Zoom 506 Bass Effects

Erm after about a week i got to grips with the thing, 'its kinda plastic' (see PWK WP100). Yeah it's ok.

Any Zoom uint gives off a great deal of noise unless used through some sort of gate, maybe a 'kinda plactic' gate would work? It's ok mind, y'know as a noisey musician is likely to by such a unit, hey i did. The effects are all fully interchangable and you are able to 'muck about with the settings on all 24 patches.

I used this many a time with out back up. maybe if it didn't break down i'd still be using it, mind it is over 6 years old now. the only problem i found was that the soldering overloaded and the inputs failed accordingly. 'it's kinda plastic'hence easily fixed.

Erm, Zoom are still about, yeah? i never called to see how the were, i supose they're great people once you get to know them. they're probably 'kinda plastic'.

Yeah buy one, see how it works, submit your opinion, i don't mind if you slag it off, i like it, it's a pedal, 'it's kinda plastic', useful to mess around with, make a little noise, ven use it on a drum machine as i did, you'll be somewhat amazed after you work it out and give it a little time to make itself at home aroundyour place.

You learn it within a day. Dead easy. Takes some time to set effects correctly, but thats purely a matter of cycling through.

The one downside is for live, its difficult to bypass in the middle of a song as it involves tapping both pedals at once, but I overcome this with a channel switcher pedal as I have two channels on my amp. I run the effects through one channel and leave the other clean, and just set the effect before each song.

Despite what people have been saying about the noise, its not that bad if used properly. The 24 presets have everything up to the extreem and yes that gets noisy.

If you want to use two effects in conjuction with the compression, and an eq setting it'll be noisy. However if run through a decent amp, with a built in eq, just using one or two effects at a time, it is possibly to get some briliant sounds out of this box. The auto-wah (both Fat and reso) are surprisingly good when set correctly, and the same for the chorus, flange and octaver. The synth effect is a pile of crap however.

Haven't had it long enough. Battery life is quite short, but you shouldn't be running a digital pedal off of a battery.

I play a mixture of rock/grunge rock/punk/funk/alternative and rock and roll and this pedal suits my needs perfectly. Its by no means the best but its pretty good. Although I would agree this is a good pedal for begginers, I would also say, people who have been playing a fair while and know the ins and outs of effects would like this for the price, as if you know how to use it properly and ignore the drastic presets designed to sell it in the shop, this pedal can be set up very nicely indeed.

it is quiet easy to use the pedal, just hit one of the buttons.

crap, crap and more crap. When switched on, it gives too much gating, it keeps on making noise, and disrupts me all the time. When bypassed, it is a nice source of distortions, fuzz, and noise, which i don't like at all. THe tuner itself sucks too, by the way.

you can easily use it without backup, no prob here. It doens't break if you hit it too hard, you know.

very good pedal too buy as your first. that way, you will get a feeling of what kind of effect you should buy. Afther that, throw it away, and buy somethign else.

Setting ( or resetting ) patches is a bit painful. During a gig, I accidently got into program mode!

Most of the factory settings are pretty hissy. Even playing through in bypass ( tuner only ) mode, a slight amount of noise is added. I do like the synth on this thing, though.

This thing eats batteries.
Get an AC adapter!

Oddly, I found the tuner to be rather temperature sensitive. This tuner is at best useless on the low B of a 5-6 string bass!

Again, it often gets set to program mode which is a big problem if you are using different patches during a set. In program mode, you can't switch patches.

No idea on this.

If all of your band is loud and a mish-mosh of sound, its probably ok.

I mean if you guys are balls-out-shred monkeys, the Zoom506 is a useful device for the budget-minded. Get the pedal that goes with the zoom506 and you can patch a few effects like pitch shifting and envelope to be variable with the pedal.

If you are on the road to purity in your sounds, You would better spend your money on a better quaulity ( $ ) multi or component effects.

Easy to use, but finnicky to use. Has tiny little buttons for tweaking patches so you can forget about editing on stage. Takes about 5 years of editing to get anything ok sounding out of it.

