Zoom 1010

extremely simple. if you can't figure this out without a manual, you've got problems my friend. if you've got problems, the manual is very clear.

i bought this back when it first came out, 3 or 4 years ago. before then, i had always played acoustic or just plain out distorted - this was my first taste of most of the effects. at the time, i loved it but i now find it somewhat lacking. the noise is pretty bad at times if used for recording line-in, but it's ok on an amp. i'd use it for keyboard before guitars, honestly, as the best features are the spacy stuff.

the compresser/wah is weak, but it is noticeable. the distortions are pretty cool as far as multi-effects units go, although that shouldn't be the main focus for this thing. if you want distortion, get a couple of obscure stompboxes and link them together - big name distortions are generally generic and cliched...

the eq isn't amazing, but it works. personally, i love the noisy chorus - it's really nasty and great with distortion. the flanger is ok, i remember being able to nick that kim thayil "fell on black days" sound with it a few years back. the doubler isn't a real doubler, but it's fun to play with..

the reverb isn't real reverb, it's a really fast delay - and that's probably why the actually delay only goes to 42 seconds, too much space bogged down on the other side. this shouldn't be the main delay in your setup, but it works fine and sounds ok.

seems pretty small, but i'd gig with it anyways. i just wouldn't stomp on it that hard...

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overall, this is not a professional unit - but i don't think it's supposed to be. i rarely use it nowadays, but i loved it when i was 16 and thought it was the greatest thing in the world. i used to stay up until all hours of the night programming this thing, then sleep when i got to school. it's a great 'beginners' effect pedal because it won't spoil you and it'll force you to program it yourself because the presets are truly horrendous save a few...

if i was going to change it, i'd add an expression pedal, a few more effects (tremolo, octave, pitch shifter, etc) and make it out of steel, dammit. i wouldn't replace it nowadays, no, but i don't plan on turfing it either...

Sounds good from the box. Presets are lame but fun if you are capable of having fun. Menu system is extremely easy.

Its not that golden tube tone everyone speaks of its a 100-150$ digital pedal, It does what it says no frills. These are the people who cant figure out why they cant beat a ferrari with a yugo.

The only time i had a problem with it is when i plugged my instrument into the amp jack. Felt like a real dork.

Never delt with them

i play with a yamaha, gibson flying v, washburn bt2, or fender strat. All sound good just have to edit the patches for each guitar. All sound great through a nice fender amp.

I've bought it in 1998 and was my first FX, as a guitar rookie I guess this is the most easy-to-use FX in the wolrd.

Its sound great, but the chorus get noisy, really noisy. Good Distortions and Reberbs, kinda good delay too, but the chorus it very noisy.

It will not let you down, ever. (unless you go out of power).

When I bought it, it had not sound, I send it to the store and they don't replace it, they fix it, but it don't sound that bad.

It works for what I need it, but the chorus sometimes make me sick. I'm always feel pain when I heard that noise.

It is very easy to get sound out of it. The patches are simple to edit. I have not upgraded it at all.

I have a peavey studio pro 112 amp and a fender stratocaster guitar. It is sometimes noisy, only with certain distortions or wah. Most of the effects sound great. I use my crybaby wah wah with it. I can easily get the sound of Metallica, or Limp Bizkit, any of those guys. The distortion is great. But the wah on the pedal itself isnt good. Thats why I use a crybaby.

I can depend on it with no problem. I jump on the pedals all the time and ive never had problems. I always use it on gigs, but as I said, i use my crybaby wah wah with it.

Never dealt with them.

I play in my band, Heavy metal and rock. It is an awesome match for my music. Ive played for 2 years. I use a crybaby, zoom 1010, boss metal zone, digitech wammy, and boss reverb. I would buy it again if it were lost. I especially like the distortion on this zoom 1010. I hate the wah on it. Ive compared it to many other pedal boards and I like this one. Not the best, the one I liked most is the digitech pedal board but with zoom, its cheeper, plus ive gotta ton of other pedals to mix. I wish it had good wah, maybe made of metal, and some more controls. It definitly helps me make music. BUY IT IF U DONT HAVE IT!

Never used an FX that is so easy to use. The "patch-menu" couldn't be more simple

The rate of the bluit-in FX are average, delay/reverb is good. Still, the pedal sounds static when in use and not played. Too bad, sound quite annoying

Never let me down before (on gigs and rehearsels). Used without any other FX (Wah, tube screamer) it may sound very narrow.

I play mostly my own songs, so I can create my own sound. The Zoom 1010 is cheap, multi functional and sounds not bad at all. I've got more FX I use, mostly in combination with the 1010. Wouldn't want to miss it when I'm playing!!!

It is really easy to use, editing could be no simpler and the manual is very good. Top marks on this one!

