Zoom B3 Bass Multi Effects Pedal Reviews

M. Cordell
from Dayton, OH
April 12, 2013Music Background:
Hobbyist

Good Variety for the Price

Got the Zoom B3 for a standard 4-string Yamaha, and it was fun and inspiring right out of the box. The built in looper is easy and intuitive, & the ability to stack 3 effects at once gives you a lot of flexibility. I do mainly studio work, so I can't speak to the live aspect, but for the price, you get a large variety of bass sounds!

Geoff Shell
from Evanston, IL
January 5, 2013Music Background:
Bassist

Unbelievable Value!

Completely innovative multi-effects pedal. Feels like owning every classic pedal on the market. The presets are fantastic (I love 'Jaco Jazz' and 'Oct OD' especially) and the customization of each preset is a breeze. Out of the box awesome! The looper / drum machine is a really slick bonus feature (along with the tuner), and the D.I. Out is also really nice for a super clean signal to the front of house. There's also USB connectivity to your computer and the free Edit And Share software! I could go on and on. There are a lot of pedals I feel I no longer need to purchase because of this super consolidated multi-effects pedal. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Steve Gorman
from Alameda, CA
December 7, 2012Music Background:
Hobbyist musician.

Best multi-pedal design yet

I've had Digitech and Behringer V-Amp multi-function / amp simulation pedals before but found their functionality hard to figure out and use, and their sounds somewhat limited and not that useful. This pedal appealed to be right away because of its intuitive design of simply placing 3 pedals side by side, allowing you to set and visualize 3 separate pedals all working together, or one or two at a time. I like how the screen on each pedal shows a pictorial representation of the pedal or amp you are using, and the 3 knobs allow you to change the settings, with additional pages of settings available by pressing the "page" button. I also love how you can plug it into your computer using a USB cable, and then with the available "Zoom Edit and Share" software (free download) you can control the B3 directly from your computer. From the Edit and Share interface you can select various patches, adjust settings, and turn off and on the 3 pedal buttons. The B3 also gets its power from the USB cable, so you don't even have to use the included power supply or batteries if you are connected to a computer. When I practice, I am mostly sitting in front of my laptop, so I really enjoy being able to change settings from, and get power from the computer. I'm not much into fuzz and distortion, and the B3 had plenty of those, but I also am finding some nice subtle effects like bass boost, compression, and some nice amp simulations like the Fender flip top. I have only just begun to try out all the different pedal and amp simulations, but it seems like it will keep me interested for a long time in finding just the right sounds that I like, and saving them as my own custom patches. The built-in tuner comes in handy too. I have not tried the looping function yet. This seems to be a very well designed and built product, and the price is very good for what you get.

Chad From WV
from Fayetteville, WV
November 13, 2012Music Background:
Garage Band Musician

Great Choice!

This device is fabulous. I love it. For the price of about 2-3 pedals you can have an unlimited number of unique tones. The 100 presets are awesome but I've enjoyed tweaking them to get something else. Most of them I just leave as is. Super fun. I love them

Kevin
from Northeast Philadelphia, PA
October 31, 2012Music Background:
Still learning

A lot of fun

Haven't gone through all of the possible settings yet. It's a whole bunch of pedals in one box. I'm really enjoying it.
An individual pedal may have more possibilities of a particular sound, but unless you need to be extremely specific, this covers everything. To get all of the sounds in this one unit, you would spend several hundred dollars on individual pedals. This is also relatively compact. I love it

Bruno De Carvalho Jamavi Bokelo
from Catumbela, Angola
September 21, 2012Music Background:
Musician, Recording Person

Nice Pedal

Excellent Bass pedal, very easy to use, good sound and what fascinated me specially was the design, 3 displays for the manual mode that makes it very easy to adjust the different parameters for the different effects. I love it!

Adam K
from South Jersey
September 5, 2012Music Background:
Musician for 10+ years

Don't waste your money on individual pedals!

Everything you would ever want/need in a pedal setup. To understand how in depth Zoom has gone, realize that most of these effects can be tweeked to what speaker cab sound/size you would want them to sound and react like...simply incredible and highly practical effects on here as well.

Lou Portela
from SF Bay Area, CA USA
July 9, 2012Music Background:
Pro musician

Zoom B3 Bass Multi-Effects Pedal

In my opinion, this is the best effects pedal in its price range. Sturdy chassis, designed with the familiarity of many stomp boxes available to players. Built in Tuner. XLR output. It is very compact, & light (fitting easily inside my backpack, designed to carry a 15" laptop computer). The power supply fits securely snugged into a recessed plug opening. One of the most user friendly units I've messed around with in many years. Very easy to create, edit and or save a wide array of effects & programs. I found the effect sampling ( many of the most sought effects by bassists can be found here) to be as good/usable as any of the individual name brand pedals I've used for decades. A breeze to flip/exchange/route effects & program pages. Excellent too as an amp/cab emulator (i.e.: GK, Ampeg, Fender, Eden, Mark, Acoustic bass amps & more). The only reason i did not give it a 5.0 rating is that I wish the folks at ZOOM would've added a built in Volume/Expression pedal feature, but, then again...no biggie since you can easily connect any like pedal to it as well. I haven't used the Bundle software yet, but don't for see any problems there. I've been a bassist for over 40 years now, and would highly recommend this to any player looking for a quality, very compact multi effect box that packs a punch (especially in tight spaced stages!).

