New: Zoom B3n Multi-Effects

[Jools4001]

Just got one of these today to replace a busted B3. Haven't had time to play with it much yet, but first impressions are that it is nowhere near as intuitive as the B3 and the manual is rubbish.

On the B3 I had it set up with patches for my boutique main bass (GB Rumour 5) which has a very refined, nuanced tone but doesn't have the hottest output, and other patches for my back up bass which is a cheapy Harley Benton that has a hot output but far less subtlety - think of the GB as a precise, surgical scalpel and the Harley Benton as a meat cleaver and you'll get the idea.

With the B3 I was able to set up patches that normalised the gain of each bass and sounds that were in the same ballpark. I'll be messing about with the B3n tomorrow and Saturday, hoping I can set some patches up for Sunday's festival gig.

 

[jimfist]

Just got one of these today to replace a busted B3. Haven't had time to play with it much yet, but first impressions are that it is nowhere near as intuitive as the B3 and the manual is rubbish.

On the B3 I had it set up with patches for my boutique main bass (GB Rumour 5) which has a very refined, nuanced tone but doesn't have the hottest output, and other patches for my back up bass which is a cheapy Harley Benton that has a hot output but far less subtlety - think of the GB as a precise, surgical scalpel and the Harley Benton as a meat cleaver and you'll get the idea.

With the B3 I was able to set up patches that normalised the gain of each bass and sounds that were in the same ballpark. I'll be messing about with the B3n tomorrow and Saturday, hoping I can set some patches up for Sunday's festival gig.

Why don't you wait until you have the B3n before you rush to judgment? A lot of us barely touch the user's manual to operate it after a cursory viewing. Once you've digested the method in changing from Stompbox to Memory mode, and how to access the slots for editing, it's not bad at all IMO. Certainly no worse than the limitations of the B3.

It's not a far departure from the way the B3 works in terms of choosing effects to go in each slot. Each patch also has its own LEVEL, so you can easily tailor the output of one patch to another, each being customized for a specific instrument's output. Within the virtual stomps (up to 7) on the B3n, you have plenty of places where you can add or reduce gain. This really shouldn't be a problem once you've gotten used to programming the B3n.

 

[Jools4001]

Why don't you wait until you have the B3n before you rush to judgment? A lot of us barely touch the user's manual to operate it after a cursory viewing. Once you've digested the method in changing from Stompbox to Memory mode, and how to access the slots for editing, it's not bad at all IMO. Certainly no worse than the limitations of the B3.

It's not a far departure from the way the B3 works in terms of choosing effects to go in each slot. Each patch also has its own LEVEL, so you can easily tailor the output of one patch to another, each being customized for a specific instrument's output. Within the virtual stomps (up to 7) on the B3n, you have plenty of places where you can add or reduce gain. This really shouldn't be a problem once you've gotten used to programming the B3n.

Why don't you wait to give me a chance before you rush to judgement? Read my post again. I HAVE my B3n. I've had it for about 4 hours and I don't find it as intuitive as the B3, that's my initial impression - so, to me that's a valid opinion...

 

[jimfist]

Why don't you wait to give me a chance before you rush to judgement? Read my post again. I HAVE my B3n. I've had it for about 4 hours and I don't find it as intuitive as the B3, that's my initial impression - so, to me that's a valid opinion...

My bad. Here to help if you need it.

 

[CharlieC]

It is so funny that with the B3n I finally have what I need in this type of product and can now concentrate on playing bass!

In turn I hope that Zoom can now concentrate on new effect models and Guitar Lab enhancements.

Cheers!

 

[-Asdfgh-]

It is so funny that with the B3n I finally have what I need in this type of product and can now concentrate on playing bass!

In turn I hope that Zoom can now concentrate on new effect models and Guitar Lab enhancements.

Cheers!

It's like 'The end of history' for multis?

 

[SirMjac28]

Just got one of these today to replace a busted B3. Haven't had time to play with it much yet, but first impressions are that it is nowhere near as intuitive as the B3 and the manual is rubbish.

On the B3 I had it set up with patches for my boutique main bass (GB Rumour 5) which has a very refined, nuanced tone but doesn't have the hottest output, and other patches for my back up bass which is a cheapy Harley Benton that has a hot output but far less subtlety - think of the GB as a precise, surgical scalpel and the Harley Benton as a meat cleaver and you'll get the idea.

With the B3 I was able to set up patches that normalised the gain of each bass and sounds that were in the same ballpark. I'll be messing about with the B3n tomorrow and Saturday, hoping I can set some patches up for Sunday's festival gig.

I'm curious what happened to your B3? I went through two of them they charge a $100.00 flat fee I paid the first time and was about to do it again until I saw the announcement of the B3n I'm glad I waited.

