Zoom GFX-4

Very fiddly, supposed to be user friendly. Got use to it's working after an hour or so. This is not a piece of Pro Gear!

I play both electric and acoustic, I was using this for Reverb & Chorus on acoustic. Very Quiet and clear sounding. Didn't rate the overdrive sounds (I own POD and Sansamp TRi-Ac v.good)way too fizzy!

I wouldn't gig this without a back up, I sold it because of this. The mains adaptor has a very thin power lead to unit, this could easily be sliced thru'.

If you are a pro' don't buy this as it will not last a year of gigging twice/three times a week... keep your old pedals. Howeverif you are a 'bedroom' player you will have a lot of fun. Wah sounds are fun.

It's pretty easy to use, took a couple of days to get used to it, but I was able to get some great sounds editing the preset patches and then creating some of my own from scratch. The manual helped, but it could've been a bit clearer when explaining the patch editing process.

I use this with my good ol' Cort SG-1000 Les Paul ripoffn and a Marshall Valvestate 20 amp. It's a pretty basic setup, but it has worked pretty well. I'd say that for its price range, the GFX-4 has about the best sound you can get. The distortions are analog, which makes them great compared to other digital distortions in this range. The 2-stage distortion (OD boost & distortion) really packs a punch. The choruses, flangers, delays, reverbs, phasers are all great, they sound very pro. The wah is good also, unlinke some reviews I have read. It's not as good as a Crybaby for instance, but then again this is a multieffects console, you can't expect that much from it. The only thing I don't like that sometimes the expression pedal's range feels a bit steep, that is, feels more like a step than a gradual change. It can be a bit noisy but the ZNR takes care of that pretty well.

It feels pretty sturdy, it's part plastic and part metal, so it's not indestructable but I think it could take a pretty good beating and still work perfectly. I have gigged with it without a backup, and it has never failed me.

Never dealt with Samson/ZOOM.. all I know is they have a decent website.

I've been playing for 8 years, I play alternative grunge and mostly modern rock. If it were stolen, I'd think about getting it again, mostly because of the price-sound value. If I had a bit more cash, I'd go for a more expensive Boss console or a rack-mounted effects unit. But that's a whole new league.
I really like the overall sound quality, I just wish it had a harmonizer effect, and well, the bank down pedal really would be an essential addition.
I definitely recommend it. It's the best in its league.

This unit is fairly easy to use and follows Zoom's way of thinking.

Now, I'm not sure why they group DELAY with the modulation effects and ECHO with the Reverb, letting you have both on at the same time. They also group Standard CHORUS and DETUNE (light chorus effect) with the modulation effects, but put the stereo CHORUS with the reverb effects such that you can 2 choruses going at the same time. A little wacky, if you ask me.

And if they could have made the switch to manual mode a little easier on the fly... As is, you can either bend down and hit the manual button to disable/enable the 3 stomp pedals on the fly or program the experssion pedal to go into manual mode by depressing fully. Unfortunately, none of the ffects have the expression pedal set like that. They actually could have used another pedal to switch in an out of manual mode.

Features include:
* switch for active/preamp pickup or regular passive pickup
* stereo or mono effects loop
* metal/plastic hous8ing - seesm very sturdy
* generous length on the A/C adapter - not a wall-wart, per se
* 60 read-only presets and 60 user program slots
* 4 reverb types (arean, hall, room, and garage)
* 4 chorus types (standard chorus, CE chorus, detune, and stereo chorus)
* analog knobs to control effects
* 3 built-in stomp pedals to control effects groupings individually (distortion; chorus/modulation; reverb)
* master volume control (unlike the GFX-8 which does unbelivably does not have one)
* expression pedal for pitch/detune, wah, and volume. Can alos assign other params to it to control the deph of chorus, for example or the speed of the tremelo.
* various additional effects like vibrato, tremelo, auto-wah, wah-wah, phaser
* built-in tuner - very, very easy to invoke unlike other pedals where you have to artfully hit 2 pedals at a time or whatever
* easy to use mute for silent tuning
* amp (combo, stack, etc) simulation for going direct
* ability to name patches with up tyo 6 letters
* a zillion other things

