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NPD: Zoom MS-60B (a Review)

KevInDaBassment

The cat's "meh..."
Jul 30, 2010
8,451
9,334
Gulf Coast
So I am quite the snob when it comes to tone and on effects I'm rather hardcore about my choice, shunning anything labeled "modeling" in the least....time to eat some humble pie :(


First Impressions:
Looks like it's a bit more complicated than the average pedal. I saw only 3 knobs on it and though "Oh, sweet...only THREE FREAKING PARAMETERS TO CONTROL? As if I didn't want to adjust my mids or anything?" The thing took AA batteries which was a shock to me since I don't think I've ever seen a pedal that didn't use 9v. It would be easier to find lithium batteries for this thing, so it may have been a good idea to go with AAs. Pedal seemed solid and had buttons all around the on/off switch. I looked at the manual and thought "no way this thing is thick enough..."

Tone:
I jumped in to try out the whole reason I bought this pedal, wanted a decent delay and chorus in one pedal so I didn't have to switch two pedals during a few of my songs, this would make things WAY easier. I tried out the stock tones and settings on them and...well holy crap it was actually pretty good sounding. Delay was just as good as my Digitech or Boss delay pedals I had, albeit you had a few less parameters to edit, but nothing that didn't let me dial in what I wanted for that song. The chorus was nice, it was editable and thick enough. I scrolled through a few other effects and they weren't bad either, the fuzz and overdrive actually sounded pretty good as did the autowah and mutron clone...Might have to take my MXR bass envelope filter back lol. Editable? That brings me to my next point!

Tweakability:
So you know how it has only 3 knobs up front? Well there are 2 or 3 "pages" to each effect that will let you edit several other parameters as well. I can't say I remember reading that, but this was actually a big relief to me. Much more flexibility than I expected to have. The footswitch is kind of weird in that it only shuts off the effect you are currently using in that patch, which makes sense, but in a multi-effects pedal you wonder why they went with that as the decision. Line selector is pretty cool though, it lets you shut off all the effects in the chain if you've arranged your stuff correctly. Might take some time to work it out, but I can see how it's doable. Segways into the following topic.

Ease of Use:
I thought this would be another dictionary-sized instruction book that requires you to drop your job down to part time status in order to figure the thing out. While not everything is super clearly labeled, in about 10-15 minutes of playing around I got the hang of it pretty quick. There's not really anything that I can go "Well I didn't figure out how to do that yet", so it's an intuitive pedal, very well designed in that regard. I haven't use the USB functionality with it yet, but I'm looking forward to. I was able to knock out two of my most problematic song's effect chain that I wanted. Was playing this through my GK MB200 into an Avatar Neo 2x10, so it wasn't like I was playing with headphones on and getting a non real-world scenario for these sounds. While I can't say I'd sit there and tweak the thing on stage constantly, it's not much harder than a single pedal might be....drastically better than the Boss GT-6B.

Models:
There's a decent amount of effects here, pretty much all the common ones that you'd like to consolidate down to a single pedal and retain more space on your board. Can't say it's an exhaustive collection of every pedal ever made, but the big ones are here. The amp models aren't too bad either, not exactly a "throw away your amplifiers and just go DI" grade of amp models, but they do a decent job and could be good for recording on the fly or just giving your sound some more character if you are playing through a rather bland backline amp. There's no vibrato effect, which made me kind of upset since the tremelo gets close but doesn't quite get what I'm looking for. That's not a huge deal though, plenty of ways to mix and match to get what I'm looking for with enough time spent in there. Spot for an expression pedal might be nice, but again not a dealbreaker. The only thing I'd really want that for is a pitch shifter and the digitech bass whammy RI is intricate enough to justify its own pedal space IMO.

Build Quality:
Feels pretty solid to me. Can't say much other it seems to be about the same quality as your average Boss stompbox, which is good. The knobs seem a little fragile, but I'm usually careful with my gear and don't foresee this being a huge issue. Nice metal housing gives it a good solid feel as well.

