Zoom 504 II

I play a classical guitar with under the saddle pickups. As I was playing through the effects to hear them, I found myself looking around me to make sure no one was laughing, especially my 9 year daughter.

You probaly know about the plastic by now.

Didn't use it.

I play pop standards, jazz, classical, latin on a classical guitar. You know, I've heard people say here the presets are bad but you can tinker with them and sound good. Well, I don't feel very motivated to do that because I sound bad with this device. If I atleast sounded good to begin with it then I would have been motivated to make it sound great.

How easy is it to get a good sound out of it?
Very easy to use. Absolutely no effort. The manual is people who cannot operate one knob and 2 buttons. Getting a good sound from this garbage can? there is no good sound on the zoom 505ii

How about Editing patches?
No different. Very easy to edit patches. There is absolutely nothing in this thing. Its got nothing.

How is the manual for it (if there is one)?
The manual is for lighting on fire because of frustration.

I hate this unit. I regret spending money on this rubbish.

I am using an Ibanez RG deluxe with Dimarzios and a Marshall tube Stack.

Noisy?? YES! VERY NOISY! Everything with distortion or reverb is NOISY.

The Weakest Effects I have ever heard in my life. The weakest! The WORST OF THE WORST distortions come from this thing. Not even one distortion effect sounds good here. I mean it. The REVERB SUCKS! The most artificial sounding reverb is here. I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT ANY EFFORT WAS PUT INTO MAKING THIS PEDAL! The delay is miserable. Sounds very very CHEAP! I HAVE NEVER SEEN A DELAY EFFECT THIS TERRIBLE SOUNDING!

I am using a Marshall tube stack! the DISTORTION ON THIS THING IS BOGUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can not get even get the song of my most hated artists. Forget about my Favorite artists!!!

EVERY...I MEAN EVERY EFFECT ON THIS PIECE OF $H!T is miserable! the WAH EFFECT IS A DISGRACE TO SERIOUS MUSICIANS! THE DISTORTION BLOWS! THE REVERB BLOWS! THE DELAY BLOWS! I HATE THIS PIECE OF $H!T!

This thing can break in 2 seconds. Its cheap plastic.

I WOULD NEVER EVEN GIVE THIS TO MY WORST ENEMY! FORGET USING THIS AT A GIG! DO NOT EVEN USE IN YOUR BEDROOM! NO! THIS WILL NEVER WORK LIVE!

I WANT TO CALL THEM AND TELL TO STOP MAKING THIS PIECE OF SHIT AND GIVE ME A FUCKING REFUND!

I PLAY EVERYTHING! BEEN PLAYING FOR 3 YEARS! I would never give this to anyone! this is a pain! I wish it had a self destruct button than blew it to pieces!

This posting is a follow-up, two years later.
I find the hi-gain procedure (depress left pedal while powering up the box) pretty annoying, a second input jack would have been far better. As on the 504...
I cannot use batteries since the tiniest shock cuts off the power supply, even with tightly secured battery housing. Very bad point.
Problems with the jacks too, had to resolder them a couple of times.
My unit does switch off intermittently for no reason, so it is absolutely not reliable.
The feedback suppressor is absolutely unbelievable: easy to use, fast and effective. A real wonder, too sad I have those reliability problems.
In fact I'm happy I just kept my old zoom 504 because this one works perfectly, and with a better sound quality (18bit converters instead of 16bit for the latest version, go figure...)
So take my advice: shop on ebay for the first version...

Usually I do not read manuals !! But this time I did and I was up and running with it in a matter of minutes. The manual was easy to understand and clear. With in no time I was editing and storing sounds. It?s great.

I have an Ibanez classical guitar, which I have been playing for the last 12 years. Thought it was about time to get one with built in pickup. So my wife kindly got me an Ovation CC057 for our 10th anniversary. Now it was about time to get me a nice effects pedal and the Zoom 504 II got my eye. Bought it off the Ebay #31.00
The Ovation sounds like a million dollars using this pedal.
I absolutely enjoy using it although I have bought it only a week ago. The sound quality is excellent. Every effect on this pedal is great. Just what I needed. I use the FATRAT 15 watts acoustic amp and it sounds great. I have no regrets buying this pedal.
I use to play in a Jazz/Blues/Rock fusion band for about 5 years (university years). I still continue to play but mostly in my local church.
I play the likes of Kansas, Simon & Garf., Doobie Brothers, some Latin etc - mostly acoustic based.

