Pedal Board Update- Zoom G3X Modeler

Modelers generally do a reasonable job with these types of effects, and it saves me having to fit a dozen single-purpose effects pedals on my pedal board.

Here’s a picture of my pedal board before the G3X. I had a noise gate, a couple types of overdrive, a compressor, wah. volume pedal, tuner, and a delay/looper (which fell off the side of the pedal board). I ran out of room for my chorus pedal, and I’m completely lacking reverb, pitch and any more esoteric effects. 

And here’s a picture with the Zoom G3X on the pedalboard, replacing the noise gate, wah, volume and delay.

The Zoom G3X is certainly not perfect and I will address some of the more serious problems in a minute, but at this price point and in comparison to other units available, the Zoom strikes a pretty reasonable balance of features.

In particular, the user interface is excellent, with three individual screens corresponding to three effects, each with a set of three knobs which control the parameters of the effect. Some of the effects have multiple pages of parameters and the little page button allows you to flip pages. Changing effect types is a simple matter of pressing an up-and-down button. Any of the parameters can be set to be controlled by the wah treadle. Or you can use it as a volume pedal. I often set the wah pedal to set the mix amount of an effect so that I can gradually fade in a phaser or the amount of delay being heard.

The three foot switch buttons can operate in two different modes- stompbox mode which turns on and off the individual effects, or preset selection mode for navigating your set list. If you just want to set this thing up with three effects and never change them, stompbox mode is ideal. But if you’re going to have a number of presets tailored to specific songs in your set, the preset mode is easier. In both foot switch modes there are other features available by pressing two of the switches simultaneously- for changing banks in program selection mode or changing presets in stomp box mode. I generally have found that trying to use two switches at once during live performance is tricky and can lead to mistakes. There’s also a longer delay for the change to occur.

Zoom’s Edit & Share software package is both frustrating and great. Creating individual patches is harder than it should be, as you have to turn these little virtual knobs with your mouse and it’s a bit fidgety to get the right values. It would be nicer if you could type in numbers directly. On the other hand, their implementation of bank preset arrangement is very nice. They make it easy to copy and paste presets and drag and drop them to rearrange songs in the list. This is very handy the night before a gig to rearrange songs in set list order. I also generally keep a second set of my presets copied in another location in alphabetical order so that if we need to play a song out of set list order, I can just quickly scan through the presets alphabetically to find it.

Now on to sound quality: there are certainly some winners and losers in the effects. The Governor overdrive is surprisingly good, but I prefer to use my real-world pedals and amp for overdrive. I am more focused on the Zoom’s time based effects like delays, chorus and flanger, and these all sound perfectly fine. I also use the octave pitch shifter for a couple tunes, and I find it to be just so so- the tracking is a little iffy. The compressors are just passable. But the delays sound good and you can hook up a tap tempo switch which is ideal. Reverbs are very low-quality but usable in a pinch. As I mentioned, I haven’t really evaluated the cabinet & amp modeling at all- I just don’t use them.

Now onto one of my biggest concerns: there is no true bypass, and worse- the Zoom appears to degrade the signal quality as the guitar signal fades out. The first unit I had did this so badly that I returned it as defective. The replacement unit I received also does it, but not as badly. I also tried a Zoom G5 and heard the same effect, so I presume this is an artifact of the way they do signal processing. Here’s an audio recording. Listen to the tail of the audio as it fades out:
Audio Example

It is a subtle artifact and I don’t notice it at all while playing with the band. But when I am sitting in a quiet room playing, I notice this faint crunching distortion in the signal as the guitar sound fades out. In principle, this bothers me a lot. Wish it had true bypass!

Update May 29, 2014: I’ve added a true bypass looper switcher to work around the G3X noise, and add tap tempo, etc.

When I first discovered the Zoom’s noise issue, I considered changing to the Digitech series of pedals. I tried an RP500 for a week and while it does have great sounds, it has its own set of issues. The user interface is a pain to work with – not nearly as nice as the Zoom. The sound is clean, but as far as I could tell, the effects seem unable to boost the signal at all. The guitar signal passing through the Digitech appears to always be the same level or quieter than the guitar signal going in. This is not very helpful for kicking on boosted solos etc. Despite that, the effects sound great overall. There’s a few standout effects, like the excellent reverb from Lexicon, and the Digitech Whammy. Compared to the Zoom librarian software, the Digitech software may be a little bit better for preset editing but certainly far worse for bank arrangement, as there’s no copy and paste or drag and drop.

There’s one other quality issue to mention. I have never seen the Zoom crash or hang. So I am quite confident using it live. The only issue that I have seen is that, very rarely, when controlling a parameter from the wah treadle, it doesn’t seem to work and I need to switch away from the program and back before it will. This has only happened a couple times, and in general hasn’t caused too much of a problem for me.

So, that’s a pretty mixed review. I’m going to continue using the Zoom G3X until I can find something better.

Update May 29, 2014: I added a true bypass looper switcher

Update June 15: I’ve built a new pedal board with the Zoom G3x and looper switcher.

As you can see, I still prefer my outboard compressor, overdrives and wah- and have added a talkbox, and a separate lead boost. This calls for a giant pedal board, but it’s still way smaller than it’d be if had separate delays, chorus, flanger, envelope follower, octaver, etc, etc.

Update November, 2014: I found something better! Pedal Board Update– Line 6 HD500X