Andrew Golba
from NY
May 16, 2012Music Background:
Musician

The Great B3

Two great things about the B3 multi effect are it's sound and it works like a stompbox. I hated other multi effects because of the way they operate-not stomp box like and more programing like and not as on the fly as the B3. I like the fact that you can pick a preset which has 3 effects and you can cut 1 or 2 of them out and then stomp on the particular effect when needed just like a stomp box. Also each effect can be adjusted like a stompbox on the spot on the fly. The ability to isolate and incorporate the effects is just like a 3 stompboxes. This is a favorite, light, take it anywhere for any situation and does the job.

Shane
from
May 11, 2012Music Background:
used to be a player, now just a warrior

Zoom B3 -getting it dialled in

I'm a newbie to the pedal world and this seemed like a good compromise between price & performance. Like a lot of the capabilities, but am only scratching the surface in how best to organize it's use for live work. I really appreciate the computer s/w for getting organized and experimenting with patch creations. Wish you didn't have to 'toggle' (hold down ft/switch 1) to switch between 'patches' and then 'toggle back' to access the individual effect in/out switches. Gonna use it for this weekends gig, so we'll see, but I think it's a solid product, and value for the $$$.

Rob Tate
from Sherman, TX USA
April 11, 2012Music Background:
Pro Musician

Greatness!!!

Sounds great! Easy to dial in great sounding tones, easier with the downloaded editing software. And, the included Steinberg Sequel LE is the easiest recording software yet!!!

Gregory Dalton
from Fishers Indiana USA
April 7, 2012Music Background:
bass player

Great single pedal

I'm able to consolidate several pedals to one. Great sound and easy to use

Joe Ayroso
from San Francisco, CA
March 28, 2012Music Background:
Semi-pro bassist for working cover band

Very cool!

I own the Zoom B2. It used to be on my pedalboard but it looked like a toy, so I removed it and only use it for rehearsals. So, I've been using real pedals, mostly Boss and a Sansamp BDDI until I saw the B3. This B3 sounds way better than the B2. I tried Line 6 and did not like the tones at all. I ordered the B3 from Sweetwater as soon as I saw it on the website. The tones on this thing are great. This has best SVT simulator I have used. It captures that low/mid boost and heaviness that the SVT is famous for. The Markbass, Aguilar and U5 simulators all sound the same. I have to play with those more to try and determine the difference and why all 3 exist. The Polytone simulator is cool. I play in an 80's band and use lots of effects and have a need for the amp simulators. The visual display is fun to use because the graphics looks like the pedal it is trying to simulate. The drum machine on the B2 sounds better. The B3 drum machine does not have a simple disco pattern...weird. That pattern should be standard. It's kind of cheezy to have a drum machine but it does come in handy when the drummer misses practice. It's not perfect, but the tones are awesome. 5 stars, yo.

Yuro
from Costa rica
March 21, 2012Music Background:
25 years playing in bands, orchestal background, engineer aficionado in sound tech, rock, electronic, latino, jazz...

Nice, nice, nice

I'm a sound modification lover. Yes, I like nice natural bass sound too, but want the effect you can reach with dist, synths,metc... i had different toys, line6 bass pod, line 6 x3, boss pedals, zoom b2, etc... This piece of metal is the best until now. And that considering that I'm more delicate with my sound now than before. Easy to use (havent read the manual yet), very good tones with harmonics, attacks, release, etc. A lot more sounds than the B2. Dont worry thinking that only 3 effects in the chain will be little (cause B2 has 9), it is enough to offer very good sounds. Excellent synths, rock sounds, distorsions, reggae sounds. Construction quality is great, details, locations of buttons, logo, size, looks very pro. Be ready, for this kind of pedals you should seriously consider dont use your bass amp, but use instead a very neutral one,so you dont color the sound again. Going direct to PA should be the way. Electronics finally offering a full spectral sound, rich in all frequencies, colored correctly, sounding interestly. Like. Period

Randy Smith
from Pelham, Mass
March 14, 2012Music Background:
recording artist, multi instrumentalist

It's in there!!

Fantastic piece of gear! Zoom has really come a long way as far as making their fx/amp simulations sound realistic..I really like the Bootsy-esque mutron bass sounds, the synths are killer, vintage cabs & effects are really authentic.Sounds great thru my Hartke combo! I record on a roland 2400cvd & I'm pleased with the sound! I can finally say see ya to taking time to mike bass cabs, being kind of a purist snob about that sort of thing.Way to go zoom!You got it all here-the Eddie Jackson sounds, Stanley, Jaco etc I can't play like those guys but the sound'll be there if I can one day.Trust me you wont be sorry with this red bad boy & people will be jealous! Thanks to Sweetwater for great service too!

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