Zoom 606

Bought it 5 years ago. Probably the easiest effects unit i have owned. You can assign a task to the expression pedal with one button press!! Very easy to use! You already know the features of this pedal so i go on to the sound quality section.... I have to say though that it has 35 effects, 11 classic amps simulation (Boogie,Marshall,Fender, Peavey etc.) plus a built in tuner!

For its price i don't think you can find anything better! It costs as much as those crappy metal zones etc. or less if you buy it used and it sounds 10 times better! Plus you add effects to your sound! Very nice clean sounds, good blues sounds and defined lead and rhythm sounds suitable for hard rock/metal music. I bought a Boss Metal Zone 2 years later expecting to replace my old Zoom, but the Zoom left me no choice!!

5 years without a single problem! I don't even have to change batteries since i run it with an AC Adapter!

Haven't dealt with them for any reason

An amazing unit for its price. You have to understand that the future of units is in companies like this one. Boss, the dominator in guitar effects industry, has overpriced its products. Try this one and you won't be disappointed! Amazing value for money!!

For me it is pretty easy to get a good sound out of it. The manual is precise and it's idiot proof. Easy to save your patches if that's your thing.

I really bought this thing to use with headphones when I am travelling. However, it does nail the EVH and Jimmy Page sound very well through my Laney Amp. The only effect I don't care for on this is the preset blues. However on manual "US Blues" it sounds very good. Most of the time I use this with headphones. I have run it through Laney, Marshall and VOX Amps. I have an SG, two strats, a telecaster and a hollow body les paul. It's not noisy. I don't use all of the effects on here - most of them are pretty useless to me because I play blues and what I call no bullshit rock and roll. Right now I'm running this through a Laney LX65R.

I've had this for two years. Tough as nails. Whe I gig, I'm pretty much a guitar into amp type guy with a footswitch to go to overdrive.

Never dealt with them.

I play blues and no bs rock. It's very good for what I got it for which is to play with headphones when I'm on a trip. Aside from what I mentioned above, I've got a bunch of acoustic guitars. I've been playing 40 plus years. I love it because it is small and I can put it in a suitcase with a good set of headphones very easily. It has everything I need.

I browsed the manual for a couple of times and i understood what it does. this was my 2nd multi fx toy. i first got a zoom 1010 but it got stolen during a gig, so i bought the 606. editing patches is easy. you just set the dial to the effect, and just press the value buttons. so convenient. also, it has a fixed value of effects, you dont have to adjust the feedback, rate etc. great for newbies.

i could pretty much come close to vai, satriani or malmsteen sound(though not completely similar), but hey, it sounds great nonetheless. i use alvarez guitars and peavey amps and i get the sound that i want. it sounds noisy on high level and gain settings. i recently sold it and bought a gfx8 coz i want to access patches easier and love twiddling with the finer details. but for newbies, you will sound great and will improve a lot, better than buying a lot of stompbox models, but if you have a lot of cash to blow you can do it.. anyway this is a good multifx, but for pros i advice to get gfx series.

i always carry a basic distortion and delay as a backup for gigs(you never know-accidents do happen) but it has never failed me for a year of using it in gigs. just be extra careful with it coz its made of plastic. a drunk ass has stepped on it once but thankfully nothing happened.

nah, i fix my own gadgets. if its just tack switches i can solder them without problems. i have known a store here that fixes digital gadgets but never ask them.

i play a lot of instrumental and rock, metal alternative music. yeah i got the sounds i want. ive been playing for 5 years its a cool fx but if your a pro i advise to get a better fx. for newbs this is cool. this is really cool for a 1st time fx. you get your basic chorus, distortion, dealy and pedal fx. i recommend it to beggining musicians.

What were they thinking when they designed this pedal. The only decent thing is that all the presets are all you can and need to do with this pedal so that means no bending over trying to figure out what effect paremetre you've selected. Well once you've read the the incredibly confusing manual (took three attemptes to understand what everything meant) its a doddle to use.

Well i used to use this pedal with a dinky litte Marshall MG10cd and it moade the litte thing sound like a fully cranked stack. Then i bought the fantastic Vox Ad30VT and thats when the feadback started. The only decent sound is the Korn setting which still sounds tinny. I use it like this Epiphone 1965 G400 reissue>Boss DS-1>Zoom 606>Vox AD30VT. The wah sounds like a cat in a dish washer, volume you would have to be pixie weight to make subtle ajustment too come on Zoom all your pedals can't be this bad.

