Zoom 505

OK, I think by now everyone knows how easy these things are to use. Beavis and Butthead could easily play like metallica or any of their metal idols.

I gotta say some of the distortions are a bit presumptuous. The blues sound really is a far cry from it's claim, and most of the other distortions you really have to F**K with to make em' sound better than average. But on the upside the "dt" setting on the distorttion combined with an EQ setting of around 15 allows my Hughe's and Kettner shake the walls. I believe it all depends on what amp your using. The 505 just sounds better in some amps than others. I also have to admit that some sounds create a shitload of hiss, which would be alright if the noisegate didn't make everything sound like shit! All in all for $240 Canadian(I live in Newfoundland, everything costs a mint!) you REALLY get what you pay for. The sounds are decent, and the price is better! You get over $2000.00 worth of effects for under $300.00, hey, sounds good nuf for me!

Ok this is where ZOOM's design department smoked some bad weed! Who the hell do you think is gonna bring a plastic peddle up on stage and expect it to survive, especially if you're into thrash or punk! I also bought the expression pedal to go with it(I paid $140 bucks for that too!) it's basically a plastic crybaby wannabe. Here's some good advice....DON'T BUY THE EXPRESSION PEDAL!!! Save yourself some later pain and buy a good crybaby(cause they sound sooo much better than a morely wah) and buy a guitar with a floyd rose or something, you'll get everything that the expression pedal offers you without having to baby some plastic box of shit. whats more you have to have a special stereo cord to connect from the FP01 expression pedal to the 505. The whole works hasn't broken on me yet but it will and when it does at that cheap a price I can at least buy something comparable or maybe by then Zoom will have made a metal version

Hey I deal with Griffith's guitar works in St. John's NF and they kick ass. As far as Zoom goes I've never had to deal with them directly so I can't comment.

Ok lets face it, if you're a beginner guitarist or ya don't have access to shitloads of money(like me) this thing is great. It even comes with a chromatic tuner and we all know how cool those things are! Yes I would buy it again with the exception of the expression pedal(sucks horse cocks!). It's just one of those pedals that are easy to learn the basics but when you really start to experiment with it the thing just becomes an amazing tool for beginners and veterans alike. Hey, multi-effects board are known to give all male guitarists serious stiffies

Simple as it gets.

OK lets be honest... the thing is 119 dollars! For what I'm using it for it works great. I have a Mesa Boogie MarkIII that I hate the reverb on and wish for some effects. The 505 has some good sounds. I use it mostly for adding reverb and chorus to my clean sounds which it does great. I wish the reverb had more adjustment but... The delay is good too. To me the distortion sounds suck. I have never liked distortion boxes anyway and love a good high gain amp. If you compair the distortion to my Mesa there's no way you would ever use it... which I won't. I didn't find it noisy as other did but that may be because I'm not using distortion.
So you get a good sounding Reverb, Flanger, Compressor, Noise gate, Delay, Phazer, Pitch shifter, and tuner for 120 dollars. GREAT!
If your just needing to fatten and candy coat your clean sound go for it. If you want great distortion buy a good tube amp.
Nuf Said

Don't know.... So far so good

Have not used it

Good little unit for adding some effects. SIMPLE

This is an update to my earlier post about the Zoom.
Yeah, really simple to use. Just dorking around with it in the store is enough to figure it out.

Here's where I mark it down. In general, all the effects are "ok" but they are very limited. You don't have manual control over any of them. The best you can do it just pick the one that suits you best. There are some effects that are pretty lame and useless, like the EQ, auto-step, chorus, compression, and limiter but I don't care for those. I just don't use them. Most of the distortions are have good tonal qualities but the noise and hiss is just too much. Acoustic, blues, and rhythm are pretty poor but metal, lead, and overdrive are ok. The built in noise gate does a little bit to cut back on the noise but it's still pretty bad. My biggest gripe is in the hiss and background noise it makes.

I don't think it will ever fail on me because my environment is gentle. I don't gig or perform. The most torture I'd give it is playing with my backyard garage band. I opened it up just to look inside and it's pretty empty and hollow. The button contacts don't look very sturdy so I wouldn't recommend any stomping on it.

