Zoom 506 Bass Effects

prety ease. no problem

here are the big problems. those sounds are so artificial people may think you are a bass player from jupiter. the reverbs and halls are nothing but cra**. the HISS WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY. the only useable thing is the baypass, but the hiss anyway........... or the tuner.
THIS IS a LITTLE BIT OF ADVICE: DO NOT use it in thre pre mode of your amp. always use it in the post mode, or chain efgfects. inh pre mode is HORRIBLE. i use a EB music/ stingray. trough a gk head and ampeg cab (classic). man, to be honest in pre mode, with this rig is like putting a geo metro motor into a ferrari. DO NOT USE IT IN PRE MODE. in post would work

as far ok.

never dealt with them.

ok. back in the 1998 the unit cost if i am not wrong $200 bucks. now they go for $39. ??why? well answer is at you own nose. i bought mine for $100. to be honest i think $39 is the fair price. sound are nothing but $20 bucks unit. tuner ok. if you tend to be pro STAY AWAY for this and maybe get a comp/limiter pedal. best invest.

it takes quite a bit of getting use to. but once you got the hang of it. adjusting sounds is `easy' enough.

I agree, out of the box, it sounds a bit digital, but you can, and MUST taylor it to your own needs and sound. and yes there IS hiss in it, but with fine tweaking, it can be overcome for most sounds

My first zoom, which was for electric guitar,which I bought used. died, but I dont know how it was treated and how old it was. I've had this one for a couple of years, and I'm pretty happy with it, now that I've changed every patch in it. no problems so far

haven't dealt with them

i have a listing of every factory patch setting on it, so if i want to recall a factory setting, I know what they are. and I changed every patch so each bank has its own `character'.and made charts showing every setting on every patch. A-bank for accoustic, B-Bank for Bass, C-Bank for chord & chorus, D-bank for distortions, E-bank for Echoes, F-bank for flange and Phase, and G-bank is for temporary use. I load whatever patch I want into the G bank and can switch back and forth between them on the fly a lot easier. I highly reccomend doing this, and ease of use goes' up to a 9 out of 10. it takes a while to program it this way, but the resluts are well worth it. now I can find the exact sound I want very easily, and it can be used with my electric/accoustic as well. the original factory set up has no logic to it. want my patch set-up list ? e-mail me at curbie1150@yahoo.com.

It seems pretty easy to use. I did some patch editing today, as I never like factory settings. It sounded okay, but I'll probably have to tweak it a bit more.

Running through a Behringer 120, i bypassed the amp's preamp stage to get good sound. Apparently, I was right when I thought I got ripped off when I bought my amp. Also, I bought the older generation, not the 506II, and it seems the older ones sound better.

When I bought it, I was told that it kept shutting off and I had to hit a pedal to turn it back on. But I immediately knew the problem (Bad switch in the input jack) and had the equipment and parts to fix it. I replaced them with jacks that bolt onto the case. But hey, for $40 used, and knowing what the problem was, it wasn't too big of a risk.

Never called, but they're probably not very helpful anyways.

Well, It's probably not the best thing I bought, but it does what I need it to do. I play a variety of stuff, from classic rock, pop-punk, a little rap, and some blues.

Fiarly simple to get to know. The main problem is pressing both the pedals to get it to bypass.

I had an active Hohner Jack going to this to a Peavey Firebass but I haven't used it in ages. Mainly due to the noise. You can get some great sounds out of it, I was particularly fond of the octaver which you can sweep if used in congunction with a volume/wah pedal.
The wah itself was fairly rubbish, more of a high/low switch than any wah I've ever heard.
I don't use it any more because it is just too noisy, even on the bypass.

It is plastic but I've never had a problem with it. I used it for about 4 years without any problems.

Never had call to find out

Great for beginners, but try to pick one up second hand.

I'm currently looking for seperate effects but without having played with this I wouldn't know what to look for. Having read one of the reviews here I'm going to stick it into the effects loop off my amp which will let me properly bypass it. This will let me get some of the off the wall sounds without having to deal with the noise.

It has served me well but it's time to move on.

It's very easy to use if in a song you only use a couple of effects and when you program it, you think in your songs.

I use a Warwick Fortress One and a Patrick Eggle Milan V, a level art tube compresor and Trace Elliot BXL 130
If you're locking for a distortion, this it is not the multi-effect that you need, if you wants to do chips, this it is the suitable instrument.
I can't get any good warm distortion (like audioslave or Billy Shehan, in the other hand, they uses a expensives preamps...)