Value:
Honestly this is where it hits the ball out of the park. Considering how much I paid for my Boss GT-6B and how much better this sounds than it, I'm floored. Of course some of the flexibility isn't there in the form of an expression pedal and all that jazz, but at $99 this can easily replace some pedals on your board and make more room for other stuff. This isn't the pedal that will make you want to toss your EHX Bass Big Muff Deluxe or Tech 21 VT Bass, but this one will definitely help you in a pinch and can easily beat out a lot of Boss or Digitech effects you might have lingering on your board. Also, if you're the kind of person who may only need fuzz or pitch shift for one song, this is probably a good pedal for you since it will absolutely get the job done for a song or two. Value is of course subjective, but if you're a guy who likes to tinker, but may not have a band that's always receptive to you using effects, this would be a good pedal for letting loose if the mood strikes them right and you get to fool around some ;)


Conclusion:
Don't expect this to be an Axe-FX or Kemper preamp loaded with effects or the exact same as a boutique fuzz manufactured by hand one at a time, it's a pedal that gives you a solid set of common effects and does them well. I get the feeling the pedal isn't "trying to be something it's not", they decided to go for quality instead of quantity on this and I believe it shows. The sound quality is good for modeling and is on par with the pedals in the $100 and below market, except you get several of them. Don't know if the FX junkies would absolutely love this or not, but it's at a fair enough price that you wouldn't feel stupid keeping it around. Think of this like a good quality, mid-grade Swiss Army Knife. It's not a Bowie knife or a hacksaw, but that's not what it was designed to be. It's absolutely useful and will certainly free up some space on your board if you spend enough time working with it.

I would also say it's an EXCELLENT place to start if you are looking to get into using bass effects or perhaps don't know what you want just yet. The price point is low enough to where a teen or college student could save some scratch or get one for birthday/holidays. Even if you're a hobbyist, it's a fun little toy to mess around with. Definitely worth the gamble!!


-VT
 
Nice review Thunda. Glad yuo see the benefits of the 60b. Im happy I have it as a tool on my board. I can play and tweak this thing for hours. Ive had it for almost a year now, along with the 70cdr, and Ive only scrathced the surface. I mainly got it for modulation but soon decided that I could use it as an all around "jack of all trades" kind of pedal. It gets used mostly for an ocatve patch that I got here and tweaked. Its called OctoPitch, I combined the OC2 and the pitch shifter for a really nice tracking and mixed OC2 kind of octave with a little POG added in. Its really sweet. I actually use it more that I do my POG2 :hiding:
 
My favorite thing about the pedal is the eq options....Parametric, graphic, or by using either the preamp models or the amp models. You can totally take an ok tone and make it massive.

My other favorite things are the compressor models and the ZNR to get rid of single coil hum from jazz pickups.

Make sure to try OzzyGreg's SVT patch posted in one of the other Zoom ms60b threads. With some minor tweaking, it really sounds great.
 
Yes indeed, I'm looking forward to getting more time to play with it. The EQ is an excellent point that I haven't thought to mess with too much, but with the graphic EQ I could probably work out some GREAT slap settings for my various basses, thus letting me set the basses where I like them and keep them there, changing only the pedal. Glad to see other people are loving on this pedal too :)
 
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Yes indeed, I'm looking forward to getting more time to play with it. The EQ is an excellent point that I haven't thought to mess with too much, but with the graphic EQ I could probably work out some GREAT slap settings for my various basses, thus letting me set the basses where I like them and keep them there, changing only the pedal. Glad to see other people are loving on this pedal too :)

There's major love for this pedal among it's users. And you could totally get a good EQ going for slap. In fact, there's a not half bad slap patch already in the factory presets. Not sure if you found it yet, but it'd be a good starting point.


Killing gods
 
I just got one of these. nice! but...

I don't understand how to bypass the pedal when not using it.
Looks like you touched on it in your review. Anyone got anymore input as to how to bypass the unit when not using any effect.
Thx

You have to hold the footswitch until it switches to the tuner. Then it's bypassed. You can set it to either bypass with your signal still coming through or you can mute it. You change it in settings menu.


Killing gods
 
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Lately I got fed up with bringing my back breaking Fender TB-600 to gigs and decided to run the bass through my pedalboard and straight into the mixer. By the way, on the pedalboard I have a comp and an EQ, there's also a stompbox on too, but it came with the amp and so without it you basically can't use it. Well, about the bass-comp-eq-mixer, it sounded really great, I must say I was surprised by how good it actually sounded. The only downturn was I couldn't use the amp built in drive/distortion which I use in some songs. It got me thinking - what if I got a multi effect, say Zoom B3 or the more elegant Zoom MS-60B, put it in the chain before my comp and eq and straight into the mixer. It could give me more sound options, plus there's also amp sims on there which is nice.
What do you guys think? If this utopian ideal of bass amplification worked, I could start bringing to gigs just two bags, and that sounds really tempting..
 
