Zoom G multi FXs...some Q's

monquixote · November 2014

My observations of gigging G3 is.

* It doesn't have any useful patch switching so if that's what you need you will be disappointed.

* It works really well as a board of stomps replacement

* You can only use 3 at a time stompable as the others will be off screen

* Hitting two pedals at the same time scrolls the screen. This will totally fuck you up if you do it by accident at a gig as you now won't be able to turn off the effect you just scrolled off the screen.

* If you use the simulated amps you need to use the simulated drive boxes. The amp sims do not take OD pedals at all well

The other top tip is it has class compliant USB so you can use it with MIDI with an adapter.

Voxman · November 2014

monquixote said:

My observations of gigging G3 is.

* It doesn't have any useful patch switching so if that's what you need you will be disappointed.
* It works really well as a board of stomps replacement
* You can only use 3 at a time stompable as the others will be off screen
* Hitting two pedals at the same time scrolls the screen. This will totally fuck you up if you do it by accident at a gig as you now won't be able to turn off the effect you just scrolled off the screen.
* If you use the simulated amps you need to use the simulated drive boxes. The amp sims do not take OD pedals at all well

The other top tip is it has class compliant USB so you can use it with MIDI with an adapter.

Thanks very much for that valuable feedback, and confirms that (although it's a supper little unit) unfortunately it can't do what I need. Even its big brother has dreadful switching issues.

However I did have a query about the 3 stomp box display at a time theme. Can you choose which ones to appear in the first 3 screens irrespective of the pedal chain order, demoting the ones you're less likely to need to 'stomp off' in the second batch of three. Or are they displayed purely in pedal-chain order?

Lev · November 2014

They display in chain order.

Voxman · November 2014

Thats what I thought but thanks for clarifying

Nomad · November 2014

Well, I'm impressed with the G3X so far. For crunch amp sim, I seem to have settled on the Bassman into the Revo-1 4x12 cab (in spite of going through a hi-fi power amp into two 1x12 V30 cabs). Got one of the compressors at the start of the chain and then the parametric EQ into the amp sim. Using external wah and drive before the G3X, and stereo tremolo, delay and reverb after. Good crunchiness for chords and excellent tone with my 'creamy lead' patch on the Nova Drive.

I haven't really played with the internal dirt pedals other than the Metal Zone one, which seemed okay but only has a single tone control (so not really a proper emulation). Sounded metalish, but I didn't spend much time with it. Same with the delays and reverbs, and the various combined pedals. I did have a fiddle with the conventional modulation pedals. The phasers, flangers and choruses all seem pretty good (speaking as someone that very rarely uses these sounds). I quite like the autowah as well.

The pitch shift effects were a bit of a mixed bag. The ones that can bend with the pedal seemed okay with lower notes but went weird with the highs (or maybe I'm just a scrappy player and was feeding it crap). The octave dropper does a passable bass guitar for messing around with, but again seemed to work best with the lower three strings. I thought the harmony effect was the best of the pitch shift effects - you can set the key and the interval, and it seemed to track well with tidy playing.

The drum box is rudimentary but quite usable for farting about. Haven't played with the looper yet. The wahs are a bit rudimentary (no Q setting, it seems), but I'd like to try one with the Nova Drive on to see what I think of post-distortion wah.

Agreed on the awkwardness of the patch changes - you can either do a two-button twiddle by bending down and using the little buttons on the top, or use the footswitches. Not really an issue for me, since I don't really need to change quickly. If it can be made to accept MIDI patch changes with an adapter, then that with a MIDI switchboard would seem to be the obvious remedy.

One thing that I do find a fiddle is scrolling through the various effects when setting up a chain - there's loads of them, and it's easy to go in the wrong direction. I noticed that the patch name editor has a dial that lets you jump between groups of characters (upper case, lower case, numbers, miscellaneous chars). It would be good to have something similar to jump between groups of effects. Not a terribly big deal, though, since the effect scrolling is only really done when setting things up.

Overall, so far, a most impressive piece of kit. For me, the amp sims and EQ make it worthwhile - the general tone is pretty much transformed (power amp is a valve hi-fi job with no EQ and a dead flat response). Getting a huge pile of modulation effects and dirt boxes is almost a bonus (even though I'll probably never use most of them), as is the looper - I've been musing on getting a looper recently.

p90fool · November 2014

Although I don't usually bother with stuff like that I downloaded the Edit & Share software, it makes organising your patches a doddle compared to doing it on the unit itself.

It's no hassle to set up either, as the G3 is USB powered you just plug it in and the software autoruns.

UnclePsychosis · November 2014

Yep, the zoom software is actually really useful, definitely worth using.

UnclePsychosis · November 2014

Just spent an hour getting my teeth into the G3X through my headphones which is how I'll be using it 95% of the time.

My biggest problem is that there are almost *too many* usable amp sims, which is a ridiculous thing to say but I was almost hoping to only like one or two just to make deciding on sounds simple. Oh well!

