Zoom AC-2 Acoustic Creator - Enhanced Direct Box Reviews

After owning a different brand processor for two years, and only using it for 3 gigs, I decided I needed someone else. The Zoom AC-2 is exactly what I was hoping for. Simplicity and quick learning curve. My previous pedal had tons of menus to ho through to get what you wanted. I hate menus. The AC-2, for me, is perfect. Built in and accurate tuner, volume boost, 3 band eq, one knob reverb, and 16 very nice acoustic guitar models. I use this with my Seagull Artist Mosaic Bourbon Burst w/Anthem pickup. I've received bunches of compliments on the tone of my guitar. A very happy owner I am!

This is a great pedal for and acoustic guitar really brings out the natural sound of the guitar I got a Martin all mahogany body real deep rich sounds I get out of it.

Just played my first gig with this thing. So easy to set up and use, and the sound is fantastic. I play a Martin acoustic in a country/Americana band and have always hated my tone - not necessarily all of it, just couldn't get rid of that "electric" sound of playing through a PA, and even through a Dean Markley acoustic amp. I picked the Single Cutaway setting, turned a couple of EQ knobs and BAM! It sounds like I'm some old dude in a bar sitting in a corner playing cowboy songs on a beat up old acoustic (which is what I'm going for by the way.) For a tiny price, this pedal still packs a lot of features into it - and having a boost and an on-board tuner is just gravy. Someday I hope to have time to sit around and play with some of the other settings and see what else it can do. For now, I'm a happy happy camper.

the zoom ac-2 is a good solid pedal..... really make my acoustic sound they way I want it....
but sweetwater is a great company, the kind you want to bring home to meet your mother.. chuck

Bought my first Guitar when I was twelve with MY OWN MONEY I Earned working at small family owned Super Market for a whopping $1.00 per hour. You have to take into consideration this was 1964, 54 years ago so I'm just estimating here but today that would probably be in the neighborhood of $10.00 per hour not bad for a twelve year old kid. While I had begun listening to Rock and Roll EARNESTLY at the age of FOUR, yep, four, thanks to an older cousin in 1956 when Elvis turned the world upside down I began listening to EVERYBODY of that time, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, etc, etc. I was HOOKED ! I'm Boston Born and Bred and used to live 3 Streets over from The Boston Garden SO when The British Invasion began IN 1964 with The Beatles first American Tour and they played The Boston Garden YOU KNOW I WAS THERE ! (After that I saw EVERYBODY and I MEAN everybody.) It was the SAME WEEK I bought my first Guitar and soon formed my first Band. The POINT of all this ? Back then, VERY Old School, it was your Guitar your Amp and of course a cable. Pedal ? Sure everyone had Pedals ON THEIR BICYCLE ! I'm 65 now and have enjoyed a LOVE AFFAIR with ALL THINGS 'GUITAR' since that time. Though Elvis DID begin with an Acoustic Guitar The British Invasion was ALL ABOUT the ELECTRIC GUITAR and it would be a FEW YEARS before Guitar Pedals arrived on the scene and made MAGIC ! It wasn't really all that long before I bought my first non Electric Acoustic and THAT opened up a whole new world of TONE. Then of course Acoustic-Electrics were my next step. Of course I've owned a plethora of Electric Guitar Pedals but Acoustic-Electric Pedals ? Not NEARLY as many. When I spotted THIS Pedal made by Zoom it INSTANTLY intrigued me thus naturally I purchased it. Let me say one thing prior to my winding it up here. Of course I continue to enjoy The Oldies and Classic Rock but LONG AGO I made myself a promise NEVER to become a "That's NOT Music..." Person but to ALWAYS LISTEN to both various and new styles of Guitar Related Music. My two sons ages 28 & 30 one a successful professional Guitarist have been of immense help keeping me "Fresh". While this MAY sound like a Mini Biography on the contrary. It is BECAUSE of my Musical EXPERIENCE I CAN SAY with absolute truth this Pedal does everything stated in it's description and MORE superbly. What's the sense in my repeating that ? The ONLY Limit to this Pedal is YOUR imagination and HOW YOU USE IT. A TRUE 10 IN MY BOOK.

It's quite pricy for an acoustic pedal but it's all in one. It made my guitar (martin) 100x better. It gives you the power to adjust eq and it even comes with a handy tuner. Acoustic players should have this

First and foremost. big thanks yet again to Dan Robinson for his continued first-rate customer service. Jeff Bezos and company just don't cut it. Musicians Friend and Guitar Center? NFW. When I can't buy local, I go straight to Sweetwater. They have NEVER let me down.

The Zoom AC-2: for the money? Try it, buy it. I used to use a rather pricey Fishman Aura Spectrum pedal, which had great features and sounded really nice. But it was actually better than what a working (bar and coffee house gigs) musician needs. It was better than necessary but not a clean enough signal, I found, for recording. But it wasn't made for that, and neither was the Zoom AC-2.

A direct piezo acoustic guitar signal is horrible, unacceptable, especially if the impedance isn't buffered. Barf. The working guitarist wants a better approximation of his/her actual guitar sound. We want to play for people and not make them sick. We'd like to leave them feeling better than when we started performing, and we need simple devices that will help us along.

The Fishman will give you an astonishing recreation of your guitar, or an even better guitar, plus a wide choice of microphones. Wow! But it's more than you need.

