Totally Awesome for the Buck

For something in this price range, you can't go wrong. I bought this for my acoustic guitar, but a band member with an electronic one basically took it away from me. He's been using it ever since my introduction of it to him.

Great Pedal

The pedal is a great addition to any acoustic sound. You must play with it quite a bit but when you dial it in it is great. I combined this pedal with a Boss AC-3 acoustic simulator for my electric guitar. Between the two pedals it really sounds great. I have also used the Zoom pedal on the acoustic and it also sounds great. You just have to spend the time to dial in your sounds. I would buy this pedal again from Sweetwater.

Excellent

I play acoustic guitar at a church choir and I got this effects box for my Johnn Lennon Epiphone guitar. it makes it sound amazing. I love it.

Wow

Considering the price, this really is a no brainer for any piezo guitar owner. I'll still mic up acoustics in the studio and for solo work, but this is totally transparent and convincing in a band setting. I do prefer the sound of the DTar Mama Bear, but I don't know if it's truly worth the extra dollars when you'll never hear the difference except in isolation. As for all other guitar simulators I've ever heard, don't even bother trying them. Get this or the Mama Bear, or your just throwing away cash.

Took a while but I really love it!

I wasn't sure at first. This is a complicated looking device with a 38 page manual printed in tiny text in blue ink. Daunting for an old guy who is a beginning guitarist. Still, once I went through the manual with the guitar in hand for a couple of weekends I started to fall in love.

Here's the equipment I am using with it. I have a Kustom Sienna 65 acoustic amp and a Kustom Profile System One PA for amplification. For guitars I have a Takamine EG240 with an active preamp and a Jasmine ES31C with a passive UST. I also use my Washburn HB35S, a hollow bodied Electric with dual humbuckers, through this occasionally.

For passive UST or electric or mag pickups you need to start the A2 in High Gain mode by holding down the left foot button while turning it on! Without doing this the unit will sound terrible and I bet this is the reason for some of the bad reviews. The global settings for Pick up type, "Feedback control" and "Amp Select next" should be set up next.

My Tak uses the dP or Dark Piezo while the Jasmine uses the bP or bright piezo. The Wasburn gets the HE for Humbucker slot under pickup select.

I have been getting excellent results setting the feedback stuff to automatic so far. This is the best part of this unit IMHO. I can play way louder than before and it works great.

My PA likes the S4 "Stack Type" amp select setting but the C3 is best for my acoustic amp.

I set the ZNR or Zero Noise Reduction next so that there is no hum when the strings are damped and the guitar is supposed to be quiet. This works great too.

After that try the presets with page 38 in front of you. Adjusting the amount of pickup signal against the effect modified signal, the dry to wet ratio, is probably going to be needed a bit but once you get this far the sounds are really fun.

Considering the price this a very cool unit and makes my cheap guitars sound way better on my cheap amp and PA.

In fact the cheap amp and PA don't sound that bad anyway, Kustom is not one of the Big Name amplifiers but both of my units work great and are a real bargain.

It's a sweet unit and if you have a bit of patience you can get some really sweet sounds through this unit. Bargain for sure...

lots of sounds

This is a big sonic improvement over the previous ZOOM acoustic pedals. While there is a bit of noise if you listen for it, this is a quiet and clean-sounding pedal for a good price. There are lots of effects and this is the only pedal you will need for acoustic guitar.

It takes some fiddling to the right sounds from it, as the presets may not fit your taste. The manual is complete, but with the number of features this pedal has, it can get confusing.

Best Multi-FX I've found to date

Over the past 10 years I've owned Multi-FX made by DOD, Digitech, and Alesis. I've tried Line 6, Rocktron, Behringer, and Boss. This beats them all for quality of construction and sound. A big plus is the capability of 6-band EQ. The best any other makes seem to offer is 4-band.
Contrary to some reviews, I found it very easy to tweak the settings to get the sounds I wanted. I had fixed 25 different settings to suit my tastes in about an hour. When I had a Digitech, it took about 4 hours.
Could it offer more? Possibly. I'd like to see the reverse delay function moved to the delay/reverb cluster instead of the mod/fx cluster so I could use reverse delay with flanger or phaser settings.
All in all, this is worth the price.

Adds lots of depth to your acoustic playing

I wasn't sure I wanted an acoustic processor as most of the time, as a musician, we are looking for that true acoustic sound.

However, once I got the Zoom A2, I loved it and it totally expanded my playing styles.

I am a hobbyist, and open mic'r. I have a Taylor 210e, and a Martin D15, both played through a Fender Acoustasonic 30. I loved the way the Zoom expanded the tone of the Martin. The Taylor has a pretty thin tone plugged in tone already, so it is tricky to not thin that out more. I even enjoyed playing with the flanger sound...something as an acoustic artist I couldn't imagined I would have liked.

I would definitely recommend this pedal and feel like I've added multiple guitars to my playing. Also, take the time to read the manual and learn how to tweek the Zoom to your own liking. I set a number of pre-sets for each guitar.

RUN & BUY ONE OF THESE NOW!