What do you guys think? If this utopian ideal of bass amplification worked, I could start bringing to gigs just two bags, and that sounds really tempting..

If you already have a DI option on your board, can count on a quality monitor, and you have the right expectation, the 60b would do fine in that capacity. There are some effects from the B3 I wish it had, but I've played many-a-gig with just the MS-60b.
 
What do you guys think? If this utopian ideal of bass amplification worked, I could start bringing to gigs just two bags, and that sounds really tempting..

The amp sims on them are nice, there is a couple of them and they do a good job. I wouldn't call it an "amp slayer", but it will certainly give you a better sound and options than the current DI rig and many other digital modelers. Just make sure you get everything on the MS-60B how you want it first, then move onto the EQ and comp. adjustments. You might be surprised at how well the Zoom does all on its own.
 
That's a fair review. I have a Zoom B3 and had a MS-60b, which I swapped out for a MS-70 CDR. I really like the B3, but it needs at least two more patch bays to be really useful. I found the sound quality I got from the B3 to be slightly clearer and with a wider range of gain than I got from my MS-60b. I found the choice of models to be quite limited compared to the B3 too. The B3 just has more and better option. I found over time, that some of the models were far superior than others. The Overdrive and Distortions were quite poor and didn't have any dynamics and were modelled on very old pedals which weren't that great in the first place. The octaver is ok, but not a charectorful as a good analogue unit (although it does track amazingly well). The compressors are ok, but not great, the amp models just didn't do it for me, mostly muddy and "digital model" sounding. The EQ's weren't too bad either, but quite hard to twiddle mid song. The synths and filters sounded pretty good.
I found that the effects which really worked well were the chorus, delays and reverbs. The rest were ok but better served with bespoke stand-alone pedals. So I ditched my '50 and bought a 70 CDR which has only those types of models...but lots of choices in those categories and I was blown away by it. It's MXR small clone and Corona Chorus models sound very close to their target originals. It's reverbs are great too, easily matching anything from Source Audio or TC Electionics. It's an amazing little unit which is a power house of versatility. My only issue with it is that it sucks 500ma....that's nearly as much as the rest of my pedal board put together!
 
That's a fair review. I have a Zoom B3 and had a MS-60b, which I swapped out for a MS-70 CDR. I really like the B3, but it needs at least two more patch bays to be really useful. I found the sound quality I got from the B3 to be slightly clearer and with a wider range of gain than I got from my MS-60b. I found the choice of models to be quite limited compared to the B3 too. The B3 just has more and better option. I found over time, that some of the models were far superior than others. The Overdrive and Distortions were quite poor and didn't have any dynamics and were modelled on very old pedals which weren't that great in the first place. The octaver is ok, but not a charectorful as a good analogue unit (although it does track amazingly well). The compressors are ok, but not great, the amp models just didn't do it for me, mostly muddy and "digital model" sounding. The EQ's weren't too bad either, but quite hard to twiddle mid song. The synths and filters sounded pretty good.
I found that the effects which really worked well were the chorus, delays and reverbs. The rest were ok but better served with bespoke stand-alone pedals. So I ditched my '50 and bought a 70 CDR which has only those types of models...but lots of choices in those categories and I was blown away by it. It's MXR small clone and Corona Chorus models sound very close to their target originals. It's reverbs are great too, easily matching anything from Source Audio or TC Electionics. It's an amazing little unit which is a power house of versatility. My only issue with it is that it sucks 500ma....that's nearly as much as the rest of my pedal board put together!

GMC, would you suggest I rather get a B3 instead of the MS-60B if I got the chance?
 
Nice review Thunda. Glad yuo see the benefits of the 60b. Im happy I have it as a tool on my board. I can play and tweak this thing for hours. Ive had it for almost a year now, along with the 70cdr, and Ive only scrathced the surface. I mainly got it for modulation but soon decided that I could use it as an all around "jack of all trades" kind of pedal. It gets used mostly for an ocatve patch that I got here and tweaked. Its called OctoPitch, I combined the OC2 and the pitch shifter for a really nice tracking and mixed OC2 kind of octave with a little POG added in. Its really sweet. I actually use it more that I do my POG2 :bag:
Hey gregmon79, could you send me the info for this octave patch you are referring to??
 

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