Zoom Fire 30 Combo

Amp was made in 2003. This amp is a digital modelling amp (it models 11 different amps in all) with a variety of digital effects. These have already been mentioned. See B Leverty's review dated 15/2/2003 for a comprehensive list of features. As a practice/home amp this has more than enough features. It is very versatile with headphone jack, footswitch in, CD input, noise reduction, preset patches and power damp.

I use the amp at home only. It plays loud. 30 Watts is more than enough power for home use.

The main problem is the background hiss. It was so annoying that I stopped using the amp for 2 years. Eventually replaced the speaker with a 10" Celestion and now the sound is much better and the hiss has disappeared on most settings (but not all!). Without the change in speaker, I would only give the sound a value of 4

I use a Fender Strat (Mex) with 3 single pickups.
I play a variety of music but mainly pop/rock

Seems a sturdy beast. It is reasonably well-built. However, it is made of chipboard and covered with a cheap looking vinyl. All the knobs and controls work and nothing has broken so far.

No need to use Customer Support.

This is a lot of amp for the money. However, the hiss lets it down. Most of the sounds you get out of it are good, but not brilliant. What it does, it does well, but it will not blow you away. In other words it is a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. But at the price, I cannot complain.

I have been playing for about 4 years. This is the first amp I have owned. Next time I will probably buy an amp that has a better sound and fewer features. However, this is a cheap way of getting lots of digital effects without buying loads of different pedals. Because of its versatility and the fact it can model 11 different amps, I would buy it again second-hand, but not new.

the jacks on this modelling amp are plastic. I accidentally stepped on the patch cord and the jack split in half.

I have been wating for over 2 months for a replace jack plug and board assembly. When I told the distributor for Canada that I would never buy another Zoom product again, the rep said that he wouldn't blame for taking that position.

Nice amp when and if it works. I would not recommend this at all due to the poor or non-existent after sales support and service.

Im violinist and use this for my electric work. Im only a learner but i have played guitar before an had a few cheap amps.
The previous reviews can offer more fact details on this amp than i can, thus i wont try! :)
This amp as everything i need and more. Its got all the effects i need an i would say the quaility of them is good, maybe some ok.
You wont get BOSS like effect standards but hey, lets remember this is a budget amp if the truth is told.
Its got enough power for me and when i got it i thought it was loud for 30 amps. i found out thats its actualy 36 amps in truth, reason enough for my thinking!

I got this amp of ebay i as new condition. You wont belive what i payed.. 42 UKP ! no shi*! 42 quid and the thing works fine. Im a very experienced ebayer and this as been the best bargain to date.:)

I have seen this model new in the local musci shop for 180UKP. i would say that this is a good value amp for the money.

I only use limited effects and dont play too loud, thus i cannot realy comment too much in this section i guess.
It is loud though! Small gigs could be done with this amp IMO.
The "Fuzzy" amp ground sound can be sorted out i find if you mess about with the settings and use the noise reduction feature. It aint so bad i find and not a massive problem if you have time to spend setting the thing up.
Chorus is fine, thats what matters to me.

Not had any problems to date, doubt i will :)

Built like Rocky!

N/A

Good amp and a silly bargain for what i paid.

I would have paid about 100 to 120 UK Pounds for this amp used as i find it to be what i need for what i do (which as i say is learning the electric violin)

I like the looks of the amp and its a solid build quaility.

If they made a 50W or even 100W version of the "fire" id buy one just incase i get good enough to `perform` LOL

Cheers

This amp has a $%^&load of features for the money!!!

The amp has a great sound if you know how to set an amp when I read the amp has a "HISSING" noise i laugh becouse it is a grounding issue and I know the DUMB ASS just don't know how to set an amp I have had mine for about a year and a half never had a hissing problem (I plug it in to a grounded outlet and do not use cheap ass guitars with no sustain single coil pickups) the amp has very good sustain if you have a good guitar or at least good pickups! It is very versitile and can sound clean or totaly insane metal!!!!

This amp is built just as well as any amp out there

never used it as the amp works every time!

