have so many languages.

I use a '98 Gibson Les Paul Standard through a Marshall Valvestate half stack. The red patch sounds great on the clean channel of the amp. It is awefully noisy, though. The chorus and flanger work well, but the echo is just not right. The distortion is psycho!

I could not depend on this thing to work right, and I would definitely carry a backup.

ok this thing is VERY noisy on almost all the patches, editing sucks,manual reads like ancient sanscrit. Looks real nice and shiny like it would last forever but....

Ok here's where this thing shines... the flanger in this thing was so damn good that I still think about buying it again every once in awhile. Unfortunately thats the only good thing about it. I used it ONLY at my house to practice with since my good stuff is all at my drummers house. I was using a marshall jcm800 50 watt headthrough the low gain jack. It had a pretty neat death metal distortion on one of the presets, but when you werent playing it was super noisy. MOST of the effects on this thing were horrible, but MAN!!!! that flanger was sick!!! I still cant find another flanger that I liked as much as that one. Its hard to describe really, instead of the normal swoosh it was like a "scccccrrrrreeeeeeeeoooooooooooo" type deal. Chorus was good. Just not as good as that damn flanger! 10 for the flanger. 1 for the rest of the effect. I guess that equals out to a 5?

heeeeeellllllll no!! I went through seriously....3 of these things in 5 months. And I wasnt the only one. The store that I shop at had gotten a few other returns on the same unit. It would just flash the right led and stop working all together. quite a shame actually. I'm usually pretty loyal to things that I like (ie the flanger in this piece of junk) but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Screw the company. The store just kept replacing em till I gave up and traded for store credit.

poop.

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<D?`|n , ?UYI marshall |P fender amp , YH?I fender , ibanez , jackson , washburn |P yamaha guitar ?O test , cheap guitar Yi?a|??O?\ noise , |h?O pickup ?t ! distortion |????W?o?C , ?S|? fuzz , ?#'L modulation An'N?OoY?o?? , echo |P reverb ?@?e?? ! ?#'L HKD $800 'N|?|u studio ???? sound , ?a<YEY?? !

?@-O 411fx ?#?????? , ?#'LYX show 'N connect ?I-O|? noise gate o?J???u !

In Hong Kong --- Tom Lee Music Co., Ltd.

EA style ?U?# play 'L , but good match 'N<Y preset bank o?J 3/4/5 , user (preset) bank o?J 7/9 patchs , ?U play oY? about 3 years guitar , all gear ?U?#|? , cos i working at a music store , hahaa... , if it were stolen or lost , i will buy AX1000G , cos this is new product , ->'a-n?i 10/1999 Yy|??f , ?U compare 'L 411fx |P zoom 505 , 505 YiYH?~??(c)U?#?i !

The presets are good and powerful. It's easy to edit the patches but only once you get the idea how its done. Took me a while before I could figure out the whole process. The manual helpful but only slightly. I figure out how to use it by trial and error.

I've a Pacifica 112M and I have a Charvel 20Watt amp. I seldom use my amplifier, I have my setup runs thru via the preamp of my 4 track to my monitor. The unit can be quite noisy but the noise gate could keep the noise down to the minimal. I like the distortions especially. They are the reason for getting the unit. I don't use much of the others except the modulation effects. Of course my BOSS Chorus CE-2 sounds better but then for the convenience of the effects in one box, I seldom use my CE-2. The sound from this box is professional. More towards the digital side but its not lacking in warmth like most digital sounding pedals are. I'm quite happy with this unit sounds. I give it a very high 9

Limited plastic. Mainly metal casing ! Won't die on me I believe.

N/A

Good all effects in one. I'm thinking twice about using my Sansamp GT2 and my classic BOSS CE-2. Not because the Korg 411fx sounds better but because it's convenient and sounds good at the same time.... anyway I may not hard to please ... so for me its a 9

At first it seems sorta hard to figure out presets. This may be because I didn't have owner manual at first. Once I got one it made a world of difference. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it.I am still experimenting with it after 4 months or so.

At first I used this effect with my current pedal chain. All Boss pedals with bcb-6 carry case. Seemed to had a big difference in tone with no effects patched in. I use a Gibson Les Paul and a Marshall JCM 900 half stack. All sounds that I have heard are excellent. Delay's ,echos.chourus flange are top rate.

Like I said I've had it for 4 months with no problems. I power it with my Boss pedalboard + - groung adapter. Seems to be reliable. Built like a tank.

Have called once to get owner's manual. Arrived in 2 days!!

I play variety rock n roll. At first I used it in my pedal chain. Then I went out and bought a Boss acoustic simulator. What a mistake.I had the idea of using the 411fx with an acoustical guitar only. My acoustis has a Dean Markley Pro Mag. What a sound. All effects and EQ and etc. for acoustical only. Try it sometime.Went back to putting in my pedal chain. By[ass on electric stuff and kick in for acoustical numbers.

It is easy to get phat sounds out of this thing. Just play with the dials. Editing patches is a bit more of a task, but not impossible. You would have to read the manual for that. Speaking of the manual, it is pretty weak. It helps but it could help a lot more. Only problem is there's so much to change that you're forever changing things and not playing things.