My favourite amps so far are the FD Combo (the twin reverb), the US Blues (Tweed bassman), the Match 30 (matchless DC30), the HW Stack (Hiwatt Custom 100) and the MS1959 (Marshall Plexi).

Next up is to work out which of the drive pedal sims I like. For some reason I find dialing in the pedals a lot harder than the amps (??)

monquixote · November 2014

The Guvnor sim is pretty good.

Alnico · December 2014

Ok so the furtther in to my G3 i'm getting, i'm noticing a few things.........

There are some stupidly good sounds in here and a lot of them are the factory settings, just with little tweaks here and there.

I'm using around half of the factory settings as a sound for all kinds of songs.

I'm loving a lot of the drives in here but they DO need to be tweaked and find whatever sweet spot they have.

After playing with the stereo delay and slicer's etc, i have realised i really need two amps...................

Damnit !

Overall i am amazed by this little box and with some work setting it up at gig volume in a studio, i'm fully expecting to be able to use this for everything i need to gig with. I'm getting the expression pedal after Christmas, but whether or not i can use a different manufacturer's pedal or it has to be the Zoom pedal is not quite clear yet.

Favourite factory settings so far.........

J.Page

E.V.H

Kirk Hammet

Layla

Brian May - I have never been able to play Brighton rock until now, what a blast !!!

Grumpyrocker · December 2014

You don't need a Zoom expression pedal. I use an M-Audio one with my G3.

Alnico · December 2014

Grumpyrocker said:

You don't need a Zoom expression pedal. I use an M-Audio one with my G3.

Ok, thanks that's cool. So does it do everything that the Zoom pedal does properly?

The one i liked the look of was the Morley Pedal...............................

http://www.gak.co.uk/en/morley-m2-passive-voltage-control-and-expression-pedal/96201

Do you think that will work ?

Branshen · December 2014

I use the Moog expression pedal and it works great.

Alnico · December 2014

@Grumpyrocker @Branshen

Thanks guys. I had kind of thought that another one would work but that's the first time i've had it confirmed.

I think i will wait and get that Morley pedal, it looks great.

Cheers

close2u · December 2014

Voxman said:

... I did have a query about the 3 stomp box display at a time theme. Can you choose which ones to appear in the first 3 screens irrespective of the pedal chain order, demoting the ones you're less likely to need to 'stomp off' in the second batch of three. Or are they displayed purely in pedal-chain order?

Yes ... you can put them in your preferred order ... using the Total button.

Fuzzdog · December 2014

close2u said:

Voxman said:

... I did have a query about the 3 stomp box display at a time theme. Can you choose which ones to appear in the first 3 screens irrespective of the pedal chain order, demoting the ones you're less likely to need to 'stomp off' in the second batch of three. Or are they displayed purely in pedal-chain order?

Yes ... you can put them in your preferred order ... using the Total button.

But that alters the pedal chain too.

There's no way at all to just shift three pedals to the displays without affecting the routing, unfortunately - they have to be consecutive in the chain. You can cheat a bit with the delay, however, as you can assign an external pedal to mute the input to the delay regardless of whether it's on screen or not. I have a few patches set up like that, so I can (for instance) have boost, flanger and overdrive on three onboard pedals, and then delay controlled by the external one. Why Zoom doesn't let you assign the external switch to turn any effect on or off, I have absolutely no idea, it's a bit of a glaring omission.

Nomad · December 2014

Any suggestions for a patch to get a non-mega-delay Brian May sound?

siraxeman · December 2014

Brian mays delays are 800 left and 1600 milliseconds right single repeat with the delays being as loud as the original sound.with the centre amp of 3 dry....you can easily programme a similar effect with one amp on most modern multi fx boxes.

Nomad · December 2014

I'm looking for guidelines on setting up the amp tone for general use. (I already have my Nova Delay doing the Ping-Pong thing.)

Alnico · December 2014

I find starting with the amp settings all at 12 o clock and working from there is the best way to finding the best tone from each. Some amp sims like being pushed and some don't but starting with everything on halfway i have found the easiest way to find a good setting.

My test piece to play for each depends on the type of amp i'm setting up. For MS Crunch i like to play 'Good times, Bad times' by Led Zeppelin. For the Hiwatt and the Bassman (Forgot what they call it) i play 'The Punk and The Godfather' by The Who...........

Some of the factory settings for each sound i have found can be pushed a bit further improving the sound and some i have found sound better being backed off a little. The Booster pedal function is also very useful, placed correctly.

My actual amp (Blues Junior III) i am leaving the EQ roughly in the middle on each control with the volume at halfway and using the master volume to set the overall volume of the amp. I also leave the FAT switch engaged all the time, however when i switch from the Telecaster to a humbucker guitar like the SG, i will increase the middle and the treble. If the master volume is set above number 6, i will back the treble off a little for the humbucker and a little more for the Telecaster.

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Zoom G multi FXs...some Q's

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