What it doesn't have:
* MIDI (like the GFX-8)
* lick learner (like the Digitech units)
* built-in drum rhythms (like the GFX707)

Based on features alone, this unit gets a "10", factoed in with ease of use, "9"

1. The Standard Chorus and the Detune are excellent! As good or better than a DanElectro cool cat
2. The echo, delays, and reverb are very good
3. the tuner is excellent! Tracks perfectly
4. I'm still working on the OD tone, so no comment there, but so far, so good
5. decent clean tones for jazz
6. 1/2 presets useless for my music
7. excellent bypass - really takes the unit out of the loop for straight amp sound
8. excellent bypass
9. the phaser can be alittle whoosy when idle, otherwisae this pedal is quieter than the GFX-8 I used to own. The reason being is that this unit has a master volume knob to dial the preset down, so no matter what internal volume the preset is set to, it doesn't come through at that volume unless you want it to. This is in contrast to the GFX-8 that has no master volume knob.
10. The pedal wah-wah is failry lame, but usuable and convenient for those of us who use wah-wah very little anyways.

I'm giving the pedal a "9" based primarily on the useful ness of the chorus, delay, and reverb effects. The OD tone is decent, too, but I'l probably use my tube amp for most of that.

Can't rate this yet, but having had the Zoom 505, 505-II, GFX707, and the GFX-8 and having never had a problem with anyone of them, I'm confident that the GFX-4 will hold up.

I play classic rock with a group of guys and this pedal will be good for that. We've yet to play out, but are working toweards that. I've been playing for almost 10 years and have owned alot of gear. Current gear inlcudes: Gibson Es-135 archtop, Sunn T50C + ext cab, Fender Acoustasonic JR, Fender GA45-SCE flattop, 1974 Fender Princeton Reverb, and an Epi Joe Pass jazz archtop.

I have owned every Zoom multi-FX pedal made over the last 5 years. I liked the GFX-8, but with it's lack of a master volume knob and Zoom having set every effect to maximum volume level, it was too noisy for me. I bought the GFX-4 to capture some of the GFX-8 tone, but control it more easily.

I really like the way the GFX-4 looks - it looks like a pro pedal with an easy to read lighted display (unlike the GFX707 which was impossible to read outdoors).

I wish the pedal had a few PCM rhythms built-in like the GFX707, but other than that it's fine.

Very intuitive and easy; much easier than gt6.

Not noisy, very good gate. I did an A/B test with a GT-6; in my view and to my ears, the gfx-4 sounds much much better, even when you tweak the GT-6; the distortions on the zoom are more analog sounding. More important, this unit souds larger and is more transparent then the boss. It does not detoriate your sound. Reminds me of the Voodoo Lab effects. Good reverbs, compression is smooth and usable, overdrive is excellent. The GT6 in comparison is more shrill and sounds digital , very bright with a Stratocaster. It is good for direct recording . The gfx-4 also has preamp modeling with choices of speakers, cabinet, type of amp. It sounds very good in a console, but of course never as good as a real tube amp. The Wah on the GFX-4 is not as warm as a Vox but it is very convenient. The unit is easy to carry and well thought.

Looks solid ; Metal and plastic

Don't know; the web site is good.

Very good for light rock, oldies; the tremolo is just so warm; can play Buffula Springfield even better. Also good for Deep Purple, Hendrix. It is not really very suitable for Ultra Heavy stuff. Mind you, At 47 I am not as aggressive as I used to.

Had everything under control after playing around with it for a few minutes. The manual explains some things too complicated, though.

I'm currently using a lefthanded Fender Standard Strat and a Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 watt amp. The guitar signal goes directly to the GFX-4 unit and enters the clean channel input. I bought the GFX-4 about ten months ago.

