Zoom GFX-707

The use of pot style knobs for digital patch editing was a great idea. They packed a lot of functionality into the buttons, which can be confusing. I think the mappings make sense, but it will take a little while to grok it all. This was clearly a design decision to keep cost down. Nothing wrong with that. The large LED display is a real plus. Again, not a cool expensive LCD but functional and well used.

When evaluating this unit, you've got to remember the price range that it sits in. Personally, I've added some more expensive equipment since purcahsing it, but still use some functions on the 707 anyway because they work so well.

There are a huge variety of distortion sounds which vary in quality. Overall, there seems to be some 'similarness' of tone across all of them. You can definitely tell they're 'digital' but many of them sound good for digital distortions. You can tweak them to get some pretty good fuzz and aggressive industrial sounds. If you're used to a tube amp or POD or serious amp modeller they are not going to sound great even with tweaking because they just are not in that league (in fact they will probably sound terrible, if you're really a purist :). But overall, for a cheap digital multifx this unit probably has the best distortions I've heard in that class.

One distortion that deserves special note is the 'Power Drive'. It is basically a tube screamer rip off and can be used like a tube screamer. If you're purist, this probably won't cut it (but if you're a purist you're not interested in this unit anyway) but if you don't mind it sounding kind of unique (a plus IMHO), this module can be used as a TS replacement. I still use the Power Drive as a Cheapass tube screamer and it works very well for me in this way. That alone makes the unit worthwhile considering the cost!

The cabinet/amp sims are really not on par with POD or V-AMP, but are good enough that you could do demos and direct recording without additional equipment. They're also useful when using the 707 as a headphone amp so they are a definite plus even if they're not high end tonewise.

Modulation stuff is fantastic. In spite of owning more expensive gear, the 707 Phaser still sounds amazing. IMHO, it alone is worth the price of admission, it smokes my more expensive Boss' phaser. The chorus can also be made to sound very good. These FX can hold a candle to more expensive units. A very pleasant surprise for a box this cheap.

Delay effects are very good. I like digital delays and this one works well. Reverb is servicable.

Acoustic Sim is surprisingly good.

Pitch shifting, etc, are usable in a pinch but sound 'cheap'. I personally don't care much for these FX anyway. They are useful for messing with to understand these FX if you later go for a more pricey unit but you will definitely not want to base your main tone on the 707 shifter. :)

The compressor is useless.

I'm not a huge wah fan, so I think this wah sounds fine. Some people insist on comparing it to dedicated wahs that cost as much or more than this entire unit (again, think multifx). I still use the Wah on it even though I have more expensive gear now for most of the other functions of the 707 but I don't have a dedicated wah and am not expecting to anytime soon. So IMHO, the wah is a real plus. The travel of the foot pedal is very short so, if you're into wah you will defnitely buy a separate one eventually.

As many have mentioned with the Noise Reduction it is *DEAD* quiet. I have a POD, ADA MP-1, Digitech GSP5, BOSS VF-1, and Behringer UltraFex II. This is literally the quietest unit of the bunch in spite of being the least expensive. Amazingly low noise output.

It seems transparent enough to me and the spec on the D/A converters are very good for an inexpensive unit. I've seen other reviews here complaining about this, but the unit I have is definitely not a tone sucker.

Overall, for a unit this cheap, I think the sound quality is really very good when compared to other units in this price range (that's waht my numeric rating is based on, compared to my VF1 or POD, this unit would be like a 5 or 6). Like I said, the Power Drive and Phaser are enough to make me want to keep the unit indefinitely in spite of owning more expensive stuff now.

I've had it several years and it has been very reliable. I'd never even consider gigging with it, though. It's plastic. I'm giving it a 7 for that reason. Considering the cost I understand why they did this.

Never Needed. They do have a PDF manual on-line which I think is a great thing. I wish Roland would do this.

I think this unit is fantastic for what it is: A sweet, compact multi-fx unit with tons of practical features geared toward practice.
You could really use this on the road as a private guitar workstation (even more so, the 707II with it's smart card ability).

If you're looking for a cheap supertone box, the low end of the amp modeller market is probably more worthwhile: Behringer VAMP2, Genesis1, JStation.

The 707 really is an all-in-one box for the beginner. Even after several years on the market, there still is no other unit (except for the newly released 707II) that is so well suited toward covering every base for private play/practice:

MultiFX
Headphone Amp
Speaker/Direct Recording Device
Drum Machine
Chromatic Tuner
Aux IN Capability
Sampler/Phrase Trainer

And it even sounds good! :)

When you move on to more expensive gear the 707 will likely still provide a few tones so great you'll want to keep it to play around with or for private practice.