For the money this is a kick ass amp (If you have a strat like guitar with single coil pickups then don't bother all amps of good quality will sound like $%^& to you)

Made in 2003 I believe. I play a wide range of stuff but mostly acoustic and recently started playing electric and thought that it would be a better idea to have a modeling amp than a bunch of pedals just to mess with different sounds and mainly use as a practice amp. This was my first amp purchase which I got from a local pawn shop. There were more than enough features and effects for me and I tested them all and everything seemed to work fine, I didnt really spend much time actually listening to it other than to see what worked. It all worked I believe, LED,s, tuner, you name it. I was never able to actually figure out how to refine the presets or to switch from one to another without it going to the default manual. Shrug. Electronics whiz I am not, which if I had known anything about amps, I wouldnt have bought this one. I chalk it up to a learning experience, albeit a bad one.

I have a Fender stratocaster, made in Mexico that I played it through. I actually played through my computer before I bought this amp and with those cheap PC speakers, I still had 50x more sustain than that sorry ZOOM amp. I couldnt believe it and I tried to add more gain/volume and that only made the hissing intolerable and seemed not to help matters so I called a friend (who I should have taken to the pawn shop and look at it with me before buying) and he came over and took a few minutes to look at the amp. He looked at the speaker and told me it was a piece of shit and told me to take it back. I took it back the next day and almost had to beat the guys ass at the pawn shop to get a friggin refund.

I dont know if I could have played out with that thing without scaring people with hissing just to get some volume. It was even bad with no gain on the clean channel, horrid with any distortion. I really didnt own it long enough to know if it would break. As far as I am concerned, I know nothing about amps, but I know that that amp sounded awful. I compare it to one of those 4" door speakers out of a '78 Toyota Celica.

N/A, and thank God I was able to get rid of it. Now I know what not to buy, just need to find an amp now and the first thing I am gonna look at is the speaker, then what country its made in.

I have been playing acoustically about 4 years, only just recently started out with electric. If someone with my little experience thought this was that bad, it should tell you that a well experienced player would vomit on it, then burn it and send it back to hell. Wouldnt replace it for anything, had a bad enough time getting rid of it. I would also like to share that I will from now on, attempt to buy only American products as this make and model were pisspoor.

Really really really packed full of features. its a modelling amp so it has to be! tuner, dfx, preset channel, soundgate thing - too much to put

ok this is a very controversial issue. The sounds it produces are really quite good - they just sound nothing like they say they do. for example the 'FDR' (fender) amp setting is just clean, thats it. and the marshall channel is just a nice distortion - not marshall distortion at all. If your a metel head dont bother with this, unless you like your metel screetchy the metel channel is wank-too tinny.

FX
The effects are really good, its just a shame you can only have 1 effect on at a time (you CAN have reverb/echoe on with effects). There are some pointless effects like doubling and ring mod and the phase and flanger sound the same. other than that really good.

Just note that this amp is verrrryyyy cheap for what it so just be aware that it WON'T sound anything as good as a POD does. Compare it to the vox valvetronics.

Havn't ever gigged with it and probably never will. Its basically a practice amp for somebody who wants every amp sound known to man in their bedroom, it fits this criteria very well.

BUT

if u turned up at a venue with this it wouldnt be the wow amp of the group. Not that its a bad amp but because its a zoom. Most of zoom stuff is shite but this is as good as it gets really with zoom. Its not great but i really like it. It wont ever produce YOUR sound because it rips off everybody elses.

I'v been playing for 3 years and im a fairly good player, if the amp was robbed i wouldn't buy another but i'd want it back. I love its flexability but i hate its 'cheap' feel. I wish it had balls! its too bloody pansy like, really really loud, but weak.

