Zoom 707 II

its relatively easy to programme apart from the shit part about having to make sure that each patch is about the same volume...

well i usually play rock and metal, so the some of the distortion sounds here are really good if u add some eq and the stack modulation but overall the effects are too digital and most of the types of distortions offered are really useless

i would never take it for a gig because its really hard to control the patch volume levels(eg. patch A1 and A2 may be set to patch lvl 25 but both vary in loudness) furthermore if u step too hard u end up jumping forward by more than one patch (eg. instead of from A1 to A2 you end up at A5)

Forget it... It may seem a good buy to amateurs but don't be fooled... This pedal ain't gonna see u through any gigs...

I've own the 70711 for probably 4 years now. It's very easy to get great tones. The first bank of patches are great. I personally did not need to tweak any patches except to set the drive to clean. The manual was simple to understand and all the Patches are listed on the back page for reference.

In the beginning I used my Fender Strat into the Zoom and then to a Fender Champ with DSP. Now I use my Telecaster with the Zoom and the same Amp. Playing the Fatclean setting makes my Amp shine. I use the Bark for heavy metal, the hyper for downtuned riffs and the pedwah for Hendrix style playing. My favorite patch is the GaryBD, perfect for my style.

Using it at home I've no problems except for inputs for guitar and amp are getting loose since its made of plastic. Used it for Jam sessions and other musicians were impress with all the effects for such a small modeler. Played two gigs with it but had to careful not to step on the cables and break the unit at the inputs. It now has been retired to the house as a practice tool, this is where it shines!

Never needed customer support, but one day I will need to.

My style of music is a mixture of Eric Johnson meets Gary Hoey with a little ZZTop thrown in. I've been playing for 30 plus years. Can get all the Tones I need from this modeler. I would replace it for one thing that doesn't get mentioned much is the sampling feature. I upgraded to a 128mb smartmedia card which gave it like 32 minutes of recording time. Perfect for laying down chord progressions and then playing lead over them. It is great for practice this way! Works easy with just the press of a button and operating the two foot switches (play/Rec}. The only fault that could be corrected is having the Wah effect work when playing with the recorded samples. Also another plus with this unit is you can record from CD/Radio and slow down the playback for learning.

IT is a zoom. They are cheap and nasty pieces of work. Every thing takes to long to do. Editing patches is a pain in the ass and it takes ages to surf the menue

I run a custom jackson loaded with seymors through a matamp and a hand built cab so the zoom didn't sound to bad. But really in the end it is just not on par with any other effects units. The distortions are lacking and the wah is usless.

I would never gig with it unless I had about 20 backups.

It's cheap plastic that would not stand up to a gig.

I play Steve vai to martin talyor to my own stuff. I need a versitle sound and amp. I have that with the matamp. I brought this as an expermient. I wanted to get some different tones. It failded misserably at that. Pathetic in every way.

Sounds bad
Built like a stack of cards

IT dosen't do it for me. IF you are a beginner then it may be not so bad. Try the digitech range instead.

You do need to look at the book, but considering what this pedal is capable of, you do need to bring a little something to the party.

If you set the Zoom Noise Reduction filter (znr), there is virtually no noise. I use it through a small Marshall amp. Sounds great no matter what I play it through. It sounds as good (or bad) as I want it to.

Batteries will run out eventually.

Good website provides everything I've needed.

In the presets you can find some decent sounding settings. But the great thing about this pedal is that it gives you complete control over all the parameters for each of the nine modules - so you can create virtually any sound you want. But to do this, you do have to read the booklet and experiment with the settings. I bought this because I was looking for a wah-wah. When I saw what this could do, plus a drum machine, plus a "slow downer" - for this money? Great bargain! Maybe it's not "professional quality", but my ears can't tell what is cost!

