Zoom 505

With in an hour of getting it home, I have the sound I was looking for. Editing presets is a breaze, manual ( downloaded ) give the gist of how to use the pedal.

Ibanez Rx - Peavy Audition Plus
I am not hearing the hiss that others are saying prob cause I just use a little amp.
I am liking a few of the presets but they are there just as an example I am figuring and I have already filled f1-4 with my own sounds and they are the way I want them.

While not of course as good as the boss stomp boxes that I have had experience with this fx unit is a nice little accessory.

So far after a couple of days I havnt had a problem, no gigs in the near future for me, while I have been playing guitar for 18 years, I do not play professionaly, so this little puppy is good for what I use it for.

no contact

For what I am guessing this pedal is for ( home bedroom use ) this pedal is a great value, I saw one at teh music store used for $100 Can and I paid $31 can including shipping I say I got a good deal.

Its a small pedal when compared to other multi-effect pedals. Once you play with and get the hang out its very easy to use and fun. The manual that came with it did its job and that was give all the basic understandings of the pedal. Its good for a beginner in the multi-effect pedal area.

I have used this pedal with many guitars, it has always worked well for me. It has covered up bad sounds of cheap guitars, and added some new tones to nicer guitars. Some effects are weak when compared to the quality of a single effect pedal ( ex. boss pedals). The chorus & flanger could have much more range. The distortion isnt the greatest but it can be tweaked to sound pretty damn good. I have used this through small 15 watt amps and larger 100 watt marshalls and sounds good in my opinion. You can in many cases clone your favortie artists sounds with this, but dont expect it to be perfect.It isnt very good for recording at all, it can have static noise and reduces the overall quality of your sound.Its fun to practice with but I would depend on it for a live show.

I depend on this pedal for practice in my room and with music buddies to play with. And for that its been very reliable. The biggest drawback is having to cycle through with a bunch of taps to either of the 2 pedals to get to a certain sound you want, making it useless at a gig if you have more then 2 sounds in a song. However , for instance if all your doing is going from "clean to distortion" or something of a one two switch, then it can be done. Its only plastic so you dont want go stomping on this thing with your boots adn crush it. I have had mine for at least 4 years and I have enjoyed it very much and it remains 100% working condition as it was when I first got it.

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If you want a multi effect pedal that can be found for a fairly decent price nowadays and its fun for messing around with for room playing then give it a shot. There better units out there and this model is rather old compared to whats been coming out but untill I aquire something better I will continue to use it. I wish it had more effects. I also wish some of the effects on it could be stretched even further. It has helped me enjoy playing guitar everytime I play by myself and I do rely on it for creating new sounds to experiment with or to clone an artists sound so I can along. If it was stolen.... I would probaly just get a newer pedal thats out there, maybe give Digi-tech a try.

Insanely difficult to customize patches. 4 buttons is not enough. Most of the effects are not adequately customizeable.

Quiet. But limited.

Individual effects are mediocre. This is a toy, not a real guitar effect unit.

The sample rate is actually low on this unit. I really noticed this when I compared it with a really good multi-effects unit like the GT-6. Guitar amps tend to kill high-end, so you may not notice it at first.

As an example, you cannot set the rate of the chorus or flanger or delay continuously, but only select from 10 different pre-selected rates (most of which aren't realistically usable). These effects have distinct sweetspots that produce characteristic sounds. Whether the detuned tones of a particular chorus setting are audible or not is a function of rate*depth. The limited number of rate and depth settings mean that, in practice, there's only one usable chorus setting (maybe two or three, but you get the point).

Not exactly built like a tank. Unlike boss pedals which will probably survive as long as cockraoches survive, this one will probably survive for a few years at most.

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Much much better than the Digitech stomp boxes (which are comparable in price, but even more limited).

A nice way to get a sense of what various effects do, in a limited sort of way. But, if you buy this unit you should consider it nothing more than a stopping point along the way to buying real effects.

You should buy this unit with the knowledge that you will throw it away once you know enough about effects pedals to want to buy good ones.

I'm not crazy about devices that try to get many functions out of a minimal number of buttons, but this one makes a good job of it. I had to look up a couple of things in the manual, and after that everything was self-explanatory.

I have an old Kustom K-200 and a little Peavey club amp, and the 505 adds a nice element of fullness. The unit itself doesn't seem noisy, but when you add enough compression and gain then you start really hearing unwanted sympathetic vibrations in the guitar.
The distortion is easy to modulate, but it doesn't give you that juicy, throaty Clapton/Bluesbreakers sound.
If you turn any of the effects all the way up it sounds ridiculous. The equalizer isn't great, and the amp models appear to do very little. On the other hand the flange sounds very good, and some of the reverb settings are much better than the reverb on my amplifier.