Bollocks! About all I use it for now is tuning cos the effects are hopeless (and it's a crap tuner to boot!) Pretty damn noisy too. Effects are only good for the "hey, isn't that wierd" comment, but you would never use it for anything. I've used it with many amps of various power ratings, and many basses, but little is the difference. Fuzz distortion was ok, delay is shit.

It works most of the time. Why no 9 volt battery? You need an adaptor cos the 4 AA's don't last very long.

Haven't wasted my/their time.

Please, if I can stop just one person from getting this unit I'll die happy! If it were stolen, I'd be a happier man. Don't fall into the trap of relative inexpensiveness (cheapness is more accurate), shell out more money for something better, something top of the line. There's no midway with these things, it's either the best or a waste of time for all concerned.

its easy to use.....if you can use a calculator, you can use this thing

the thing about it is, i use this with a guitar (strat/ l.p. through a fender blues deluxe amp) i use the dr distortion at lots of different gain levels. i use the auto wah (which is puke) and the chorus (also puke) on a clean setting. this thing is a toy and not for the serious musician. i should be drawn and quartered for trading a still tasty stick of stale juicy fruit and a shoestring for this.

so far i can, but i have some good equipment and this is a toy.....its like having a corvette with a k-car engine in it.

who knows

i play hard rock/ semi-alt./semi metal. the distortion, for me, is a twist because i use this thing with guitars and this is a bass effect. so i have came up with some really original tones, but im in the process of buying a PODpro and mesa tube power amp to drive a 4x10 bassman and a 4x12 slanted marshall babinets in stereo. when i finish building my dream unit, i will trade this thing to some bass playing chick for a suck job or something.

Out of the box and playing with patches in no time... editting patches takes a bit more work. After reading the manual, it's easy to learn the procedure. I give it a five because it takes a while to understand the thing, but after a while it's like second nature.

I use a jazz bass, fretless bass, and a five string through this pedal into my Crate BX-160... the built in noise gate helps cut out noise, but the more effects you use, the noisier it gets. Some effects are fairly decent, like compression, pre amp, modulation and delays, but some are extremely weak, like the auto and pedal wah (with opt foot pedal). It's a good way to get your hands on a multitude of effects, but there are only few ways to adjust effects, but hey, it's less than $100, so no big loss. You gotta play with it for a while and use it live to know what works and what sucks, so once you figure out what you like and what you don't you can just use the good stuff and ignore the rest (like the synth, ha). I use it mainly to compress my signal onstage and in studio and for the "Slap" preamp. Once in a while I use a little delay to make my basslines sound more 3 dimensional, and I always use gate as needed to get rid of the excess hissing. It's definitely not something I'd use if I had a million bucks, but for now it's doing something good for my signal.

Let's face it. The pedal is made out of plastic. I wouldn't put the lead foot on it to change patches, but I've had mine for five years now and have never had a problem with it. GET THE AC ADAPTER... it eats 9V batteries like Sally Struthers in a soup kitchen. I treat my pedal pretty nice, and it's never wronged me. I have a 505 Guitar that a friend gave me to fix... it was all sorts of screwed up cause he threw it around all the time... I just popped the casing off it and it still works as just the circuit board. I'd say use it, don't abuse it, and it will be good to you.

I've never dealt with ZOOM.

I play in a heavy metal band, but I like a big thick bass tone, this pedal helps me get a bigger sound and the noise gate is useful even if you don't use any of the other effects. My wireless system makes a little noise sometimes so the noisegate helps get rid of that. I've been playing bass and guitar since 1996 and I would be pissed if the thing got stolen, but I'm planning on getting rack effects soon anyway, so I'd rather get something with a little more quality. To be honest, as a bass player I don't really need multieffects, I'd rather just have compression, noisegate, and a little drive control to add warmth... I could care less about chorus and flange and all that. I really wish this thing had a 3 band parametric EQ... instead, you get a 1 to 50 EQ control, 1 being bassiest, 50 being trebly, and 25 flat... now way to get the midrange scoop I desire... so I leave the EQ off and use my amp's 7 band instead. But I'd have to say that it's helpful as a signal boost with the compression and for the noisegate, so it's still helpful to me after 5 years with it. Oh yeah, and I'd like to say FURAX RULES!