Using it is very easy. There are about 40 presets, you press the pedal to get to the next one. Editing patches: read the manual, after about 1/2 hour you should get the basics down. 40 places for saving a patch (one side is read-only, the other is user area, eg read/write). I have a Boss GT-6, the same principals apply. the real pain is moving a patch. You may want to save the patch at the target location before stomping on it with the new patch. So there's a lot of shuffling, and it's really a pain scrolling thru with the foot pedals. There are 2 "move to bank X" switches - they are tiny and really hard to get to. I ended up putting all the patches, mine and
theirs, into an excel spreadsheet.
Summary: editing a patch to add, delete of modify an effect is easy;
"patch location maintenance" is a chore.

I have 2 Ibanez's (Iceman & JS1000); also a Marshall 100W. Most people knock the quality of the sound produced - I think they are good over-all. The Boss has some superior sounds, but also costs 3x more. I didn't really notice excess noise from this box. The overdrives are OK - not great. There are some interesting effects: "step", "violin" (really good). Zoom underutilizes digital delay in their settings, I usually take theirs, like MT Zone, and add some delay, renaming it "MT Zond". They could have done a lot of variations with delay - you'll have to come up with your own, manually.
The presets.. blah, there are too many uninteresting ones (I focus on heavy metal), so there's a lot of clutter. I went thru each one and ranked them, to know what to avoid.

HERE's WHERE THIS BOX SUCKS.
First, it's real cheap plastic. The [wah-wah] pedal squeaks, probably because it too is all plastic. I use the pedal only for wah-wah. It's programmable, but setting it up for something else was too much work for me. There is some reinforcement for outdoor use - the pedal has a rough finish to it, so you can use hiking boots on it, and the pads underneath provide some protection. I've used it playing on sidewalks and stuff. It's OK, could be worse, definitely could be better. Not sure what they intended it for. Steel would be more suitable for me.

The input and output jacks started shorting out one day. I'd have to jiggle them endlessly to make a connection. Started bending the cords to extreme angles, if they moved a millimeter, the connection was broken. I took the unit apart twice trying to repair the endpoints, but they are pretty inaccessible. SUCKS. I threw it across the room and stomped on it insanely one day. Now I'm shopping for another effects box.

N/A (never used it)

The plusses: it's small and very portable. The 4 AA batteries are a major advantage. I have a hog-20 amp, so with this, i'm fully battery powered and portable. They should have bundled an adapter with it, I had to go to Radio Shack to find something, or better yet, have a cord built in to it. Since the input jack ports are so flimsy, I have to give it a thumbs down. I'm looking for something that won't break after a couple of years, like this did.
If they: a) added a cord/adapter; b) reinforced the exterior and connections; had a USB port to upload/download settings to a computer; c) had a better set of default preset sounds; d) had ~5 foot buttons to select sounds
...then this would be a great unit. But then I guess it would be a GFX.

Editing is easy although finding a very good sound is quite tough. The manual has a few useful tips...thats about it. Controls are fairly straight forward, I had it up and playing right away.

I use a cheap yamaha guitar with a fender 212. It sounds good enough for my small town band, and hopefully will sound better when I upgrade guitars. The effects are quite cool, although some are boring and must be modified. I like the metal distorion on this, because thats what I play.

Yes, its plastic, but i trust it. Yes I gig with it cause I can't afford better.

I play metal and this is a pretty good match. I have been playing for a few years. I would definatly buy somthing it for the price I got it at. It definatly helps me make music. Its a good pedal, and would recommend it for beginner to intermidiate players.

Not a very user friendly start if you are unfamiliar with multi effects pedal but as you go along, you'll be accustomed with it. The presets are useless, there were only a noticable few (Acoustic, 12 String, Clean Wah). Editing the patches would be a difficult task if you dont read the manual (The How tos part). The first time I saw the pedal, I thought the three knobs were Equalizer knobs until later I found out that they were actually parameter changer knobs. The manual is pretty useless when it comes to explaining the specific effects.

