Zoom 503 Amp Simulator

I bought the pedal for ZAR500 (USD75), got home and had all my patches programmed in about 2 hours (I use mainly three banks). I found it fairly easy to get the sound I wanted. My three banks are close to R.Sambora, R.Blackmore and the famous Metallica grind. The latter is particularly close to the real thing and Enter Sandman is in the bag. The manual is well written, but the layout is horrible and the fonts are too small for ease.

I use the unit with a Marshall V40, a Peavey Special 130 or directly into the desk and it sounds pretty cool. You can hear the noise creeping in as the sound decays, but the ZNR kicks in pretty efficiently. I do not think the effects are weak, but the low frequencies sound boomy on the chorus sounds(without distortion); with distortion there is not enough bass, though this can be sorted out by lowering the mids and highs on the patch. My guitars are Ibanez Roadstar, Ibanez Les Paul and Ibanez Gibson Standard and I am happy with the end result. I have used the unit with a Strat but it sounds horrible, but then A Strat always sounds horrible unless driven through a cohort of effects.

I have been using the unit for six months now on pretty rough heavy metal stages and have had no accidents, though I am always subconsciously aware of the featherweight construction and have the feeling that sooner or later it will crack under a boot. My only backup is the built in drive of my amps and have never had to use it.

Have not dealt with the company and do not feel upgrades are necessary fo this price; If I need upgrades I would rather add another unit to the board.

I play heavy metal and hard rock and have no problem with matching the patches to the style. I own a RP-10, Boss effects, Rockman Distortion Generator and a Russian Wah. My main sound unit is the Zoom, though. The most unattractive feature is the repetitive pressing of the pedal to get to the desired patch. There is also this small gap between switching patches, but it is nowhere as wide as the RP-10's. A piece of advice - do not use the unit before other distortion or modulator effects eccept for delay - sounds like you are playing in a large bathroom!

Instruction manual isn't bad, but is printed on a paper which you have to unfold (booklet form would have been better) plus the printing is so small you almost need a magnifying glass to read it. Editing, storing, and switching patches is not too hard. Doesn't take long to get it going when you use it the first time.

Fender Srat plus into Crate G-60. This doesn't sound too good through an amp; the distortion and effects are much weaker. However, this works great as a headphone amp and for direct recording. The distortion sounds are ok, but not great (MESA BOOGIE sounds best to me), the chorus sucks, reverb is ok. But the flanging is excellent, especially on clean patches. The amp simulations don't really sound much like the amps they are supposed to imitate in my opinion. The best sounds from this are the clean sounds. 3 clean simulations are available: Fender, Roland Jazz Chorus, and just Clean. I think Clean is best, especially with the flanging effect. Overall, this is good for headphone practice or direct recording but not through an amp.

Made of cheap plastic; switches are suspect as are the jacks. No I would not gig with this, with or without a backup. Step on it hard or drop it and it would most likely break.

nope have not dealt with them

I play classic rock. This is only a fair pedal, too cheaply made and no good through an amp. I like the Zoom 504 Acoustic pedal and 505, that is why I bought this. Don't expect a VOX AC30 or Marshall stack from the 503. Would not buy it again if lost or stolen. The clean sounds are best and flanging is the best effect. Good for practice through headphones or direct recording only. Not bad to operate and edit.

First off, ZOOM's 2 stomp, little edit button thing has got to go. I can use it, and since I dont breathe from my mouth it didn't take long to figure out how to edit, but really....this could have been approached much better. Scrolling through menus is great in Windows, but a few knobs sure would help this one.

I tend to agree with the prevailing clean good/dirty bad sentiment on this page. The clean sounds do precisely what I wanted when I bought this, which was to record direct to four track without running mics to my combo and destroying close relationships. It seems to play nicely with other boxes, but this should definitely be placed last (as you would, say, a real amplifier). The distortions dont sound bad, necessarily, but sho dont sound like Marshalls I've ever heard. Decent efx if you're short on real ones, but dont expect much variation. No chance to run this out of my amp yet, but Ive heard its kinda pointless.

Im not a big destroyer of equipment, but I feel as if I accidentally step on this in the dark, it would break in half. Not at all the solid feeling of my Boss or even my Ibanez potato-bug boxes. And it seems to like the volts so keep an AC adaptor handy. Suspect jacks, as well. ZOOM stuff just has an air of cheapitude about it.

Never dealt with ZOOM. Ugly manual, as well. Use your brain.

I got a good deal on this one and wanted an amp sim for recording and headphone-practices and thats what I got. There are many, many adjustments I would make here (fix the distortion, rethink controls, higher grade plastic housing, better jacks, etc. etc.). But really...I paid $85 and it does the job I ask of it. Or, I could've paid 3 times as much for a Sans-Amp. A good amp sim on a budget, but realise that more money invested will result in a higher quality effect (not necessarily the case in other effects boxes.)

