I picked one of these up to it out and see what it can offer. Here's my quickie comments based on playing with some of the effects. I only have a Roland GR-55 for directly comparing digital multieffects against. I no longer own a GT-10B or any Line6 boxes.
* I didn't even need to open the manual. Plug it in and it instantly and intuitively works as a 3-effect box. Really easy to use.
* Tuner seems good for standard 4 string tuning, supplements the LCD with red/green LEDs which will make it really good for stage and sunlight use.
* The box is not noisy. I'm not sure where those other comments are coming from. If you have drive effects on or amp sims with the gain all the way up then you'd get hiss, that's no different than any other effect digital or otherwise. Stick the noise gate before/after it to kill that type of gain hiss/noise.
* There's no headphone jack. ***? I must have missed that in previous discussions. Serious omission IMO. Any box with amp sims need headphone jacks so you don't have to run them into an amp to hear it. I think I saw a comment of USB into a computer than headphones out of the PC, that might work.
* There's no master volume knob. But there is a Master Level in Global that's easy to access.
* Drive effects are generally poor sounding and too buzzy sounding in the highs with not enough real, thick saturation. This is fairly typical for digital drive effects. However, the Roland's overdrive is more natural/tube sounding, and generally the distortions less fake sounding. My recollection is Line6 has always been closest for modelling drive effects with a lot of drive applied to the lows/mids without the digital buzziness in the highs. Note the Zoom overdrive has no touch sensitivity and is too gainy even at 0 gain.
* The Zoom drive effects all have blend which is nice if you want that. However, some of the drive effects sound terrible without any blend. Like the overdrive which sound absolutely terrible soloing the actual overdrive effect without blend.
* Reverbs sound "cheap" without any real quality airiness compared to the effects in the Roland GR-55 I'm comparing it to.
* There's a LOT of effects in the box. It should cover your bread-n-butter modulation and delay effects as there's a bunch of phase/flange/chorus/delays to choose from.
* Some of the synth effects seemed reasonably useable with good sounds. Tracking was good as long as you have the technique. They track octave jumps pretty well, and retrigger reasonably fast but not fast enough for repetitive 8th note playing. But overall better retriggering than the Mark Bass Super Synth based on my recollection from when I owned one. With that said, I don't recall the soloed synth sounds being super deep and fat.
* There's some fun effects in this box that aren't in most others like LPF, bicrusher, BendCho (auto-whammy as far as I'm concerned), and a great keyed noise gate which can let you HEAVILY gate anything when set to Detect=GtrIn with a high threshold.
Some quick thoughts on some experimental stuff for you to try:
* Try using BendCho for portamento type sounds.
* Put a ZNR in slot 1 with Thresh=24, Detect=GtrIn, Level=Max then a full gain fuzz afterwards for something approaching a heavily gated FuzzSmile after. Maybe some crafty EQ after could make it sound genuinely good. But you do get the heavily gated sound and there's no noise/hiss. Then try sticking other effects in front or behind for more experimentation.
* I haven't played with the amp sims yet, but make sure to consider them as an EQ slot not just an amp sim. With a lot of other boxes like the BOSS GT-10B the amp sims can sound sculp better than an EQ effect. Particularly for shaving off the nasty digital high end of the drive effects.
In the next couple weeks I'll try to get a Zoom B3 page on my site with some sound clips and patches to download.
* I didn't even need to open the manual. Plug it in and it instantly and intuitively works as a 3-effect box. Really easy to use.
* Tuner seems good for standard 4 string tuning, supplements the LCD with red/green LEDs which will make it really good for stage and sunlight use.
* The box is not noisy. I'm not sure where those other comments are coming from. If you have drive effects on or amp sims with the gain all the way up then you'd get hiss, that's no different than any other effect digital or otherwise. Stick the noise gate before/after it to kill that type of gain hiss/noise.
* There's no headphone jack. ***? I must have missed that in previous discussions. Serious omission IMO. Any box with amp sims need headphone jacks so you don't have to run them into an amp to hear it. I think I saw a comment of USB into a computer than headphones out of the PC, that might work.
* There's no master volume knob. But there is a Master Level in Global that's easy to access.
* Drive effects are generally poor sounding and too buzzy sounding in the highs with not enough real, thick saturation. This is fairly typical for digital drive effects. However, the Roland's overdrive is more natural/tube sounding, and generally the distortions less fake sounding. My recollection is Line6 has always been closest for modelling drive effects with a lot of drive applied to the lows/mids without the digital buzziness in the highs. Note the Zoom overdrive has no touch sensitivity and is too gainy even at 0 gain.
* The Zoom drive effects all have blend which is nice if you want that. However, some of the drive effects sound terrible without any blend. Like the overdrive which sound absolutely terrible soloing the actual overdrive effect without blend.
* Reverbs sound "cheap" without any real quality airiness compared to the effects in the Roland GR-55 I'm comparing it to.
* There's a LOT of effects in the box. It should cover your bread-n-butter modulation and delay effects as there's a bunch of phase/flange/chorus/delays to choose from.
* Some of the synth effects seemed reasonably useable with good sounds. Tracking was good as long as you have the technique. They track octave jumps pretty well, and retrigger reasonably fast but not fast enough for repetitive 8th note playing. But overall better retriggering than the Mark Bass Super Synth based on my recollection from when I owned one. With that said, I don't recall the soloed synth sounds being super deep and fat.
* There's some fun effects in this box that aren't in most others like LPF, bicrusher, BendCho (auto-whammy as far as I'm concerned), and a great keyed noise gate which can let you HEAVILY gate anything when set to Detect=GtrIn with a high threshold.
Some quick thoughts on some experimental stuff for you to try:
* Try using BendCho for portamento type sounds.
* Put a ZNR in slot 1 with Thresh=24, Detect=GtrIn, Level=Max then a full gain fuzz afterwards for something approaching a heavily gated FuzzSmile after. Maybe some crafty EQ after could make it sound genuinely good. But you do get the heavily gated sound and there's no noise/hiss. Then try sticking other effects in front or behind for more experimentation.
* I haven't played with the amp sims yet, but make sure to consider them as an EQ slot not just an amp sim. With a lot of other boxes like the BOSS GT-10B the amp sims can sound sculp better than an EQ effect. Particularly for shaving off the nasty digital high end of the drive effects.
In the next couple weeks I'll try to get a Zoom B3 page on my site with some sound clips and patches to download.