- Don't use batteries
- Be carefully with the connection of the a/c adapter if you step on it, you will have it to reconstruct
- Never failed me
- Be carefully with the small buttons of the side

I play rock untill 10 years ago, if somebody stile it never I bought again the same.
But if you don't have money, you can use the compresor, the amp simulator and you can connect the earpieces to play with batteries in the mountain ;).

The unit is easy to use,but navagation is a little cumbersome.

The unit has decent sound quality. The units standard effects are weak, but with some time and experimenting you can get some decent sounds.
The bad thing is that the unit is noisy, I wish it was cleaner.
Some people say that it is junk, but it is usable if you take time and make good paramater adjustments.

It is made of plastic, but it does seem to hold up well.

I have never had to contact them. Unlike the 505 I have not found any sites with patches available. The 505 had many uses post some interesting patches to use.

Overall it is a good unit for a beginner or some live use, I don't think it would be a good thing to use to record with. If you need a unit for live effects and could get it for $20 it would be pretty well worth it. If you want effects to record with I would get a Boss or pod.

Easy to use, simple. No problem here.

Very very poor....if you have a good bass, it will destroy your sound with hiss and artificial sounds....

Don't worry about it, you will give up before it cracks.

Who cares?

Very poor. Bass is very different than guitars...if you don't have the best equipment, you'd better bypass it. A good bass, amp and cables are essencial...but unless you're already playing pretty good and want to record things, the dream of improving your sound is very frustrating by bying such things....if so, save your money for some bass classes will improve it faster!

Pretty easy to use, switching through the patches takes a minute, but it's pretty easy to do (up or down the bank, not much else to it).

Editing patches is somewhat annoying and takes getting used to. Following the blinking lights is confusing at first.

I used this mostly with a Yamaha BBN5 running through a Yorkville 200B and it was hard to find good settings with it. It's a decent first multi-effect to get your toes wet for playing bass with effects; one or two of the stock patches are ok.

Overall, the effects this thing makes are pretty weak and nothing stands out as being particularily good.

I haven't had any reliability issues with it while I owned it and I bought it used.
Not something you'd want to gig with; well, unless you like your bass to sound like ass that is.

n/a

I had this pedal for about 4 years, mostly using it for the tuner feature, occasionally playing with the patches. It can be fun to experiment with, but overall, the sound you get isn't going to be very good.

It's pretty easy to figure out. It grows on you. The interface does suck compared to digitech's though I miss the knobs 8(

I'm not a bass player. I just needed a couple of the effects/features that were on this and I could get it really cheap.

For those interested:
I play a Epiphone Flying V w/Duncan Distortion in the bridge
into-> Rocktron Gainiac Tube Preamp
into-> Zoom 506
into-> Peavey Deltafex stereo processor
into-> Technics 500watt Stereo Receiver (For the Power amp)
into-> Home built 4x10 cabinet w/ Eminence speakers


I bought this primarily because I needed amp simulation (My stereo receiver kicks out a lot of sound but it has zero tone shaping). I considered getting digitech rp50 or rp100 but I went with the z506 because I found it for 20 bucks on ebay...plus I used several digitechs for years and have come to this conclusion...Zooms simply have way better ADA conversion.

I am very impressed with how this little pedal worked out.
First, I like how the amp simulation has divided the preamp and amp simulators to different parts of the signal chain therefore giving me the chance to disable preamp simulation when I don't need it. I like using some of the clean preamps on here to help shape my lead tone but for heavy gut crunchin' riffs it sound better to have the preamps disabled.

I think the flanger is pretty cool

The EQ seems to be effective but it takes so long to find out exactly what I want that I hate to mess with it.

reverbs are great, delay is okay...

I'm a little nervous here...
I bought it used so I don't know how much abuse it's taken...
Right now the battery leads are open and taped to the battery, I hope to fix this soon LoL. There is no battery cover so If I move it, it can shut off and I have to retape it. I guess I can't fairly rate this category since I didn't buy it new....

Great for what I bought it for.
Excellent tone shaping ability for such a low-class piece of equipment.
I used to play digitech rp300 and I can say that the sound is overall much clearer on the zoom. It sounds more like analogue.

I can't speak one way or another for the fuzz' and distortions on the 506 because I only use the clean amp simulations. I use my tube preamp for the distortion.

There's some noise in it...

All in all, it's a tight little package that has everything I need to complete my guitar effects.

Yo tambien voy a dar mis opiniones y calificaciones en castellano! para que lea algun compa?ero latinoamericano o algun compatriota Argentino. A ver empezamos con lo facil o dificil que puede ser usar esta pedalera. Es muuy facil de usar, esta muy bien configurada y armada, salvo algunas opciones que se quieran realizar en donde hay que mantener teclas apretadas por mas de 2 segundos ...pero esta muy bien, ademas los manuales de instrucciones estan bien explicitos y no hay forma de que uno no le agarre la vuelta a la cosa.