This was my first Multi FX guitar pedal and I can say that its not really that bad. I could even get certain difficult sounds in a jiffy (*coughEinzigercough*). Forget the distortions, they are quite choosy when it comes to amps. The cabinet modelling module, on the other hand, rocks. You can get good sounds through it. The ZNR module is also good when it comes to suppressing hums; just avoid overhauling it to 8, your guitar will sound like an impotent d!*k. The whammy/Pitch pedal seem to produce pinch harmonics when I dont want it to (Like A stone Solo). The Wah is a killer one if you know how to set it up. The autowah on the other hand sucks big time

My setup is RJ 7 - String Guitar -> BOSS MT-2 -> Zoom 707II -> Marshall 15CD and it doesn't sound bad enough to be called crap nor good enough to be praised by many.

I'm very delicate when it comes to preserving my materials but I tend to go high during gigs so I really dont know if I could depend on this machine. The adaptor port is kinda loose already. I use energizer batteries on this machine and it lasted for about a month of constant use. I had the input jack loose and I resoldered it myself. Its not that difficult to do though

I dont know if there exists such customer support for zoom on the philippines. Base from other's opinion, I guess zoom has a bad rating on this part.

I play mostly Pop, Rock, Progressive, Metal, Trance, Old School Rock, Hip Hop and I can say that this pedal is very versatile when it comes to style. I just recently bought a Boss MT-2 Pedal and I can say that it literally kicks zoom's drive module's ass. I'm currently in a band and I use this for gigs without backup. If it was stolen or lost, I'm not gonna buy this pedal again (unless of course someone willgive it for Free) because I'm planning on setting up my own pedal board of individual pedals.

This is your basic entry-level-to-moderate guitarist's effects processor- easy to use, set and carry. Parameters are easy to understand and the manual is comprehensive and well-written.
Setting and editing patches is quite easy, even for last minute on-stage tweaking.
The pre-sets could be better arranged; there are some good ones but most of the clean tones, for example are pure crap. For first-time users, may be better to sit with someone who knows his patches while first setting them up.

I have an Indian-made Rs. 2500/- ($60) guitar with surprisingly sweet tone. It sounds good when played through the 707II and 80-100W Stranger amps.
Played it once through a concert set-up (largely Bose/Peavey) and it sounded lousy. This was probably because the patches sounded wildly different through the big boxes. Too trebly. I recently heard a friend play his Yamaha Pacifica through a similar set-up, and while he sounded a lot better than me, the patch sound DID seem different. It's frustrating esp. in a situation where you don't have too much time to soundcheck.
Having said that, the distortions are nice, much better than a Korg (have not tried Digitech). Clean tones, once you set them are very pleasant and you can get a variety of effects; though my lead guitarist who uses a GFX-8 says there are certain combinations that the 707II does not permit. Still, it's nice enough for the price.
Nothing sounds "very bad" on this; I get the feeling the more you work with it, the better sounds you can produce with it.

It's a plastic box, but quite strong, though I hate stomping on it because it's so dainty! I bought this over the 505 because of the expression pedal, which is quite nice. I like it because I can carry it around without fuss and don't have to worry about it acting funny---always starts promptly, the way it's supposed to,and hasn't displayed any funny bugs or peculiarities.
This is my only processor and I have no qualms about using it without a back-up. All it takes are 4 AA batteries to run on; I still haven't bothered getting an AC adaptor for it.

No problems so far. Anyway, that's for the best cuz there's no local support for Zoom in India that I know of.

