Zoom 9000

Good manual, easy layout, nice big switches on footpedal

Sounds good for Charvel Predator through 4 kW Marshall with Peavey Speakers. Nice distortion and compression, excellent echo and a good fat chorus. Used it for 8 years as main gigging unit.

Only damage was snapped plastic on footpedal plug (while packing up after a very drunk gig)

Happily depended on it at over 200 gigs.

After 8 years it died completely - so I moved to a 4040 which ain't bad, but I can't use it in the park:(

Very crap support - after it died no-one offered any useful info. I tried contacts in UK, USA and Japan

For blues or rock this is a good box - the classic Zoom sound. For heavier thrashing, it isn't quite fat or crunchy enough. Nice and light, so good for picnics and busking, along with my 1W Marshall baby.

IF ONLY I COULD FIND SOMEONE WITH SOME TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE SO I CAN FIX IT. I MISS MY 9000!!

Bought it used no manual, was a nightmare till I tinkered around with it after that no problem.

To me I think the sound quality is excellent for the money. I like
the pitch shifter and delay the best. Distortion could be better with
a tad more gain settings etc but overall good sound.Its easy to get that Rhoads or van halen type metal sound or anything else really.

This is the third zoom I've bought, my little 9002 died after years of
faithfull service. Dont know if I would like to depend on it for gigs though, I would probably use just some of the mod effects like delay
chorus etc.

Never had to deal with them, had to take my first 9000 back to the shop for repair as the power in socket was faulty after that no problems.

I like the 80's metal sound, Rhoads van halen etc and it does the job
very well, its not something you have to wrestle with to get a good sound.My only gripe is the small delay between patch changes and the distortion could be better but for the $$$ I think its unmatched.
Definitely by it again as its relatively cheap compared to other brands and you get a ton of effects for the price of one pedal so its got my vote.

Well, since I got it used, I didn't get a manual. It took me a few days of dinkin' with it to really figure out how to access all of the settings. If you get one, be sure to spend lots of time checking out all the settings. I've found that the overdrive/distortion sounds much better if you dink with both of the EQs just right. The foot controller doesn't have a straight-forward bypass which sucks.

I've been using mine with a '67 (SG-body)Melody Maker with a Tele pickup at the bridge and a humbucker at the neck. The sound is pretty good into a 50W Marshall, but I've had the batteries run down on me live so I mostly use it to record into a PC. Sure it's noisy, but with the kind of gain/distortion settings I use, anything else is just as noisy. Gotta love the harmonizer. It does drop out momentarily between settings, which is disappointing. Also, don't try to use it too close to an FM wireless... you'll get lots of digital buzzing.

It eats batteries like crazy, and I hate having 50 wall-warts. If you abuse it the connectors will screw up, but they are easily fixed if you're good with a soldering iron. Just on general principles, I'd never go to a gig without backup gear, but that's not a reflection on the unit, just my own paranoia.

I own three pieces of Zoom Gear... the 9000, a 9001 and a Zoom Driver. The 9000 and Driver were bought used. None came with any manual, and I've contacted Zoom about all 3 with disappointing results. Once I was overjoyed to get a large envelope in the mail from them, but it had none of the info I requested. Just adverts for new gear. Typical engineering types. Build great stuff, but don't tell anyone how it works.

It's a pretty versatile piece of gear. You can create patches for any style of music. Like any unit with a ton of effects bundled in, some are not perfect, but the convenience of having all your effects in one box makes up for that.

Pretty easy. Not too many parameters. My unit was packet with footpedal for selecting presets and tuner mode. The combination worked very well in band and live situations.

The sound is quite thin and modern. Allways sounds like ZOOM. Won't let the sound of your guitar and fingers through. The by-pass mode isn't true by-pass mode. Has actually only one distortion sound, which is good for modern high gain things. Clean sound is also suitable for modern things. Basic effects are pretty good for the money.

Mine survived for 8 years until it said bzzzzzzzz and become totally silent. Had problems with the power-in connection. Sometimes lost all user presets. Don't drop it on the floor too many times. Otherwise solidly made.

Good for modern sounds. Not suitable for root music. Works well in live and band situations with build-in tuner and optional floorpedal.

I got my 9000 new in 92, and I think they'd been out about 2 or 3 years at the time. There are some decent presets on the unit, but all are editable and this should be done to fit your guitar and amp. It is not difficult to get a good sound out of this little processor. A manual will go a long way in speeding up the learning process, but I lost my manual shortly after learning to use this thing and haven't needed it since. The manual was actually quite good considering it's a manual for musical equipment (and we know the general quality of those!). However, this isn't a programmable processor to fear like some others out there. The biggest problem I have is the small size of the buttons, the closeness of the buttons, and the relative similarity of their appearance. Quick changes in the dark could cause problems.

