Zoom BFX-708

Once you've read the manual, editing patches is pretty straightforward. You will definitely want to figure this out from the start, the presets don't really demonstrate the potential of this little plastic toy. In fact, I don't use them at all.

Fairly noisy, and hard to match levels on the various effects - some are super loud, some not so much.
I use this with both bass and guitar, and am pretty happy with a few of the effects: in particular, the tracking ability of the octaver is far superior to that of the Boss OC-2. Not perfect on the very low stuff, but great past the fifth fret of the E string, and great on guitar. The synth effects are also great, in a low-fi distorted way. This is not a pedal to make things sound smooth and rich, obviously - but the digital nasty factor is high. I even enjoy the distortions for what they are: buzzy, grating, and wonderful.

So far so good. Seems like a potential disaster, though, it's flimsy and I feel like the pedals could decide to start sticking or something. I've gigged with it, but I'm a man of faith and ingenuity - if it stopped working, I'd plug it into a foil wrapped baked potato or something.

I play some noisy hard art rock in somewhat of a Mr. Bungle/Lightning Bolt/Freedom Haters sort of vein.
I think anyone could find something to use with this pedal, except for the tone snobs; it's unlikely that anyone will like everything it does.
For the octave effect alone it's a bargain in my book.

it takes a couple of hours to play as good as the pedal can do it. if you dont read the manual maybe the pedal cant do not well that you expected. for example, the manual says you most to put the 708 output volume in a 3/4 position to get a strong and warm sound, high mid range and good signal provide for the effect.if you turn down to 1/2 or less you can notice a weak signal and a low quality sound. maybe the fuzz and all relation with the distortion mod can be useless.
it has 8 little buttoms, 5 knobs, 2 pedals for the patches, and finally the expression pd, each one of them combine different functions depends the action that you want to do.

some people make me laugh: they have expensives basses, with a expensives cabinet, thousands of u$s in equipment and the biggest basses ever made and they are such a fool like to buy an a cheap bass effects like the 708. the most ridiculous thing is they didnt go the the music store an after take a look and play they seat down and think: "this pedal doesnt go well with my ken smith, my tobias, my stingray, my trace elliot, my messa boggie"
they decide to buy the thing and then put a tread describing how bad is the product the buyed. and then said "the only thing i can use is the bypass and the tuner". well my friend, i got to tell you that you are not a business man at all. you can get a chromatic turner for 12 u$s. a Korg one!
i have a yamaha bbg5a. cool bass for me. this pedal is good, thats all. i dont have money right now to buy something better. but is good. low price, low everything.

i recently buyed, so at this time i dont have any problem. but it look like fragile.

i've playing for around six years, im not a big fun of a effects processors, once i've had a 506 1, which was a toy which i played till i boring and sold it for cents. never used in gigs or something. the 708 can be a toy either but is most serious, it has a 20 bit against 16 of the 506 1 o 2, the effects like chorus, phaser, flanger even the distortion was redesigned and sounds with much clarity and quality.
a hundred u$s, not much to ask.

It's not rocket science, but keep the manual handy.

Using a Dean Edge 5 with EMG 40s and the BQS system, through an Alesis EQ and QSC pwr out of 2 SWR Goliath 3s...not bad...but definately not good. The bypass sucks the life out of the sound. The effects are kinda neat, but most are useless. Once you learn how to tweak the sounds effectively, some useable sounds can be found.

I've had it for a couple years, usuing it here and there. No problems yet. Plastic is scary though.

havnt dealt with them.

Playing different styles of rock I can get some useable sounds. As far as it being a preamp, look elsewhere. If you use a switcher, you can bypass this unit until you need some effects, which it does ok with. The convenience of not having a group of pedals almost makes up for the lower quality sound.

The unit itself is easy enough to use after a quick flip through the manual.

When using this pedal, I always find myself flipping through the effects, either laughing or shaking my head. There are only a few effects suitable for playing with, the rest fall on either side - either they're too overblown and ridiculous to use, or they simply lack any real kick. The distortions are terrible, the delay/echo doesnt delay or echo enough etc. I find the only ones I use are the Analogue, Hardpick, and of course the bypass tuner :)

I've had my unit for a few years, treated it well, but just lately the input jack has come loose.

I think of this pedal as more of a toy than a serious tool. For my style of playing (experimental metal), it is completely inappropriate, and I am better off using separate, high quality stompboxes.
As stated, the unit no longer works due to the input jack coming loose, and I'm still not sure if I'll bother getting it repaired. I certainly wouldn't buy another one.

The manual is about as easy to read as the diary of a crack addict, but the thing isn't had to figure out once you get frustrated and burn the manual. All around, it's easier to use than most similar pedal effects. The drum machine pretty much blows. You can alter tempo and tone all you want, but without the ability to toss in a fill or a coda or any pattern alteration, I wouldn't gig with the thing.

I have only been using the zoom for practice, so I haven't had to run it through a PA or anything- see other reviews for this info. When I first set it up, as per the manual's diagram, it sounded horrible. I practice with a Genz-Benz M-line 200, so I was able to run it through the onboard effects processor and it fixed almost all the problems. Some effects cut out when you nudge the pedal, almost all sound as digital as they are and the only real fun to be had is in the more outlandish effects (try the theme to Sesame Street on 'fuzz.')

It has worked fine for the last four months, but I do baby it quite a bit. I have a feeling

I sent an e-mail off to ZOOM shortly after I bought it four months ago to ask about the drum machine problem (see 'ease of use) and I am still awaiting a response. I am not sure they even have customer support.