Yo estoy usando en este momento un amp Fender BXR, un Fender Jazz Bass Standard y un Gibson EB-3 de 1967. Yo compre esta pedalera sobre todo para poder usar mi Gibson, ya que buscaba un sonido tipo Jack Bruce (CREAM)y la verdad es que quede muy complacido ya que buscaba un pizca de distorcion y me parecio mas adecuado esta pedalera que un Boss Overdrive Bass que es una distorcion mas metalica, algunos efectos son muy "plasticos" por lo que no son muy buenos, para el Jazz Bass he usado efectos como el chorus, auto-wha...y estan bien..no son gran cosa pero estan bien. Haciendo un promedio la pedalera queda aprobada, es una pedalera no profesional que no sirve para estudio por lo ruidosa que puede llegar a ser, pero esta excelente para usar en vivo.

Si!, es bastante confiable, nunca tuve problemas. Aunque no dependo de ella, el sonido lo doy yo con mis dedos no ella.

ni idea...nunca llame a nadie por reparaciones porque no las necesite.

Para el estilo de musica que hago, que es Blues-Rock esta muuy bien!.He tenido 2 de estas pedaleras y si llegara a perder esta pedalera no dudaria en comprarme otra porque por la calidad-precio es muuuy buena!!!. Siempre tiene sus pros y contras porque cada uno tiene su sonido y resulta dificil adaptarla a "su sonido" pero siempre puede contrarrestarla si se le pone paciencia, y teniendo en cuenta la relacion calidad-precio. Es una pedalera confiable y de buen sonido.

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.

a ver...todos dicen cosas en ingles, yo dare mi opinion en espa?ol: la verdad es que para mi me fue muy facil a prender a usar esta pedalera, incluso puedo editar ( si tuviera un problema) en vivo.

tiene algunos efectos realmente buenos, como el reverb, el slap y el chorus, pero hay otros de verdad muy malos, las distorciones se notan muy digitales y el wha es demasiado sintetico, la verdad es que me hice un solo efecto y ese utilizo siempre, como pre amp es bueno.

yo toco Rock, Funk, Blues and Baladas y la verdad es que cuando no lo he llevado a alguna "tocata" lo he hechado de menos, se nota la falta de el y eso que tengo un buen amp (trace elliot) y 2 bajos muy buenos un Fender Jazz y un Washburn de 5 cuerdas

Quite easy. This is a "one-much-little-none-parameter" effect's edition process. The manual is clear.

I used a cheap Washburn Lyon "Precision Bass" copy (with a cheap single coil pickup) through a Peavey TKO 115. It was noisy, but it did a great job. Then I sold these gear to get a Fender American Standard Jazz Bass V and a Marshall Bass State B65 combo. The little bastard cut the signal. It sounds better bypassed than in a clean path, and even bypassed it was too noisy. Quite disappointing. It converts the analog signal into a 16 bit digital signal, killing the sound of the fender's pickups. I'm waiting for a Digitech RP200 (24 bit converter) to test it, but I think I'll rather get analog units. If your bass has bad pickups, this little bastard will help a lot. Get a noise gate.

Well, it's plastic. But it's too noisy to gig with it only. Anyway, it seems to be a hard plastic stuff.

All I know is that Zoom is a japanese corp. Dot.

This is a too general purpose box. It will fit well if playing music is your hobbie. If the music pays your bills, get something better. If it were stolen, I would be sorry for the thief. He probably would return it to me with some money to buy another thing. Just joking, it's not that bad.

It's very easy to use and to get the hang of it. Editing is easy but you should read the manual since it's fairly good and simple.

I have an ibenez TR-300 bass that i connect (in this order) to a Dixon Metal Rocker followed by the Zoom followed by a Danelectro Tremolo. It has many basic fx however they dont sound too true. I mean they are too round and perfect in some cases and in others they sound like something out of an weird science fiction film. What I want to say is that they were hammered in there. The Fuzz (despite not being able to enhance the harmonics the way i want) and the Vintage distortions are among my favourite fx in here together with the delay. I also use the wah because i dont have a separate wah. You can do funny and consistent things with the rest but be careful to balance the sound well. It can sound lousy to vintage purists and sometimes it really does but if you explore it you can do something funny. It makes a slight pause when you change the effect; this is a BIG minus.

You can depend on it an use it on a gig despite being made of plastic. Be careful with the buttons on the side. When you change effect it makes a slight pause as i mentioned earlier.