I really genuinely wish there had been something like this available when I was truly a beginner. The FX are good enough that you can learn all the ins and outs of the different FX types, the tone is good enough for beginner recording or making a cheap practice amp sound much better, the sampler can be used for copping licks, it's a headphone amp, and it can tune you up. Oh yeah and there's a drum machine!! I would have killed for a drum machine as a beginner, parcticing with a solid rhythm will really improve your playing and timing.

Anyway this unit is highly recommended and an excellent value considering the inexpensive price tag. If you need something that can do it all and really have limited means, this thing is just the best.

Needs working at to set up the sounds your after , very limited to changing at pace though you can swap around to align the effects , not good for daylight playing due to LED display and sunlight not getting on too well together. On saying that for what it is it dose the job for recording or silent practice.
7 for ease use as it needs to worked on .

I cant believ how many people have slagged this unit off for sound quality ? Its a multi effect pedal for gods sake you just dont plug it in and hey presto thats the sound you want , it is very adjustable you can get all sorts of sounds out of it from utter crap to realy nice ,why the hell do people fork out to buy it if they didnt like it ???? I have an idea they are probably new to guitar playing and have to buy all the toys thinking they will sound like "Gary guitar god". Well take a reality check and play it before you buy it, dont just walk in to the shop and say "duh give me that one dude " and walk out if you are new to playing and too shy to play it in the shop ask the sales man to demo it for you these are not penny things to buy then not like ,dont listen to these guys who say it sounds crap try it your self first , it sounds good for what it is and considering the ammount of effects and mixing at that it is a bargain ( only if you can use it of course )overall for home recording , practice it well up to the job. it is worthy 8 sound quality

I personaly would not use this on the road its not what it is for keep it in the house or in the van for when your bored or want to record to tape direct.
its never died on me in a good few years so 10

what for it still works?

this should be able to cover any style sound your after . If it cant you dont know what your doing. its cheaper than nearly all the other multi fx around and dose what it dose very well . I didnt compare it to others there was no need too this is one unit that is not for gigging with. it is what it is and it is a good thing , even if you use just 2 effects out of it such as reverb and echo it works out at good value

with a large LED display and three knobs for the settings of the effects, it's relatively easy to use. oh! and the effects you're tweaking with flashes on the display. neat.

well, for my distorted tone... i use distortion 2 always, with compression to add sustain. the modulation effects are cool too. i always use chorus (standard) for my clean tones. makes my guitar sound like a keyboard. :)

the delay is pretty nice too.

this is my only rig. nuf said.

my input jacks have constantly bugged me. but there's nothing like some personal touch to make them work again.

very good gfx if u ask me.

Pretty easy to set up actually...didnt take me long and the manual was good.

Ok...sound quality is crap like most people will say. I mainly only like this thing anymore to give me a cheap alternative to more expensive stomp boxes. The ring modulation is good and i do like its ping pong delay. Its terrible when it comes to the guitar signal. It truly degrades it to absoulte crap sound. Set to bypass its ok...doesnt sound as crappy. I will go along with the noise reduction...not half bad.

The things jacks break left and right. It really wasnt a problem for me to go in and solder the loose connections though. I really spend more time kicking it around so that it will work then i do using it.

never used it

Like before mentioned, the zoom 707 is now my backup for any effect that i may need that i dont have in a stomp box. It dinky plastic and the jacks suck. It did have a good variety of effects to choose from. I've never used the distortion...it plain sucks. This pedal is good if you ant your music to sound digitally harsh...otherwise search elsewhere or buy used and at your own risk.

This machine did take me a while to get to grips with. It was my first ever fx pedal and was recommended to me by my guitar teacher. The preset fx are good and bad. Some of them are absolutely dire. There are a couple of good ones, i like the Step effect a lot, and wind is good for an atmospheric kinda sound. The manual is good, it does show you what to do, easily, but not condescendingly. My unit has never been upgraded, though I did try to run it with a Boss OD1..... never again.

I use this with an epiphone nighthawk into a Marshall 80 watt transistor amp. The distortion thing on this machine is CRAP. ABSOLUTELY AWFUL! don't rely on this distortion cos you cannot make out notes, its just one big horrific noise. The ZNR on this baby does work for me, I dont have any problems with noise unless I use some of my custom fx involving heavy distoriton and their wah.

One thing you must hear about this product is that it sounds different with different amps. Marshall sounds ok with it, but Peavey is dodgy as hell.