Won't comment on this section yet, as I have had it only for a week.

Not used yet

Excellent for the price.
I have been playing for about 15 years ? combination of base guitar & acoustic. Now I just stick to acoustic. And now with my Ovation and Zoom, I have a renewed enthusiasm to keep on playing.
If the Zoom were stolen, I would go out and get another one straightaway.
I like the Delay and the12-string effects particularly. They are great.
I chose this one because it has got the ?all in one?. This just suits me fine for what I am doing.

Once you get a hang of it, it's easy. Got to do some reading though.

I have Yamaha FX-310 piezo pick up and a Montana MT-105N. Noisy in some settings probably because of the patch level. But you can correct this since you can change the settings right? Got some really good sounds from this Zoom. Man i was surprised. You can actually copy the sound of high end acoustic guitars through this box. I'm running it through a locally made electric guitar amp. And before i got the Zoom, i plugged directly to the amp the sound was of course unnatural. the Delay and reverb are acceptable.

Looks dependable but man it's made out of plastic so a little care would be needed. Look at it as an extension of your guitar and treat it like your guitar since it's helping your guitar sound better.

none yet. Just bought this a couple of weeks ago.

I play Folk, Rock, Blues, Jazz or whatever the crowd would like when i play in our gigs. But of course acoustic versions of all time favorite hits. The Zoom can handle any style i play and then some. I played for 5 years during my college days many years ago. After that i had to face life and get a 9-5 job. my wife bought me these guitars a year ago so that makes 6 years of playing. I'd buy another one of these Zooms if it were lost or stolen or broken. I like this so much because it can shape the sound of my entry level Yamaha to a high-end sounding guitar. I like the emphasizer and wah effects which has given new dimension to my acoustic guitar playing. Haven't compared this since there's none to compare it here in the philiipines. Not that i know of. I was looking for an effects box in the internet and this one had a very reasonable price tag and had some good reviews. So when this hit a local store i snapped it up immediately no questions asked. It does help me make music very beautiful sounding music. If your just starting out with an entry level guitar, get this box and you'll be surprised at what it can do.

I don't like Zoom's way to change patches, but I reckon it is possibly the only way to do that with two pedals...

Sound is OK
Fx are OK, reverbs are good enough
But this thing attenuates the instrument's signal. The Hi-Gain setting is not so, the signal is always halved at the input circuit, and when you select "hi-gain" the processor restores the normal output. This is crap, I don't like a processor killing my guitar's output.
The input circuit also kills the bottom a bit (poor bass response). Try unplugging your guitar and going straight to the amp and you'll know what I mean.

It is crappy plastic, and its size means the floor has to be leveled, otherwise it moves. Don't wear big shoes, you'll habe trouble stepping on just one footswitch ;^)

Once you figured it out it's easy to use, I wish it had leds to let you see which module is on or off(like on the 504). It is not noisy at all, if you use good cables and on. You basically have preamps, small eq(only boost,no cut and that's a shame), plenty of useless effects and honest reverbs. The antifeedback is effective, but must be seen as on-stage salvation operation because your sound gets very much changed. I still haven't discovered the utility of the de-amp function,and I also own a 504 for years...
It accepts 4 aa nimh batteries and they last very long before recharging again, so it's hassle-free for stage use.
By depressing the left footswitch when powering on you get the high gain setting(for weak instruments or,via passive transformer, microphones) and that becomes interesting.
Versus the 504 it lacks definition and details(the 504 has 18-bit a/n, and the 504 2 has 16-bit a/n in order to keep the battery consumption as low as possible) but has an emphasizer effect which adds a lot of clarity so it's better onstage.
With a vocal mic it's perfect...

