Zoom G2

At first when I bought this little box I really was disapointed about it. But then when I figured out all its specs and possible variations in effect moduling I really understood why it works out the way it does. Now after 3 weeks of experiencing I find this pedal more that enough for my purposes. It just took me a while to understand how all the things work.

Im playing in a band and also building a little home studio for my band and my friends bands and before I bought this pedal I were not able to get nice line-sounds for neoclassical-power metal. Now combined with my Tech21 - SansAmp GT2 and Boss - MetalZone MT-2 I have found the perfect sound for my recording purposes. Factory presets are totally shiet but once you make your own sounds this unit kicks ass.

Now this pedal is irreplaceable part of my homestudio well atleast for the time being... (mostly because of the fact this pedal was absolutely bargain with it's 99$ pricetag) I've never heard another pedal this cheap sounding as good as this does. I do recommend this for everyone who want to record with line input nice stereo guitars with warm and dynamic sound and well balanced effects. I've used this pedal 3 weeks day and night and it works perfect... and the structure seems firm enough and the footswitches are metal so no worry about them breaking down easily.

Never needed to contact em'

This baby works fine with any amp and sounds good even with 15W practice amps. You'll get the most out of it with another pedal (distortion or overdrive) and use this one as the reverb/comp/delay/amp sim. effect processor. When in recording use I recommend that you use analog or digital tubewarmer with this to get the ultimate sound. I truly think this is one of the best multieffectpedals there is below a price of nearly 500$.

well ive owned a Korg AX1000G before and was pretty used to tweaking sounds with knobs on the fly. well for a compact unit i shouldnt be expecting much save for the three knobs, and lkasjdaksjdsdicantudnerstandsometimeswhatthecodesmean codes for the effects i think for this baby you just need to have a good background on effects, what they do and how to mix them up. i managed to figure out how to work the pedal on my own without the manual. up down switches. pretty easy to use.

i use a Gibson Les Paul Gothic Edition and an old strat through a small marshall combo amp. this baby is THE SHIT when it comes to audio quality especially the distortions. though id love to have more freedom to choose the cabinet sizes, mic placements etc etc like my Korg, well but this baby kicks. i loved the MesaBoogie thingy and the crunch it gives me.

deserving of a 10. ive got a dozen effects and this baby retired my entire pedal board save for my wah pedal

its made of steel i can throw it around and i think it wouldnt fuck up

i play in a jazz/metal hybrid band and the really insane metal distortion is what i love.. the harmonics scream like analog. this is the shit for only $100

FANTASTIC VALUE zoom is like giving these babies away for free

How easy is it to get a good sound out of it?
- plug yur guitar and play, some some good some lame.
How about Editing patches?
- easy to understand manual makes easy editing
How is the manual for it (if there is one)?
- same as the above answer
Do you know the firmware revision number? Has your unit been upgraded?
- no idea about here

i bought it for practice using headphone, and it sound awesome. on its own its great, then tried experimenting with it guitar->danelectro fish n chips->bad monkey->g2.1u->headphone. start w fender clean drive and some reverb, the rest of fx off and u can have some srv tone here. tried marshall crunch drive and same setting as above and you can get zz top tone. bad monkey adds some organic tone and girth which i love. tried with a tube amp the above setting and blows me away.

solid built ......

no support neede here built stable as rock

i play blues to rock to some metal and this unit can deliver. with some experiment , you can have a sound of your own. bad monkey gives this unit a more organic tone

IMHO: Easy to get a "great" sound out of it... Editing is silly easy... The manual is OK (a bit cheap)... If you are used to zoom interface it will be much easier... ADVICE: DON??T FORGET THAT YOU CAN TWEAK A LOT (A LOT!) IN ORDER TO GET WHAT YOU LIKE... AND THEN, WHEN YOU ARE DONE EDITING AND SAVING YOUR CHANGES, YOU GO BACK TO PLAY MODE AND GIVE "A FINAL TOUCH WITH THE THREE MAIN KNOBS"... THAT ADJUSTMENT WORKS LIKE ANY SIMPLE AMP ADJUSTMENT AND HELPS A LOT IN GETTING EXACTLY WHERE YOU WANNA GET...

Rating sound quality is too subjective... IMHO you can get great sounds out of the g2, but hey that's me... Anyway -within the wide range of do it all low price machines- i consider this has no rival...

I play at home (old man), and it looks sturdy enough for that... I don't know if digital gets old and sounds crappy with time... I never deal with zoom guys (not in the states)... Anyway it's so cheap that i do not really care if it works only for a couple of years...