Well I used to use this with my Epiphone SG and My Squire Jagmaster into my Marshall VS100R before I sold the thing. It wasn't particularly noisy on any settings, and if the distortion was getting a bit hissy then the noise reduction usually sorted it out, but it did mess the tone up a bit so you'd have to fiddle with the eq again.
The distortions were top notch-I can't complain about them. Number 4 (can't remember the name of it) was the best one for me cos I play stuff like Smashing Pumpkins and it did sound pretty good for that stuff. The compressor was just cack, I never bothered using it at all. The wah's were ok but not nearly as good as the cry baby I've got now. The Wah number 1 sounded good as a fixed position wah (like the intro to Leech by Limp Bizkit), but when used with the expression pedal it was a bit jumpy-not a smooth sweep at all.
The flanger was excellent though I must say, it went really slow and deep (just like Love by Pumpkins), but it didn't go very fast. It was good at what it did though. The chorus was good if you liked Michael Bolton Ballads (which I didn't!)but you couldn't get the wobbly vibrato sounds out of it that you can with a seperate chorus pedal cos the rate didn't go fast enough and the depth wasn't deep enough. Delay was cool if you like digital delay, but not a very long delay. It sounded good on maximum length, but then you haven't got the option to increase delay time if you need it. Reverb was ok bu I used my amp's reverb normally instead. And lastly, the doubling was pretty good but completely unused on my effect cos it didn't fit my style of playing. EQ was excellent too. The tuner was very accurate, but it only tunes as low as C# so if you want to tune it to low B or something them you have to tune the low string off a 12th fret harmonic-not a major problem, but I'm sure they could have designed it to tune lower in the first place.

I used it at a few gigs without a backup and no problems....it's made of plastic so don't go being a rock star and jumping on it though! Never had any problams with mine, but I looked after it pretty well.

Never dealt with them.

I play mostly alternative rock music, and this pedal is good for what it was made for....which is basically an introduction to the world of effects. I've been playing 5 or 6 years, and I still have the guitars and amp I mentioned earlier, but I've since sold my ZOOM and bought some stomp boxes instead. It lasted me 3 years and I got some good sounds out of it, but I got to a point where I outgrew it and I wanted more flexability and better tone. I didn't like only having 12 presets cos it limits the sounds you can use at a gig I think. Stomp boxes sort this out cos there is practically no limi tof combinations to use. I also like trying new fx routing systems now to see how effects work in different ways depending on how you wire them up.....this is impossible to do on the 1010. Another on of my favourite things about stomp boxes is the ability to get feedback going and bend down and create havoc by messing with the controls! Again, out of the question with the 1010. It's cheap and it does sound good-I'd recommend it to anyone, you've just got to take into consideration it's limitations before you buy it. If you have the money and you want ultimate flexibility then forget it and buy single pedals, but if you're on a budget and you want basic usable sounds then this is very, very hard to fault. It seemed much better to me than the Korg things I compared it to, and so much better than the Dod Multi Fx thingy too. Buy it if it fits what you want it for. Excellent value, but be warned-you will grow out of it after a few years.

If you cant figure this out, put the guitar down and pick up a shotgun you will have better luck with it.

Distortion is workable, flanger is great, chorus great, I agree with the masses the reverb and compresser could have used some work

works, all the time

havent delt with them

been playing for about 10 years, the pedal can only take you so far you have to play, i dont know about everybody else but i can make almost anything work with some tweeking ( make your own expression pedal, just follow a schematic of a volume pedal and send the wet back to the unit on the stereo channel)

for a multi-effect box this one is really easy to use

celan sounds are great and remain clean at higher volume.
chorus is quite ok, but sometimes a bigger rate of it would be needed
(eg. intros). flanger sounds like it would be made by some 80's cheap synth and really sucks. distortions are not much better either. they don't sound pure and at higher rate sounds too electronic.

never used it on a gig and only for practice and experimenting different sounds.

never had a need to

I play sort of funk/grunge/metal stuff, sometimes blues aswell. it matches quite good for some blues and classic rock stuff but not for metal or other styles with more distorion. It's really good for just experimenting different sounds when you write music, but i would not go and make a recording with it.

An untrained monkey could use this. Hit edit, use the aroww keys and the table to quickly find what you want to edit, and use the value key to change it, then hit the store key twice. THATS IT! Also very easy to adjust the volume. Just select the patch use the value keys to change the volume, then hit store twice.

I am Using an Ibanez RG170 through a Yamaha Mini Mixer with Bose fold backs and with this unit the distortions impress me for a digital unit. The reverb is also nice but could be better. Hall is probably the best, the room is a little dry. The Delay is only an echo and isn't perpetual. On top of that it is only 420ms long :-(. The chorus is excellent as long as you dont start turning up everythig past halfway, otherwise it can detune your guitar, this mabey desierable but as a guitarist that playes everything from Nirvana to Blues this is not good. Same with the flanger, it is possibly a little weak but i am comparing with an old dedicated flanger pedal I used to own. Once again dont turn up the settings to high as this can detune your guitar. The doubler is an interesting function and can be a nice addition to the reverb if set right. The Zoom Noise reduction is very effective but has to be turned up all the way to be effective, this eats at the tone slightly, but not much. The Compressor is absolutly useless,you have to turn it right up for it to be noticed, but this eats the tone dramaticaly. The Wah is weak and you have to buy an extra pedal for this, hell, for the $80AUS I could buy a decent second hand dedicated Wah!