I am influenced by radiohead massively. Now if you have ever seen jonny greenwoods and ed o briens setups you will know that the gfx 707 is laughable compared to it.

i play lead guitar in my band, and i like to think that lead guitar adds atmosphere and counter melodies... i dont use the distortion much, but thats because its SHIT! i cant bring that home to ya more!

also its very dodgy if u try to combine it with stomp boxes. Five second sampler?!?!? hardly even f**king worth it

This is the dodgiest machine in the world. Do not depend on this. It is temperamental, at times I play live with it and i like the sound. I practiced last nite with my band and it sounded pretty reasonable! but tehn i played a gig a week ago and it sounded shite! The output jack is dodgy, but then i have had it for about two years, so wear and tear on an initially cheap thing is bound to take its toll


I do, but shouldn't play with this and no backup at gigs. it has backfired dramatically on me before. The bypass thing is ridiculous to try and get both pedals down simultaneously.

nope

i play indie rock /alternative music similar to radiohead coldplay, muse.

i have been playing guitar for 3 years, adn this is my first guitar fx pedal. Its great as a starter, but if ur gonna be giging then dont get it!

If it were stolen, I may actually consider getting it again as its so expensive to get all of the little fx which it offers at no significantly greater quality.

there was nothing to love about it, but i hated the distortion! and the presets!

It does, however, certainly help me to make muisic and does not hinder at all.

A bit fiddly at first but u can get about any half assed effect out of it and thats the problem!!

Crap

No the input sockets loose after 3mths and it basically sucks because i have to tape the lead at an angle on the floor! and if isnt bad enough i have to tape the whole thing as well in case it moves so i have a large heap of black tape which looks and sounds like shit dont buy it......!!!!

could be bothered in lerning how to use a phone the pedal took so long to master that i forgotton how to dial

its black cheap as pedals go and of course it sucks! You do not want this! im off now for some therapy

Quite tricky to use at first - you have to invest a couple of hours learning how all the features work. Editing patches is ok, there are so many sounds and options that if you work at it you can get the sound you want. Because of all the stuff you can do with it you tend to come up with what you think are really clever things to do live (like at the end of a gig I would use the foot pedal to record the last phrase of a song and then walk off stage with it on endless repeat next to the amp feeding back) This worked a couple of times but generally trying to do clever things with it live is pretty tricky. Manual was complicated but then I think this pedal is complicated. The expession pedal is also a waste of time live - again its clever what you can do with it but its not practical, I tried using it as a volume control but it weakened the sound when not on full volume. In my opinion, the best thing going for multi-effects is the built in tuner, unfortunately the one on this board isn't that great - its really difficult to get the note to sit in the middle light, no matter how minute you adjust your guitar it seems to tell you the note is either flat or sharp.

95% of the preset sounds are bad - there's always too much reverb and other 1980's effects which you could never use straight off live - you'd look really bad. I play a telecaster through a 1982 Fender Concert. Basically my set up at the moment is as follows: I have a foot switch for my amp for either clean or distorted, then I've got this pedal - to set up a patch I basically went through all the parameters so that there was nothing on the patch and then built a patch up for the effect I wanted. At the moment I've got a patch with just a bit of compression on it and some tone changes to add to my basic clean sound when I want it; then I've got another patch with a tiny bit of chorus and other stuff really subtely; my next patch is a standard flanger - I think this is very good indeed (once you fix it to how you like it); and finally I use the auto wah - I think the auto wah is extremely good - we've used it in a couple of songs and it really stands out and makes the songs, I don't know if you can get an auto wah on its own??? so this is a really good effect. These are all the effects I use. I've tried creating a distortion effect to give my amp a bit more edge than it comes with on its own, but i just can't find anything classy enough to have confidence using. Another problem with this pedal is that there is a slight delay switching to some of the effects - depending on the type of music you play this can be deadly!!! Those extra milliseconds can make you look like a real amateur if people notice the delay on something. The other major problem is that I wanted to set up some empty patches which would just work as a bypass to my amp (ie. you tap the switch to go to the patch as another way of bypassing to the amp) the problem with this is that even though you try to put all the effects to zero the resulting patch doesn't sound like bypass, there's still something there. I thought there must be of way of doing this but I just couldn't find it. Regarding the amp simulators, I flirted with the idea of doing away with an amp and just relying on these because they seem quite good (no more heavy equipment!!!) however, again I couldn't get the thing to work in practice and sound good enough for me to put faith in this live. So, overall some good sounds but some real problems as well.

Ok this is my real gripe with this pedal - its stopped working on me!! At my last gig it just turned itself off and on again in the middle of a song!!! unbelievable - i thought it might be the adapter I was using but I changed this at last rehearsal and its still happening. I've got another gig at the weekend and have no idea what I'm gonna do.