I play an Epiphone Sheraton II into a Crate GX30-M. The Korg is generally very quiet, and it has a dial for noise reduction too. Some of the effects are weak, but most of them sound great. For example, the pitch shift sounds awful to me but the phaser is great. My favorite artist is Jimi Hendrix and I have been able to get a good "Angel" setting and come somewhat close to other settings. I think the wide range of sound available should allow most folks to imitate their favorites. I like the range of distortions a lot, from low gain stuff to pure fuzz and noise. Overall, great sound.

This thing is pretty sturdy. I have not had a problem with reliability.

No problems with my Korg yet.

I play the blues and rock. This effects pedal is great for me as a beginner with effects. I can achieve many sounds with this. I have been playing for a few years and the 411fx is perfect for me because I just jam with my friends. The hard part is finding the exact sound you want from all the possibilities- from there it's great. I compared this to a used ZOOM 505 for $99 and the Korg sounded much better and quieter even though it doesn't have as many effects. Plus the ZOOM is plastic. Go for the Korg, even at a slightly higher price. This pedal helps me enjoy playing and I recommend it for anyone getting into effects. Besides, it's a great price-even new!

This is an update of a review I did of this like 50 years ago, when it was my first effect. Now that I'm older and wiser, I thought I'd repost a review.
This is pretty easy to use. I tend to prefer the ease of use that multiple single effect boxes provide (ie want some chorus on, hit the button, want it off, hit it again), but then again with a multi unit you can have distortion and phaser and delay come on all at once with a pre-programmed patch.

The rating of 7 is misleading. Some of the sounds are great, some suck, and some are good when combined with other effect pedals. The clean with reverb sound is great. Echo sounds good but is not that editable. Chorus is good but a little thin (no depth control on modulation effects, only speed). Doubling chorus is good. Flange sucks ass, and is only useful when combined with distortion. The phaser is good, especially when combined with a Cool Cat chorus. Then there's the phaser with unique peaks. Weird but cool. Let's see, vibrato is okay. Tremolo is good. Auto rotary is pretty cool. Auto wah is good with distortion. Pitch shift is good on the setting that I use it, which is with the pitch shifted up like a 6th from the original note. Good for chimey, ethereal sounding chords.
What else we got. The compression is good. My fellow band mates don't use compression, and consequently their strumming is much harder than me and they make a guitar go out of tune really fast. Overdrive is good, but can be a little harsh and trebbly. Same goes for distortion. Distortion is best used for soloing. The fuzz is really nice though, smooth and growly. Good for rhythm and soloing. The three way eq and noise reduction are also good.
I guess I better explain my setup. I play a Fender Telecaster (Mexican-made) into a Snarling Dogs Super Bawl Whine-O Wah, a Sustain-Punch modified Big Muff (soon to be sold so I can buy a Tech 21 Comptortion), the 411fx, a Danelectro Cool Cat chorus (they're like bellybuttons--everybody has one), a Korg Toneworks 301dl dynamic echo, into a Peavey Bandit 112s. I use the amp's distortion quite a bit because it kicks ass, and I have the chorus and the echo in the fx loop.
I'd complain about the fact that you can't combine the modulation effects with reverb, but I use the reverb on my amp anyway. Despite it's drawbacks, this is a great pedal, and still the most important box in my effect arsenal (if you will excuse the militarization).

Well, it seems to be doing great except on bank 11, periodically the sound drops out for brief moments. It was doing that a while back, but it's not doing it now. Could have something to do with the fact that I've dropped it down the stairs and onto cement.

No idea, but if the bank 11 problem comes back, I have to figure out how to get a hold of these guys (no help from their web page) because I depend on this pedal for all my songs.

Overall, I love this pedal and it's still the most important effect pedal I own. There's never a time when I'm not using it. Not all of the effects are great, but I like it much better than Digitech multi-effect pedals and crappy DOD pedals and even the new Toneworks AX1-G, because this thing makes those pedals sound like cheap toys. This one sounds REAL. I think they're being discontinued, so if you think you need something like this, better get one fast.

Sometime back in the mid '90, someone at Korg probably had the great idea that there was a huge market for a line of good-sounding programmable effects units disguised as simple stomp boxes. However, despite meeting these two critera, and garnering favorable reviews in Guitar Player and Guitar Shop, the pedals tanked, and have since been discontinued. As with all the other pedals in the ToneWorks line (104 Hyper Distortion, 105 Classic Overdrive, and 301 Dynamic Delay), "ease of use" is a thorny issue, as their hybrid nature makes them neither fish nor fowl in the world of guitar effects. Is it as easy to use as a Tube Screamer? No. Is it easier than a DigiTech rack FX unit? Oh, yeah. Did I have trouble using it right off the bat or editing patches? No, it was all pretty logical, despite the abhorrently sketchy nature of Korg's instruction sheet/table cloth.
The main thing to remember with this line is that after recalling a patch, the knobs will probably not reflect the values of the effects. Once you get familiar with what each knob does, as well as the range of sound the knob controls, the fact the knobs don't line up won't be a problem. And since this unit doesn't have a mini-toggle switch to assign dual parameters to each knob, it's far less of a problem in the 411fx than in the 104ds Hyper Distortion or 301dl Dynamic Delay units.
As a final note, my 411fx is set up so that "High" imput should be used for humbuckers and "Low" with single coils. While consistant with the instruction sheet, an earlier ToneWorks pedal I bought (301dl) has this reversed to follow the more conventionally accepted (and as noted in Guitar Shop)"High" for single coils and "Low" for humbuckers. It's all just part of that Korg charm.