As always most of the factory presets are crap, so you have to tweak them or create your own. There are 60 slots available for saving your own patches (4 groups x 5 banks x 3 patches, which is plenty, but the 60 factory presets can't be overwritten). You can give names of up to six letters to each patch and adjust their volume levels seperately.

Amp Simulation: I only use this when practicing with headphones. It sounds too artificial through an amp or directly recorded. Four amps and five speaker cabinets can be selected and combined. The cabinet depth can also be set from 0 to 10.

Integrated Chromatic Tuner: No problems. The tuner is enabled when going into bypass or mute mode. The reference pitch is adjustable from 435 to 445.

Zoom Noise Reduction: Does its job fine, but a noise gate with more parameters would have been better (you can set it from 0 to 10).

Compressors: There are two compressors available. They're both very noisy when used with distortion, so I only use them on clean patches (on which I think they are necessary since the unit's clean sounds are somehow not that impressive).

Equalizer, overdrive/booster, auto wah, slow attack, chorus, vintage chorus, flange, tremolo, detune, vibrato, phaser, pedal wah and especially all of the reverb effects are very good and do what you expect them to.

The unit has digital delay but the maximum delay time is only 500 ms. There is also a sample and hold function of 2 seconds (Wow. Great. Do you know any 2 second riffs? Me neither. That explains why it's not advertised as a real feature of the unit and is only mentioned somewhere in the manual).

The pedal pitch effect and the pitch shifter are the worst effects on this board. It sounds just plain bad and digital (I must admit that when I sent a microphone into the guitar input, it was quite fun to mess around with the pitch shifter). One preset patch even suggests to use the pitch shifter set on -12 halftones as an octaver, which sounds very weak. They should rather have included a real octaver. The step and ring modulation effects aren't good either.

What the GFX-4 really excels at are the analog distortions. Most of them are suited for all kinds of rock and metal (dial in METALZ and start shredding), but you can also get some smoother distortion with the "overdrive" and "us blues" settings (although I would recommend using your amp's own distortion for that). The best one is clearly the EVHDRV distortion (which probably stands for Eddie Van Halen driver).

I tried the GFX-4 with four different amps of which two were solid state. In my experience, the sound with the tube amps is many times better, especially with smaller combos.

Aside from pedal wah and pedal pitch the onboard expression pedal can control distortion, volume, delay and reverb. It can also be used to control the main parameter of a modulation effect (e.g. adjust the Tremolo or Flanger rate) in real time.

Connections and controls at the back: an active/normal switch for active and passive pickups, guitar input, mono output, stereo/headphones output, master volume control, ac input with safety hook for cable, power on/off.

I wish the casing would be entirely made of metal, like the GFX-8 is. It looks a bit fragile to me. But since it has not given up on me yet, I would definetly gig with it. All buttons still work as they should, no wear, no tear (after ten months of constant use).

Never dealt with them.

If it was lost or stolen and I had the money, I would probably buy a better unit (maybe the new GT from Boss, or one of these expensive G-Force rack thingies). But for the price, this is a very good multi effect. I definetly prefer it over the cheaper stuff from Zoom and I'm happy with it (even after ten months).

The range of sounds available means it can be a bit forbidding at first. I would advise spending a little while playing with it before gigging with it. Beware - if you edit patches while the amp sim is on and save, all the patches are saved on the sim setting. I was playing a gig and just couldn't figure what was going on - completely spoiled the sound. The expression set-up is a bit hard to understand - I use it mostly to add reverb to a sound. The reverb can be ferocious - use sparingly - it can make a solo really fill a hall though. Do not edit using headphones as the sound will be very different through your amp, but I suppose that is the case with all FXs. I previously used the Zoom 1010, which is a lot more fiddly to edit. The GFX is definitely superior.

I play a strat through a fender chorus amp, which has a terrible dirty channel.The GFX-4 helps me to get a good dirty sound and adds a bit of variety. I also use an Epiphone SG as a quick back-up for when I break strings ( which I do a lot). Make sure you have different patches for different guitars as the sound can change dramatically. Not too noisy in most patches. Some of the settings should be changed to give a decent sound, and some of the options are just too weird to bother with. Don't be tempted to throw in the kitchen sink and use all possible options at once - stick with one or two at a time.