The Zoom AC-2 gives you a decent selection of acoustic guitar body types, plus a resonator and an upright bass(!) to choose from; a 3-band EQ; a gain foot-switch for soloing; all the stuff you'd expect from a DI box; and a (perfectly adequate and readable) tuner!

This is an excellent arrangement of features for one affordable foot pedal. And the signal is pretty much noise-free, BTW.

I've seen the Zoom AC-2 criticized for its build quality, ruggedness. I've had it and used it for exactly two hours, so I cannot speak with utter certainty... but, I believe it will hold up just fine, providing that I don't play soccer with it. It's a perfectly solid build.

Looking forward to hearing it through my PA system and others. I've listened closely to it with headphones, and sonically it seems far more than adequate for live playing.

I recommend it. If I start to feel differently about it, I'll post an update.

This product really helped on my smaller body guitars and warms up the piezo sound. Easy to use and the variety of effects are helpful to dial in my sound.

I've had this now for several months and it's time to give it a review.

I've been playing acoustic only gigs for the last ten years. My main guitar is a Taylor 414ce and it sounds great. And I always used an Ovation Celebrity as my back up should I need it.

However I'm getting old and my right shoulder would start to kill me only an hour into the show. That's because I'm a small guy and my right arm has to really sit high on the guitar, at a 90 degree angle to my body. So the solution is a smaller or thin body guitar, right?
Try to find one of those that sounds like the Taylor. Yes, I tried a mini-Taylor and while I loved playing it, it didn't sound right. I also bought a Takemine thin body guitar and I missed my return window and am now suffering with the sound of it's piezo pickup and electronics.

Enter the Zoom AC-2. This is really a DI box with effects. The built in modes are nice and I can dial in a nice tone for ALL my guitars. The tone controls help to tweak those as well as each individual guitar. Built in reverb is great, not necessary but good to have. Same with the built tuner.

This unit stops the piezo pickup from quaking like a duck. That's worth it right there. But it's only one simple pedal to bring and that's awesome. You know what else is awesome, the Boost pedal. That's perfect for solos and way easier than reaching for the volume knob which is hard to reach on some guitars.

The other really cool feature is the anti-feedback button. This seems to be overlooked in other reviews but I'm telling you it really saves the day at a gig.

So why not five stars? The battery life is for ****. You get maybe three hours of battery life and that's a whole gig, and who wants to risk that. So keep it plugged in? Yeah, but the extra chord is a drag and it's also in the way. If maybe it had a 9v it might last longer but I can't trust the AAs to hold out and that costs a whole star.

Buy it, it will make your acoustic sound great without a huge investment and it has lots of versatility.

The AC -2 acoustic creator has been wonderful. It aid and enhance my acoustic sound

For guitar, this is OK. The sound has a slightly dead tone to it when recording. The ring of a good rosewood guitar does not come through as clearly as I would like. I am back to using a mic to record acoustic guitars. The reverb, turned up high enough to notice, is canned. Not good at all. I am back to adding a reverb effect after recording to the acoustic track.
But.... For kicks I ran my bass guitar through it with the setting on "upright bass". I love it!!! It gives a very slight sound of an upright bass to my electric bass guitar. There are no words to describe the sound but it is good. I record music that requires an active bass line and this device has added a very nice improvement to the sound I am getting when recording. This is the exact sound I've been wanting for bass guitar recording. It has changed my recordings.
It also will act as a pre-amp for my bass, boosting the volume enough to record clean. I no longer use the AC-2 with acoustic guitars but I use it on my bass 100% of the time. I have paid more for devices to use with bass guitars and this one blows the others away... in my opinion. They need to market this for Bass.

I was looking for a pedal that had a tuner and a boost for my acoustic guitar. This looked like the most affordable pedal that had both features. The other features that are supposed to offer various sounds (dreadnaught, orchestra, 12 string etc.) simply don't work. I've been using this pedal consistently for about 6 months and now it is giving me some issues so I stopped using it. I doubt that I will replace it with the same model

Tho it sounded nice while it worked however unfortunately it stopped working after a week of use and sent it back and opted for another brand.

This pedal makes some cool claims. It just is not made well. The dials are plastic. The modeling dial for different types of guitars is pretty worthless. And there is a lot of him and some feedback while using it. I'm no pedal guru by any means, but I decided to go cheaper when my last pedal failed and now I'm buying a new pedal that I had before. Costs more but I know it works better. One thing I have never seen on any of these pedals. If you play during the day in the sun (vineyards and breweries) you can't see the tuner. Not a fan of this pedal.

I really like the idea of this DI/Pedal, but it did not live up to the hype. First, I will say that I normally like most Zoom products so I am not completely bashing the company. Second, this is not a Sweetwater issue, as the service is very good.

I have used the AC-2 regularly for a little over a year, but in the past 2-3 months it has started going out on me and has become completely unreliable. I think part of the problem is that there is a lot of stuff going on in one small package that is cheaply built. The AC-2 has always given me some strange signal noises from the beginning, but I just dealt with them and tried my best to ignore them. Also the battery life is practically zero. You can MAYBE get 1.5 hours out of one 12v battery. Sure, you can plug it in, but I personally hate plugs on pedals. Also, the selector knob that is suppose to model other guitars really only messes with the EQ (it is almost pointless).

The AC-2 is a great size, has some neat features, and does a lot for a small package (when it works). The tuner and the boost are nice features and worked well until it started completely crashing.

I am moving on to try a DI from LR Baggs and hope to find something more reliable.