Although I have a couple of guitars and amps to choose from, my favored Gibson SG/Ampeg VT-60 tube amp setup in my home studio has been picking up a lot of radio interference lately, so I have been running my Gibson 335 solid body (yup, back from the dark days when "heavier=more sustain") through my Peavy Bandit 65 which I have set up in the living room (needless to say, my wife is none too pleased about this). The 411fx can get initially a bit noisy when using some of the high gain settings, but with a bit of EQ and noise reduction, this thing is dead silent.
I try hard not to be a shill for the Korg line, but I like their effects so much, I've bought all four of the pedals over the course of the last six months. This pedal beat all expectations I had for it. The modulation effects as a whole are among the best I've ever heard, and the compressor and auto wah are exceptional. Although I have auto wah effects on other units (ZOOM, DigiTech TSR24S), I never really used them. Fire this one up, throw a copy of "Shaft" in your VCR, and you can amuse yourself for hours!
Although some people have griped about the lack of programmable parameters in the 411fx, I find them to be liberating. It's my theory that there's a diminishing return in effects and effectiveness. Every parameter that you can tweek removes you a step from your real goal of making music. If you can't get what you want out of these effects, the problem probably lies elsewhere.

While some reviewers have complained about the unusual nature of the four AA-cell arrangement, I really like it, as they last much longer (three or more sessions) than my 9-volt equipped zoom 505 (which, when using rechargeables, lasts about an hour before conking out).
As far as the durability of the unit itself, I'm not presently gigging, but did use it to squash an earwig that was scooting across the carpet. While this may have voided the warranty, the unit was none the worse for ware. It is solid as an old Nikon camera, and if/when I gig again, I'd have no reservations about leaving my rack unit at home.

I haven't had any problems with the 411fx. I did, however, have a slight buzzing problem with the 105od Classic Overdrive of the same line. Musician's Friend took it back with no hassle, and sent me a new one within a couple of weeks. Now that the line has been discontinued, however, getting repairs or a replacement could become more of a problem.

I put off getting one of these because of programming concerns raised by reviewers both here and in Guitar Shop, and the general "ho hum" reception from Guitar Player. This is a decision I now regret, for the time (and fun) I've lost playing with this unit. I've been playing for about 12 years, and, honestly, this thing has made playing fun again. Riffs and ideas just kinda ooze out of it. Smart people will buy one before they become the Electro Harmonix of the twentieth century.

This thing is pretty easy to use. Two knobs, one effects one program. However if playing live it is quite difficult to switch as sometimes the footswitches may get slippery and the switch not activated.

i used to use this with a fernandes strat copy and a peavey rage 158. it sounded pretty good actually. the chorus is pretty good, lush and full and the distortions are great. the phaser is also top rate and the flanger kicks ass!!! it tends to get noisy however if you combine three or more effects but you can always reduce the noise. since then i sold both my guitar and amp and am a proud owner of an ibanez rg 250. i expect it would sound even better with my current guitar and my soon to be amp, a fender frontman 25 watt reverb.

yeah i would depend on it but i am not really sure if i would use it during a live show. as i said it's pretty hard to switch it would be better if they changed this into a stompbox.

nah never dealt with them

i play mostly alternative rock and it suits me pretty well. a good multi effects overall and a good buy at its affordable price.

Plug in and go. There aren't a lot of presets or spaces for your own programs like some processors, but it offers enough for most situations. The manual is in several different languages and a bit sparse. It took me about 15 minutes to learn how to store my own programs. The good thing about this is you can turn knobs and get good sounds right away.

I play an SG copy with stock humbuckers through bass amps, powered mixers and just about anything that can give me a basic clean tone. I can get a functional sound no matter what I'm running through. Some of the effects are weak like the wah, but most are decent, although not very tweakable. I actually like the distortion on this unit. It can get really fuzzy in some settings, but otherwise it gives you just about every distortion type you need. Most modulation effects are average, and the reverb is good. I didn't notice too much noise, probably because I keep the NR cranked almost all the time. This thing does have a great Noise reduction circuit that keeps you quiet without hurting your tone.

Metal & plastic. The first one they sent me didn't work at all. The second one worked fine though, but I can't comment on how it would hold up on stage. You see, I'm actually a bass player. It doesn't feel as sturdy as a BOSS, but it's built much better than a ROKTEK.

Just dealt with Musician's Friend. They're okay, but a little slow.

A good little pedal for 100 bucks. It's very basic, but it gets the job done. I'd buy it again. It doesn't have the convenience of multiple switches or numerical displays like the DOD Tec4 or all the options of a Zoom 505, but what it lacks in these categories it makes up in sound quality.

I found the unit very easy to use.

While the quality of the FX was very good, I found the unit extremely noisey, regardless of position in signal path or type of guitar. My set-up is extremely quiet - GT Soul-O 75 and Anderson and Schecter guitars. Noise was irrespective of battery power or when hooked to a supply. I took the pedal back.

Both stores that carried it in my area reported many returns of the Korg FX in this family due to malfunction of the foot switches.

This pedal tries too hard to be a "Be all cure all". Definitely way too noisy for studio work. I replaced it with the Danelectro Dan-Echo. One pedal, great sounds, very simple - NO NOISE.

