I am a lot like you, I don't really play with effects too often. That being said, my main gig is with a cover band and it is nice to be able to tweak your sound to fit what you are playing.
The Zoom B1x is a great pedal for my needs. It does a lot stuff well. However, it isn't spectacular at anything. For the $40 I paid for it used it has been quite a good buy.
The B1x is basically a small effect rack in a pedal. Again, this is not a pro-quality bit of kit, but it does get me by. It is made of durable plastic and it get kicked around quite a bit. It stands up to the abuse. It has a digital readout on it that is woefully inadequate, but it does get the job done if you have the little decoder card handy while you are programming it. After a few weeks of messing with it you become familiar with all the codes and you don't need the card anymore. The B1x comes with an expression pedal. It is pretty handy, I use it a volume control mostly.
Patches: The unit comes loaded with 40 preset patches that all promise to make you sound like Jaco, Victor, Flea, or whoever. After you get past the BS, you can use those as a starting point make your own patches. In all, it holds 80 patches- 40 preset and 40 user made.
Effects: The B1x comes loaded with a dozen amp modeling effects. This does NOT make my cheap Behringer practice amp sound like $2000 Trace Elliot rig- but it does shape your sound ( notice SOUND not TONE: Tone is in your fingers.... in your soul). Other effects include Chorus, Phaser, Echo, Delay,Flanger, Synth, and so on. You can mix the amp modeling and effects together in the same patch.
Other goodies: The pedal has a rudimentary noise reduction feature that works pretty well. I have a noisy J Bass that has a hum- I have a patch on the B1X that only has the noise reduction programmed in it. This really helps the buzz when I am plugged into my stage rig. Also included is a three band EQ (70Hz through 3kHz).
Drum Machine: Honestly, I didn't even care about it until my metronome died last year. I always practice with a metronome, and after it died I used the drum machine on the pedal as a stop gap. Then I found that the drum machine has a metronome function in it. It give you a pleasant click track at 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 times between 40BPM and 250 BPM. One day I will pick up a nice metronome- but I am not in any hurry.
It also has a tuner (which I use on stage).
It can also be used as a "mini-amp". I have plugged my bass in once side and headphones in the other for quiet practice when the wife is sleeping.
I use the included power cord so I have no idea what battery life is like. It uses four AA batteries.
The pedal specs are as follows:
46 effect types sampled at 96 kHz. A/D and D/A converters are 24 bit, 128 oversampling. (the sample rate here is not very high, but this is not a very expensive pedal).
THE BOTTOM LINE: This is a good pedal for what I need it to do. It was a good buy used, although I would have never bought it new because it looks cheesy. I have seen it retail for around $90. If you are a pro musician, than you would NOT want this unit. However, I wish I had had this unit when I was a younger man playing bars and starting to learn the instrument.
Sorry for the long post- I didn't mean to give a review!
