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Zoom MS-60B announced... at last

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#721
I live in Norway, and no shops had it listed online and it was not available in the street shops. But many carried other Zoom products, so I asked. And the closest Zoom shop got it from the importer in 2 days.

So... just ask.
 
#729
Ah... I am having fun with this little beast of a pedal. So far I have quickly tried all effects and default patches with default settings. I then tried to recreate some of my favourite settings on my pedal board.

In general I think both patches and effects fall into two categories:

1) Great sounding effects and patches that are close to perfect to begin with, and easy to tweak to near perfection.

2) Harsh or exaggerated effects or patches that are a bit annoying, and also hard to tame.

My experience from previous multi effects are that the effects are often OK and pretty usable, while most of the patches/sounds are one trick ponys (at best) or pure annoyance. I am delighted that Zoom has made a lot of the effects so good that they rival the ordinary, single effect pedals. You quickly find your preferred favourites.

Trying to mimic my pedal board was a mixed experience. It is easy to create great patches with the Zoom, but hard to make them sound exactly like my analog board favourites.

I am happy. In a pinch I think I could get by with the Zoom MS-60B as my only pedal board. The only thing I would miss would be the easy access to turn on and off individual effects with foot switches. But I guess if I wanted to replace my old pedals, the B3 would be the better choice.

This is an addition, and I think the need for new pedals is much less with a MS-60B on the team. :)
 
#730
Epidrake said:
It actually tells you in the display that the batteries are running low. In case no one mentioned it, the pedal uses 2 double A's. NOT a 9 volt. Not sure how that's possible.
Click to expand...

The pedal can run off two AA batteries (3V), a USB power supply (5V), or an external supply (9V). As an electrical engineer that tells me it probably has one or more DC to DC converters (aka switching power supplies) inside to allow it run off power supplies over that range of voltages. Actually it is wider than those numbers suggest because two AA batteries give only about 1.6V when they reach full discharge so the full operating range is around 1.6 to 9V. Could you then put a 3V or 5V power supply into the external DC power input instead of a 9V supply? Maybe, I don't really know. But the common external supplies you all use are 9V so it is probably just an academic question.

As to the current it draws, well, if it does use DC-DC converters then the current will vary with the input voltage. It will be higher at 3V than it is at 9V. I just checked the battery current on my MS-60B and I got 280mA with four effects units active but no signal input and I don't know what terminal voltage my partially used AA batteries have right now. That is fairly consistent with Zoom's claim that two AAs will run the unit for "about 7 hours" and with the 2.8A-Hr rating for AA alkaline batteries. An operating current of 280mA would suggest 10 hours of life in fact but remember the operating current will rise as the battery voltage diminishes and the unit may not work all the way down to 1.6V. Both of those would diminish the 2.8A-Hr capacity of the batteries in this application so a 7 hour expected battery life is reasonable.

Most likely then the current drain from a 9V supply would be around 100mA or less. Why would Zoom specify a 500mA supply then? I don't know for sure but if that is the smallest power supply they make and they want to sell you their power supply they will tell you 500mA. Other reasons are that if you buy any old cheap crap power supply rated at 500mA there is a reasonable chance it will actually be able to supply 100mA!! And then many of you use a single power supply to run several pedals so you need a bigger supply than the MS-60B alone needs to run all of them. I don't use a traditional external supply so I can't try to measure the 9V current to confirm my assumptions, I mainly run off USB power and I'm not set up to be able to measure the current from the USB port either.

Ken
 
#731
Couldn't 500 mA also be a high boundary, with the most intensive processing going and the most current-hungry screen on display? I like having the current draw estimate (which is always what they are: estimates) be conservative so I am less apt to run out of juice on a gig.
 
#732
Well, I just went and ordered one.

I don't see it as a substitute for a pedalboard, at least not for me, because it would require careful planning of What I'm going to play and our setlists tend to be quite dynamic, adapting to how the audience is responding... so when a song is called I don't want to have to think where a particular effect is. Therefore, I still will use a pedal board.

What I find attractive is that I can turn this pedal into a number of things, based on the occasion.
I play in more than one band. One is the most active, but there are another three with varying degrees of live action.
Some effects I only use in one band and not in others. Some effects are actually a combination of say an envelope filter and an overdrive, or an octave and overdrive... I use an LS-2 to allow me to switch various pedals on and off at once. I also sometimes use a Microsynth... big and nice, Just for one sound.

I think I could program several patches that can combine whatever I need: synth, or octave plus overdrive, etc ... and use the Zoom to substitute a couple of other pedals... or three, counting the LS-2.
I would still use probably a few separate pedals that I love, and use the Zoom for the "special effects", saving space and reducing complexity: fewer cables etc.

There's another thing that caught my eye: it can be powered by USB?
With one of the bands we go busking sometimes. I use a small battery powered mini PA unit that works really well... and it has a USB port.
If the Zoom could be powered through that, it would be quite nice, and I would use it as tuner and EQ (The mini PA has only basic controls).
I suppose batteries are fine... but having the option of usb seemed like a nice touch/backup.
 
#739
gregmon79 said:
Can I ask, how have you been doing that in a live setting? Do you have a power strip with a USB port in it?
Click to expand...

Only one gig with it so far. I don't have a power strip with USB, but I have so many usb power adapters, and I can always seem to find someone with one, that I won't worry about forgetting it or having it break. The batteries then function as a backup only.

I will probably get a power strip with usb ports soon, but I have spare usb power adapters and cables in every gig bag and case. I'm more likely to forget the pedal than to find myself without a way to power it.

I may have worded my post poorly, as I really meant that I don't need to worry about a specialized power supply.
 
#740
Used my toned-down PB Oldskool patch for most of an oldies/soul gig tonight with my Spector, SM 9.2, and GB UB-212T cabinet. Sounded pretty good, I think I had too much EQ on my amp still as I had a few songs I played clean, so my amp still had some bass boost. W/ PB Oldskool at some points I felt like I was missing too many highs, but overall it worked really really well. Thanks Canshaker!
 
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