Never had to deal with them, and I hope I never do.

I'm going to get separate pedals for all the effects that I like and slowly try to phase out the Zoom from my playing. It's a neat pedal because it has so much in one package and it's great for exploring sound. But you can get a lot better than this. If it weren't so damn noisy I wouldn't send this update.

Fabulous! Even if you are dumb as dirt the presets will hold you for a bit.Manual is good but you won't need it after a few minutes.lots of online resources.A monkey could make this sound good.

Great Distortion Compression Limiter Chorus Flanger Reverb Delay. Noise gate and Wah is lame

Plastic. Treat it gentle. Power and sound however is no fail. use at a gig as long as you don't have an iron foot Hey, for 120$ you can buy one all the time

I don't really know. I think Zoom has some report

All I ever want or need. I love it. it has added about 100 new deminsions to my music. Programed very easily.Best Value for money.THE BEST. PERIOD!!!!

Ultra easy to use. The manual tells all, but after a little time getting to know the unit you don't need it anymore. Up/Down patch selection with two footpedals. Patch editing is smooth and easy, but you can't do it with your foot.

Pretty good here. Zoom built in a noise reducer module that keeps the hiss out. Heavier distortions with a lot of gain and the ptach volume set too high cause a noisy feedback. The same feedback hit me when I used it through my '78 Mesa/Boogie studio 1x12 combo's effects loop, but I hear it has different reactions to the loops of different amps. Best bet is to use it between your guitar and amp. The auto-wah is a little sticky and takes a pretty hard hit to sweep, but by connecting an expressor pedal you can use it's pedal wah, which I haven't explored yet. The distortions are great, most notably the blues driver and lead distortion. The acoustic simulator is not much diffrent from running it clean. The metal distortion wasn't thrash enough butstill acceptable for my purposes. The phaser was more like a vibretto/tremolo than a rotary speaker. Either way I don't use it that much. I like the chorus, especially combined with the doubler, making a nice dual-shimmer touch to my clean stuff. I tred the flanger with a touch of distortion one day with my amp cranked and everyone was looking up to see if a jet was going over real low. 'nuff said. Zoom's step effect is certainly diffrent. Sort of an auto-appregiator, I haven't found much use for this, except as fills for long note-holds. The pitch-shifter is ok. I use it mostly as an octaver, but those of you who use harmonizers can probably do a lot more with it. I like the reverbs, but the delay could be a bit more versatile. This still hasn't stopped me from putting it to use, though.

I take it everywhere with me and it hasn't failed me yet. I do use an AC adaptor for it, though, since it drains a nine volt battery in 90-120 minutes, despite the manual's assurance that batteries last four hours. Don't stomp too hard on it, though, it has a plastic case.

Never dealt with them.

It has definitely helped me out. I love the little thing and would buy it again and again. Decent effects at a decent price. All my friends keep wanting to borrow it, too.

Editing Patches is easy and almost endless combinations of effects The manual will show you every thing you need to know

I noticed after I got it It was nothing like I expected it to be there wasn't a single effect that sounded good while using my wah at the same time (I use a Crybaby it could sound better using a diffrent pedal?) The Chours was the worst effect on it The phaser was good and the Flanger was good also but for a $119 it wasn't worth it

The olny reason I submitted this was to save some body thier money It sounded like such a great pedal but i got rid of it in 2 weeks

Very easy to use. I really like the different categories of Distortion with the Gain. Editing the patches is very easy. You can even move the patch like lets say, from A2 to E3 without any problems. The manual is useful, but after 10 minutes, you don't need it anymore

Noisy ? Not really, I didn't plugged mine in the effect loop. The sound of every effects in that box sounds really great. For $120 bucks, we would think that it would be cheap sounds that would come out of there, but not, really professional. But I must say I only played with it in my living room,I haven't jam with it yet.

Plastic !!! Too bad they didn't make it in metal. Just be careful, it's worth to have it.

Never had to called them.

I would buy it again and again and again and again...... What I love the most ? 1) Professional sound. 2) 24 patches, wow ! 3) I play Blues/Rock/Country and that it what I always dreamed about.

Very easy. Sounds great direct into a board for recording. Editing patches, though limited is very easy and quick. Manuals okay, but you hardly need it after a few minutes.

