Zoom BFX-708 II

The unit is fairly easy to use, but I haven't gotten to in depth in the functionality. I'll tell you why in the next section.

It adds a great deal of noise. Even when it is supposedly bypassed and just being utilized as a tuner. Now granted my bass has fairly noisy, hot, active humbuckers.... but still when the units's effects processor is not being used, and short quality cables are in between the bass the unit, and the amp, the sound difference should be difficult to detect. It isn't. It is significantly cleaner when I run direct.

Some of the effects are fun, but because of the noise, I just can't consider this thing a real professional processor. I'm more apt to consider it a toy. (hence the use of the word fun)

Just like my old zoom 507 II, it works consistantly. I've only had it 6 months and I only use it as a tuner, so in that capacity I expect it will last forever. But I do gig at least once per week and so far, it is still mint. I still have my 507 and it still makes a great tuner, but the output jack and expression pedal died along time ago.

It is the only tuner I keep with me at gigs (although if need be my guitarist always has a tuner too..)

What can I say, its a great tuner, but and audible noise is bad, and this produces way too much.

Quite easy to use. manual is simple, although I lose my english version and have to read the german manual, by reading those graphs I somehow I managed how to use it. Editing patches is easy, but since it's a small unit, editing patches with 8band EQ might be quite painful. other stuff are ok though.

I use an entry level 5 string bass Ibanez SR405 and a 50W Aria amp (which is very cheap). my bass doesn't have a sweet original sound, but it sound quite good after this effect unit. so i guess this unit worked. however i can't notice anything different of the amp modeler except some ssssss noice. since i use a cheap system, this feature is really important to me, but i guess this is the worst part of the unit. Compresser is OK, i don't have a stompbox compresser so i can't tell the difference. overdrive and distortion are... i don't know...just too digital, definitely not so good, and hence i'm going to buy a stompbox overdrive. quite good reverb though, i use it very often. delay also good. wahs seems a little bit...just too weak, i never use them. some guy here said the Pedal Wah is ok, maybe because he's using a different amp. chorus is also good, but i hardly use it with my bass, in fact it sounds quite good with my acoustic guitar Washburn DC10. i use this unit a lot when playing acoustic guitar, seems ok.

all my favorite bassists use better basses and amps so i guess it's reasonable that i can't get their sound. you know, the bass is always more important than effect.

i bought this unit two years ago and it seems alright, i played guitar during last six months and just leave it in the dust. it still works ok after i wiped off the 1 inch thick dust on it.

and i don't have a back up. got several stompbox though, but they are not backups of this unit.

no such experience.

i use to play grunge and post punk and brit pop and something like that four years ago, and this unit seems ok, resently i began to play blues and i prefer a more vintage sound. so far it worked not good. it does't have a good amp modeler and decent tube overdrive sound. other stuff is ok but i can hardly use any reverb or chrous in a blues song. i do use to love it, but now if it get stolen or broken, i defentely gonna buy some other stompboxs and not the compact one, i just love to turn the knobs and see how the sound change. i really hate those digital number (expecially those in EQ).

the build in drum machine is quite cool, really helped me pratice(they are a little bit too loud even when the LEVEL is set to 1, i don' know why).

it's a good unit, but if you prefer a vintage sound and feel, maybe buy stompboxes are better choice. i bought some very low priced Behringer stompbox and they worked amazingly well.

Bought it online from AMS. Nice sounds. The presets and the editable sounds are good, even tho there is replication of sounds, just in different banks. Manual was a little cumbersome for me at first (I wished for another way to show what sounds were where, but, by George, I think I've got it!!

The hissing noise that others have talked about seems to depend on where you have the ZNR setting. There is some hiss, but I don't think it's obnoxious. I've just turned the ZNR off on most of the sounds I use. Right now, I'm using an old school Peavey MkIII head and an Ampeg 15" with a horn. I've edited the sounds I use most for what I play, reggae and some R&B stuff. The chorus and vibrato sounds are real cool. Not sure on the compressor section tho....

