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Zoom B1

Summary
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Manufacturer URL http://www.zoomfx.com
Ease of Use 8.0 (3 responses)
Sound Quality 9.0 (3 responses)
Reliability 8.7 (3 responses)
Customer Support N/A (0 responses)
Overall Rating 9.0 (3 responses)
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Page: 1 (Show 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 reviews per page) Showing 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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Product: Zoom B1
Price Paid: Australian Dollars 130
Submitted 05/20/2008 at 10:02am by Anthony Artmann

Ease of Use : 10
It's easy to get a good sound out of this unit. It comes with a ton of presets. Some are conservative. Some are crazy.
Editing is simple. 1 knob to select the parameter and another to adjust the parameter. The manual is clear and simple.

Sound Quality : 10
The sound quality is great. Clean and quiet.
I play through my KRK monitors. The pedal comes with some nice amp simulations. All very useful.
The signal output from my Ibanez bass is a little weak. I found that even with the input sensitivity maxed out I didn't seem to be "driving" the unit as well as I could be. The solution was to add a Behringer PB100 pre-amp pedal before the Zoom. Now it sounds totally brilliant.

Reliability : 10
It gets thrown in my gig bag. Made of tough plastic. If I forget to take the power supply it runs on batteries.

Customer Support : No Opinion

Overall Rating : 10
I just like jamming along to the built in drum machine, mp3's or youTube videos. This pedal makes me sound really good. Lot's of fun and really cheap too!


Product: Zoom B1
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted 11/07/2007 at 07:55pm by btles

Ease of Use : 7
The sound is pretty good for the price. I haven't had any real problems with extraneous noise. The patches are OK and grouped by cabinet/amp simulations, performer simulations, and then some really wierd sounding stuff. But all can be significantly modified and saved. With a little tweaking you should be able to get whatever sound you are looking for out of this. The manual is serviceable.

Sound Quality : 8
As stated above, it has a good array of different sounds.
No effects are "bad" they work as advertised. Some of the PATCHES may be "bad", but that really means they are not to my liking :-)
Using a Rogue Hofner knock off and a Carvin B4 and both sound fine through the unit. A few settings are noisy - the fuzz patch is one that comes to mind, but it can be dialed out to some extent. I simply don't use those settings that cause problems (like the built in "noise reduction". Using with a Carvin R300 head and B115 cab - sounds awesome through this set up. I do notice noise more through my practice set up (on heaphones) but on my live rig there have been no problems.

Reliability : 8
Made of plastic but, seems to be fairly sturdy. The B2 has a metal chassy if it matters to you. I use it without a back up, but I'm not a big effects guy myself.

Customer Support : No Opinion
N/A

Overall Rating : 8
I play mostly classic rock covers and it does a fine job (with tweaking and saving the patches) helping to reproduce the songs. That's the thing with doing covers - you need to have some versatile sounds. I've been playing about 10 years. I'd buy another if it were lost/stolen. Again, for the price, why not?


Product: Zoom B1
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted 02/14/2007 at 08:28pm by Gary

Ease of Use : 7
Fairly easy to use -- footswitches scroll up and down through patches, but getting in to tweak programs and patches is a bit tricky. Nothing I'd care to change as far as parameters go. Built-in drum machine is a nice extra. My Spector seems to like this unit so far.

Sound Quality : 9
There's a nice variety of useful sounds in the pedal, with a few strange and spacy ones I'll probably never use. The Jack Bruce patch and the McCartney/Bassman patch are my faves so far, with the Jaco Pastorius patch moving up quickly.

This pedal is QUIET, and many of the patches have a noise gate in them, so things STAY quiet. My Spector is a quiet axe to begin with, but this unit is incredibly clean and transparent sounding.

Reliability : 8
Even though it's a plastic box, it's a sturdy and apparently well-built plastic box. The footswitches feel firm, and there's a metal baseplate on the bottom with rubber feet. I wouldn't use it to drive nails or heave at unruly audience members, but for what it's made to do, it should last a long time with some common sense care and feeding. I can go without a backup.

Customer Support : No Opinion
Haven't needed them yet, but I haven't heard anything terrible about Zoom's service yet, either. I bought the unit through zZounds, so I expect they'd be my first stop if the thing keels over in the first month or so of use.

Overall Rating : 9
I play anything -- and I mean ANYTHING. Jazz, lounge, bossa nova, country, rock, reggae, ska, whatever -- if it pays, I'm there. This thingy is going to be my little musical Swiss Army knife. If anyone was so hard up as to swipe it, yeah, I'd get another one.

Page: 1 (Show 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 reviews per page) Showing 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

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