Hmmm, I have the 504 for years and it has always performed very well despite stage abuse but the design is made this way. Since the 504 2 is editing-oriented I would absolutely not step on it because it would break, one have to choose here...
This said it is electronically very reliable, I own several zooms and no breakdown ever so I guess the people who makes them are not choir girls...or boys,more likely

Forget it, NO support here. They don't answer mails so what could you do?

It is a lovely little machine! I use it with my acoustic, even my fretless bass and it helps me have a good sound without engineering. I use my old 504 with my vocal mic and that's it. Talk about simple and effective... I am thinking about purchasing Alesis's acoustifx in order to have a better sound(20 bita/n/a, 4bd eq,) but you won't be disappointed in the zoom. Unless you take it for what it's not lf course...

If you've used effects pedals that permit patch editing, this one's pretty simple. Use the knob to scroll through the various parameters, tweak for optimal sound as you go and save to a location. I take off points for the foot pedals' lack of an auto-scrolling feature. You have to press the pedal each time to advance by one patch with no option to hold the pedal down and quickly scroll through patches (as in the Digitech pedals). The case is kinda cheesy so it would save wear and tear on the pedal components if they incorporated this feature.

My situation is sort of unique which is why I'm bothering to post here. I'm using a Godin Solidac which pairs 2 humbuckers with a single coil and then an LR Baggs acoustic pickup in the bridge. Similar guitars are manufactured by Parker (Nitefly), Carvin and Fender (Nashville Telecaster w/ Powerbridge). I channel the electric pickups to a Digitech RP300 pedal and the acoustic pickup to the Zoom 540II. Each goes to a dedicated channel on my amp. The overall effect is incredible. I can switch from acoustic tones to scorching electric leads on the fly. Before using the Zoom pedal, the acoustic pickup was okay but generally lifeless. This pedal makes it come alive, the best $70 bucks I ever spent. The 12 string emulation is awesome, choruses are lush and even a fairly dry patch can sound very much like a miked acoustic. I'm very happy with the tones and effects I'm getting from this product. By mixing the acoustic signal with the electric signal, I get some really fresh sounds. I'm using the Zoom direct to a Behringer KX1200 amp. Some of the effects are useless of course, like any other mutli-effects pedal. The most efficient use of this pedal is to dial in maybe 6 or 8 great sounds, from dry to light reverb to light delay to light chorus, etc. and then assign them in sequence where you can easily get at them. By the way, I also tried it with my Guild F47CE having the fabled Fishman Blender system and it sounds absolutely fantastic. Again, the sounds just comes alive. Most patches are pretty quiet. The "air" parameter seems useless. The patches that supposedly make an electric guitar sound acoustic are weak. Your bang for the buck is in the straightforward acoustic patches. Forget the autowah and other crap. The feedback suppressor seems like a good idea but I won't need it with the Godin since it's a solidbody guitar.

As most everyone else has said, the case is pretty plasticky but if you set it up with your favorite handful of patches and don't literally use it as a "stomp" box, it should hold up. Hey Zoom, how 'bout making a metal case and raising the price by 10 bucks? Otherwise, who knows how long the electronics will keep on ticking. I'll gig with it but will throw a chorus box in the bag just in case it craps out mid-set.

No opinion on customer support.

Been playing let's see, about 30 years now. I do the fingerpicking James Taylor thing when I'm out solo and switch off leads and rhythm when in a band situation. This pedal is perfect for both. I'm in a Country cover band right now and the Zoom, coupled with my Godin Baggs pickup lets me emulate an acoustic guitar sound without switching axes. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it sounds better than most electric/acoustics I've heard played straight to the board. It records better too. I would buy this pedal again in a minute. For the price, it's a great little gizmo. Even if you only come up with a half dozen patches you really like, it's worth it.

Easy enough to use. Editing patches - not bad - fiddly, but simple enough to rescue a bad sound in a live situation if need be. As far as I'm concerned, you have no choice but to get to grips with patch editing, since almost all the preset patches have crazy levels of reverb/delay (why do they do that? - is there some fashion I missed that says that acoustic guitar has to sound like the haunted ballroom?). Anyway - it's OK - the manual is fine, but you do have to read all of it before it makes sense. Also, it would have been friendly if they'd included a table of default settings for the presets. Firmware - no idea.