It's the only processor I have. It gets used on every gig and has seen some studio work as well. No issues, no backup.

no need

play reggae mostly with some R&B and other stuff here and there. I have bene playing for about 15 years. My basses are a Hohner BbassV and a Series10 P-Bass replica (first bass!).
The biggest pain in the butt is selecting sounds while performing. it has a quick pre-select feature that you enter by pressing the up pedal while turning the machine on, but still if the patches are more than a few pedalpushes apart, you can get lost very quickly. I've done a lot of swapping so I have the sounds I use the most all onONE bank. That seems to work best for me. Other than that, good unit. Not sure if I'd buy it again if it went away tho. I like trying different things.

takes a while to find the patch you want, so that doesnt help playing live! editing patches is good fun, you can do a lot of cool sounding stuff with it

the hissing really brings this thing down, but then again, its lost in the mix when youre playing live etc
some of the effects are pretty pointless, i edited my own effect to get timmy c's rage against the machine sound, 'calm like a bomb' etc

i'd depend on this, just look after it
i'd use it without a backup

equipment vs heart, use it to be creative and have a bit of fun!
if youre looking to take this thing everywhere you go, and are not willing to play without it, i'd get a better one.
i love using this when im practicing, keeps me going for hours
if it was lost or stolen, i'd probably buy it again

This thing is so easy to use you almost don't need the manual, unless you need to mess around with the sampler or very specific options. The manual is good as are all of ZOOM's manuals. As soon as I bought it I equiped my pedalboard with a 128MB SmartMedia card, which gave me a total sampling time of 32 minutes (more than enough for me).

The main problems in this unit are synth, auto-wah and compressor. They suck big time. Although the pedal-wah is fine, the auto-wah is completely useless. I thing mainly because it has no overhead control for the sound, which the pedal-wah has. The case is I don't use pedal-wahs, because I love the auto-wah feeling for slap. The synth sounds and compressor don't even deserve to be spoken about. I have an old Boss ME-8B that kicks the 708's ass in the sound department. Nevertheless, some sounds are nice, for example, it has a sound for picking that resembles that of a picked RIC, some funky sounds. Normally I use eq, compressor and alternately wah, chorus, flanger, phaser and synth. I have two setups. An EB MusicMan SR5 which I use through the Boss pedalboard and a Hartke 3500 head with one 4.5XL and one 215BXL cabinets. This setup is for loud music (mostly modern metal rock and power funk). My other setup consists of a Fernandes Gravity 5 through this ZOOM and a Peavey combo which I use for a working funk/jazz/reggae/R&B/soul/bossa band. I use the 708II with rechargeable batteries because with a power supply it is incredibly noisy. I also use an RS baby bass through this setup and it sounds nice.

I don't think this is gonna fail on me. But let's give it some time. One advice, the expression pedal comes very badly calibrated so that you have to step on the thing too har in order to swich the assigned effec on or off. This could damage the unit, so, as soon as you start using it, first off all, calibrate the expression pedal.

I trust Samson. I had a problem with my Hartke head overheating and I allways got immediate feedback from them, so I have to say they're ok.

I had a BFX-708 and sold it two months later because it was horrible. It had a main problem that consisted of a mute in signal as I changed from patch to patch (corrected in the 708II). I remember the BFX-708 had more pleasant auto-wah and synth, but overall, I prefer this new unit. The thing is not for studio recording, not even for sounding decent. Instead, it's intended for serving the small-club gigging musician ok. The 708II has enough features when you need a small, practical pedalboard for working.

When You once have understood the user-interface, you can program anything within 2 minutes, really. On stage, you normally can do nothing because you don'nt have those 2 minutes. I've programmed some slightly different sounds in one chain, so in case of the typical acoustic problems, I can help very fast.
The manual is quite good. After some weeks of use, you don't need it any more.

I Play a 5-string MusicMan through the zoom direct into the PA-Mixer. Some sounds are a little bit noisy, but the noise-suppressors works very well on stage (not so good in studio).
I'm not so interested in the effects, but in modelling good amp&cabinet-sounds. And the zoom is really great for my funk, rock, pop style. Specially the good compressor and exciter give more punch and pressure. Better than the Bass POD - I got more money via ebay for it, than I had to pay for the zoom ;-)
With the zoom I really don't miss my amp an cabinet on stage.

The part so far worked without any problems.
It's all platic and I don't know what happens, when someone runs over it. For the normal use, it so far was solid enough.
I don't like external power adaptors on stage and the thin 9V cable...

I had no problems with the part.
I give a good note, because the good manual can be downloaded as PDF in different languages.
Boss-Users can't.

I play Funk (Slappin'), Rock an Pop with it.
I think, I have the device since over 1 year of heavy use.
I love the fat but clean sound - clear but with pressure, not like a HiFi- device. Hard to express what I mean.
Lots of valve-amp-models may sound well too, but are not usable for my music. I use the chorus and reverb for some room and stereo feeling. That works very well. Most other effects may be well or not. I've tried them out, but finally don't use them on stage.

I found the patch editing, drum machine and recorder very easy to use thanks to the visually friendly (ie I didn't fall asleep reading it) instruction booklet. I found it hard and annoying initially switching from one effect to another a couple of patches down the line without causing unwanted effects in my playing, but I switched these into some kind of easy order.