THE A2 IS A FANTASTIC PIECE OF GEAR FOR THE LESS THAN A HUNDRED BUCKS YOU PAY FOR IT... IF IT ONLY LASTED 3 MONTHS,I WOULD BUY ONE EVERY TWO MONTHS AND A HALF... THE PRICE IS A JOKE... I PAYED 85 BUCKS FOR IT... JUST THE TUNER IS WORTH IT... THE THINK HERE IS YOU CLEARLY HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO USED THIS KIND OF TECHNOLOGY IN ORDER TO REALLY MILK THE SOUNDS YOU WANT.. IF YOU EXPECT THE PRESETS TO BE READY TO GO... YOU ARE A PRETTY NAIVE GUITARIST FOR 21ST CENTURY...

cool little green acoustic tone machine

Very nice little box. I'm using a Larrivee OM with a passive undersaddle piezo that sounds bright/brittle straight to an amp, but with this box I can get many desirable sounds. There are different sounds such as acoustic guitar modeling, reverb, delay, chorus, flange, etc. that can be edited to taste. However, the presets are overall very usable and sound great with no tweaking.
The only real negative for me is not being able to recall a specific preset at the push of a button; you have to scroll through the banks to get to a desired sound.

Beats the Pants Off the Boss AC3

I bought this and the Boss AC3 to compare before making a decision. The Zoom won hands-down.

The idea here is to use a simulator pedal on my Wednesday night gigs so I don't have to take one of my nice acoustics to the patio. I want to use one of my beater Strats instead. So I run a Strat into the Zoom and into my 200W acoustic guitar amp, which along with its matching extension cabinet, also serves as the PA. This pedal fits the bill perfectly and sounds very convincingly like a real acoustic guitar.

The Boss sounds thin and hollow in comparison and is going back. Sorry, Roland!

Great Sound-Great Price-Small Footprint

I ordered the A2 from Sweetwater and it arrived the next day. I own several popular MFX boxes including a Line6 POD XTL, but wanted something much smaller for playing out.

I have spent several hours with the little A2 and am pleasantly surprised with the quality of its sound.

It is built well, mostly metal case and solid foot switches. The display is easy to read. The knobs and their functions take a few minutes with the book to fully understand, but then they become very intuitive.

The tuner works well.

There are 40 user preset locations and 40 factory preset locations. Creating and storing a patch is easy, though there is no way to backup patches to a computer, or other device.

I setup several patches as close as possible to the POD XT Live, and after tons of a/b'ing back and forth actually like the A2 sound a bit better.

Of course the POD has many times more versions of the effects, and some are richer, but holy cow, for $100 and the small foot print, the A2 is pretty incredible.

I also found it sounds better with my Larrivee (LR Baggs Element pickup) than the Tribeca OM (K&K pickup). But the Zoom A2 offers many pickup options and I have not tried them all.

Usually I toss the presets of an MFX box, but several of the A2 presets are usable. I especially like the 12 string preset with the Larrivee. No one would mistake it for a $$$$ twelve string, but it gave the Larrivee a great, cut through the mix sound.

The guitar modeling options (D28, Ovation, Jumbo, etc) are a nice surprise. They add a whole other flavor to your acoustic sound.

There are a good variety of quality effects, compressor/limiter, chorus, flanger, phaser, detune, reverb, and delay.

Had great fun with the delay, which extends to 5000 MS (5 seconds).

It also cleared up my Line6 Variax Nylon guitar. However, for some reason, my Godin ACS nylon did not fair as well, the sound was distorted regardless of A2 pickup selection. More time will have to be spent, oh darn! [Smile]

I connect the A2 to my SLA power amp which is connected to Peavy PA speakers, and the sound is clear and clean. I did not notice any digital artifacts as mentioned in other reviews.

Also, the comment about the Hi-Gain option helped me with the K&K low output pickup.

So in summary, the Zoom gives me the essential boost and effects I wanted for my acoustic playing in a very small and inexpensive package.

can't believe the price...

What can you say about the zoom a2? Well, this little chinese giant has all the tweakability power you can't imagine till you read the manual throughly and learn the very simple interface... it is as quiet and pristine sounding as a much more expensive modeler can be... just listen and struggle with it for -at least- ten minutes... won't be dissapointed... it is healthy natural sounding stuff... don't be afraid about getting it asap...

Underwhelmed

This unit sounded very good playing my acoustic through it by itself. Lots of parameters, sounds, etc. The problem is that when I auditioned it with a full band at higher volumes, it just sounded poor. It had really harsh mid-range tones with no musical sounding harmonics to speak of... lots of digital brittleness going on; it really trashed the character of the guitar (passive undersaddle piezo equipped). I do suppose this unit would be alright for someone just wanting to tool around with some sounds in the living room. I just didn't find those sounds desirable in a live band situation. Fortunately, Sweetwater has a generous return policy...

My Worst Gear Purchase

I was so excited to get this unit because of the large amount of features. However, I am extremely disappointed. It turns my beautiful warm Artwood into a thin, tinny weak digital sound. I still use it but I had to create my own settings to make it worth anything. I use about 3 features from the unit and all of the great expectations I had for feedback elimination and great sound are lost. The tuner is decent.

Stinks!!!

Don't buy this! The drum machine may be fun, but there are no usable acoustic tones here. The manual stinks also. After a week of trying to find the tone control, I quit. Maybe you high tech acoustic players out there can figure it out, but I'm 53 years old. I play a Takamine EAN10C, which is a bright guitar(see review) and it sounded just like tin. Buy yourself a ToneWorks AX10A. So simple to tweak in good acoustic tones, just by turning the treble and bass knobs.

Zoom A2 Acoustic lie

So, this is a 96khz, 24bit device. So what? The AD/DA converters of this machine are a truly joke. In bypass mode, you can hear de digitalness of the sound, mainly on low frequencies. It looks like Zoom forgot to filter some harmonic distortion here. So, I think there's no need entering the effects review part as this kills all our expectative!
Don't buy this if you like real tone!!!