I've had this pedal for almost 2 years and now its broke. Even if yours works though there are still other issues - the thing doesn't come with an adapter so you have to go and buy one. The adapter itself plugs in right next to your guitar lead - I had quite a bulky multi headed adapter and the other ends which weren't in use made contact with the metal of the guitar lead so I had to cover them all in insulation tap to stop interference! Also, a baby hamster could pull the adapter out the back of the board, if you're jumping around the stage slamming your foot on the pedals you better be careful it doesn't unplug itself. The other BIG problem I have faced is the bypass issue I mentioned above - the only effective way I found of bypassing the pedal was to press both switches at the same time - this is extremely difficult in a live setting (you have to make sure you press both at exactly the same time or you switch up or down an effect) when I first started using this board I was really worried about doing this - a couple of times I would go into one of the ridiculous effect patches instead of clean from my amp (some of our live recordings are actually hilarious because of this mistake) My solution was to copy the same patch in 5 positons in a row so that at least I would switch to the same patch my mistake - how naff is that?!

i took the back of the board to fix it myself.... then put it straight back on - I can't be bothered to have it fixed, i am going back to single effect pedals

This pedal is only really good for cramming just about everything there is into one cheap box. If you're new to effects its a good way to learn how to use and create them. The problem is that it is basically an entry level pedal which thinks its a grown up. On paper you'd think it was all you ever needed when in practice you just can't rely on it. Instead of putting so much into one pedal the designers should have concentrated more on fixing the little glitches which all of a sudden become really big when your're on stage. I'd say it would make a useful addition when recording and messing about at home (it has got some good sounds on it and does allow for lots of experimentation of effects) The only reason I've used it for so long really is because of the auto wah sound which I'm not sure how I can replicate without it.

The presets are easy to browse through and ajustment is pretty easy. If the screen was a bit more advanced (more lines of text etc instead of looking like a calculatr) it would be easier to understand some of it. The maual is pretty basic, and sometimes a bit hard to understand, but ok really.

Ok I should say that this is very much entry level stuff. It's not at all bac though. I have been using it with my dad's Marshall Park 50watt amp. It sounds ok with my Washburn Maverick.
Within the next few days, I'm upgrading myself to a Gibson Les Paul and a Roland VGA-7, so this is behind me to an extent, but if you're starting out this is good- especially if you're into metal/grunge.
Most of the sounds are metal/grunge orientated, which ain't my thing really. They are all pretty good quality though. The auto wah is too quiet really, the compressed clean sound is way too loud, as is the overdrive. Otherwise, no real complaints.

It's relaible- had no problems with it at all. It's pretty solid build-wise too.

Never had to go there

I'm into rock, nothing heavy (think Manics/James/Delirious?/Turin Brakes) so this doesn't match me too well, although some of the "softer" distortions are ok for me (crunch, solid).
I've been playing guitar for about 4/5 years. I'm also a pianist, and have a Kurzweil PC-88, plus a Yamaha RM1x. Also a Roland VS1680-based home studio setup.

If you can't figure this thing out without the manual then you don't deserve to be alive. That said, a quick read of the manual does help... Editing patches is a learning curve but once you get to grips with all the parameters you can start taking your sound apart. Manual is ok, translated and helpful enough.

I use this with a Dean EVO DN76 Doubleneck, Standard tele through the Zoom 707 into Marshall amps. ZNR does actually work sometimes, gets noisy when low on battery power! Effects are variable but there are some great ones. The Van Halen, when tweaked correctly is awesome, chorus is pretty good too and i like the overdrive, Auto-Pan is an interesting one to play with. Factory presets are pretty rubbish to be honest but hey, its a multi effects, what do u expect?? That's why they have built in custom features to make your own. Even the P-Wah can be hashed into a respectable even good sounding Wah wah. Just be patient! I play mostly rock>metal but anything from foofighters, grunge, to heavy as f*k metal can be achieved once you take the time to sit down with this baby.

Hasn't done anything bad to me yet. Not sure about gigging- there's no way of turning it off so if you play through a loop then you'll get what ever patch you're on in with your sound. I created a clean patch as my opener so I could use other boxes without screwing up my sound. Would gig if it had a power pack!

Never had to but sure they're good

Suits many kinds of music especially classic, 70's, 80's, 90's rock/metal. I've been playing for about two years. If it were to bust, spontaneously combust, melt etc. I would probably buy something like the Boss GT's- but this does me fine at the mo. I love the variety of sounds and the endless changes u can make. I wish you could turn it off but overall it is pretty darn good for begginner up to live performing.

not bad.....could be better. it took me a long time to finally get a really good distortion sound out of it but other than that its fairly easy to use if u know a bit about making sounds and stuff

most of the preset sounds really suck. when i listen to the distorion from the pedal it just doesnt seem very deep sounding, just kinda crappy. if u want a good sounds you have to really mess around with it for a while to get something worth playing with

havn't had a problem yet and i even go really hard on it. ive had it for a while and my friends all stomp around on it (wearing commando boots) and its fine. i got it about 6 months ago and nothin yet

nothin

i play a lot of styles ranging from punk and ska to metal and the beatles. overall not a bad pedal although make sure you've tried every other pedal in the store before u settle with this one.