Using my Ibanez GSR200 through a Crate amp it sounded very good, Some of the effects I'll never use but it is easy to change them into something I would use. I also plugged my Hohner Strat copy through it and got good sound from, realistically, a s**t guitar. Good for any Bass and Guitar players

Very sturdy piece of equipment although it is hard, in Ireland anyway, to get the adaptor for it. Not ideal in a gig to be changing batteries during Anesthesia.

Never had any problems.

Easy to use, reliable with a battery/adaptor combination during a gig. Great sound for either Bass or Guitar.

Well it's definitely not easy to understand how all the knobs and buttons works by yourself. Then you quick-read the manual, and you know few basic things. You read it twice - it's again easier to use :) and so on...
Manual is very brief, but complete.
Editing is simple just set the effect, modification, and move to another... Maybe you'll wish to do things that are not possible - that might be frustrating a bit. Anyway there's still few things i don't know how to do - so you gotta be patient and learn to use it for few days...

I've got Ibanez Soundgear bass and some old german amp. Unit has very clean sound in some effects but some effects are very noisy. But hey - what you expect of distortion, or overdrive? Reverbs sounds really nice and clean, Modulations (chorus, flange) sounds not so good, but still good enough. Amp modeling / cabinets varies sound a bit, but in my opinion it's just some Equalizer presets and few noise added. (That might be because of my cheap amp). I was a bit dissapointed that you can't mix any of 50+ effects in one time, only some "groups" of them - but it still gives you infinity of sounds. From that ammount you'll like maybe 20%, and from that 20% you'll find 20% useful - still LOT of sounds to play. Preset patches sounds fine too anyway. I'm not playing the bass so long - so i can't be really objective - but yes, it's sounds fine to me.
I played a guitar bit longer (5+ years) so I wanted to hear my old guitar through it - sounds fine too, not so much useful effects, but still fine.
I'm giving it 8, because i do not play bass so long and my setup is killing some sounds and because of some noisy effects (just don't use them and be happy)

Well it's all plastic - that's what all the folks around say. But it's not the tank - it's music instrument - even your guitar is not made from metal. If you are not memeber of hardcore-to-the-bone band, you don't have to be afraid of your unit safety. The expression pedal could be metal but it's zoom - cheap and plastic.
Well I'm not playing bass so long for any kind of gig, but when I'll be better, i think I will use it. No problem. I believe in it.

I never dealt with them, all I can say the guys in shop where I bought it were very friendly and helpful.

I think it's a great choice for all you who are just starting playing with a bass. The price (comparing to DIGITECH) is a bit lower and it is practically the same. I repeat, I'm not playing bass for a long time (but I'm not beginner - I've got basics from playing 6string guitar), but it definitely adds new possibilities to your bass. It'll give you new ideas and - you'll just have the right feeling when playing through 708II. If it were stolen, I think I couldn't buy anything, I'm short of money :), but I will probably consider another thing from ZOOM because of price. When I was deciding between 708II and 607, I chose this because of Rythm trainer and sampler. I don't use both trainer and sampler yet, but I know it's great tool for practising - esp. when you're beginner. I was thinking of BP200 also, but price wins (they are complaining about AC adaptor price - another 25$, but it don't need to be Zoom, you can get cheap adaptor for 10$)
I like those soft effects most, maybe some delays/halls. Synths are fine too - but useless i think. And for my guitar distortions, and amp modeling. Sampler is also great thing but I'm not using it a lot because of 6secs sampling time. (When I bought some memory it could be another super thing)
What I wish? hmmm - I don't know, it has really wide scale of sounds, enough rythm patterns, sampler - what else you need? Maybe some nicer distortion for guitar :))) but it's bass effect, not all in a box. The expression pedal could be metal too - but I treat it pretty nice.
Overal - 9, It sounds fine, It has lot of possibilities, It's cheap, but I know there's something better - always is :)
I'm not natural born english talking person so excuse my english :)

It looks like more thought went into the presets this time. There's a majority of sounds modeled after popular amps & playing situations. Like the 708 each of the 7 modules has an array of effects, each usually having 3 parameters. The combinations are vast, but on any particular saved patch the parameter knobs give quick access to the 3 most useful variables (generally gain, modulation & reverb).

You can tweak presets pretty much out of the box, but spend some time with the manual & you can build some outrageous sounds. The manual may seem spartan, but it's all there. There's just no reiteration of previous commands, either absorb like a sponge or do maybe 1 re-read.