No problems so far, apart from some surprises when using the expression pedal. I usually take my old Zoom 1010 with me when playing a gig, but only had major problems when I inadvertantly had saved everything on an amp sim setting.

Never been in contact with them, though their web site didn't seem to informative.

I play rock covers mostly, and can get a good crunchy sound for the likes of 'Hard to Handle'. Haven't spent too much time playing with the echo, but what I have used is quite effective. I would consider getting another if lost, but would maybe check out competitors like Digitech, as some of the editing can be frustrating on this.

I have had this pedal for about 4-5 months and im pretty pleased. The editing patches are very easy to use and i can usually get the sound i want. The manuals pretty straight forward (easy to follow)

I have a fender mexican strat w/ pearly gates humbucker at the bridge possition and i play through a Marshall valvestate 100. Some effects witch i despised that were noisy X-Rock, RingDrv and Hyllow. I can usually get the sound i want by messing w/ the tones. I like artists from Hendrix and SRV to Sublime and Rx Bandits. I really enjoy the strum effect,Texas,

never delt w/ them

I like to play alternative style to blues. I have been playing for 5 years. I own a Gibson ES120-T, Roadhouse Strat, and A fender mexican Strat. If my pedal was stolen or lost i would prob get a diff one that could bank down. Not being able to bank down is very irritating.

Ok this unit is very easy to use. I upgraded from a 707 and i didn't even need to read the manual. If you're used to multi effects, you'll be alright. If not read the manual which explains stuff reasonably well.

I use a heavily modified Yamaha Pacifica through the GFX-4 and into a Peavey Classic 50. the effects are very good. The CE chorus effect is very nice. the echo effect is also good. The distortions however are the strongest point. most of them are useable and sound very good.
The wah is probably the weakest effect. it works fine with a clean sound for funk, etc but through distortion it doesn't sound too good.

Seems well made, it's made from hard plastic with some metal parts. these don't appear to offer all that much more protection though. the pedals should be metal. it'll hold and i do gig without a backup however

never dealt with them, so i'm in no position to judge.

My style ranges from acoustic rock to heavier alternative styles. The GFX-4 is the only multi effects i'd ever need. if i had to replace it i'd get a GFX-8 or a boss something. i compared it to a korg AX1000G, and the zoom sounded better in my opinion. The distortions and effects are very good, the wah is weak, but i don't need it. I've been playing for 6 years and i'm happy with my gear. while it has it's shortcomings, these are far outweighed by it's fantastic sound quality. A good product overall, and for the money you shouldnt be dissapointed.

This is really easy to use, I bought it used without the manual, figured out how it worked in 5 mins.
Great dist. on this one, but the wah pedal isn`t good...
It is very easy do edit patches... great !!!

As said before, the disttortion is GREAT on this one. Chourus is good too... I think all the effect exept from the wah sounds good at this baby

It is made of metal and plastic, I wouldn`t dropped it, but I`m sure it can take some beating...

Never dealt with em

I`m playing alternative punk rock, great grungey sounds =)
great pedal

Its easy to use just like eating peanuts....Editing patches is a breeze if u read the manual twice or thrice..

I use a fender mustang running through a fender bassman 600 amp...It isn't noisy as long as the cable of guitar is clear...the effects sound great from blues to metal...you can have different types of distortion from creamy overdrive to hell blasting metal......I can get sounds from any artists from jimi hendrix to kirk hammet..as long as u set the proper tone for it..

I can depend on it as long as it depends on me....i can use it without back up in a gig..

I wrote them via e-mail but they won't reply...I don't know why...

I play blues, alternative music, and mostly hard core metal....I started playing guitar when I was 7 years old...I've been playing proffesionally for 10 years..i have a band and we are signed to warner music of the Philippines..I play most on rhytnm Guitars..If it were stolen I would buy another...It really helps me big in my career
We recorded our album using it witouht a Fuss....