 

[Johno Dunn]

Had a gig over the weekend, and the board performed flawlessly. Thanks for the power suggestion #CharlieC, no issues at all through FOH. With the new update of the 60b, it made it critical to make these two work together, and they did.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I will probably need to redo this test as I realised that I may have used a source that wasn't mono, and I need to also repeat with different mixer inputs, but here goes.

I took a signal out of the standard audio out of my pc, and split it to two mono 6.35mm connections, one to a b1on on bypass, then to a zoom r16, the other straight to the mixer. The first caveat is that this will be low impedance to the b1on.

I recorded each signal, then normalised, adjusted for latency as best I could (an impressive 1.3ms) and reversed the phase of one of them, rendered the result to mono and put it through a spectrum analyser.

If the signals had been identical and I'd got the latency and the stereo input issue entirely sorted I'd expect silence, whereas there is still up to -34dB of signal based on a FFT analysis. The audio did have drums, though, which may have been in stereo. The bass is still audible but barely.

Ill fix up the methodology and repeat but the next two weeks are very hectic.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I will probably need to redo this test as I realised that I may have used a source that wasn't mono, and I need to also repeat with different mixer inputs, but here goes.

I took a signal out of the standard audio out of my pc, and split it to two mono 6.35mm connections, one to a b1on on bypass, then to a zoom r16, the other straight to the mixer. The first caveat is that this will be low impedance to the b1on.

I recorded each signal, then normalised, adjusted for latency as best I could (an impressive 1.3ms) and reversed the phase of one of them, rendered the result to mono and put it through a spectrum analyser.

If the signals had been identical and I'd got the latency and the stereo input issue entirely sorted I'd expect silence, whereas there is still up to -34dB of signal based on a FFT analysis. The audio did have drums, though, which may have been in stereo. The bass is still audible but barely.

Ill fix up the methodology and repeat but the next two weeks are very hectic.

P.S. all recording was at 44.1kHz, internal processing as 32 bit floating point WAV.

I will see how clean my passive DI box is so I can then potentially test with a high impedance signal too.

 

[Spblat]

Clicky: Blind listening test: bypassed Zoom B3n vs cable

 

[Dave Tompkins]

The mains input on my B3n is very tight and takes quite a lot more effort to unplug than on any other pedal. I noticed that the connector has a slight indent all around the barrel, about 1mm from the black plastic at the tip. Is this usual? I tried another adaptor (didn't pug it into the mains, just testing the tip) and though it too was a little tight I could at least remove it easily. I was wondering if this was done on purpose to stop accidentally unplugging the unit. It's not a big deal but if there's a chance that using it will cause problems further down the line (post guarantee) then I'll contact the retailer to change it. I figured I'd get a quicker response from here than from zoom or the retailer. Any help appreciated.

After having the unit for 5 or 6 weeks I finally used it live this weekend. I need to spend a bit more time balancing the patches. I thought I had, but as soon as my amp went up beyond neighbour friendly volumes I realised it needed tweaking. I had a patch for double bass that worked better than I expected but would like to see a hpf and possibly an acoustic image modeller. I'm trying various combinations of splitter, parametric and EG Filter (I'm pretty much at sea with the latter as I don't know what the difference is between HPF2 & HPF4, but have had some random success). The live test wasn't ideal as it was in a converted brick barn/stable and the overall sound was horrendous...not the fault of the B3n.

The other thing I realised is that I should have spent some time at home using the unit with shoes on. It was a bit like playing the piano with boxing gloves at first, though I got used to eventually.

 

[jimfist]

You can expect that home-brewed tones will need to be tweaked at the gig UNLESS you have the luxury of really cranking up your rig to stage volume (at home) AND you can audition the new patches in the context of some sort of mix that includes drums/guitar/vox/keys, etc.

A number of guitarists who use modelers with full range stage monitoring (either wedges or in-ear) will make a music "minus" mix for themselves for just that reason. Bass is no different. It's the best, fastest way to get your new patches ready for the gig...still not foolproof, though.

On a side note, with the advent of inexpensive digital mixers that also do multi-track USB recording (like the Behringer X-Air XR18 - but not the XR12 or XR16 ), live recorded multi-track to a laptop has become cheap, and relatively painless. Some bands use these full multitrack band recordings (playback via USB) as a means to ballpark mix a venue at sound check without needing to have the band physically there. We're living in good times.

 

[CharlieC]

... I was wondering if this was done on purpose to stop accidentally unplugging the unit...

Indeed!

Also notice the other quality I/O on the rear of the B3n. All connections feel appreciatively solid and true.

 

[Dave Tompkins]

Indeed!