Mine is already broken after very little use, but I got it used and I don't know how the first owner treated it.
If I were playing in public regularly I'd have a different effects box, mostly so I could get the distortion I want. In that situation I think that the 505 wouldn't be a bad backup.

The company responds promptly to e-mail, and they answer their phone. Then they tell you that there's a one-year warranty, and they quote you a price on labor. I'd be happier if the 505 had a lifetime warranty like a Skagen watch, but I really can't fault the company.

I play blues and a little classic rock, but mostly I'm just practicing by myself and waiting to get called as an emergency replacement for Joe Kubek or Tinsley Ellis. It's not stolen or lost, but it is broken, and if I can't fix it I might very well buy another one. If I ever get the chance to compare effects boxes I'd be very interested in the different distortion sounds. For the price and for my purposes it would be close to perfect if it were still working.

There will be a learning curve, so sit down with it and play around with the preset patches until you think it sounds better. I own both the 505 and 510, so I picked up pretty quick.

The 505 can do anything from clean with chorus/reverb/delay to smooth slight overdriven to all out smash your nuts with a hammer! Though the 505 is a great little processor, tuning, tweaking amp settings and a separate EQ may be required! The distortions are great although the Acoustic sim is a bit weak. The chorus, flange and reverbs are pretty good. The delay could be a bit stronger but thats why I use a separate delay unit. The EQ is setup a bit strange so I use my Boss GE-7 and turn off the EQ on the 505 entirely.

It is plastic, gig without backup at own risk! But other than that, the inner workings seem pretty solid.

Never needed

The Zoom 505 does alot of things from one little unit. I haven't tried anything but Zoom processors so I can't say it's better or inferior to anything else out there. Every processor has their selling points and their downsides. If you're just starting out and want a nice processor to toy around with. Do research by reading reviews here at Harmony-Central and go with your guts. Thats what I've done.

Once you've got your head around editing one patch, you can edit them all in the same way, so not much of a learning curve there. Manual is good as manuals go, but surely they're for putting to one side?!

This was my first effects unit (on to stomp boxes now), so I was running it through a '1st' guitar and amp set-up. This isn't a unit for running mid to high-end gear through, so assuming it's a starter effects box, the sound quality is ok, if a little too digital. It's not going to match your favourite artist's overdrive sound or WAH'ed up solo though. In terms of noise, again, the digital nature comes through and it has a tendencey to hiss.

I used it for bedroom / small room practice only, and it never failed me. A little battery hungry perhaps, but addition of power supply didn't alter noise levels or anything like that so use it where you can. Wouldn't gig with it personally (bigger sound systems will only show up the inefficiencies of it more).

Never had to deal with them. Heard good things about Zoom in general though.

This is really a beginners all-in-one effects unit, best suited to bedroom or practice room use. These days, it's a great cheap way to learn about different kinds of effects before you (inevitably) decide upon the higher quality effects you actually want in your set-up. Because of this assumption that it's a beginners piece of kit, I give it a good overall rating.

This is the original Zoom 505 so theres a little less features compared to what they got now.Very easy to use pedal as I'm not much of a tweaker guy I like playing instead of wasting time trying to get a sound.I think theres something very wrong when it takes weeks and months to get good sounds out of somethign you should be able to get something good the first day or 2,and from their tweak it precisely as you play to perfect the sound you want.

I use a Peavey Bandit 112 and Yamaha/Ibanez guitars and play mostly heavy/death metal but a decent amount of clean stuff too.It seems everyone doesnt like this pedal too much but I think it's better then what its given credit for.Although far from a great pedal it is usable for most situations,I've even used it in recording with great results.Now for live thats another story,its quite trebly and digital sounding and doesnt sound too good overall although I keep it as a backup now.For practice this little thing is handy,easy to use and small.The compressor/limiter is ok,drives are mostly crap(especially the fuzz and metal ones uhhh)but the overdrive and lead are ok,as for the distortion(dist)I think this is the only reason I keep it as this is a brutal distortion thats great for the stuff I play.One thing which I agree with everyone and its hard to deny this thing is noisy no doubt about it.Eq is not really good as its only a boost for certain areas and the noise gate is a joke.reverbs are pretty good for a cheap multi fx,especially the hall,rest of the effects are ok,nothing I would use other then to mess around(why do companies still make auto wahs in multi fx are beyond my comprehension)

Although it is only made of plastic I never had problems with it at all,I used it to gig in my early band days and it stood up well but I had many friends who had some and they all broke down so maybe I was lucky.I wouldnt be aggressive with it though.Buttons on the side to edit get sticky which is annoying but thats not a big deal.As for playing without a backup,not a good idea ever so always make sure you got something to cover your ass incase something goes bad.