Good amp for bedroom bashers

it has good features and lots of opportunity to tone your own sound from the settings available even if some arnt to your own taste.tuner built in a bonus.open back cab leaves you space to store the power lead and the amp is light in weight for portability.

i use a fender jagstang and play punky style rock and like to mess with classic blues tones and sometimes slightly overdriven tube tones thats not in your face.there is a buzz(hiss) noise on the amp but tube amps turned on make a noise as well so i,m not that bothered by it apart from when i,m playing quietly at home with the acoustic settings.i had a marshal 100dfx and that had a cooling fan which was even noiser than the hiss.like i said before you will find some very nice sounds on this beasty.30 watts at home is well loud.just ask the neighbours.

had zoom products before and not had any trouble with them.

never had to use them.

been playing 10 years.may replace it but would like to try out some other 30 watt amps first.vox,marshall,behringer,fender.taking off a couple of points just because of the slightly annoying hiss.

scroll down.i hate redundency.Therefore i won't write whatever has been written.

as good as my POD xt;only the price is cheaper!!!!way cheaper!!

i use it for home practice,therefore i dun care.

If this amp were produced in the 90's,i wud say it wud cost u a fortune!!Luckily digital equipments/components are becoming cheaper each day and the fact that ZOOM had to compete with line6 and other manufacturers made the price of this amp so affordable to almost everyone.

Line 6 stuffs are good(no doubt about dat)...... but the price is
not for everyone.
I've been playing the guitar for more than 15 years now and wud consider myself as a 'pro' as i gig alot.
When i bought my first amp,little did i know that 15 years later, practice amp (with tons of features) can get this cheap.
And I wonder why tube amps are still expensive?The price never goes down as far as i am concerned.
Not that i hate tube amps;infact i am a proud owner of marshall TSL 122 which i bought almost 10 times the price of this ZOOM fire30.
The TSL 122 is good,but its NOT practical for bedroom playing.
Above all,its way overpriced for what it does!!!!!and to be honest,i like my pod xt better when playing live.
Bottom line is, if u r looking for a practice amp.....look no further...FIRE 30 is the one....regardless of your playing level -whether u r a beginner,advance,expert or even a pro,
this amp is worth every penny.Trust me.

See other reviews below about the features (a long, long list!).

This amp is more than versatile enough for the various styles that I like to play. I'm kinda stuck in the mid/late '60's psychedelic rock groove, with a penchant for fuzz, wah, reverb and the Marshall stack sound. Well... this amp has got a lot more than that, much of which I know I'll hardly use. What's great about the features is that you can easily tweak and do gradual adjustments to get just the sound you want. And that's what comes next...

I have a Yamaha for an electric (yeah, I know, I really should graduate to a more serious guitar, but I'm just a play-for-fun amateur, yup). Still, with a straight up, good value for the money Yamaha guitar, this amp can acually make you sound like you're playing Hendrix' Strat with Marshall Stack amps. No, I'm not an expert on this... some of the reviews by the pros below agree with me, though. :-)

About the hiss... you'll notice it'll disappear once you touch the string, or for that matter, any metal part of the guitar that the strings touch. The cause? Grounding. Ground the power plug and use what you'd use for a PC computer for a power supply / surge protector, and your household items electrical interference will disappear, too. I get a nice clean, noiseless sound out of my amp now that that power supply is clean and grounded.

Brutal? *laugh* Major understatement! This amp can be as brutal, and as gentle as you want it to be, such is its versatility.

No problem so far... but it's only two days old. ;-) So, not rating or opinion on this one.

Same for customer support.

This amp suits me fine. :-) I tried a lot of amps in the shop, and this one not only had all the features I wanted, but it had THE SOUND I wanted.

loads of features 22 amp models loads of effects tuner aux-in headphone socket bottom edge sustain and some more

i you can get over the hissing sound drowning out your guitar it is ok there are some good distorion setting the cleans are a bit bland the effects are ok there are some weird ones . i have a marshall mg10 and use that over that over the zoom fire30 sometimes because the sound quality is better and it cost less than half the price which must be sayin sumthing

its built well apart from the input jack the skrew that holds it on allways falls of and the jack goes inside the amp apart from that i dont think it would break easily its pretty sterdy

no idea

its ok if u can get past the hissing noise i guess ive only been playin just over a year so im not realy experianced enough to get the most out of the amp but the hissing does totaly ruin the amp in my opinion, but the tuner is pretty good you can get some gain there are loads of features for the money so its not all bad