Zoom 505

This unit is a breeze to program.

Let's keep in mind that this is an entry-level device. I play out regularly with my band, and use 2-combo amps, a pro pedalbaard with about $1,000 worth of boutique + vintage effects. I use Les Pauls, and a Telecaster. I use the 505 for headphone practicing, jamming with friends, and Through my Pignose 30 watt Hog rechargable amp outdoors (nothing like ripping leads out in the desert!). This unit is exceptional for wanking around like that, it is not a professional studio-quality, roadworthy pedal. I have hovever banged this unit around for a few years, and it works perfect, and it's easy on batteries. As far as sounds for the price, this unit cannot be beat, its a great little effects ubit for short dough. it has a great fuzz distortion; the modulation effects are great also. My rating is based on the fun-factor, this baby can't be beat for the money.

No problems for 3 years, take care of your equipment, and it usually takes care of you.

Never needed it.

As I said, for the cash, it's awesome, many cool Zoom sounds, some wacky stuff, and some great lead sounds. It also works great for home demos in a fix. Very small, low battery consumption (also runs off standard Boss 9V adapter), and it's a vrey fun unit, I use mine all the time for bedroom playing. Not a pro unit, but the cool Zoom vibe can be had cheap.

I have had this piece of kit for nearly 10 years.
Dead simple to use.

OK - you have to bear in mind the price.
It is OK but you do get a lot of hiss with some of the more "trebbley" distortion settings. The trick is to keep the levels low when you are programming it - dont go over 15.

Still going strong after 10 years.
Use it for gigging & home recording

As it is still going strong, have never used customer support, but good website.
pdf manual available from http://www.samsontech.com/products/relatedDocs/505.pdf
even though discontinued!!

Look, for #99 to get 10 years + good use is bloody fantastic.
Not the most sophisticated unit but great for basic effects.

easy to use. Editing patches is so easy.No need for manual.

i only use this with headphones, i only got the zoom 505 for 1 week (bought it 2nd hand). yeah, its noisy on some settings, especially with higher dist level. they're not really weak. use it with my marshall micro amp (sounds great!!!!),i dont know if this will sound good on bigger amp. You can get some of ur favorite artists (pantera, metallica), though i cant really get the sounds of some of my fave artists like richie kotzen..etc...(can anyone help me get RK's patch?). Distortion - too heavy, and when setting to lower gain it sounds fake/lame, other effects no problem...i dont use the wah here since i have a crybaby ...

i havent gig with it, since i only had this for 1 week,but hopefully soon. i dont have back up since this is my only guitar fx..This thing eats battery... better use an AC adaptor, i only have a boss adaptor 9V, 200 mA, but it works, im just worried that it might soon break the circuit in my pedal(hopefully not!!!). i've read that someone here uses the same brand of adaptor ( i just dont know if its 200 mA too..???)HEY U, BRO!!! IN CASE UR READING THIS, HOW LONG HAVE U BEEN USING YOUR BOSS ADAPTOR IN YOUR ZOOM? IS IT 200 mA TOO? DOES YOUR ZOOM STILL WORKING?

bought this thing second hand!!!!

i play blues, rock, ive been playing guitar for 9 yrs. i own a crybaby wah and marshall ms-2 (poor me!!) if it stolen or lost, i think ill buy single fx like boss.. i think the tuner here is pretty fine.. can get close. i hate about this is the noise when setting to higher level. I bought this one coz it cheap, its the only one i can afford, and with lots of effects, its a good choice!!!

Easy to get a good sound out of? -- Not likely....sound quality is lacking, but for rehearsal gear it is decent. Editing patches and saving them is a breeze, manual is quite good.

The sound quality is definitelu lacking. I can say that it has some useful chorus tones and compressor, reverb and delay patches but on the overall it sounds as cheap and plasticky as it looks.
The distortion settings are noisy and the noise gate not always catches much of it.
The really stupid thing is that the two decent effects (delay and reverb) are actually on the same effect patch so you cna use only one.
All I cna say is that if you want to jam on headphones in the night this thing is not bad but you won't be doing any serious jamming with it onstage or at rehearsal. WIth an amp it sounds better, with a tube amp it almost works...

For the first few years of use I could depend on it, after more extensive use the left button started to stick and became almost impossible to switch with. I tried to clean it by opening it up and almost laughed at the little amount of parts it has!
Since live switching with no lag can be done only by pressing the two pedals together (and one of mine sticks) I'd say it is not reliable at all, but will give it about 3 for its first 3 years of use.

Customer support is horrible. When the button started to stick I wanted to see if they'd be interested at looking into fixing it for me -- no response. After a second though I am glad they didn't cause now I have a realguitar rig.

