Zoom B1

The B1 is a reasonably easy to use piece of equipment - set it up and straight out of the box you can be listening to the pre-set effects and sounds that are stored in it by default. Some of these aren't great though, and you'll soon be fiddling around and trying to edit the patches.
This is a straightforward process which soon becomes second-nature, and anyone who has had experience programming units like the Korg AX3B or similar will be quite at home.
The manual is clear and well set-out. It starts by explaining the basic functions and moves on to using the tuner, built-in 'drum pattern' player, and editing patches.

Even a beginner should find it easy to get to grips with this product.

I use this with two different bass guitars (Yamaha BB414 and a no-name cheapy for practise) and an Orange Crush 35B amp.

The B1 comes with a built-in noise-reduction circuit, which is adjustable and can get rid of all unintentional noise/background hum/hiss etc.
The only problem is if this is set too high, then you get no sound if playing a string very softly. A bit of tweaking should enable you to find a happy medium though.

Some of the effects are very nice - the Fender Bassman model, the tube pre-amp, and the James Jamerson tribute all sound very accurate for a piece of kit this cheap.
The not-so-nice ones include the 'Attack from mars' step effect, which is interesting, but not very useful (unless you're making experimental progressive sci-fi psychedelic music!). Also the Harmonized Pitch Shifter was a bit ropey.
I think generally, the more complicated the effect the box is trying to reproduce, the more it struggles. A reasonable phaser and good delay make up for this though.

Haven't had it that long, but have stamped on it a fair bit and it's taken that well enough - light plastic case means it IS a bit fragile though...

Iwould use this without backup.

Not had any reason to contact Zoom Customer Service yet so no opinion here.

I play indie/rock with my band, but while practising run through a variety of rock, reggae and soul numbers and this box works well enough for me.

I would buy this pedal again, certainly just for value for money - for this price (??42.00) you can't get more effects. Just remember, you only paid a small price, so don't go expecting the same results as ??500.00 worth of Boss effects!

I like its ease of use and value, but one thing that bugs me is the tuner - I have two other tuners that 99% of the time agree with each other when my bass is in/out of tune, but this tuner has its own ideas! Even if the other two say I'm pitch perfect, the Zoom wants to differ...I would probably avoid using the tuner, especially seeing as a reliable separate tuner can be bought quite cheaply.

Finally - a decent little box for those wanting to experiment with a few basic sounds. It's not too flash, and it struggles with some more complicated effects, but then it is very cheap.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.