It takes time. Once you get it figured out, just tweek with it until you get what you want.

For what it is it sounds really good. I have a Fender Jazzmaster, Ampeg Reverbrocket amp, and a Fender Music Master Bass Amp (use it for guitar). I use the 411fx along with the rest of my pedals (tubesceamer, VOX wah, Roto Vibe, Boss DD3, Boss Super chorus, etc.) i would not suggest getting rid of all your pedals and buying this thing, but i would suggest using it as a space filling tool. It is very good for adding texture to your sound. It is worth it for the tremelo and the two phasers alone. The flange is pretty good and the delays are ok. The chours effects sound kind of weak. Some of the distortions are lame but like i said you can tweak them to sound good. I got distortions similar to a marshall and a fender out of it. Sounds cool in stereo. Only problem is it gets a hum on certain channels... that probably has to do with my single coils as well as a bad ground... let's say it may enhance you buzzes. It is cool also because you can alter the tone of each effect.

The first one i had i purchased at a pawn shop. Soon after the program switch broke. Korg replaced it free with no hasle. I think it is reliable but don't depend solely upon it for your effects.

No reciept needed, just the serial number. I sent it in for repair and they sent me a brand new unit within 4 weeks. Super cool.

I have been playing guitar and bass for around 8 years. I play spacey, emotional, alternative rock. The music has a lot of texture and this little pedal adds a lot. It is good for creating your own sound rather than trying to sound like a certain person. If you want to sound like a certain person, find out what they use and buy that stuff. What is the fun in that? Experimentation is crucial for artistic music! Experimentation is crucial in moving to the next level as a musician. (enough philosohpy, sorry!) I strongly suggest this little friend... it adds a lot of texture to my sound. Try it out!

Not difficult after you understand the thing; you'll realize there isn't much to change in each individual effect.

I got this effect through a catalog (first mistake). It's a personal thing really; each effect alone can not be changed much, so listen before you buy. My guitars include a Gibson Les Paul Studio and an American Standard Fender Telecaster. My amp is a Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 100 half-stack. So why would someone with this setup buy this pedal for it's distortion? I got it for times I am away from my amp; it isn't easy hauling a stack around. I wanted another for my pedal board (SKB makes a very nice all-powered board), I have a Mr. Crybaby Wah/Volume, Danelectro Dan-Echo, and Boss Super Chorus (all previously along with this piece of junk). The Chorus, Delay, Echo, and Auto-Wah I didn't use because I had pedals which already performed these effects. That left the Flanger, Phaser, and Tremlo the primary effects to use. They are terrible. Where do you put this? In the effects loop for the flange or phaser? In the front for the gain? It doesn't matter, it is no good in either place.

Battery Cover broke.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I got this (without ever hearing it) for distortion. I am currently in the process of exchanging it for a Boss Metal Zone (which seems to be everyone's favorite around here). I don't even play metal, but IT will perform what I want it to.

I found this to be very easy to use and not to difficult to set up patches after you get the hang of it. It took me awhile to figure out how to save a patch because the manual doesnt make it totally clear that you have to hit program again while the light it flashing. As someone said before, I found it best to set each knob to zero to erase all the junk before creating a new patch. But overall it only took 10 minutes to get it all down.

I play a Rok-Axe strat immitation (strange name but I like it alot) through a Crate GX-40c. The possible combinations on this unit are tremendous. I like most of the available effects. Even though alot of people didn't care for the pitchshifter, I like it. If you turn it up to ten it sounds like midgets whistling. If you turn it down around 1 you can get a humming sound, and in between, of course the popular chinese music. I polished off one of the presets with the auto-rotary for a perfect Rage Against the Machine jet-plane like noise. I play pretty much alot of the so called "alternative" music. The word alternative lost its meaning. Alternative music today would be polka er something. Anyway I felt the sound quality is awesome for so many effects at $73. The noise reduction and EQ work great.

I tried out some other multi effects units at a store and they were all plastic and the sound quality on the 411fx is just as good or better than those that costed almost $200. This is also nice that its metal and seems more durable. The bypass is nice too. Running it through an fx loop on my amp doesnt take away from the sound at all. I would go with this without a backup. (yah right like I can afford another one :)

Never had to deal with korg. I did e-mail zzounds.com where i got it, because it was a couple days late. I got an e-mail back explaining that they didn't have thier shipment from korg yet. For the price I paid the wait was worth it.

I like to play all sorts of music, Nirvana was what I started playing with when I started playing (xmas '97), now I know nearly every song (and yes that includes rarities/unreleased songs)But anyway, this pedal is great for that kind of genre. This is also the cheapest multi-fx unit available. Most people paid $99 or more on this, but I got it for $73 ($78 including shipping) from zzounds.com and no, it wasn't used. Brand new. I'm very happy with this unit and am going to go play with it right now.