I use a Taylor NS32 (nylon string) and an old Ibanez CR100(?) that plays like an old pair of slippers. I use a Samson PA system, the guitar is DI'd from a Laney GC50a (acoustic channel, with everything flat and the reverb off) using an active LEEM box. Some of the effects are teeth grittingly nasty (the 12-string thing is horrible, to me) and some of them are a bit hissy.
The sound quality, from an engineering point of view, is about what you'd expect from this level of bit resolution. The reverb is a tad clattery, and if you're not careful you can introduce weird artefacts by overdoing the limiting.
Given time, I'd like to edit all the patches a lot - I don't like the presets. I've collected 6 tweaked versions of favourites, and parked them in bank F. I need time to work at this. A facility to back up the custom patches onto something else would have been handy, but at this price you can't expect that.
Main use for me is hiding that awful quack noise that a transducer pickup makes - with effort, the pedal helps a lot. It still doesn't sound as good as a real microphone, but it's handier for gigs. I wouldn't use it in the studio.

No problems so far - i would hesitate to use it without a mains adaptor. I am nervous about doing a gig where my sound is manufactured by a pedal - very nervous.

Not contacted them. Their website is quite useful for manuals etc.

Jazz, blues, folk.
I've been playing for 35 years, pro and semi-pro. For electric work, I have a Gibson L5-CES and a (1948) ES-150, also a Telecaster. I use a Godin ACS (with Roland synth) in the studio. Normally i use Fender amps for jazz work.
The pedal is good value for the money, it helps with a long-standing problem with the sound of amplified acoustic, which is a good thing, but I'm not particularly attached to it. If I got serious about this, I might look at the Yamaha AGStomp instead.
It would be nice to be able to store edited patches somewhere off-line, and it would be nice to have some spare patch addresses to keep them in. In fact, I can happily overwrite most of the presets, but I have to be organised to remember what's what. As in a lot of devices like this, I find nothing intuitive in the layout of the patches - i just get the hand of where to find the few that I like.
I like the size and the simplicity of use.
I'd like to find a source of patch edits on the Web - I haven't really looked.

I found this processor fairly easy to use because it basically only does one thing: restoring the natural sound of an acoustic guitar when amplified. The other effects are pretty much a waste of time. The exception to this is the digital reverb and the feedback suppressor which justify the price of the unit.

I'm using a Washburn Monterey for an acoustic through a custom amp setup consisting of a 15" speaker and a tweeter with about 80 watts of power. To try out the simulator I used a Vox Phantom with Kent-Armstrong pickups through the same amp setup. I don't know if there is something wrong with this particular unit, but the simulator sounds terrible to the point of being unusable. (distortion or something) This is the great part: within a couple hours of buying the unit, I took it back to the store I bought it from to try to bug out the problem or exchange the unit. The owner asked me what I was using the unit for. When I answered "acoustic" his advice was to avoid the simulator!

I just got this thing so I don't know how reliable it is. I imagine I will have to baby it since it is plastic. It seems like the type of unit I'll carry in the storage compartment of my guitar case.

I've never had to deal with Zoom but like almost every other company I'm willing to bet that customer service is lousy. The onus has to be on the store you bought it from. I'm afraid that we are getting our come-uppance for letting mom and pop businesses go under by giving our money to Wal-Mart.

Here's the only sequence I'll ever use: Patch A1. Patch level:30 > Type:Mild > Limiter:Off > Low:5 > High:5 > Air:Don't insult my intelligence. > Effect:Touch9 > Delay/Reverb:Large1 > De-Amp:Same as Air. > Feedback Suppressor:Search. These things should only have one patch. Let's face it, these would be a great stocking stuffer for a 16 year-old kid who fancies himself as the next Hendrix-or-whoever-it-is-now, but the reality is that it will be in a chain of MXR or Ibanez compressors, choruses, E.Q.s, etc.
But hey, rock and roll ain't for wimps.