My one big complaint would be the 60 presets are laid out in too wide a range of styles, despite the 'categories' listed on their grid. Making a sensible package of user patches (straightforward performance, standard fx, specialty fx, interplanetary fx, triggered-sample banks) requires alot of planning & swapping.

I play an SWR Workingman's 15 Combo or Eden Nemesis 4x10 Combo. Plenty of power but I'm already appreciating the amp modeling from the 708 II. I have a Rick 4003 but mostly play my Westone Dynasty for the great pickup sensitivity that the 708 II translates into either power or strangeness.

The chorus, flange & phase all seem to have improved from the first generation 708. More clarity & better reaction to different attacks. Vibrato is definitely improved. A neat enhancement is preset effects combining vibrato/chorus, etc. 2 effects from the same module - not otherwise possible.

Some work also went into presets that get the sound of different players (you have to guess a little bit - maybe they didn't want to get sued). JACOP, "jazz rear-picking sound" has a slow attack making your bass convincingly unfretted just like you-know-who. This was a favorite of mine from the 708 & sounds better on the 708 II.

The distortion presets are more performance oriented and many times combined with the octave effect to give bottom support while you lead. The synth module has 6 more tweakable variations, including Syntalk. Dammit! I spent hours tweaking my 708 to get it to 'speak' and now everyone can just dial it up on the II! "eeyaah" is right!

People who mock Zoom's use of plastic are just snobs. Based on several years of stomping on my original 708, the 708 II will be an heirloom as well. The pedals are bigger & easier to hit in tandem to access the tuner (which has a new mute function, nice). The expression pedal is also larger. Battery life has never been an issue since I bought an adapter at Radio Shack for $15. (using the same one from my 708) Definitely gig worthy.

I was concerned that some modules weren't working when I started tweaking the Bass Synth effect. I wanted to mess with the diving Moog Taurus sound that is provided, but the EQ & Cabinet mods turned off. I emailed Zoom & despite an obvious Japanese / English text translator program I got a response that I understood in less than 8 hours!

They said the effect uses the DSP more than others. I emailed back for clarification & they explained the "digital signal processor" peforms arithmatic functions more heavily on the synth module which necessitates turning 3 other mods off. But guess what - the Modulate & Reverb modules were still available, which is where I wanted to work anyway. I now have some truly out of this world sounds (and it was in the manual, btw).

I play a wide range of styles and the 708 II fits anything I feel like (there's even a Progressive preset). I've been playing 20 years, and getting the 708 I some years back started a period of experimentation. The 708 II triples the possibilities - 60 custom user patches (unlike the original model you don't loose any presets when you save something - the presets are mirrored on the other 60).

Built-in rhythms can auto-load when you select a patch (and can be programmed with short lead-in & lead-out segments). Best of all - SmartMedia! Save samples (yes, plural) of your playing up to a half hour's worth, or import from any source. You can auto-load samples when you select a patch, and unlike the 708 I you're not limited to playing the same patch as the sample. Gain is variable so you can really do a lead over top. Even without shelling out for a SmartMedia you still get 6 seconds sampling built in.

Finding something lacking on this baby is really tough. Not for the money or compact size can you get as much. That's why I got it the minute I learned about the mark II. Very happy with the 708 I but just ecstatic about the II. I got mine on Ebay using a buy-it-now price that was $15 less than anywhere else on the net.

The 708 II is the mark 2 of the BFX-708. It is very easy to use once you've read a bit from the manual, which tells you everything you will ever need to know pretty much, but it is forty pages long. Editing patches couldn't be easier I don't think. I havn't got to use the smartmedia card function yet because I only just got it a couple of days ago and I think smartmedias are pretty expensive. The function that let's you synchronise a drum pattern with each effect is very useful if you don't have a drummer.

My setup is an Aslin Dane AMB-200 and an Acoustic bass amp. It is hardly noisy at all. I don't have much experience with pedals so I can't say if the effects are good quality or not. The auto-wah is not good for slapping, you have to play pretty softly to get maximum effect out of it, but you can get a very funky auto-wah type sound for slapping with the phaser. The distortions don't have very much gain, only just enough.

I've only had it for a couple of days so i don't know what it's reliability is like, but as usual from zoom it is only plastic so i wouldn't count on it too much.

none

I play funk(e.g. old style Chili Peppers, Skunkhour) and also shred (e.g. Racer X, Steve Vai etc.) and it is very cool to use for both. I've been playing for about 3 1/2 years so i'm not very experienced, but it is very suitable.I compared it to the Digitech BP-200 and i thought ths zoom was much better (apart from the plastic case). Overall I think it is an excellent buy if you want a cheap pedal.