Well, here's my hot take after spending about an hour with the B24.
I'm coming from a pedal board that consists of a MS60b -> Zoom B3. I play in a party/wedding cover band. So styles range from Motown to modern pop, some heavy-ish rock, a few synth bass things. I don't perform with an amp, so I'm relying on the amp sims.
Overall I'm very happy with the B24. With a few exceptions, the quality of the individual effects is as good or better than the B3/MS60B. The biggest exception is the fuzz. I really liked the Big Muff emulation on the B3/MS60B. There are two fuzz effects on the B24 (Fuzz Smile and NY Fuzz) and neither are as good as the Big Muff. I find them either piercing or completely lacking clarity. Maybe with some more time, I could dial something better in. But this is all OK because as much as I like the Big Muff, my favorite fuzz actually comes from the emulation of the Xotic BB preamp and it's still here in the B24.
Several of the other effects on the B24 sound better and are more usable than their counterparts on the B3/MS60B. I find the octavers have better tracking and tone. And the synth bass and envelope effects are much less finicky on the B24. On the B3/MS60B it was possible to get usable sounds from these effects, but it took getting the sensitivity just right. On the B24 they just seem to work (with no sensitivity param).
As others have noted, many of the effects lost some of their parameters. With four knobs on the B24 vs. three on the B3/MS60B, Zoom seems to have really focused on trying to keep the paging to a minimum. So far, I don't miss the extra parameters. I think this approach worked.
There are fewer amp sims and what are there lack any sort of cabinet emulation. I'm not really troubled by this. I don't need dozens of amps to choose from. I just need something that will give me a good usable tone and easy to adjust eq. There are plenty of options that fit that bill in the B24.
The bottom line is it sounds great, has more effects than I'll ever need, is compact, and is easy to use.
I'm finding it hard to find fault with the B24. But there are a few things I wish Zoom had done differently.
There are way (I mean way) too many presets. 250 presets is just too much. So many of them sound the same. Many of them are just an amp sim with a particular eq applied. It's silly. And you might say, "so what?" The thing is, it makes getting around in the patch menu a chore. 50 solid presets that showed off the capabilities of the pedal would have been plenty. They seem to have named each preset with a song title and year. In a few cases that works. But in a lot of cases it's just nonsense. 98% of these named patches aren't from songs with iconic bass tones. Money, yes. 7 Nation Army, maybe. Sir Duke, yes. Higher Ground, yes. There are a few other good ones. But there are so many that just aren't necessary.
There are a few effects (synth-talk and tri-chorus for example) that don't seem to able to be used in a patch with any other effects. They're grayed out unless they're the only thing in that bank. That's weird and inconvenient, especially if you're relying on an amp sim. They should have either upped the specs of the pedal or left those out IMO. (Though they both are really cool.)
In addition to the 5 effects slots I was expecting, there's a weird sixth slot that holds a metronome. But there's no audible click. I guess if you use a lot of delay, the looper, or drum machine, this might be useful. But it's weird to me that it sits in the effects chain like a pedal. That should have been it's own separate button or be integrated into the effects that use them.
Same goes for the drum machine. It's weird to treat that like a pedal. It would have been better as a separate function.
I know everyone is excited about the DI. And I would not have bought this without a direct output. That's one of the reasons I stuck with my B3 and never switched to the B3n. But TBH, I just don't need six different DI options. I just need an XLR out to send to the board. I'm going to do all my tone shaping in the effects, eq, etc.
I can't decide how I feel about the bypass button. I can imagine some situations where it might be useful. But I wish it didn't also disable the selection on the DI. It should just turn off all the effects. And it takes up a lot of real estate on the board for fairly limited utility. Here's what I wish they did instead. When you're in the patch menu, you have a patch selected and its light is lit showing which one is selected. Right now, if you tap that button again, nothing happens. It should turn off that patch and bypass all the effects. That would be just as useful as the bypass switch and take up no space on the board. That extra space could be used for breaking out the drum machine or tap tempo.
Ok, I have to say though, I'm being really picky here. So far, my overall impression is that this is a GREAT pedal. It's well worth the $250 price.
It's definitely a good upgrade from my B3. I haven't decided whether I'll keep my MS60B in the line up. There's so much about that pedal I like. It packs an incredible amount of function into a single pedal space. It has the Big Muff fuzz that I like. Keeping it would give me nine effects slots with four of them switchable at any time. But I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where I'd need that. Frankly, I'm having trouble imagining anything I'd need that the B24 couldn't do. And I guess that says it all.