Well, it aint let me down yet. It is made out of re-enforced injection moulded plastic that seems strong enough but i wouldn't jump on it (i am gental with my equipment as I am a poor student :-))
The pedals are a little flimsy but they have held on so far and plugs seem to pull out the back much to easy. I would take a distortion pedal to a gig with me but that is it. The reason i dont is because i don't own one and the school dont like me flogging theirs (Boss MT-2).

Well i have never had to deal with zoom, i bought it second hand from my local music shop and the DC in plug had dry solder joints that had to be repaired but the man at the shop fixed it for free before he sold it to me.

Well I am a 15 year old who has been playing guitar for 5 years now and i consider this board as getting past my interests as I move into writing my own songs. I love the distortions, I have got a Metalica, Nirvana, Offspring, Living End and Live Distortion programed into it (there are 8 types of distortion). But it lacks the clean sound that I cherish so much (i play with a delicate balance of both clean and dirty). I compared it against a Zoom 505 and a Boss
ME-30 but i couldn't afford the ME-30 and the zoom 505 was just crap.
If u are like I was, a poor student looking for a cheap board that will absolutly scream out distortion. Buy this. If it were stolen I would trak down the bastard who stole it and beat the $200 dollars out of him and put it towards a Boss GT-5 that will more than sattisfy my weird obseion with using all sorts of effects in songs. This is a good board if you play a lot of covers but if you wish to write songs, you may find it restricting.

It's real easy to get a good sound out of the 1010. Each effect has three or four parameters to adjust to find the sound you're looking for. The full manual is good, but the one page comic book version of the manual is good enough, and you probably won't even need that. The only thing you can't use out of the box is the Wah Wah. It costs $50 or $60 extra for the FP-01 foot pedal to use the Wah Wah. I give it a 9 only because it's kinda hard to use the Wah Wah if you don't have the extra $50 for the FP-01. Which I don't have so I have no idea how good the FP-01 is.

I use a Fender Double Fat Strat through a Silver Face Bassman 70 and an Ampeg V4 4x12 cabinet. The setup sounds great with the 1010. If your setup is too noisy you can set the Noise Reduction to eliminate any unwanted noise. The effects all sound like analog stomp boxes, but you can chain effects together into a single patch so you don't have to stomp six different boxes to get the sound you need. The best way to get a consistent sound is to find the best setting for each effect seperately, then use the same settings on the individual effects each time you mix effects. I hope that makes sense. I'm sure you could duplicate anyone's sound easily since the 1010 has about 10 different Distortions, 4 Wah Wahs, 2 Reverbs, and about six other effects, plus it has a Compressor, EQ, and Tuner (w/ bypass so you can tune silently).

The 1010 is more reliable than any stomp box I've had since it comes with an AC adapter and all the effects are wired together (in the right order) internally. No need for a pedalboard stocked with 2 dozen different stomp boxes that must be chained together in the perfect order (so you don't pick up AM sports radio shows) by working patch cables, not to mention the $15 apiece for most ac adapters. And I've played a countless number of live shows and practices without any problems at all. Just make sure you write down your patch settings just in case.

The band I'm in sounds kinda like a cross between the Melvins, Babes In Toyland, & Fugazi, with spooky melody lines, but the 1010 could fit any sound or style because of it's number of effects. And since most decent stomp boxes cost between $100-$200 anyway, you might as well get a 1010 and get almost every effect you'll need, instead of just one. I also own Distortion, Flanger, and Compression/Sustain pedals, but since I bought the 1010 they've been collecting dust. If anything ever happened to it I would replace it immediately. I started off with a Zoom 4040, but switched to the 1010 because of the ease of use, and the size, the 1010 fits in the compartment thing in my hardshell guitar case, the 4040 was about as long as the body of my guitar. The only thing I would change about the 1010 is that the "optional" FP-01 Wah Wah/Volume pedal would come free. The only other thing I would recommend is to not get too carried away with the effects. My band's set list is 16 songs long, and I've only used 5 patches. Oh and be sure to make the first patch of each bank the same distortion, then use the other two patches for other sounds. And whatever you do, DO NOT USE THE PRESET PATCHES! Make up your own and give them cool names. My set-up is:
A1=Fuzz Box
A2=AM Radio
A3=Distorted Flanger
B1=Fuzz Box
B2=Clean Chorus
B3=Spooky Reverb