I got the optional footswitch with mine so changing patches while playing is quite easy. I've done it while singing and playing onstage, and I'm not a brain surgeon.

I'd suggest ignoring reviews of the 9000 if they were made on cheap guitars and amps.

I have played this unit with American Strats w/ stock pickups & EMG's, a LP Custom (the guitar I bought and got the 9000 with for free), a custom made tele with Van Zandts, a JB Player with EMG 81's, other guitars; and for amps it's been Peaveys, Fenders, and Tubeworks.

This processor has consistently delivered quality effects and sound with all my equipment over the last 8 years. Sometimes I've put it down for a period of time, picked it up on a whim and rediscovered just how good it sounds! True, there are some cheesy effects in here ("metal" and "cry"), but everything else is great. My favorite guitarist is David Gilmour of the Floyd, and with this Zoom I was copping his leads with my Les Paul - years before I got my strat. This unit is very flexible for its size, and while it does have some shortcomings like the eq parameters, well that's what you have knobs on your amp for! Even still, for a while I ran the 9000 straight into a Tube Works MosValve 920 amp which only had volume and presence controls for each channel.

For my tastes, the distortion and overdrives on this sucker are awesome. Mix in some delay and chorus, all little reverb, and crank it up. The octave on this thing kicks ass too: I just mix it in at a level of "1" for one octave down ("-12" on the menu), then thrash on my LP along with RATM's first album. Beefy! The choruses, reverbs, and delays on here are excellent and quite flexible. The flanger and phasers are okay - definitely not Electro Harmonix or old Boss quality, but good enough in the mix. What I also like to do is turn the first effect type off, the one that sets crunch, overdrive, clean, distortion, etc. With it off you just get the tone your amp puts out, or run it direct and it sounds nice and spanky clean. Very nice. I have also used a Dunlop crybaby with the 9000 as well as the Boss GE7, both to great effect. When using pedals with the 9000, experiment with putting it before the input or in after the output (prior to amplifier).

One big problem I have with the 9000's sound quality is the delay between patch changes. The sound drops out for a fraction of a second. The Super Player (8080, I believe) was supposed to "seemlessly transition when switching patches" but when I played one in a store it wasn't what I expected. The delay is manageable if you practice your transitions (I was in a serious band when I used the 9000 exclusively and I was forced to!). Some of the compressor levels on the higher gain settings can be noisy, but I've heard worse from overdrive pedals. It's not bad in my opinion and has never presented a problem for me. I guess if you were at full volume alone in a stadium and held your guitar instead of playing it....

Here's where the 9000 falls short. I went through 2 units before I got one that wouldn't die on me. In order to keep these suckers from glitching and resetting all the patches to factory default DO NOT USE BATTERIES. You must have an a/c adapter. Also, the plug receptacles aren't very sturdy, especially the "mix in" one - mine is defunct. Be careful that you plug & unplug the power smoothly and firmly.

Otherwise, this sucker has been everywhere and taken some abuse. A few scratches but otherwise no other problems. I gotta give a lower rating due to not being reliable on batteries.

Never have. When the first two went tits up I dealt with the store.

In the words of the great D. Gilmour, multi-effects processors due many things but don't do any of them particularly well. This is very true. What the 9000 does for me is give me all the sounds I need in a small, easy to use package. To match or surpass the amount and quality of effects that I get from the 9000 I'd have to spend a lot of money and lose a lot of space in my gig bag. I will eventually replace the 9000 with a pedal set-up, but I still haven't found the pedals I need to make that a superior, pragmatic and tonal option.

I just bought mine used, and it did not come with a manual. However, I figured it out pretty fast after listening to the different sounds.
It is very easy to use. Once you get a hang for it, there is not much to it.

My guitar is a Hoener Les Paul and a Peavy RAGE. the effects sound very good but the noise does become a problem. This can be remedied
by just wailing on your instrument and playing fast so the noise gets kind of mixed in with the sound. The flanging is good, but not great. Very analog sounding.

When I put batteries in it it just refused to operate. After playing around with the battery themselves in the unit everything is A o.k.
I might use it on a gig without a backup, but be very careful and know your 9000 well, because it might malfunction when you'll need it
most.

N/A..so far have not needed to do this.

I give this a rating of 8. Great used price for such a great little processor.

The unit has a great sound overall. I can get any sound I want out of it. Editing patches is easy to do even if you don't have the manual.