I've this thing forever, so I don't even remember the original presets. I enjoy making my own, therefore, I've never had any complains about this.

I've used this unit with several basses, a Peavey and an Ibanez, as well as several amps. A Fender and a Dean Markley practise amp. The fuzz can make a lot of white noise but this can be controlled with the Noise Gate.

This was a cheap pedal with a lot of options, so I'm not concerned that some effects aren't the greatest. The Octaver sounds muddy (at the very least) and the delay only has 9 options. Use this pedal for the compression, distortion and modulation effects.

I have used this for several hour-long gigs (without a backup) and it is reliable provided that you go in prepared.

Never had any problems in the four-ish years that I've had it.

If this were stolen I certainly wouldn't shed any tears but I'd be disappointed with having to replace so many effect options with something else.

The Zoom 506 bass is real easy to use, with loads of effects. The manual has everything to reseting the pedal, to making your own patches. It has alot of really unjique presets, and you can make a lot of your own (24 to be exact). If you have problems about the order of your patches, you can rearrange them, too.

I use mine on a cheap Vantage bass on a cheap univox amp and it sounds GREAT!! a quick clean tone , press both pedals. I comes with the exact distortion that Flea (from Red Hot Chili Peppers) uses on Around the World, which is cool. Alot of cool effects, like Flangers, chorus, wah, disto., and such. You can also add a extra foot pedal to make a wah-wah pesal, wich is cool. In the words of Benny Rietfield, "It's comact, has alot of cool effects, runs on batterties, and looks Like a tricorder!". Okay, okay, that was for the Zoom 606II, but they're practically the same, Right?

I would use it in a gig because its easy to use, you can rearrange the patches to your convenience, and (I cannot stress this enough) IT HAS COOL EFFECTS!!. Also, very sturdy, I dropped mine 3 times, lost a pedal and almost short circuted it, but it is in one piece, the pedal just popped back on, and i unplugged the power it Just in time. Do not use a power source higher than it is made for. It can really fry it.

It is easy to repair (the pedals pop back on in broken off) and the shell (plastic) is sturdy, but i have not dealt with the costomer support, and i have not yet fried the inside.

I have been playing for 3 years, I was looking for the right pedal,and BAM! the Zoom 506 is perfect. Doesn't matter what kid of music you play, there is an effect for everyone.

This pedal is very easy to use, very basic and a good over view of all the effects there is out there.

WEll when i played an ibanez 5 soundgear through my crappy old fender bass amp rad bass 75 watt it was good. It was so exciting when i first got it , all the wierd effects etc. But now that i have upgraded to an ernie ball music man sterling , it distorts the effects and amp, it isn't the pickup height either , i think it's just that the music man pickups have such powerful output , and this little thing can not handle it. I do like A 3 it was always a fave very funky,and i made an effect with digital delay and wah which is awesome. The low down though it sux compared to stomp boxes.

I don't think i'd want to use it at a gig simply because of the hissing , lack of bank options , especially having to press down both pedals at the same time for clean tone, i know i wouldn't trust my feet to do that at a gig. also it's plastic you got band members romping around if it gets stepped on it won't be good.

Never had to deal with it. I'm guessing it's good.

Well I've been playing for 6 years now , and at the time i got it 4 year mark it was great , it really was more of a learning process about different effects , what effects sound like mixed and lets you experiment with sounds. It has also gave me knowledge of what kind of sound i want to get and what i don't want. If it was lost or stolen I'd smile and look at the moon and then plug in my ebs bass iq which rocks!!! For all you beginers it is a must have , you;ll learn a lot , but for anyone who's been playing for a while and is serious in the music go for the stomp boxes. I'm selling it now along with my crybaby which also disaponted me . EBS all the way.