This pedal is not something that you should plan to really try and get intimate with, unless you have the reference "chart" handy... It would work just fine if you'd already programmed in your patches, but forget trying to quickly modify anything major. However, given the fairly straightforward layout of the pedal it is pure logic that dictates the patch editing process. There are a couple of variations to the Korg 411fx's process, but not many. The standard patch-entry procedure is: use the "bank" knob to select from one of 11 banks. In each bank, there are two patches. Use the "program" foot-button to pick the "red" or "green" light patch. The first knob choses between 11 banks, which have two effects in each (toggle between the two with the program switch). Then, using the remaining three knobs you select your effect--(drive, tone, contour, modulation, ambience, and noise reduction/level)--and the type/amount. Keep in mind that the same three knobs are used for all of the effects, so it gets slightly confusing sometimes because the position of the knob might not be the setting of your tone, once you jump to another effect... You need to play with it, and there is a "learning curve." But, if you turn everything down to 0/off levels, and then add things to build your effect, you can get a nice tone fairly easily. Just remember to EQ for each patch.

The sound can be described as this: great for a little metal box that saves the space of 2-5 pedals, but of course not as good as, say, true-bypass analog pedals, or a $1000+ rack system. However, keep in mind that you are paying $99 for this thing. If you buy it, you are looking for a compact, inexpensive, digital effects system that can simulate analog effects decently given the variety of options, and won't cost too much. The only downside I can see to this pedal is that it is not (although it was advertised in Musician's Friend: Winter '98-'99 as such)--true bypass. But, if you can find a setting that you like to enhance your sound most of the time such as a mild chorus, slight delay, and EQ/noise reduction, then it will work well for you. Bypassed, the pedal makes a slight change to your tone. Check out the chorus, the delay/echo, the EQ, and the compression. Those are the best things it offers as far as I'm concerned.

Seems reliable. However, at the store they had three pedals for sale. Two of them were re-furbs. Mine was the only "new" one they had. They seemed reluctant to tell me why there were so many that had been brought back. I've read below here that some people had to take theirs back. There are a lot of "little things" here that could probably go wrong eventually.

Korg is Chinese-originated I think, so I couldn't comment on customer support.

If you want some good sounds, to save space, to get a good deal, and you're not >too< picky, try it out. I personally would have rather invested $200 per pedal and done the whole thing with analog pedals... I currently use the Fulltone Fulldrive II, and I would have gotten some Way Huge effects, or more Fulltone--if I had that kind of money. Perhaps one day I'll upgrade, but until then I plan on doing a pretty decent job simulating a >LOT< of pedals with this thing... Might get a tone booster to take care of what I miss from non-true-bypass... Try it if you're curious. It's VERY configurable and not a bad pedal overall.

You need to read the manual which takes like 5 minutes and look at chart to see were effects are. 10 user banks which are easy to tweek. Easy to save your sound too.

I use this with 2 amps, a fender champ 110 and fender princeten 112. Prince is 65 watts and put 75 watt speaker in champ to get 55 watts out of it, the 2 are linked together. I also use a fender strat. It's a little noisy only because I have a cheap AC unit. other whise it's not noisy at all. All the effects are great eccept the distortion. I still use my trusty Boss DS-1. The 2 choruses are great and can get a great come as you are and teen spirit sound. With the trem/pan on max speed I can get a cool heart shaped box solo sound and its close to radio friendly unit shifter. As you can tell I love nirvana and can get great sounds from this box. Great flange, phaser, EQ, noise gate, compresion, reverb, and delay is ok too.

Sturdy metal box and have had no problems yet. played small gig w/out backup. most likley get years of use out of this box. No wimpy plastic strong metal that takes abuse and has true bypass.

never dealt with em. Probably won't need to.

I play punk and grunge like nirvana and foo fighters and sound garden alice in chans ect... and its great. Works great in my band. I would by it again. Compared it to othes but they were plastic and didn't have true bypass. Wish it had depth control on modulation effects. Lets me be creative in writing music. Wish it had a wah but I will eventualy get dunlop crybaby. great pedal, replaces old pedal board and alot cheeper too.

Once you get used to it, it's easy to program. But I felt the ultra-brief manual was lame and lacking. I give a weak score due to the manual. I think they could have given you a clue what the factory pre-sets were without you having to sit down with paper, pencil, and their de-coding table, fiddling with the knobs and writing all the settings down yourself.

Some sounds were ok, some weren't. The delays were good. The pitch shift was unusable. Some of the several versions of distortion were good. The tremelo was very limited. (no depth control, only speed).

Didn't keep it long enough to rate this catagory.

No contact to rate.

Returned it.

Well, contrary to the numerous submissions on the 411fx, I must disagree...I had not an ounce of trouble figuring out how the thing worked. Given it doesn't act like your average effects pedal, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out by all means. I spent about 5 minutes with the unit and the manual and I was already creating my own patches.

In short, this thing is a diamond! I just got rid of all 6 of my pedals for the mere fact that I couldn't stand carrying them all around and setting them up everywhere I went. I wanted a all-in-one, quality sounding unit. This thing was an answer to prayers! I was totally impressed upon every aspect of the unit. I found myself using the overdrive more than I thought I would...I didn't even plan on using it, but do to it's parametic mid eq, this thing has a world of tonal possibilites! Very nice! All of the modulations were great...the quality was exceptional for a box of it's caliper. Sure there are limitations upon editing each individual effect, but heck, just turn the thing on and play!, you'll sound great! I really love the way the unit operates too. It has two switches up top, one to bypass and one to switch programs. Now there are 5 user banks, each bank having two programs, for example, I bypass all effects to have just the clean on my amp, then when I switch on the effects, I have a nice mellow overdrive on program 1 of user bank 5, then I hit the program switch again to go to program 2 of user bank 5 where i have a thick over drive for leads...it works perfectly! I just LOVE this thing! It's a compact, mega-packed dream! The unit is easy to carry around. Lightweight but pretty sturdy. Looks cool too. I would definitely recommend this unit for anyone looking to have a handful of quality effects in a compact, easy to carry, no-nonsense pedal. For anyone who even compares it to the Zoom 505, look again. With the quality of this box, it's a world ahead of the Zoom in every aspect! I know, I owned one when they first came out. I give the 411fx a 10 for what it is...and what it is, is a masterpiece. Great price too, they're down to only $100 bucks now!