Plastic is not a durible material. Cheap yes but in this day in age we need metal!

Steer clear! Don't buy this its the worst pedal ever built!!! Ok that is a big clame. Its ok but i hate it.

With regards to being user friendly, I would say iwould give it a 7. Well actually, it already has all of the required system controls for you to modify and cutomize the desired tone. I would say I have to browse several times on the user manual to accurately comprehend the configuration controls. The effects so far are already rich and powerful to start off especially for the distortion patches, you probably dont need to modify it in some way, not unless you are looking for your own signature tone.
For the Expression Pedal, it is quite exceptional to me. But i should have suggested for zoom to provide a foot switch for the pedal assign system for much ease of use especially live performances.
The only thing that bothers me is switching through patches, especially if the other one is located on another bank. Yes, it does have the patch call method but when you talk about Live, RealTime performance, switching sucks, I'm the front man in my band and play guitar at the same time, I always end up messing up my performance due to troublesome switching of effects.

Like what i said, for me. The sound quality of my 606 is very excellent. It is powerful enough to boost up my Small Marshall MG10CD practice amp. I even used it live and on rehearsals and it gave a very good quality sound. AS if my performance has improved dramatically. And the effects are very bright and solid I actually use an RJ Raven as my main guitar. Compared to the Denio analog Distortion pedal that I have, for some reason it is unable to achieve the razor sharp and thick tone on my small amp, instead giving an OD tone only, which pisses me off back in the days where i don't have my 606 yet. I would give it an Absolute 10!!!

I would most probably depend on it. But to tell you frankly, I never or just moderately really tested the true limits of my 606, when it comes to reliability. I purchased my 606 since 2004 which is almost 2 years now. No unusual tripping of the gadget yet. I made a customized durable nylon casing for my 606 with a hard and sturdy base as my pedal board. But the most abusive thing that i have done with the 606 so far when i used it on my band's rehearsal and i actually placed the system on the area of the carpeted floor which is still wet from the spilled soda from my fellow guitarist, it indeed still worked out fine. I'm afraid the plastic chassis of the product migh not withstand such rigors of the road or setup on stage. If I would give it any rating so far, i would most probably give it an 8.

I haven't tried it yet. But i wouldn't even bother going to them just in case. Firstly, zoom products are mostly japanese made, introduced and distributed. And try to figure out what reps would they have. Yep you got it. It is Language Barrier!!!!!!

For the Overall rating of my 606, i would give it a 9. When it comes to sound quality and the price, there is no contest compared to other effects. Who would ever think tagging a very affordable price on a digitalized muliti effected pedal all packed into one?! The only thing that i would comment on is that Zoom should improve on designing their system to make it more user-friendly and therefore improving the guitarist's performance further. Practicality and quality comes hand in hand with zoom, keep up the good work and keep on innovating. Kudos!!!!

In terms of programming, this is a huge upgrade from the 505, and that was simple to use but cumbersome. On the other hand, the "expression pedal" seems to have no usable function that I can detect. You can use it as a volume control, but it's not really controllable because tiny movements create huge differences in the volume. (There may be a way to adjust this, but I was and remain too disgusted to plow through that rather obscure section of the manual.) Why not have it work as a user-controlled wah-wah or a practical volume control? And by the way, you'd better have fairly precise footwork or you'll wind up activating the expression pedal when you're trying to switch patches.

I have an old Kustom K200A and a little Peavey amp. I don't think the 606 is intrinsically noisy, but when you turn up the gain you start getting sympathetic resonance from the guitar. Some of the effects are pretty cool--the chorus or flanger or something really does give that airy, spacy whooshing sound, the auto wah works pretty well, and the reverb is very effective. On the other hand the amp modelling does nothing that I can hear, and there are some effects that seem to randomize the pitch. I can't figure out what they're supposed to be doing, and I can't imagine how you'd use them to actually play music.
You can really dial in the amount of distortion by adjusting the gain, and if you're looking for buzzy, raspy distortion you should be able to find an effect that works for you. If you're looking for that juicy, throaty Bluesbreakers distortion...well, I can come close.

I don't abuse or even heavily use my equipment, so don't ask me about reliability.
If I were playing in front of audiences regularly I'd buy something better and use the 606 as a backup, and if I were making big bucks I'd get another of the better effects machines for a backup.

They're reachable and they'll talk to you. That's as far as I got with them on my previous 505 (bought used, so I don't know how much abuse it took before I got it) because they wanted more than it was worth to look at it.