Well, I play a little metal, a lot of punk, and have been playing lounge music just for a change of pace. I have been playing bass for six years and have gone through a dozen different basses. I am currently playing my trusty old, dirt cheap Hondo (stop laughing!) as my MTD was jacked out of my car. This pedal leaves a lot to be desired, but if you are just a poor beginner, yet to make your mark on the music world, go ahead and use this for practice. Just treat it better than your girlfriend and don't leave your car unlocked.

had no problem learning how to use it.

i thought the sound quality was very good. Used it for many live shows.

this is the problem with the unit. It's built cheap. I bought 2 of them and neither one made it over a year. I take pretty good care of my equipment and I even tried to baby these things but yet they both broke. For this reason I would NEVER buy this product.

nah

i play about 2 gigs a month and practice everyday. I really liked some of the tones this baby helped me get but whats the point if the dang thing breaks all the time. Forget it.

Dials are a big improvement, but you still must know (or learn) to use multi-pedal menus. A large LED screen helps with real words like "NOFRET" or "JACOP". Lots of presets of good variety.

Effects and Sounds are quite good. Of course it has that digital pedal noise associated with such pedals and is apparent at very high amp volumes. The distortions sound good when using the amp simulators to take off the electronic chip edge common to digital distortions. I especially like the NOFRET defretter effect. I use it with my 1979 Ibanez Roadster Bass and with my 1979 Ibanez Artist Guitar. (Yes, ZOOM's bass pedals work nicely for guitar, too.)

Had to resolder the INPUT jack. No big deal with a soldering iron and 15 minutes.

Never needed.

Nice unit, but it will gobble batteries. Alkalines last 11 hours according to the manual, so you must (realistically) use an AC adapter all the time or invest in rechargeable batteries. I modified my unit so that it internally tricke-charges Ni-MH batteries when plugged in with an AC adapter; the result is exceptional: no more dead batteries on stage as long as I use an AC adapter at home or in practice sessions. See how I did this at http://www.masbagua.com/zoomcharge.html if you'd like to learn more.

the ease of use is excellent. the jack ports are all labelled clearly and the interface is laid out properly. all the infomation is on the front of the pedal. the only flaw is that the knobs are a bit twicthy and over sensitive.

i played this through a peavey 100w bass amp, with pirana leads and my epiphone thunderbird bass. on the "tight" setting the bass is powerful and has a brilliant sound to it. other effects are flange, chorus, fuzz, wah wah. some of the effects are saft and unuseable like "time" a heavy delay effect-very useless when doing solos. all the effects can be altered-mainly reverb. also the gain (volume) and rate can be altered. full gain on fuzz sounds awesome!

very good-hasnt broke down on me yet. this can take mains or 4 AA batteries. i would recommend a mains adaptor for gigs.n

dont really deal with things like this but theres alot of infomation on the box to assist.

with the music i play (rock and shuffles :D) the effects serve well. for rock i use fuzz, chorus and flange and for shuffles i just have it on normal. the only flaw is the knobs-they are very sensitive so you have to mess about with them. it also comes in with a tuner-and a drum machine! how about that for value for you pennies! with 12 patterns where the tempos can changed for 40 to 240 (for all those metal heads out there). ZOOM have really got a winner here-you brits can prob get it cheaper because i brought it last year. a brilliant buy

Pretty Easy to set up and operate. Only annoying thing is hitting both buttons at **Exactly** the same time to get into bypass mode for the tuner.

I agree with most of the previous posters who say this sucks alot of life out of your tone. The unit is good for home practice and noodling around with. Playing live, I only really use the tuner plus two sounds, one with everything off except a small amount of compression, and the defret patch, which gets some passable Pino Palladino type sounds with some fretless warmth and 'bark' - if you set it up just right.

At home, I use the unit as the front end for my homebrew practice amp. Live I use it with a Yamaha TRB5II and Trace Elliot 7410HSM. I plan to make up a switch box to bypass the unit except when I want the defret patch - even bypass mode seems to suck tone out. The unit gets a 6 for the passable defret patch but that's about all I find it good for.

Not convinced by the plastic case. I haven't (yet!) had some of the problems with connector reliability that other users have reported. I keep it in a laptop type padded case, and I would recommend other users do similar.

Don't get the Zoom PSU - I have repaired Zoom PSU's for friends - and they are C**P! CPC (www.cpc.co.uk) in the UK sell PSU's which is far more solid and relaible than the Zoom PSU, cost about half the price, and don't have the problem with 'spider' type PSU plugs shorting to metal guitar leads.

Never dealt with them.

I have been playing bass about 15 years, and have used this unit for about 2. I play mostly praise and worship music, and find the defret patch good for slow worshipful ballad type stuff, but that's about all I use it for. If it were lost/stolen, I would probably look around for another way of getting a fretless type sound (without using a fretless) before considering this unit again.

Easy to tune and edit the effects and other parameters. The manual is complete and easy to understand in several languages. However, there is a great lot of features wish makes it long and difficult to go through all the possibilities... neverending fun :)

the effects are all good and if it's not the way you want it to be, you can edit any patch over and over to finally get the perfect sound that will fit your highest expectation. A little bi noisy sometimes but you can fix it by changing some parameters. I play an Ibanez 4 strings with a Marshall BassState 65 amp and I don't have any trouble getting a great sound.

I didn't need to contact customer support.

I've been playing punk and metal since one year and i'm really satisfied with my effects processor. I like the fact that I can play about 10 to 12 hours with one set of batteries. Another cool thing is that you can tune your bass guitar directly in no time, very handy. Seriously, I have been very lazy playing bass guitar without effects, and since I got this, I play a lot more and also a lot better.