I play metal. This pedal is not a bad at home excercise effect when you don't feel like blasting the real amp. It is cheap and almost disposable and at what I see them going second hand it might be worth owning so you can run reverbs for singing like I do with it sometimes.
There are also a few interesting computerized effects in it that might be of some value, the chorus and compressors are decent if ran thru an amp.

i think I paid 59.00 for this thing a couple of years back. the AC adapter was another 20.00. I had it hooked up to a small practice amp in my room. I took a hiatus from playing electric guitar for a couple of years and then got back in to it. so I started cheap..best bang for the buck. Editing patches is confusing at first but becomes second nature. the manual is basic but works. Doesnt tell you what the amp simulations are. firmware? no nothing about it. With some editing you can get a good sound out of it.

Edit the patches and you can get good tones. The thing that sux is that when you switch between patches, say heavy patch to clean, there is a moment of silence between the two. very annoying and low budget sounding. The pedal is great for what it goes for, but the sounds are very processed sounding. This is a great pedal for home practice or relaxed playing with the boys, I still use it for that. However I don't recommend it for gigs. You can get away with the sound quality, but the silence between patches kills me. plus I get a lot of feedback and a rediculous amount of hum when I use any of the heavier patches at high volume i.e. jamming at the studio.

depend onit? on a couple of different occasions I got a small amount of debri by the edit button and it stuck in place, rendering it unusable. i managed to get it free but i would hate for that to happen at a gig. also, the left/right pedals are too close together, all too often I go to hit one and accidentally hit the other, or hit both and turn it off. Playing barefoot may help...

dunno.

good for various styles...great for at home practicing...small amp or run headphones in to it. For anything else I suggest spending the money and buying a higher quality unit.

Sure its easy to use but it sounds like crap when your using it if you are thinking about buying this don't it is easy to use but sucks.

I'll give it a 9 for easy to use beacause of how easy it is but it sounds like crap.

My setup is a Gibson Les Paul through many boss pedals through the zoom pedal and then into a marshall half stack. The only reason i have this pedal is because someone gave it to me for christmas. IT REALLY SOUNDS BAD. i dont use it any more and i'm glad i dont. the effects are weak and the distortion just sucks.the distrotion well never sound good. The chorus is ok but thats it every thing sucks. when you try to make it sound like an acoustic it has way to much feed bad and a funny buzz

No. its flimsy and slides around on anything other than carpet. it ways about a half pound and wont stay in play every time i hit it im worried about breaking it. If i stomped it to hard it would break. i wouldn't use it for a gig but if i did i would deffintly have a backup.

dont even wanna try

I play almost anything and this pedal doesnt cover anything. I've been around long enough to know that this pedal stinks. I would not buy it again or buy it in the first place someone gave it to me. I HATE IT!!!! I wish it had tone and good sounding effects. I gets in the way. DONT BUY IT

It's super easy to use,and best of all you can go online and get about a thousand diff settings for it.
I didnt have or need a manual,but you can goto zoom website and they will send you a .pdf file of it.Never been upgraded not sure it you can upgrade it.

I use different setups all the time.
It is noisey on some of the patches.
The effects are totally changeable and they are strong.I use a peavey head with a crate stack.You can get the sound of almost any artist with this it just takes time and patience. the lead, accoustic, metal, Blues, there a few more in that category with those if you use them you get ,well at least I get static its low but its there and it drives me crazy

Its reliable ,,but whatever you do if you use the adapter make sure there is no battery in it,it caught my adapter on fire well it just melted it but I saw smoke

Never had to call but the web site rocks they are very helpfull

I play alot of diff styles. Nirvana, Metallica, G.N.R, Smashing pumpkins, and stuff like that and alot of older bands like Lynord Skynord and CCR and Bad Company.If it where stolen or lost I would just buy seperate pedals .only because I have alot of single pedals and they are easier to turn on a off ..instead of going thrue patches and then turning on .

The preset patches are crap so you will have to learn to edit them. Fortunately with the manual this is quite easy. The buttons at each side are fiddly, and having spent 5minutes cultivating a sound you like it is all too easy to lose it when you think it is saved.

Used with a fender strat and fender princeton II amp, I had no noise, but having used other (better quality) effects you realise how cheap this sounds.

After 6 months two of the buttons for editing and saving patches stuck(not the stomp pad buttons.) I managed to fix them but this should not happen in the first year. It has now bit the dust as I used a power adapter which was not made for this pedal, Correct power output, but it started to need a bit of a wiggle to power up, then in no time it stopped altogether. I believe that I look after my equipment well. I have owned all my other equipment for over 10 years, all gigged and in good condition.

Never needed them.

In no rush to buy another one.
If you want to play around with lots of effects without paying loads of money then these are worth a try.
If you want quality sounds, and long life out of your equipment avoid these cheap all-in-one's

It's very easy to use. You don't need to read the manual to edit patches. Maybe to understant features like 'bank hold' or 'direct load', and to understand the mnemonics appearing on the 2-digit display.

This unit was designed for beginners. And as such, do not expect killer sound from it. Like most units, factory presets sucks. I played this unit with a standard Fender Stratocaster and with a Tagima Zero (27 frets, 2 humbuckers).