I use the Zoom with an Ibanez EX series through a Peavey Audition 30. It is not noisy at all. All the effects are great on it too. The distortions are not too good for palm muting, and the EQ has a very limited range (only 2 bands).

I just got it so I've never dropped it or anything

I play lots of different kinds of music so it helps me expand my musical composition ability. I wish the EQ setting had 3 or 4 bands instead of two and I wish the distortions were heavier.

Well i would say that it's very easy to use even without the manual. Editing patches is quite a easy too ,except that every buttons has so many purposes that first i was bit of confused ,but when you use it enough you'll learn it.

I'm using this unit with good old Fender Stratocaster and Marshall Valvestate amplifier, and i think they fit together quite nice. Zoom 9000 is noisy with some settings ,that's true and some kind of noice reduction would be really good. But it's not SO noisy as some people says . Distortions are quite a identical but those are decent i guess, larger variety of distortion sounds would be nice. Reverb is pretty good and delays work fine. Modulation effects are absolutely good for the price;phaser,flanger pitch shifter and others are good, tremolo effect is nice too. But i have to say that metal effect is totally useless, it's sounds really weird.With adjusting the effect parametres you can get very futuristic and strange sounds.That cry effect is good but i would like to have more options to adjust that. After all i think this little box really have good range of effects inside.

Well i haven't got this unit with gig yet but i think i would depend to it . I have dropped it many times to floor but it still works fine.

This unit is really good and fantastic value for the money, it has so many effects inside, that it's hard to find as good processor as this with so little of money. This processor is good and i would buy it again i guess.

I bought this unit used, no manual came with it -- but it's pretty intuitive once you start pushing buttons. I was editing patches in about half an hour or so. Each button serves more than one function so it gets kind of confusing if you forget what mode you're in, but a little patience and practice solves that problem.

I agree with others who say the sound is somewhat mediocre. Kind of thin and over-processed. I'm using it with a Washburn Shadow played through a Peavey Bandit 112 Transtube amp, and the Zoom tends to suck the bottom end right out of the sound unless you handle the effects settings with some delicacy. Otherwise you just heap layers of inherent noise into the mix. Reverb and delay sound pretty good but the controls are kind of limited. Chorus, flange, phase, pitch shift and tremelo sound quite good to me -- good range of controls. The Cry setting (auto-wah) is ok, but do yourself a favor and get a real pedal for that. Later for that "Metal" mode - totally useless. Onboard memory could have been put to better use.
The distortion effects are nothing to write home about. There's very little difference, really, between the Distortion, Overdrive and Crunch modes. The compression isn't all that great, either. These are analog effects & it doesn't seem like the designers put too much thought into it or paid too much attention to user input. I usually use the distortion/overdrive on my amp and let the Zoom handle the modulation effects.

It's pretty reliable, but I would definitely bring backups to a gig. The unit was not designed for stomp box use -- more of a set-and-forget thing that you stick on top of your amp. The buttons are far too snmall and close together to try to operate with your feet.
Even though the case is plastic, it's pretty sturdy. It can take a few falls off an amp and still keep on ticking.

Only had to call them once, to mail me a manual. Other than that I've never had a reason to contact them.

The Zoom 9000, for all its weaknesses, is fairly impressive for its size. I think, though, that they tried to cram too much into such a small package. Quantity over quality is not always good.
If your style is more manic/effects driven, or if you gig alot, maybe you should consider something sturdier or easier to operate "on the fly". If you're someone like me who does a lot a solo projects in his home studio and plays out only occasionally, this unit is very good -- although I probably would choose a rack system for my next purchase.

You will definetly need the book to get started. The manual is sufficient, but nothing special. Have to do a lot of foot tapping to use it live. Would be nice to have a backlit display on it to see settings better.

As others have mentioned, the distortion has just one sound to it. Ok for awhile, but it gets old pretty fast. The worst thing is the EQ - it must be digital with too low of a sampling rate: extremely noisy when trying to get any treble boost at all. The chorus, delays, and reverbs sound pretty good to me. The maximum delay (500 msec) is just a little too small for some things I'd like to do with it.

Mine failed once under warranty and had to be replaced. Also had to replace the RJ45 connector that plugs the foot controller into the main unit. Sent the unit back another time under warranty because I thought it must be defective to sound so bad with treble boost, but later found out that is just the design. Have had trouble with it losing it's battery backed up settings.

Support seemed reasonably good. Everything handled well.

I liked it because it was small, but since it really requires a foot controller to use, I would buy something in a foot controller only format if I had to do it all over again. No way would I buy it again unless the EQ section was drastically cleaned up and more distortion types were included. However, it is handy to have in your bag and can help in a pinch - have used the reverb for the house mix with surprisingly good results.