I use it through a board for direct recording. For that it is clean, precise, and very, very quiet for the most part. The feal FX sounds are useless, but the basic overdrive and chorus and reverb are fine for recording. Echo is disappointing as I couldn't get a simple Rockabilly slap-back because of too many regenerations.

Seems fine.

E-mailed the company on the Net and they sent personal answer next day.

I love it for recording. It's simple and doesn't take a lot of time to find the right sounds. I use it mostly for the overdrive and chorus with reverb features. Doubling is pretty good, too. BUT, I would not use it for live amp work. It is just too plain noisy for that. It doesn't make sense to me but there it is. I tried the effects loop and everything and it just does not work somehow without mucho hiss. Again, great for recording or practice.

Well, straight out of the box the Zoom 505 is a breeze to use. You can plug straight into the amp or go through the effects loop, and once you turn it on, fun for hours. I would recommend plugging into the effects loop as in my normal signal chain it made tone of noise when in bypass. The presets are good and cover all ranges of music, and are a good starting point for creating your own patches. Editing is a breeze and can be done quickly, the only downside is that the volume of the patches can only be changed through the Level parameter as opposed to through a standard volume knob which would be nice. The volumes on the patches vary incredibly, so when you first turn it on don't crank your amp up. For some odd reason, the fuzz patches are about 600 times louder than the normal distortion patches. I never got a manual, but even without one you can use the unit quite easily.

The unit can be noisy when using distortions, but the noise gate can easily take care of that. Overall, the unit provides a good look at all the different types of effects and their uses in music. I wouldn't say that any of the effects are incredible, but they are all reasonably good and can be used in recording and performing situations. Overall, I found that you have to spend some tweaking the unit to get a good sound, especially when using distortions. The unit can sound cold and anemic, but with some good tweaking it can sound incredibly good. The distortions are wide ranging and I've gotten incredible sounds out of them. The flangers and phasers are limited, but work well. The chorus, reverbs, and delays are a blast to work with, but the delay setting are pretty limited. Overall, this unit can give you a great sound if you are willing to spend the time working with it.

I've used it in concert situations and recording, and it's held up fine. Even though, if you tour regurlaly, get a back up for this unit was not meant for constant stomping. The battery life is short (4 hours), so having an AC Adapter is a good idea. I use it alot, but I admit I don't smash on it like I do my wah-wah and Big Muff.

No idea, haven't dealy with ZOOM yet.

This machine is a great introduction into the world of effects. It works well for all situations, and can be extremely handy when working with a four track or recorder. I've used it for some recording sessions and it's worked like a champ, and my friends have been amazed. It sounds much fuller than my amp distortion, and I've programmed a good amount of nifty patches that cover all my musical desires. I don't know of I would buy it again because I like to move on, but I think I'll always keep it around for those days that I sit around and record ideas onto my four track. Once you get passed the programming stages, it will aid you in your musical endevours. The only thing you may be annoyed by is that you will find yourself bending over and getting into the Edit mode very often to change the level of each different patch.

It's certainly harder to operate than a volume pedal but then, you get somewhat more effects. Seriously, edit and save are mastered in a matter of seconds and the manual is clear enough on how to joggle with the knobs for the more complex functions. You definitly need it to know what is what when it comes to parameters, you make no wonder with a 3 letters display.

At low level in the shop, in a sound proof cabin or on headphones it's ok but once home i got a bad surprise : it has a permanent backgroud blow noise even in bypass It's a Zoom so it sounds like a Zoom : synthetic and the choice of parameters per effect is quite basic but remember the price tag!!!

It's all plastic so what you gain (or actually loose) in weight, you loose in physical resistance. I won't use it on a gig anyway due to the sound quality and versatility but if you play in a band that has an extensive stage show (ie lots of run and jump), definitly DON'T!!! But the electronic should be ok.

I bought it to replace my Rockman soloist that just died and for that use (practice amp on headphones) it's great. It's good enough to go jamming around without a van full of gear. And it's certainly a excelent start for a beginner with a limited budget. But if it's versatility and creativity you're looking for, you're gonna have to spend "mo'mony man".