WHAT'S BAD:
- The distortion tones are too heavy! If you set a low/mid gain, the distortions are lifeless. In high gain, they are too heavy and dirty. It's difficult to get good sound from them.

WHAT'S GOOD:
- Chorus! I like ZOOM's chorus. In fact, most modulation effects are ok. Delays and reverbs are limited, but they sound ok. It's easy to get a good clean sound from this unit. Even the wah is acceptable, considering that most multi-effect units have a TERRIBLE wah! Wah + distortion on this unit sucks. Clean wah is ok.
- ZNR (noise reduction). Works fine for me.

I'll give a 6 for this unit, because of bad distortion and lack of parameters to set EQ (see 'Overall Rating').

The plastic case may look fragile, but it's pretty strong. In 6 years, I never had any problems with this unit.

I contacted'em by e-mail, and they answered all my questions.

WHAT'S BAD:
- There are no parameters to each effect, only a "general level", example: on a compressor unit you may have 'threshold', 'attack' and 'level' controls. On 505, you only have C1 to C9 levels of compression.
- You cannot individualy set each band of the EQ. There are "presets" for equalization parameters. You have to try all of them until you find one that gets close to what you want. I think it's the WORST thing of this unit! :[

WHAT'S GOOD:
- Very low cost, for the bunch of effects you get.
- Great chorus.

It's a good unit to have at home to practice. For live and gig, only people that play VERY heavy music (doom, thrash) will like the distortion tones.

You can use it to colour your clean tones at a low price. Chorus is great, despite of the lack of parameters.

I recently sold mine to get a 9150 Valve DSP. As anyone would expect, the 9150 distortions and EQ are *WAY MUCH* better.

I'll give a 7, because of it's low price.

Pretty easy to use. Instructions were a bit more confusing than helpful when I first got it but I was new to programming. All in all it's really easy to use and within ten minutes I was doing fine having ignored the instructions and mainly used them for reference such as effects explanations/defenitions.

I've used this pedal with several amps. Older Yamaha with twin 12's, single 12 w/50 watts and most often with a Crate solid state head and half, now full stack. The compression is quite satisfying in my opinion. The more compression you use the more it compensates by rasing the input level. Auto wah is a great but the pedal wah is really disapointing. Don't use the limiter but it does what it should. The Distortions tend to suck BUT not with all amps. I use it with whatever distortion and the gain on 1. My amp heads gain takes on the voice of whatever gain I choose even the FUZZ. THEY SOUND AWSOME!!! Some amps when used as meant they sound digital and really like shit. My Yamaha and old Crate they sounded great on. Not digital at all. The modulation effects give you ZERO parameter control but don't sound digital at all on my main rig or any rig I've used them on for that matter. The Flanger is what mainly leaves me craving parameter controls but I guess the Phaser really does make up for that and when both used compenstates for it. The pedal pitch bend is decent but also quite lacking giving you bend down or dual octave bend which is really useless FOR ANYONE. The amp simulation and Zoom Noise Reduction are absolutely great. While the EQ could have been set up for specific bands it still does very well. It is a very unique simple parametric EQ basically. The Delay and reverbs are actually exceptional but again lack parameter controls. The room reverb is great as is the hall. The delay can give you a short echo, ping pong in stereo or on the 1 setting the EXACT delay sound Kirk Hammet used to use. My only MAJOR gripe is the output level. It's set at +4 db for going straight into a
P.A., mixing board exc. for recording. Most ppl are using it straight into an amp and when doing so it delivers an annoying amount of white noise. not enough to ruin your sound but enough to annoy you especially at higher volume levels. Pisses me off the noise reduction gives you perfectly clean sound but the output level is that of Pro Audio gear when it shouldn't be. It should be -10 db for going straight to an amp. This with a few other minor drawbacks earn it a seven.

Bought mine online but my friend at Sam Ash was shown how to sell them. THEY STOOD ON THEM! The guy I know infact jumped up and down on it while standing on it!!! Plastic but it's very solid. I have had mine for 7 years and stood on it the other day for the hell of it. WORKS FINE. Been chewed up in my car, crushed under furniture....you name it it's been through it! Spilled soda and a number of other beverages on it. It's very reliable and if absolutely was a must I'd gig without a backup but otherwise NO WAY WITH ANYTHING!

Never dealt with them till recently for a battery cover. Never got back to them cuz I'm sure they'd wnat 5 bux for one plus shipping which would be ridiculous.

Overall its a great pedal. The effects don't give you parameter control but there is enough of a variation that you can get the sound you need for basically any cover song. The distortion seems to perform differently with different rigs but typically sounds very shitty cuz it sounds digital. Sounds great though the way I found to use it as mentioned above. The white noise is just unacceptable so if I get the 505 2 as planned I better check it out in the store first. All in all it's a great pedal and will save you a FORTUNE in single pedals or even if you build analog pedals yourself as I am now getting into.
Beginner or Pro this unit still has a lot to offer you. Anyone who can't manage to get the sound they need from it is quite simply gear incompitant. But hey thats 70% of musicians/guitarists out there!