Never done it...

I agree... You just can't beat the G2 for the price (even if it was like twice the price it has now). I was one of those who used to hate ZOOM effects like many more. Then once I bought one of their drum machines for a ridiculous price and it had great resolution and tons of goodies. Still have it and it's great fun to play along. Anyway I tried a 504 series pedal for electric/acoustics and did not like it at all. So my opinion of zoom used to be pretty discret on guitar stuff, but, hey, when I saw the G2 at a store I kind of felt it was different. I didn't even tried it at the shop. They are my friends and said to me it was worth the 90 usd price. God! It was that and then some more! It's been a very nice piece of gear for everyday practice. Just like many of you guys, I do not especially like heavy distortion (Well... it depends on what sort and what the artist does with it...), so I'm programming my G2 pretty much departing from a pretty clean fenderish sound into heavier clean and effected sounds... Here, a guy has said you can not get a bluesy "just about to break" overdriven sound... In my opinion you can do it if you don't forget all the tweaks you can and "have to do" before you find what you want. Fot the sound I'm talking about, you can use the booster (bs) there is in the wha-wha section. This booster has like three positions & it is good for getting that VOX AC30 sound I was talking about... Feels like I still do not know how to get all the juice out of this little guy (how can I get a nice flanger sound?... how do you use the 3 delays.... etc...) but I'm happy with it...

The factory preset patches seem unusable and not worth wasting time trying to tweek. The key to this pedal is to read manual thourghly and start at A0 and clear out the factory settings and starting from basics create your own good sounding settings.

I am using small tube amps. I have a standard strat clone and a les paul clone then a bad monkey, G2, then Fender Pro- Junior and or epiphone valve junior(the hum reduction mod was done) After creating my own patches I have 7 seems I am only using 4 most of the time. Have gotten great vintage Rolling Stone sound from Fender Clean Patch.The Roland Jazz chorus patch is very similar with a bit of vintage distortion. The Peavey stack patch is excellent for Jimmy Page sound. The point here is shape your own sound. Play with it the good sounds are there.

It is built solid I would trust it anywhere. If I were on the move I would definately have a spare power pack or batteries. Since they have the highest failure rate

Never dealt with company

I play mostly vintage rock- Rolling Stones,Led Zepplin,Tom Petty, Bad Company, Eric Clapton, and even a couple of Stevie Ray Vaughn tunes.I originally purchased because my amps do not have reverb,chorus,delay or any real EQ. After 2 weeks I was discouraged because the factory presets were so lame and tossed it in the corner.After reading lots of reviews here decided to give it another chance. I can not emphasise enough create your own patches from scratch and you will find some great sounds.

Once I figured out how to MOVE the patches around it was easy to get great sounds. Editing patches seems easy enough. I added some delay, chorus and reverb to some patches and they turned out fine. The manual is pretty good but could use some tweaking especially in the directions for moving patches from one bank to another.

The patches have names and some of them are right on the money like the SRV and Heart ones. I really like the Twin Reverb patch too.. The suggested patches sound good and you can tweak them by adding a little delay, reverb etc.

I bought this pedal to use at practice so I don't have to bring my stompbox pedal board with me all the time. I can throw the G2 in my bag and away I go; just my bag, guitar and myself. However, I am now considering using the G2 on stage as it doesn't take up as much room as my pedal board. The G2 has enough patches that I can manipulate for the music my band plays so it has become an option I am looking into.

The G2 does not appear to be noisy but I've not used it on a gig yet, only for practice or in my basement. I use two Historic Gibson Les Pauls, a Historic SG / LP, a Firebird V and a Custom Shop Strat through either a 59 Bassman RI, 68 Bandmaster, JTM 45 in an 18 watt custom cabinet or a Gibson Goldtone GA 30 RV.

I have to think that if you are patient enough you should be able to use this pedal for just about any kind of music.

Several years ago, I had a Zoom 505 and it was pretty realiable. The G2 is a fairly rugged unit made out of metal so I don't THINK there will be any problems but you never know. The price is relatively cheap, so I can afford to buy a backup just in case.

I called Zoom and I am still waiting for a reply. They make decent stuff but their Customer Service is marginal at best.

I've been playing for 40 years, since 1966. I've owned all the standard pedals, guitars and amps over the years and this is the best $100.00 I ever spent. It does EVERYTHING that I need; it probably won't work for everyone. That's just the way people are. I don't usually do reviews but I wanted to for the G2 because I think it's a really good piece of equipment.

