Zoom 9002

easy enough to get a multitude of different sounds. I spent many hours coming up with all kinds of overdriven tones.

Sounds killer in headphones, direct to a recording console or to a stereo. I couldn't get a good sound with an amp either. Maybe a solid state amp might work well, I dont know. The clean presets are nice but the overdriven ones blow. I got fantastic overdriven sounds by making my own settings. I like a short delay to fatten the tone. The chorus, delays and reverb are top notch. The compressor is good only for clean settings. The pitch transposer is great for laying down bass tracks with a regular guitar. The EQ is very usable. Just takes a lot of fiddling but a great tones are findable in this unit. The headphones sure could be louder. I plugged into a stereo so I could get louder headphones. The EFX feature sounds cool but is rather useless. I think Zoom could have done something better there for sure. Again, I really liked this thing for recording. Great sounds for guitar, bass and vocals and the unit is very quiet if you use the compressor properly.

The recharable battery is an issue and now the unit does not work at all. I think there is something wrong with the input jack or the input circuitry. Haven't played the thing in 5 years because of it. bummer...

Never tried to deal with these people.

When you consider all the different effects this unit offers and all the features such as the remote controller, recharger, battery, headphones and various output jacks oh, and the great sounds it offers I would say the unit is rather inexpensive.
A little about me is that I have been playing lead guitar for about 25 years. I have a 76 Les Paul, 1964 Stratocaster, 84 Custom Shop Jackson, 4 early 70s Marshall half stacks, a few vintage Fender and Gibson amps and a zillion old pedal. I also have had a home recording studio for 15 years. So I know tone.

If you want to control more than one bank at a time you must have the Zoom on the front of your strap just above the neck, playing with two cables running around your shoulders. Well, it's not really comfortable.
Different you set max 4 patches.

Great if used with headphones .....playing all night

Bought it more than 10 years ago, still works. Batteries are not reliable.

10 years ago a revolution

Very easy to use and gets a great sound. I like the patches I made much better than the presets. Wish I could actually delete many of the presets for more of my own stuff.

Fender Strat and Fender Deluxe Reverb Amp.

Battery died long ago. I stepped on it and a few other things, still works.

Bought it brand new for 600.00 about 10 years ago??? Got it the first week it was out I was so impressed. Sorry to say, I am in the process of getting something new now (not ZOOM either). But I may keep the ZOOM for dinking around at home.

Very easy to use.
Very reliable.

Profesionnal. Can be used as send effect for other instruments. The reverb is very good for voice recording.

The only problem is the battery.
This box cannot be used anymore as when it was new.

I ve tried to buy a new battery from a shop in Switzerland (HappySound - Lausanne). They sold me an old one for the price of a new one!

9

this is not a pedal . it's more like a headphone amp w/h effects , tuner & a metronome .

it's very easy to use . just press your bank and then the no's 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 . when you want to tweak or create something for yourself , then the manual comes into play and even then it's still easy .

i don't know if the 9002 sounds artificial or digital but it sounds good enough for me when i didn't have the funds to get an amp and effects .

i have played it through amps ( fender , peavey , etc ) and they sound good enough but maybe not for the " purists " who prefer tubes over anything .

there is that pause when switching between pedals .

like the other reviewers - the battery issue is really an issue . it dies really fast and then you gotta to use the wall wart and after a while you just use the wall wart .

besides you cannot stomp on it like a pedal - so if you're a soloist , this is not it .

dropped it before and it still works . i think zoom is good at making plastics last as long as metals .

this is what happened . bought 1 or 2 years before 1994 . it worked fine . 1998 - didn't touched the guitar and so i didn't touch 9002 .

a year or so later - picked up the guitar and tried the 9002 . couldn't see the LED's and no sound . put it back under the bed . this year , took it out and the LED's came out and everthing came out fine except for the volume knob . when you turn it to maximum you don't actually get the max but when you decrease it a bit then you get the max output .

just sent it in for repairs .

if your'e a soloist or the lead player , maybe this is not your option .

this is a good starting point for multieffects or no amp or portability or a practice tool .

for the price when it first came out - it's unbelieveable . i just couldn't believe the price when i first tried it out .

very easy to use, light and compact, no problems with drops, hits even rainy days onstage outside wanderfull!, very intuitive interface and programing steps, the patches are so sensitive i had few details with but no matter, containts metronome and tunner, very handly, better if they would added an indigo display and night location buttons, if you are figer faster you can change effect parameters in real time! ( thats not a joke)

interesting sound arsennal, you can go from simple folk or jazz to heavy metal and grunch, i like progresive and found my own sound on it, the distortion color is good, but the EQ is less than i hope, you better use your amp onboard, i taste it with two jcm900 rack version preamps and a peavey CS800 as power monster, supports a wide variety of guitars and bass, yamaha, jackson, hammer, gibson, fender, and fernandez, my favorites are a standard gilmour strat, an a kirk hammet jackson, for bass i like metalic bright sound cord, so i taste troug a steinberger spirit and even a yamaha rbx260 and really works but also you can run it trouhg a cris squier rick's edition and hope that works without change the sound identity.
i drove them trough a wide variety of enclosures and no problem to change the sounds color, headphones are very good, but normal out sucks, too noisy and lacks of power sound, thats why i use it trought headphones to drive in the marshalls, the sfx secction is pretty! to create new sounds, however yo have tow delays or two rebervs or a combination but no 4 effects at once, too bad boys, you should have finished what you started.
in general good effects, pitch kill, no much control over compresion,but ok, too much factory presets

few delay with patch selection, i bougth it with the batery dead so i use the AC adapter no problems, but the cord is too short to use with AC and put into the strap, the turn on/off switch is too small and fragile so you should avoid run over stage like van halen with this poopy into the strap

never used

it meet my spectatives about a multiefect, i had been playing guitar and bass for 20 years from pop, rock, jazz, acid, punk, new age and progressive, is less noisy than my boss units, have also a GSP7, and a FX500 and an ART ECC, i wouldnt change it, is confortable, and pretty sound, but never use it trough the normal output use headphone out