I've used various processors i must say this is one area where the 503 really excells. If you're a beginner a quick glance at the manual(which is very good by the way) and youll be editing in no time. If your experienced with multi-effect processers you probably wont even need the manual to get this bad boy up and running.

Now any idiot has probably figured out that this little box isnt gonna sound exactly like a bunch of marshalls and fenders. But that doesnt mean it doesnt sound good. So as long as you dont buy the 503 expecting to get a 5150 and a fender twin in the same box at that low of price you shouldnt be dissapointed. First the clean sounds. The 503 offers 3 different clean amp models, a fender, roland and the other one i cant remember. My favourite out of the 3 is the fender, I would say the the clean sounds on this unit are the best thing about it. It has 6 dirty amps too, ranging from a crunchy fender to a very distorted peavey. While the distortion is not the best a couple of them are useable in a home environment. The 503 also includes different cabinets and mike posistions. Tweaking these will yield a quite a few different sounds. And to top it off they've included some mediocre effects, reverb, and delay. Overall this is a good unit if its used at home just to practise.

Ive had the 503 for over a year and ive never taken it out of my house and i probably never will. It weighs about half a pound and is made of plastic. But at home it has always worked for me.

N/A
Never delt with them.

Overall it is a good unit, i just use it at home for direct recording and it sounds alright. I dont like the reverb and effects, i use another processer for that. If your looking for a processor to practice with at home i suggest you pick one up.

This is a follow up.

I reviewed this unit almost a year ago, I think, when I was looking for an amp simulator of some kind to go direct to a board for my church's music. I ended by saying we went with the more expensive POD from Line 6, which has been wonderful.

I have recently wanted something for home recording, and thought I'd give this thing another shot. I only wanted it to be able to give a decent clean sound and some decent distorted sounds. I didn't even care about specific "amp models" (i.e. Boogie, Marshall, Fender).

I tested this out at the store with my Tascam Porta02 and an American Standard Fat Strat (humbucker in bridge position). First of all, to be positive, the "Fender" clean sounds were fantastic, even better than I remembered, even better than the Tech 21 Sansamp GT-2 that I'm going to end up getting. Sounds acceptably tube-like. The modulations are good, the cabinet and miking positions change the tone, the reverbs are good.

So if that's all you wanted, it would work fine. But wouldn't you think an Amp Simulator would do an acceptable job with distorted sounds, too? ACCEPTABLE? No way. This is what I remembered from trying it last time, too. They all sound cheesy, like you're playing your guitar directly into your home stereo. With varying degrees of gain, of course. I tweaked and tweaked for about 45 minutes, and could get nothing I thought was close to acceptable. I just don't understand how this gets good reviews in this area. It sounds no better than when I have tried running a Tubescreamer direct into the four track recorder. Fuzzy and buzzy. I even tried headphones direct out from the unit, bypassing the Tascam. No better. I tried the Fender clean sound with a Danelectro Daddy-O overdrive in front of the box. No better.

I wasn't expecting the POD's quality, but I wanted at least a couple usable distortion sounds. Test this thing out yourself before buying, PLEASE!

This is a follow up.

This is another entry in the Zoom 500 series. It provides amp simulation models for a variety of amps including, Marshall, Fender, Peavey, Roland, and Mesa Boogie. Editing patches is straightforward. If you want a decent copy of the manual (ie readable) download it from Zoom's website.

I use this unit both as a headphone amp and to drive a Marshall VSR30 or Mesa Boobie Subway Blues, just for some different sounds. Most of the presets are over the top and not really useful, but editing is easy. The Zoom Noise Reduction feature seems to work pretty well at cleaning up hiss, especially at some of the overdrive settings. Most of the amp sounds are good, especially the Fender clean, Mesa Boogie drive , and Roland. There are enough parameters to play with, such as EQ, gain, cabinet types, mic placement, some basic effects, and reverbs, to tweek a half way decent sound from most of the selections. Is it useable for recording? depends on your tastes and experience. Like I said before you can get decent sounds out of it but don't expect knock dead emulation. One note, the bass patches can be changed to electric guitar which opens up eight more patches.

I've had it for a year and no problems. I've edited all the patches dozens of times and everything is still working fine. Yea the plastic is cheapy looking but it seems to hold up and for bedroom playing is perfectly satisfactory. Get a 9 volt adapter fom Radio Shack and forget the battery.

Their website is very good and provides all the user manuals for their various effects

I play mostly blues and jazz plus whatever sounds good. I've been playing about three years. I like the fact that this unit is easy to use and delivers good sounds for a reasonable price. I compared it to other amp simulators but for the price it is hard to top. If it were lost I would probably not replace it simply because I like to try different stuff. The bottom line, this device is fun to play with and provides a variety of sounds that help me shake up my playing when I get in a rut.