Never needed it so no rating for customer support

Overall I don't think it's that great a pedal,but for someone just starting to play like when I got it and great sounds isn't a issue it's one of the only multi fx for this cheap and makes a good upgrade when you can't afford expensive amps or pedals.I use a Digitech Rp2000 now which is a great pedal to use,so I would think the Rp50 and Rp100 for the price would be pretty good probably better then the Zoom I got,but I haven't tried the new Zooms and I've heard they've improved considerably.As I've mentioned before,you can use these in band/live situations but I would highly recommend getting something better in that case or a better amp.For practice though Zoom pedals are great solutions if you don't feel like paying big bucks for Line 6,Boss or higher end Digitech

easy to use.
bobo lang talaga mga kano kaya nahihirapan.

all factroy settings are lousy.

EDIT THE PATCHES. do not use more than 2 fx per patch. it will eat up your tone and will make it hiss a lot. why do some people use all the fx at the same time?? thats crazy.

the distortion is bad
the auto wah sounds bad
the modulation fx are ok.
the tuner is ok
avoid using the amp sim

ANG PROBLEMA KASI SA IBA, PINAGHAHALO YUNG LAHAT NG FX SA ISANG SETTING. KAYA SOBRANG INGAY.

never failed on a gig. no back up.

PARE WAG LANG SADYANG SIRAIN, HINDI TO MASISIRA. DIBA??

never dealt with them

ive been playing for 13 years now. im into hard rock and metal. i only use the 505's tuner, chorus and flanger . i get my distortion sound from my boss ds 1 linked to a danelectro eq. the 505 is a very versatile gadget for its price, but i really hope you guys improve the distortion selection.

NO DIGITAL FX CAN MATCH THE SOUND OF AN ANALOG

The pedal is fairly easy to use once youve practiced the editing, getting a good sound takes quite a while. The only thing i like about it its that it has no preprogrammed patches that cannot be edited so if im in A1 i can co to F4 (the last patch) and edit it, i use this pedal mostly for the reverb and the modulation effects.

Here is my complain, this pedal is based on presets for everything, so you have no control for the chorus rate depth or anything at all, you have to stick to using 9 presets it has already programmed. The pedal is noisy has a lot of hiss and it seems to be conflicting with a distortion pedal i have because it creates digital noise (a disgusting blobbling sound ) when the dist is on instead of the normal hum, if you step on it tooo hard the input jacks become crakly , overal the sound is a piece of crap.

Even its made of plastic it has stood up to 6 years of practice and live gigs (didnt have the money to buy all the effects apart) so i guess it is realiable and i have gigged many many times without a backup even on the worst conditions (rain)

Never dealt with them

With the advent of other digital multifx like the Digitech Rp 50 and other, this unit is basically useless, and even the 505II is not worth the money ( the 20-bit depth is just not enough when for a little more you get 24 bit and much more efx), personally im dropping the whole multi fx and im going stomp pedal,( i already own a pedal board with a morley wah, an Ibanez Ts9, and a Boss Ds-1) but i bought it as my first pedal and it wasnt so bad .

It's pretty easy to use although getting a good sound out of it depends largely on the supporting equipment such as amp and axe.
The Pedal itself is a cheap practice unit, nothing more. If your serious about emulating Satch or Morse then you should look at an expensive DigiTech, they're the best.

The Pedal itself is noisy, I have used Boss and DigiTech pedals as well and the Zoom 505 makes too much noise. The distortions are absolute crap, if you have a stand alone Distortion pedal your better to not use the Zooms.

Never use the Zoom 505 in a gig man, it's a practice pedal. The buttons stick too so no you can't rely on it.

Never had the inclination.

I like Satch, Blues (any), Metal - Metallica etc, the Zoom dosn't cut it. I've been playing 25 years. I wouldn't buy a replacement. I bought it at the time because it was within my budget and I wanted to forge a style. I wish it had better distortion and less noise. It helps only because it beats a totally clean amp sound.
If you havn't bought it yet I'd suggest you don't bother, go and guy a digitech, anything but a Zoom 505.