Extend your sound palette, cheaply (Zoom 505II Guitar Effects Pedal)

Member Name: mo79

Product:	Zoom 505II Guitar Effects Pedal
Date:	18/05/02 (5932 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, small, light, attractive, durable, smart interface, a wealth of effects, great sounding. And has a built in tuner. A smart all in one solution, maybe the best one out at the moment for it's price tag

Disadvantages: No power source supplied, no power switch, no expression pedal (unlike the cheaper AX1G), not a 'patch' (haa-ha, read op) on dedicated single effects units I'm sure

I bought a guitar, studied 'Guitar For Dummies', did silly poses; and now that I feel somewhat confident enough to degrade myself by calling myself *gulp* a guitarist (somewhat - still a little far to go before I'm comfier with my skill, or lack of), I thought I'd extend my sound palette beyond limited distorted and clean with a compact multi-effects pedal. - Saving money on purchasing dedicated single effects units, which are better but costly.

Like my guitar playing friend, I wanted to get the Korg AX1G pedal as he'd highly recommended that in terms of price and sound set, and it had a built in expression pedal to boot. But alas the AX1G is no more made, and so with some debating I got my hands on Zoom's slightly more expensive 505II Guitar pedal, which although has no expression pedal, has some extra great features of it's own to more than compensate!

The first thing that stunned me when I received my package, was the size of the pedal. Unlike the Korg pedal, the 505II is not much bigger than the original Game Boy, and it virtually weighs nothing. And to top it all off it's been beautifully and sturdily designed in a part retro, part-futuristic silver plastic with a very sensible interface.

You can only use the 505II (the cheaper, compact-er and better successor to the 505 - allegedly) with guitars (electric, of course) only, not bass guitars as I'm told that these pedals work by frequency detection of some sort. You can use this pedal and a guitar without needing an amp though, if you plug your pedal into some speakers or a pair of headphones.
Also built in is an auto-chromatic tuner, so you can be computer accurate in how tuned your strings are and save time in needing to work it out manually (though I can do that, and I'm very proud - I have to say!) or shelling out an external tuner.

To power the unit you'll need a 9v AC adapter (not supplied) or four AA batteries. Alkaline ba
tteries will give you 28hrs continuous usage. You can also plug in an expression pedal or footswitch into the control socket if you have one, into the control socket at the back. These will unlock additional features of your pedal (controlling volume and pitch etc.)

Incorporating the device into your setup is a breeze, although you will need two leads. Simply plug your guitar into the pedal, and plug your pedal either into speakers, an amp, a recording source or just put on headphones. Voila! The unit automatically turns on when a lead is inserted - though a on/off switch I'd say would've been nicer.

The 505II has 33 effects, and 9 can be used at the same time. This is more than the AX1G I am told. 36 presets or 'patches' are stored in memory and can be written over with your own creations. Patches are made up of effects modules which you can edit, and these patches are stored in banks. There are six banks that can store 6 patches each (A, B... upto F); equalling memory space for 36 patches. You can also reload these factory presets if you desire, should you for instance have lots of poor patches on your pedal. Some of the presets are amazing; early 80's style metal, robotic, a Chinese/Sitarry like thing etc. All ace!

The simple instruction booklet details the preset patches, and many of these are very fine indeed! A few though seem to be completely dud or don't make a sound at all, not matching their description. But this isn't as a problem as you can indeed make your own patches from existing ones and the good presets make you thirsty to use it straight away!

A rotary dial on the pedal selects between play and edit modes, clearly labelled on the pedal, and + and - keys let you scroll through the available parameters for each module you want to edit in a patch. And then apart from that there's a store button to store your creations, an LCD display, which is a tad cryptic if you haven't read th
e manual, but not very, and of course two sensibly sensitive foot switches to skip back and forth through patches as you play.

Functions such as setting volume, accessing the tuner, sound editing and storing can be looked up in the little manual. They aren't difficult to execute but just require simple procedures to remember (e.g. hold down both foot switches simultaneously for a sec. etc.).
You can also change the 'patch call' method, which allows you to organise patches in an order you'd like them to be called up. i.e. you'd want a distorted patch readily accessible on a foot-tap after a clean patch if you're playing a song that starts quiet and goes loud. You get the gist! This makes it suitable for live use as it prevents you from halting your playing before you find your sound!

The instruction manual's end pages provide notes on all the effect types and parameters, which makes understanding the 2 digit red display, at this time, easier. I won't go through all the effects but in a whole the things you can edit in a patch on the 505II are: level (volume), compression (keeping the overall signal in a certain range), limiter (reduces peak levels), wah (get funky), distortion (go metal), gain (go metal!), EQ (bass boost/cut), phase (pulsating, man!), contour (EQ 2), ZNR/AMP (noise reduction and popular amp simulation), modulation (you need a good chorus), delay (hello!...hello!), reverb (turn a bedroom into a concert hall), and time (delay/reverb).

Overall, the Zoom 505II is easily one of the best compact multi-effects units out there. It has a multitude of effects, extra features, it looks damn cool and it's really easy to master aswell. It's the ideal money saving solution for the smart guitarist in search of an effects pedal, and I have no reservations in recommending at all.
It has a few drawbacks, but as most standard pedals cost about £100, you cannot argue with this one! The 4 stars
here actually mean 5! I'm sure you understand my gibbering. Now let me go and bury my riffs in swathes of treatments.

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