I got it used for christmas in 2000. had figured the whole thing out in 20 minutes. Really straight forward, even with no manual. Enjoy the remote thing, usually have it taped to my guitar or wrapped around my strap.

Running it through a beginners set-up. Lotus strat mock up kustom KLA-10 practice amp. Adds a whole new sound to that amp. Even better with the ear phones. now a days, I'm pluggin my CD system into it, which has helped my playing by leaps and bounds. The distortion sucks, I still use a DOD grunge pedal. Have to switch all the effects off to make my 535 crybaby wah sound half descent, or run the wah after it in my effects chain. when tweaked corectly, you can get some kilelr stuff out of it. I also like the pitch shifter, can give you a half step down tuning, or even a bass synth. still trying to tweek out a 12 string sound though.

Don't like the fact that the battery sucks. I always have to use the adpater. I would gig with it, but ONLY if theres more than one guitar. The delay on the patch jumps would create too much of an holed sound. Planning on taking her for a spin when I go performing wiht my band next time. Would still bring my other pedals though, jsut for good measures. (If anyone wants to help me on a battery search, PLEASE e-mail me: minusleafclover@hotmail.com)

Kinda p.o.ed at the company. I wrote them a few times about the battery and it's inability to charge. They gave me some run-around about having someone contact me and other stuff. Not much happeneing. They've moved on to bigger and better things, so oh well.

I really do like this. If your a beginning guitar player,a dn you can find one of these, purchase it immediately. They're real inexpensive since they're so old, and they can make your tone soudn a little better. If your someone whos been playing for 10 years, and has a huge set-up, consider one of the newer products. They've evolved from what I've heard. I'm into all kinds of stuff, from acoustic picking around a campfire, to praise songs at my church, to headbanging ear-blasting metal thrash parties at my house. I paly anything from Creed, metallica, linkin park, nirvana, jimmy buffet, hendrix, satriani, maybe throw in a dash of country. it's mostly metal though, and hard rock. This is a prety versatile little device, and I take it all these places now. i'm really looking forward to borrowing my friends pig-nose, and seeing what I can do totally portable. I'm also going to give it a test play and an old '63 vibrolux tube amp and see what it can do there.

You need the manual & some practice with it, but it does a lot for a small, inexpensive device...the unit has built-in distortion, delay, flange, chorus, octave, & some wacky stuff! Also metronome & pitch for tuning by ear. Effects can be added (double delay etc.) which is nice.

I have used with headphones (uncomfortable but beats the old Rockman!)and Peavey amps (works OK). Now I use with small powered computer speakers, very nice low-volume practice setup! I play UFO, Cheap Trick, Metallica...no problems with distortion etc.

The battery fried out soon after I bought it, so I run it only on AC adapter. No other problems at all.

No need to contact them for any reason.

I think this is a most impressive device, perfect for travel. Don't know if I would use it live, it does not lend itself to quick patch-changes...later Zoom devices with floor pedals would be better. For dinking around, it is pretty darn good!

The unit itself is fairly easy to use. Editing patches is fairly easy but its importing a preset patch to a user pathc that's a bit more challenging if you didn't go through the manual first.
Manual is okay, although it lacks the professional touch from, say, a Boss/Roland product.

Sound is somewhat too digitized. Presets are mainly distortion-oriented. I am using it on a Peavey Bandit 112 amp and it sound good, thanks to the built-in preamp that the 9002 has. Once you tweak the user patches you can have killer sound from it. the SFX option is totally useless unless you like goofing off with sounds.
Practicing with headphones cannot be beat with this little marvel.

This is the second Zoom 9002 I've owned so far. The first on I had fell so many times, it isn't even funny. Still works A-1. I sold it to a fried of mine that still has it. I kinda regreted selling it so I got another one.
Although its not made of metal like Boss products, its extremely durable and will last for years on end...

So far, I checked on their site for a PDF owner's manual and it wasn't listed. I e-mailed them today. We'll see if they give promt replies.

I play mostly heavy metal and alternative for 10 years or so. The Zoom's presets are okay but with serious tweaking, you can emulate almost any guitar sound in the likes of Metallica to Korn. The fact that it is walkman-sized is great when you travel alot with your stuff. For practicing with headphones, this baby is great.
Playing onstage, I'd suggest the Boss GT-3. Its the same price the Zoom 9002 sold for when it was still available. What I dislike about the 9002 is the small delay when swithching patches. Luckily when playing with the whole band, its not as noticeable as when you practise alone. If you find one used, I recommend it, but keep in mind this is a 10 year old product and there are better units available out there now.