I use it mostly for jams/ an occasional show with my office band and my old alumni band. We play mostly classic rock- Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons---plus some newer stuff--- mostly rock and metal inspired. This gives a good set of sounds, but I'm lazy---usually I just set 3-4 patches and use the one that sounds the most like any particular number. If you're one for getting the EXACT tone and quality of of your processor, perhaps the 707II isn't for you!
I have been playing since I was about 13, but never ventured too much into fast solos or shredding and that kinda stuff. Since I have never aspired to any level of competence approaching professional, my gear reflects that mentality!
Givson guitar (2 single coils)
Stranger 10W for home practice; Stranger 80 and 100 amps for jams.
my consideration set was the Digitech RP100, Korg AX100G and this one. I was told the Korg's distortions sucked and Digitech was rather "plasticky". Can't say I regret the decision.
If it were lost/stolen, I would probably buy the same or a slightly higher variant. I like Zoom, but the GFX-8 is a little too much for me, so I'd probably stick with this baby!
I love the (low) weight, the nice big red display, the price and the distortions. I hate the presets, the trouble it takes me to get a decent clean tone out of it and the fact that it looks fairly unsexy on stage. Favourite feature is its versatility in terms of the sounds it produces- for a cheap entry-level pedal, it offers quite a bit!
Wish it had a set of recomended patch settings---to get the first time user going!
I'd highly recommend the Zoom 707II to guitarists who aren't THAT serious about their playing and mostly do so for their own pleasure and for the occasional gig. It's no hassle at all, and has a nice personality!

I would say easy to use if you are already experienced in music but a bit tricky if you are not.
To edit and save different patches is simple. It's a matter of selecting a patch, pressing edit and doing the rest. The manual is quite helpful, but you must read it carefully. The manual doesn't help much when explaining each effect and feature and what it does.

I'm using a Washburn Strat through some crappy Kustom 20 watt amp. For the crappy setup i have, i must say the sound is impressive. Is is quite difficult to get exact sounds of other bands though, unless u have the right amp and guitar. Even then you have to fiddle alot. Fuzz is bad and acoustic sounds are horrific. Acoustic sounds like a retarded, deep banjo. Distortions and amp simulators are a quite impressive though and it can generate quite a bit of power. The rest of the effects are good but better can be achieved with other products.

I would say pretty reliable. It's only giving me a bit of a problem with the input jack but i am pretty happy to use it without a backup at all. It is also very strong.

Never dealt with support, so no comment, but heard it's crap.

Overall i would say it is definitely good for small gigs and playing for friends and stuff, and it's a great multi effects pedal for the price you pay. But there definitely is better out there i must say. I would definitely upgrade if i could. It only seems to sound good when really good equipment is used (guitar especially). My best feature is the wah effects, although i haven't really tried any other wah pedals. I like the drum machine, as it helps mostly when practicing.

Overall not bad. Easy enough to change between patches, while the stompbox effect is very useful. The expression pedal is supremely bad though. The range is far too limited and the sensitivity is annoying. Press down too hard (which isn't even that hard) and the thing turns off. Although the pedal can be customised to your personal setting it still remains shit afterwards. The recording facilty is very easy to use though on otherhand, and the ability to loop tracks is very useful.

This pedal is an absolute joke. The sound is almost unusable. The distortion are poor, falling into two categories... Extremely treble heavy with obsene hiss or an attempt at classic rock but thin and hollow sounding. The general effects are pretty useless, the wah is unusable, distortions are poor, chorus sounds far too manufactured you can actually hear the fakeness of it. The few bright points are the delay is pretty good and some of the amp modules are usuable that are preprogrammed patches. Reverb is ok, but makes lil difference to sound.

Overall if you wanna sound good on stage avoid this!!!!!!!!!

Has never broke down on me. Not the best built piece of kit, made mostly outta plastic and there is no lighting on the foot pedals so you need to take night vision goggles with you to dark gigs.

Never used them

I'm a aspiring musician, and when writing songs require a diverse range of effects. I don't want to have to use the same distortion on all my songs, the same acoustic patch for others and same lead patches for soloing but the limits of the effects on this unit mean i often do. The pre set patches are UNBELIEVABLY SHIT! Im amazed at who programmed it because he obviously didn't have ears. The preset patch BARK is the best, i think they forgot to put in the "id rather listen to a _ _ _ _ than this patch...."

In summary absolute shit. Avoid like the plague, is absolute poo.