I play in a classic rock and roll dance band and the GR does what I want it to do. I would defintely replace it if it were lost or stolen.

I've tried some other digital stuff in the past, Boss GT 6, V Amp, GT 8 etc, and this Zoom pedal sounds really good. It does not have the decay that I experienced at the end of a passage using other processors. In my book that's what sold me on the G2.

The trouble with this is that the distortions are SHITE. Absolute rubbish. Maybe usable for over the top metal and stuff but for ebverything else they suck. I had a 707 and presumed the distortion on this would be better but they are actually worse. Zoom make a big fuss about the new modelling but I couldn't get a usable tone out of any of them. The good thing is that you can chain this up and sounds good so I can use my pedals and if I use the effects loop the distortion comes through real nice.

Don't get me wrong I use this every time I play and am very happy with the patches I have created but I can't stand the sound of any of the onboard distortions.

The up switch has failed after 6 months playing.
SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. Did not happen on my 707 or any stompbox I ever owned.
I do not own 2 sets of pedals so I have no choice but to gig withoput back up. I will have to pay attention to the switching once I get it fixed.

It works fine but like most processors it just has too much stuff on it. The first thing to do when making a patch is turn all the shit off. Get rid of the distortion, compression, noise reduction and eq and the patches really come to life. Then only use the basics to get the sound you want.

it is very usable and sounds great after lots of tweaking.

this is a very cool machine. imo easy to use and edit patches. the tone is incredible.

i bought this is really a new toy that the reviews were great on. man, they were right too. with heaphones or through an amp,it sounds awesome. each effect sounds very nice. and the user patches are very good as well.

the metal housing and the rubber ends are a really good deal. i would use this without a back up for real.

*ATTENTION*

on the LCD screen i believe there is a plastic film over it to protect it maybe during installation which some products do have and thats good but if anyone knows for sure and has pulled it off, please mention it or email me so ill know for sure.(im old lol.)
thanks.

never dealt with them. i bought it through Sweetwater and they were great!

this is a kick a** unit! and for 99$ U.S. it cant be beat.

not easy, bear in mind its my first effects box, but im starting to understand it..seems a little clunky, i mean if it was a lil bigger they could have laid out out alot better in one word zoom..simplify..but the knobs n buttons r easy enuf, still cant figure out editing patches yet, only had it 1 day..manual is so so..
an actual readout would be better than the dodgy led thing. like a calculator from 1983, i mean how hard would it be for zoom to add a decent lcd so you can see the names instead of their own codes ??

well i have nothing to compare it with but.. im very pleased with fender clean, i just wanted that smooth santana sound and now i have it, i have a westfeild e4000 les paul copy, cheap but well thought of by all who bought one.. and a erm..soundking 30w amp. i find the overdrive /distorsion a bit over the top, but im sure i can tame the beast as i get to know it better,
its such i HUGE difference now i bought this, and i love playing to the drum thingys..i acctually sound pretty good heh..
well happy with the sound

looks hard enuf to be scottish !

dunno

yes im very pleased, ok so i know i wont use most of the effects, but its nice to know they are there,
i said to the guy in the shop, i will pay more if you have a better one ??
he looked about scratched his head and said there was nothing better in the store altough he had loads of different ones..
i was not sure about the makers zoom as the earlier ones looked chep and a bit shite, but this one is fabby !
buy one.. would have gave 10 but the display is poor, in this day an lcd would be common !

Need to read the manual first, then fairly easy to make changes.

I have used many effects units from Digitech, Korg, DoD, Ibanez, etc. I ultimately sold them all and just used a pure amp tone for recording projects (Marshall DSL201 or Fender Blues Junior). But I have been exploring another effects box for direct recording to a DAW, particularly when looking for chorusy/flangy type sounds. The G2 is the perfect fit and at an excellent price. The reports of low noise are all very true and I have never owned a guitar processor that is a quiet as the G2. You really would have a hard time knowing that it's even on without the LEDs. Clean sounds are awesome. Distorted sounds are equal or better than I've heard before from an effects unit. Similar to my Korg PX4 (which I use only for headphone practice) but without any of the noise. But I'll still go through a tube amp when recording anything with mild to harsh distortion (maybe with the G2 in the chain). In my opinion, amp modeling is not quite there yet compared to the real thing.

Haven't had it for long. But it sure seems like a tough little unit. Very cool design as well with the chrome hardware.

For $99, it would be very hard to find anything comparable with such low noise and modern technology. Direct recording with my Echo Audiofire 8 is spankin clean.