I would and do use it everywhere I go, never had a problem.

Never had to deal with them, I'm sure they're doing a good job though.

I play a varitey of music. Mostly Vigilantes of Love covers, Plankeye, Model Engine, Stavesacre...it can dish out anything I need it to. I've been playing now for four years. If it were stolen, I'd hope the person who stole it would'nt erase my patches. I would buy it agian though. It helps your music because it doesn't get in the way

Ok this unit is pretty easy to understand as well as to program.You get 2 programs for each bank with 5 total banks to program. Now for those of you who like being able to control every parameter then this unit isn't for you, you can vary most of the effects by amount of effect, for example the higher you turn the level knob up the more the effect intencifices. For some people that may suck but for those who don't want to spend hours programing and just want a good sound then it's a great buy.

I have to say after playing with this for awile I was able to get some great sounds with little time spent. All the effects sound great with maybe the exception of the auto wah which is kind of week. The only major turnoff would have to be the fact that you can turn off any of the effects but turnning off the EQ's will dull the sound so you always havw to EQ each program. The best thing about this unit is the fact that you can switch it off unlike some units with a bogus bypass. It's pretty clean so I don't think there should be a problem, I play a strat through a trace super tramp and so far have had no noise problems.

Well it's not plastic but then again it is thin metal. I have had it for about 6 mts now and it gets beat around and no problem.

If it were to get lost or stolen I would proberly buy another one.

It's real easy to use, but you need the manual to do anything. I can't see how it could be much easier.

I played bass on it, until I sold it. I thought it was really bad for sound quality. It produced tons of noise (you know, static hissing sound). You can only get one modulation effect at a time, and you can't get reverb and any modualation effect at the same time, but the worst part is it has only one settings knob for every effect, that makes the flanger useless, as well as many others.

It's made out of solid metal, looks pretty sturdy. I could imagine the switches breaking, though. I think the boss style swithes look sturdiest.

donno

I really didn't like this pedal. It's got a lot of distortions though. I don't use them though.

User manual incredibly poorly written. Very easy patch copying, editing and no problems in getting a good sound from the unit. Program footswitch allows selection of only two programs before bending over and turning the effects knob is required. Most presets have too much gain.

I felt that the sound quality was quite good on all the effects and the noise gate worked very well with single pickup guitars into a tube amp. The chorus, auto rotary and auto wah sounded especially good. Limited parametric adjustment of effects.

Bypass on first unit failed in two weeks. A second unit had an incredibly loud buzzing sound. I decided to buy a different unit.

Didn't deal with Korg. Guitar Center accepted defective units back without hassle.

If your 411fx works properly this is a good sounding unit with limited flexibility but a reasonable price. After my experience I would recommend that if you decide to buy this unit that you purchase it from a retailer with a liberal return policy. I have now bought a considerably more expensive Digitech RP7. In contrast to the 411fx I appreciate the user manual, incredible programming flexibility, ability to switch programs and turn multiple effects on/off within a program easily with footswitches. I have played for over 30 years and suspect that in the long haul I will find the extra bucks for the RP7 worth it.

I found this unit easy to program. I recently read a review in guitar player (I think) where the reviewer spent half a lifetime trying to get this thing programmed. He was a MO-RON. This unit is positively simple to operate and set up-MUCH easier than the Korg AX30G which after 2 years, I still cant make heads or tails out of.

I have been playing for 35 years and at this point I feel like I know good sound. Korg has always made a high quality product and this unit is no exception. Dont expect $2000 sound from this thing-for the money I paid its a serviceable little box with lots of versatility. I originally bought it for use with headphones but now I gig with it. The unit is quiet, has noise suppression, good compression, very good thick chorus, nice EQ, and good-sounding delay and reverb but modification of these effects is limited. I found the overdrive distortion to be the only one I really like, the others sound too fuzzy and muddled. I play a custom Lipman guitar and a Fernandez sustainer axe through a Fender Blues de Ville. The flanger on this unit is not acceptable-too much whoosh. I use an MXR flange, a Mesa V-twin and a Morley volume pedal to control the whole mess.

My experince with Korg is limited. The AX30G has never needed servicing despite several beers being spilled directly onto the pedalboard.

I play blues based rock and for the money this box cant be beat. I especially like the pitch shift turned down to double low octave with a bit of distortion and a hint of echo. Its a fun box with much better sound than Pandora, or other comparably priced units. for $99 I would definitely replace the unit if lost or stolen. Dont bother with ZOOM products- the 505 doesnt come close.

This unit provides quite a bit of options, especially for the size (a little smaller than a Big Muff). In return many of the knobs are dual function when it comes to editiing and saving settings. I give it an 8 because it took me at least 10 minutes to program my first setting, including manual reading time.