The owner's manual states: "Compact multi-effect device convincingly recreates the sound of famous guitar or bass amplifiers." Preset patch number 2 is called "Twin-Lead", and since I do not currently have the means to afford a '65 Twin Reverb Reissue, I thought this box would be a good alternative for the time being. It is important to note that in the configuration of effects, Zoom has placed the tremolo before the reverb. Ask yourself a question, "Is this how a '65 Twin Reverb works?"
The way it works on the zoom, you will degrade the tremolo effect in proportion as you increase the reverb. Suppose you hit a chord and immediately mute the stings. You will not hear any throbbing from the tremolo as the reverb gradually fades out.
Unlike a previous review, I actually value the tremolo effect, but I can only use it without any reverb (contrary to what I had hoped). I simply don't have time to write a full review of this box. It does have some nice points, but I wanted to make this "feature" known to other prospective buyers.

There are so many parameters that I feel like I haven't yet tapped into all of the great sounds this little unit is capable of. Editing patches is very simple once you get the hang of it. The manual is terrible, but you won't need it once you've edited the patches a few times. I have 4 patches set up for headphone playing, and 4 patches set up for playing through my amplifier, because what sounds good through the headphones won't necessarily work through the amp.

Played through an amp, this unit can completely change the characteristics of any amp. The Fender Blues Jr, which is a wonderful sounding amp for blues, can take on the sound of a hot-rodded high gain amp with the help of the 503. Through the headphones, this thing simply sounds great. I don't play too much with the chorus effects, etc, because I just wanted something that sounded convincing through headphones and DI recording. This does both of those things well. The unit has noise reduction built in, and that is a good thing. Turn off the noise reduction and it isn't pleasant. The distortion is excellent.

Other reviews have stated that the unit is made of plastic and doesn't look very sturdy. I'd like to say that the thing seems to be pretty sturdy. I don't gig so a backup isn't an issue with me, but if I were I'd keep my old, trusty Arion SD-1 handy.

I've never dealt with Zoom

I play blues rock. The 503 is good for just about any style of music. I've been playing for almost 20 years. If it were lost or stolen I would get another one because it's dirt cheap. I love the sounds, hate the chorus effects and tremelo (why is this stupid 70's amp feature suddenly popular???)

Manual is kind of bizarre, like a road map, and slightly confusing. But once you figure out the basic setup, you'll be fine. Editing is fine.

I play in a contemporary church band. We do many styles of music, from country to alternative to ballads, etc. Myself and the other guitarist were trying to figure out a way to minimize stage noise in an effort to get a better mix out front, and getting rid of our amps was one way to accomplish this, so we investigated this pedal.
We tried many guitars: PRS, Les Paul, Danelectro, Fender stuff. Both of us use Fender Deluxe Reverb amps, mine's a Hot Rod Deluxe. We both wanted that clean tone, with the ability to get a really nice overdriven sound. Weren't too interested in heavy-distortion kinds of sounds. We went straight from this unit into a very high-end Mackie mixing board.
We didn't even care if the amp "models" matched actual amps like Mesa, Fender, Marshall, Vox, Matchless, etc. We just wanted an acceptable clean sound and the ability to get a decent overdriven sound.
What we found was that we could achieve an "acceptable" clean sound, although it didn't sound like "Fender" or anything in particular. Pretty generic. However, we tried and tried to get some kind of acceptable overdrive sound and could not do it. Everything sounded fuzzy and horrible, like playing through a home stereo or cheap headphones.

Pretty cheap-feeling plastic. Probably wouldn't last under any kind of heavy gigging.

What we ended up buying about a month ago was a POD from Line 6. This thing has been getting rave reviews, and we went for it. It's fabulous. Clean sounds are really nice (although they still, to my ears, don't sound like Fender clean) and it has lots of versatility in overdriven tones. And the overdrives are excellent-sounding, very focused and complex for the different amp models. It's more expensive, but at $330 or so, it packs a lot of great uses (as well as wonderful digital effects).

This model is a very good amp simulator, considering it's price. Frankly, it kinda behaves like it's job is to waste batteries, rather then to produce some cool sound (which it does very nicely, though). It's presets are cool for people like me, that can't be bothored by editing their own patches.

I use an American Telecaster Deluxe guitar with my Fender Prosonic head + combo. I like the effects very much but most of the time it's easier just to use ordinary pedals, after all I've got a pedal for every feature that it holds, so I don't use the 503 much except when I'm recording in a studio.

I don't use it when I'm gigging because it's easier to use the normal pedals. It wastes batteries so fast I don't like having it without a backup. Although, when I'm recording, I like having it, it's much better then the ordinary pedals there, if I have an AC adaptor present.

It hasn't broken down yet.

I play rock, pop and metal. I think the 503 is fine, it's great with all music. I have been playing for 31 years and I haven't found it's match in the studio.