Also notice the other quality I/O on the rear of the B3n. All connections feel appreciatively solid and true.

Many thanks. I can rest easy that I'm not on the verge of breaking it when disconnecting.

You can expect that home-brewed tones will need to be tweaked at the gig UNLESS you have the luxury of really cranking up your rig to stage volume (at home) AND you can audition the new patches in the context of some sort of mix that includes drums/guitar/vox/keys, etc.

It was especially obvious when swapping from the Double Bass patch to the Bass Guitar ones. I'm trying to make the mid set instrument switch as clean and quick as possible. I'll get there in the end.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Jantelagen]

The mains input on my B3n is very tight and takes quite a lot more effort to unplug than on any other pedal. I noticed that the connector has a slight indent all around the barrel, about 1mm from the black plastic at the tip. Is this usual? I tried another adaptor (didn't pug it into the mains, just testing the tip) and though it too was a little tight I could at least remove it easily. I was wondering if this was done on purpose to stop accidentally unplugging the unit. It's not a big deal but if there's a chance that using it will cause problems further down the line (post guarantee) then I'll contact the retailer to change it. I figured I'd get a quicker response from here than from zoom or the retailer. Any help appreciated.

After having the unit for 5 or 6 weeks I finally used it live this weekend. I need to spend a bit more time balancing the patches. I thought I had, but as soon as my amp went up beyond neighbour friendly volumes I realised it needed tweaking. I had a patch for double bass that worked better than I expected but would like to see a hpf and possibly an acoustic image modeller. I'm trying various combinations of splitter, parametric and EG Filter (I'm pretty much at sea with the latter as I don't know what the difference is between HPF2 & HPF4, but have had some random success). The live test wasn't ideal as it was in a converted brick barn/stable and the overall sound was horrendous...not the fault of the B3n.

The other thing I realised is that I should have spent some time at home using the unit with shoes on. It was a bit like playing the piano with boxing gloves at first, though I got used to eventually.

I'm not sure if the snug I/O fit would or should make indentions to your cables. I'd double check that, just to be on the safe side

 

[CharlieC]

I'm not sure if the snug I/O fit would or should make indentions to your cables. I'd double check that, just to be on the safe side

No reason for concern here as the described indentation around the barrel is by design.

 

[pudgychef]

Need some opinions from this Zoom crew...

I am pretty sure I am going to pickup the B3n in the fall (I will be back in Canada in October, and will purchase there as they are about 30% cheaper than here in China)

Considering picking up a B1on locally for now...but have one questions:

Would picking up a B1on now help me prepare for the move to a multi? Would it help me start to get an ear for Zoom sounds? Or too old in comparison to the B3n?

The other reasons I am considering picking it up are:

1) I will have two big surgeries this summer (knee and nose-throat) and want a tool/toy for killing time with a bass and headphones (will rehab in a condo or hotel in Thailand for the summer...so can't be crazy loud..love that it has rhythm, headphones, aux in..)

2) I need an octave pedal for a couple songs my band is doing...been trying to find a Mooer Tender Octave..but no luck..the only octave here in the B1on price range is the Joyo ...and while I have good luck with a Joyo tuner and AS...I have heard their octave is meh with bass

FYI - a B1on is 399rmb here - which is currently about $58-$59USD...

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[SirMjac28]

Need some opinions from this Zoom crew...

I am pretty sure I am going to pickup the B3n in the fall (I will be back in Canada in October, and will purchase there as they are about 30% cheaper than here in China)

Considering picking up a B1on locally for now...but have one questions:

Would picking up a B1on now help me prepare for the move to a multi? Would it help me start to get an ear for Zoom sounds? Or too old in comparison to the B3n?

The other reasons I am considering picking it up are:

1) I will have two big surgeries this summer (knee and nose-throat) and want a tool/toy for killing time with a bass and headphones (will rehab in a condo or hotel in Thailand for the summer...so can't be crazy loud..love that it has rhythm, headphones, aux in..)

2) I need an octave pedal for a couple songs my band is doing...been trying to find a Mooer Tender Octave..but no luck..the only octave here in the B1on price range is the Joyo ...and while I have good luck with a Joyo tuner and AS...I have heard their octave is meh with bass

FYI - a B1on is 399rmb here - which is currently about $58-$59USD...

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

I think it's a great idea to get the B1 it is a great introduction to mult-effects. I had nose and throat surgery a couple of years ago the one thing l recommend is taking your pain medication on schedule even if you are feeling alight l learned the hard way.

 

[Spblat]

I too support your B1on idea. I think the sound is similar to B3n. They have a ton of effects in common so I do think it'll build an ear for Zoom, as you say. Plus the looper and rhythm and headphone jack and you can power it with a cellphone charger. Win win win.