I play a Std. Stratocastor through a Fender 1x12" 25 watt solid state. I have found that many of the "factory presets" are suited to gainiacs, which I am not. But those are factory presets and it takes a bit of adjusting to get everything just so. Once everything is right the sound is great. All of the effects are great. That's right all of the effects. At least great for my tastes. Many have said they dislike or seldom use the pitch shifter. I will speak the postive side. I have found that with overdrive, the pitch shifter gives a sound that is not unlike the droning guitars of 93' era Stereolab. Or with a little less drive it sounds like Josie and the Pussycats on heroin. Completely a matter of taste, but I just don't hear the "Chinese music" thing myself. My favorite artists are NYC based bands circa 64-73(VU) and British bands circa 76-whenever (Wire-MBV) with a sprinkling of Dayton, Ohio thrown in (GBV, Brainiac). I am confident that with this unit I could play most with most of the effects any of these guys might use, with exception to Brainiac, I don't have a clue what they did in the studio. As I said earlier all of the effects are good, but you can't adjust everything, but I feel you can adjust enough to get a good sound. Even behind a Big Muff the presence of these effects is not diminished.

This unit appears to be built fairly well. I definitely won't expose this to the abuse that I have unleashed on some of my other pedals, though. I would use this without a backup, unless I bought another one of these, it is pretty unique so if it did go out trouble would surely ensue.

I play the never popular, but not dead style of shoegazer inspired "rock/postrock". Think GBV doing Spiritualized covers, or Spacemen 3 doing Echo and the Bunnymen covers, er, whatever. Anyway, this unit provides an excellent companion. This pedal boosts my creativity, and that is enough to keep me happy for now, if I ever could drop $1000 on a rack mount processor, I would look at what Korg has to offer first. Last word, I have played since I was a junior in high school, which makes it seven years now. In the beginning I was a stomp box champion, beliving that palying through ten boxes was supreme, but now being a little less DIY and a little more concerned with quality, I think this unit replaces nine of those boxes (the Big Muff stays), and for the cost I can only say I wish I had found this sooner.

just have to read book, also get the person at the guitar shop to explain, if you do this you are 99% there. the only thing left to do is twaek and play and wonder where the hours went.

very wide selection of tones and toys. its just a litlle hummy(is that a word?). not bad enough to be a problem

so far so good

never needed (knock on strat)

very well made . i almost spent twice as much for same thing.

Read the manual, er whatever it was and seemed to be pretty straight forward. Once that was over there was nothing of use except for the table describing the effect values. Quickly made a copy and posted it on my amp.. Very simple to operate... I give it a 9 and not a 10 only because the table should also be printed on the back or something small on the font of the box...

Scrap the preset user patches, tweak to your liking and GO. WOW! The distortion is very nice and very tweakable because of the super EQ control. I had a ZOOM 505 for 4 months and while it was decent, it emitted a horrible hissing sound and rendered by dirty channel useless because of the noise. I couln't even use it in bypass mode it was so bad... Sold it off and bought this jem. No noise at all and I can use all of my amp. Contrary to the entry before me, I can get some pretty awesome overdrive and great distortion on both channels.

Very nice casing.... looks very sturdy, must better than plastic

Not yet warranted...

I play everything from the blues to decent rock... I am very happy with this and would definitely buy it again. Although you can't use as many patches at one time as with the ZOOM, the sound quality is better. I am using an AM Strat with a Hot Rod Deluxe and now my little korgy... Sold the ZOOM, DS-1, NS-2... This is all I need for what I need it for... Especially since Guitar Center had them on sale for $99. Shit, I should go buy another...

The things pretty easy to use. The instruction book is really of no use except for the table that explains each sound and it's setting. I gave it an eight. If your not a complete idiot...you can figure it out.

Really good sound quality if you use it right. I play an American Stnd Strat through a Peavy 5150. If you use the pedals distortion along with the amps distortion you have yourself some bonafide crap. Waaay To much gain, but if you're gonna use your distortion don't use the pedals. Pretty simple huh? The effects are a little limited but if you're giggin' not recordin' it'll do just fine.

It hasn't failed me yet.

Haven't need 'em.

I gave it a nine because it's perfect for what I do. I play progessive and 80's type metal so the phaser and flanger are really cool. The Auto wah was a nice touch too. I've been playing for about six years and if it were stolen I'd buy a new one or track the SOB down. I love it's ease of use I hate that to change sound you have a knob not a clicker button or something. Not very good if you need to go from say #2 to #7 in a hurry. I had an Ibanez Virtual Amp and this is just more convienient. I wish it had an expression pedal that would make it a lot easier. I find it a big help not a henderance.

Once you get used to this unit, it's simple. But for the first week, you'll find yourself scratching your head about how to edit programs. No problems once you get the hang of it, though.
Only complaint is that there are only 10 user program banks, and that you have to set up things carefully if you want to switch sounds mid-song in a live performance.

I have used this with a Peavy strat-clone, a Hohner les paul-clone, and a Fender acoustic. I run this through a 15 watt Peavy practice amp. Even with these humble set ups, the sounds are fabulous. My favorite thing to do is combine chorus, compression, and delay to create a U2ish, Policeish sound. Delay is amazing, chorus is beautiful, flanger and fazer are groovy. Only effect I didn't like was the pitch shifting, because it sounds like chinese music. I don't know, maybe that's what it's supposed to sound like, I've never really used pitch shift. Oh yeah, and the distortions will rip you another hole. Rock on!!