I've been playing forever, but not well enough to play out. Basically, I keep practiciing in case I'm ever at a Smokin' Joe Kubek gig and he has a heart attack on stage and they need someone to fill in on a few 12-bar blues tunes. For that it's perfectly satisfactory.
If this were lost or stolen I'd probably hold off on buying another until I got one of my rare opportunities to play in public.

With it being a modulating unit, this was simple for the get go and was simply a case of plug in and play

Clean sound could of been better and sounded more like a bypass setting more than anything - the pre set patches weren't the best ever and often sounded the same and to be honest i don't think i ever swayed past the G options

After 2 years the jacks broke and then needed constant soldiering every few months. After 4 years the control dials ceased to work - something that was never fixed. This left me stuck with the preset dials which i had luckily changed over time. Finally after the fifth year the thing just froze and stopped working. The circuit board is just screwed in with two screws giving the impression that slight depressions of the pedals could often cause massive damage.

Dont even try.

Having played guitar in constant metal bands for the past seven year, I feel that I just grew out of the pedal. Great for beginners but it just doesnt cut it for anyone playing longer than 2 years in my mind.

easy to use. if it's your first mfx, is not a problem because the handbook, says everything you need to know.
edit patches is very intutive...

well when i used this stuff, i was playng with an ibanez rg270dx and a very old combo amp :"Aria".
certly it shouldn't be a g-force, but i have to say that, if you try to make a good sound you find it.
i like to play many kind of music and i made some artist sounds, like: satriani, vai, petrucci, malmsteen, van hallen....no bad.
this zoom can be very noisy if u can't set correctly...

reliability?i thing no so much.
when you put your cable into the input jack on the right if you're using this unit by battery, zoom shuts on. when my inputs jack were broken after 2-3 years, you can't imagine
how many times i kicked off it, when playng, strange and very noise sounds cums from my amps, and the zoom started to go off and on 10 times in a second until you try to find a corrects position of cable by skotch or anything else.
you'll have also to fix you're expression pedal...soon

i dont know. never call it.

i play a funky-rock-blues music but often i play heavey metal or some jazz stuff.
I've been playng for 10 years more or less, and this was my first mfx...at this price if you take it carefully it's a good thing for begining...now i've got a boss gt-8 a marshall tsl_602 and the old ibanez rg270dx...don't compare

easy to use. if it's your first mfx, is not a problem because the handbook, says everything you need to know.
edit patches is very intutive...

well when i used this stuff, i was playng with an ibanez rg270dx and a very old combo amp :"Aria".
certly it shouldn't be a g-force, but i have to say that, if you try to make a good sound you find it.
i like to play many kind of music and i made some artist sounds, like: satriani, vai, petrucci, malmsteen, van hallen....no bad.
this zoom can be very noisy if u can't set correctly...

reliability?i thing no so much.
when you put your cable into the input jack on the right if you're using this unit by battery, zoom shuts on. when my inputs jack were broken after 2-3 years, you can't imagine
how many times i kicked off it, when playng, strange and very noise sounds cums from my amps, and the zoom started to go off and on 10 times in a second until you try to find a corrects position of cable by skotch or anything else.
you'll have also to fix you're expression pedal...soon

i dont know. never call it.

i play a funky-rock-blues music but often i play heavey metal or some jazz stuff.
I've been playng for 10 years more or less, and this was my first mfx...at this price if you take it carefully it's a good thing for begining...

I suppose its easy to use, I only use the distortion sounds (I think all the other efects are quite poor to be honest) so it can be a bit of a pain having to skip through all the other sounds.

I use an epiphone les paul (with EMGs) through a vintage marshall JCM800 head and a relatively new 1960b cab.
The distortion sounds are very good indeed, in fact I have tried lots of other stomp boxes (boss mega-distortion, boss MD2, digitech death metal) and I have to say it was better that all of them.
Only problem is that the clarity gets lost a bit when I play live with a band.
I never use the other sounds so i cant comment on them.
I play mostly power metal (gamma ray, helloween etc.) and it does the job nicely, not quite the same sound, but I have pretty much given up on trying to replicate that exact sound.
The great thing is that its not too noisy.

Its currently broken because the input is jack is dodgy, so no, not all that great.

never dealt with them

If it were stolen I might get another but only if I couldnt find another decent distortion pedal.
been playing for about five years (bass for another five)
still on the look out for a better distortion sound, but for its price this blows the competition away.