I play the blues-punk and rock and roll mostly. What i do with this is to try to use one effect on a song and change the sound with outside effects such as a distortion, wah, tremolo etc. I believe it's the best exit to the problem that this device poses when you want to change effect or turn it on. It's very good for beginners not only for it's price but also for the variety of effects it offers. It has the basics.

Well, I bought this little guy used without a manual last year. And I must say it doesn't take much to learn how to edit patches. You can always go online and get the manual in PDF form, which I did anyway. At the moment I can't figure out why I need to activate an effect each time I switch to it. It never used to it. Oh well, it makes no difference in quality of sound.

I'm using this box with my Carvin LB20, through a Peavey Basic 60 (woo-hoo!). Eventually I'll upgrade, but as it stands, this set-up sounds pretty good. Since the Basic 60 sounds pretty average on it's own, this pedal makes a world of difference. On two of the clean settings (B2 and E2), my amp sounds like I paid and extra $300 for it. The 506 acts as a sweet equalizer in these modes, and can really help those with mediocre amps. I disagree with many of the folks here who said the distortion is weak. I like it, and I can find uses for it. This box was used in both practice and band settings, and it sounded great at all volumes. I play with picks, fingers, and slapping, and the pedal performed well.

Don't use batteries in this thing unless you are on-stage. I couldn't believe how fast battery-power is drained by this little devil. I'm using an a/c adapter from my cordless drill, and it works fine. So, it's pretty easy to find something that will power this thing. Apart from my unit changing how it operates on me (2 stomps instead of the original 1), I have no other complaints. Even though it's made of plastic, it's pretty sturdy. Learn about it's limitations on your own, and it's all good.

Never had to use customer service, but if I did, I'm sure it would be fast (zoom, get it?).

I've played MANY different types of music, and I wish I had this thing from the time I first picked up a bass almost 10 years ago. As a musician who's drifited from band to band, style to style, I can't stress enough how important a versitle unit like this is. I was skeptical when I first tried it out, but after playing it for over a year, I'm so happy I bought it. The 506 has really improved how my little rig sounds, and it's hella-fun just to toy around and play with the effects when you're bored. It's far from perfect, the cumbersome bank movement is a bummer. Also, it'll be quickly surpassed by more expensive units as the player moves on in life. Regardless, I luv mine. As a side note, it also sounds pretty good with a guitar running through it. So check this thing out if you're in the market for an inexpensive, versitile floor unit.

Anyboy capable of using his right foot should have no problem at all. However, sometimes I like to tweak effects live which is quite frustrating having to bend over and fiddle around with the edit/store keys. The volume is fiddly too, and I had to fork out more money to buy a matching expression/ volume pedal

I use the 506 with a Yamaha 5 stringer and a Calsbro 400W Custom Amp. Before you my this pedal remember : It is *VERY* noisy when played at high volumes(ie with a full blown band),especially with the distortions, slap effects and flangers.
Chorus is not bad, but ended up buying a seperate chorus pedal due to its lack of flexibility (how can C1-C9,c1-c9 describe all the possible configurations of chorus?).
The Amp Simulator is absolute rubbish, as well as the noise reduction unit, you can really see how gimmicky they are in the first place.
The octaver is a bit muddy. I like the reverb/delay effects and the synth and funzz are fun especially when playing around with artifical harmonics. Nothing's really special, but for those who don't really use effects very much it's not bad. I am however, starting to have doubts on the tuner.

Never failed me. Just treat it as you would treat your bass. Don't drop it, spill liquids, jmp on it etc etc.
Use an AC adaptor AND battery for gigs (funnily enough , my ac adaptor fails me quite frequently)

You get what you pay for : a couple of "general" effects and a few gimmicks. I play mostly progressive metal, but I play just about everything I get my hands on. It serves me well, but I don't use effects heavily : just a bit of reverb, delay and thin fuzz
I've been playing for 4 years and I own another 2 single effects boxes (Distortion and Chorus/Flanger)
If it were stolen or lost, I would probably buy a few single stomp boxes, since they still serve my purpose quite well.
I love the fact that it offers a fair range of effects. I hate the fact that most of these effects are utter tripe at the best of times. This is NOT a pedal for bass effects pioneers.
Unfortunatly even the cheapest single stomp box available on the outperforms the 506 in its field. I wouldn't even dare compare it to Digitech's and DOD's multieffects let alone a studio rack, but anyway, its cheap.
I wish it had finer control of effects.
It definitly, doesn't get in the way, just don;t exaggerate.
REMEMBER : THE QUALITY OF WHAT YOU GET IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO HOW MUCH YOU PAY