Never failed me yet. Batteries last a while if you get the good kind (Energizer). Even better if you buy an adapter (not included). Sturdy metal case. No backups needed for gigging.

No problems yet, don't know.

This is a great, inexpensive multi-effects processor. No matter what style of music you play, if you need effects, this baby is for you. Keep in mind that switching between programs mid-song has to be set up before hand, because you can switch between two effects with your foot, but if you want the others you've got to twirl a knob. Other than that, this is a sweet machine. I bought a DOD tec8 for like $220 and the Korg made the DOD look like a kid's toy. Don't buy the tec8, the distortions suck and so does the delay.
Anyway, overall, this machine kicks more butt than Chuck Norris and Mr. T combined.

I actually exchanged a Korg Classic Overdrive (105d) pedal for this unit. This is certainly not a plug and play device. It took me at least 5 minutes of reading the manual to figure out how to program the unit and change the sounds. However, once you get the hang of it, it's a breeze. You definitely need the manual to know what the settings are since they aren't labeled on the unit. The manual is minimal, but to the point. It actually took me about half an hour to get a sound that I was satisfied with, but once I found it, I was in tone heaven.

I'm using an Am Std with a DiMarzio Fast Track 2 in the bridge position -> Korg 411fx -> low input of a Marshall JCM800 2204. The distortion possibilities of this unit are so flexible. You can get just about any sound using the eq, which includes a quasi-parametric mid. This unit can do both the Korg Classic Overdrive (105d) and the Korg Hyper Distortion (104d) and a whole lot more. The 411fx distortions range from Tubscreamer to the Metal Zone/Big Muff -- very versatile! For 20 bucks extra, its definitely worth it. I tried both 105d & 104d and they are both one trick ponies. The 411fx is definitely much more versatile. Although the effects aren't quite as flexible as rack units or even most floor multi-effect units (the delays have preset times), they sound pretty good. I'd say it's pretty damn good for cramming so much into a little pedal. The only glitch is that the modulation effects (chorus/flange/phaser/pitch shifter) don't work when the reverb is turned on. However, this doesn't really bother me since I rarely use these effects. The noise gate is great too. The only thing this needs is a built in tuner and you'd have just about everything you need!

So far so good, but I've only had it for a day. Seems sturdy. It's made of sheet metal with heavy duty footswitches. I'll hold off on this until I can give it the true road test this summer.

I never dealt directly with the company, but the place I bought it from, Guitar Center, was very helpful and didn't give me any trouble when I wanted to exchange my 105d, which I had bought about a week earlier, for the 411fx.

I play mostly distorted pop in the vein of the Ramones and Descendents. This unit does it well, but is also capable of many other styles of music. If it had a built-in tuner, then I wouldn't have to leave my Boss TU-12H in line. Oh well, nothings absolutely perfect, but this comes close!

Very simple to use - The editing system in particular is extremely intuitive - select the effect type, and then use the 2 knobs to modify the effect parameters. The manual explains it well, but I didn't really need it once I'd figured out how to save a patch.

I've been using this with a Marshall 8080V Combo and a Fender Telecaster Special. I intended to use this to replace a Zoom 505 which I use in the FX loop of the amp - I use the amps channels for clean and crunch sounds, and then the Zoom to add a little overdrive & extra volume for solos. I found that the Korg isn't really suited to this - When I try to add OD with it in the FX loop I get uncontrollable feedback (this wasn't a problem with the Zoom). I've tried altering the loop level and the input but this didn't make any difference.
I then tried going from the guitar straight into the 411 and then into the amp. At home I wasn't too impressed with the sound but I tried it out at a rehearsal and was pleasantly surprised. The modulation sounds are on the whole pretty good - I particularly like the Auto-Rotary sounds and the Chorus. Delay is good, but the Reverb is a bit grainy (For #99 can you expect anything else?). Compressor is very good (unlike the one on the Zoom which didn't seem to actually *do* anything). Heavy distortions are excellent, but the unit is slightly let down by the overdrive - the crunch-type sounds are a bit too middly for my liking. Even using the parametric mid in the EQ section didn't help that much. Having said that, the EQ section is very good compared to the Zoom - Seperate knobs for Bass, Treble and a sweepable mid control. Noise reduction seems OK, but haven't really needed to use it much - the unit is pretty quiet. If it wasn't for the effects loop limitation I would've given this at least a nine, but for now it'll have to be....

Seems fairly sturdy - sheet metal construction and big chunky footswitches. I'll feel pretty secure with this under my feet. Haven't used it live just yert (next gig isn;t for another months) so.....

Never dealt with them.

I've been playing for 16 years now (ouch! - didn't realise it was that long) and I've tried lots of different effects options - pedals, a Quadraverb rack, back to pedals again, the Zoom, and now the Korg. Where this really scores for me is simplicity; I sing while I play, and don't want to have too many pedals under my feet to worry about. This unit combines the simplicity of an old fashioned stomp-box with the versatility of a Multi-FX, managing to get the best features of both. I think I'd buy it again if it was lost/stolen.