Zoom G5 Guitar Floor Multi-Effects Pedal

For $300 bills, you cannot get more high quality guitar effects than this. 32 bit floating point processor!!! Boss and most others are still at 16 bit last I checked. And you can hear it in the clarity of the sounds. They shimmer and sparkle and sound sweet and clean and open. The amps can get a little noisy, but that is true of any amp sim. Amps are just noisy and when you sample them, the noise comes with. Good news is there are two different noise gates. One is called ZNR and it is a proprietary Zoom noise gate. I have found it useful after the amps to kill the noise. Honestly, with the G5 I find myself more and more not using amp sims at all, and I am going direct into my studio board, no guitar amp at all! Try that with any other effect processor, better yet don't, I already have and it sounds like crap, always. My fave sound right now on the G5 is just a Comp, Tube Screamer and a little delay. Oh and I haven't even mentioned the reverbs. They are so lush and real you will not believe it. Arena Reverb is my fave. Bottom line is, the G5 sounds better than any amp, or effects processor, or combination I have ever owned. Another great feature is the included software editor, which loaded up with no problems. Recognizes the G5 as soon as I turn it on, and opens the editor so you don't have to bend down to the floor to edit patches. Just click on the the stomp boxes and edit them right on the screen in real time. Re-arrange the effects order, type, change parameters and save all in seconds. Makes it a snap to dial in just the sound you are looking for. Tube booster is a bit of a buzz-kill. Have not found much use for it. It has to warm up for a good 20-30 minutes before it sounds right and sometimes that's more than my jam time. But it can add some nice harmonics to the right patches. I admit I need to play with it a little more. Some have said it takes a few weeks for this tube to sound right so maybe I haven't given it enough break-in time to judge. (Update on this part, the tube has finally broke in and sounds great if you integrate it right and let it warm up but do not expect the tube booster to sound good out of the box. Mine took a good 30 days to break in). I am a long time Zoom fan and used the Zoom 9030 as the heart of my effects rig for 10 years and loved it. I recognize some of the signature sounds in better form here in the G5 due to the higher rez chip. Don't wonder if there is anything out there for this price that sounds this good and has as many different effects than the G5. I looked, there is not at this time. There is around 140 sounds including the amp models and they can add more via updates, and you can download and share sounds with other users on the website. Really cool features I think because someone else might give you a totally new programming idea and that expands your horizons. . You have to spend hundreds more to not have as many sounds with other brands. I have been using the Roland VG-88, 99 and now back to Zoom with the G5 and loving it. Only thing I miss from the VG stuff is the 12 string sounds. No big loss for what I have gained. The G5 allows me to really hear the sound of my guitar. Something I have not been totally happy with in the VG's, they always sound so colored, but not the G5. Also, this thing is built like a tank. Solid aluminum chassis. Even the pedal is metal so it feels really good under foot. Very responsive feel. Another thing I have not been happy with the the VG's is the Wah sounds leave a lot to be desired. Really great sounding wah's on the G5 and the pedal has left and right functions so you can have it set up to do 2 things a once. Pretty awesome. Anyway, stop reading this and go buy one already will ya...

I am an older, experienced guitar player, have used many multieffects pedals. I really like this one, lots of options, very intuitive, you basically just turn the knobs like you would on a pedal. Lots of options and cool effects, and a fair amount are musically useful. It is not easy to change patches on the fly, might be a problem on stage if you use a lot of patches, but when I am on stage I like to keep things simple, better one flexible good-sounding patch that a bunch of patches. I wish it had an insert loop and an aux in. Still, it is my pedal of choice right now. A follow up after some use (10 months of use). I still like this pedal. For playing out, the patches are not easy to use, I'm using one basic set on the Zoom and supplementing with a couple of off-board overdrive pedals (OCD and Fulltone) to get a menu of over-driven sounds. I don't use the tube boost much, sounds kind of flabby in my set up (going into Mesa tube amp). One thing I don't like is it is easy to accidentally activate the looper by pressing the button too long, another reason I use the off-board pedals. I don't like the tuner function, you have to press two buttons simultaneously. The on-board overdrives sound pretty good, just hard to get to them on the fly; I think with enough tweaking, I could get a set up that would work with only this pedal; the options are endless. I agree with others that this pedal doesn't sound as good as a bunch of boutique pedals, but it also cost the same as one of them, while providing a boat-load of effects. I am also using this for home recording; it really shines there, adding the "Air" effect gives my guitar something (a kind of "live" sound?) I wasn't able to get previously. Also cool is the ability to change the order of effects easily. Only danger is you can spend a day tweaking the sound! I think I will wind up buying another so I can have one for the pedalboard and one in the studio.

I bought the zoom G5 about two years ago and decided to write a review after I had used it fully. Basically, I love the pedalboard. It has more effects than any person could ever need, and is very easy to use. As far as quality of sound goes, the individual effects on the pedal won't be as good sounding as say the matching individual 200 dollar boss pedal (for example a reverb effect on the G5 versus a 200 dollar boss reverb pedal), but the difference is barely noticeable, and when you are playing it should make no difference. The G5 also more than makes up for this slight difference by the 200 different effects you get for one price. The only bad things about this pedal I found were that most of the distortion effects were not that good sounding. Granted, they could be helped with a little EQ and noise cancellation, but the distortion (especially heavier ones) are flat sounding and the high mids are way too loud. It would be best to rely on the G5 only for a distortion boost, not the sole source of distortion. The same could be said for the amp simulators, which are ok when used lightly, but could sound bad when you try to crank up the gain too much. The patches on the pedal are way too numerous to try all, and it is most likely that you will never actually use any of them. But the quality of each patch is ok, and could be made better with tweaking EQ and such. I had a run in with customer service because of a manufacturer defect, and got the pedal replaced without paying anything (was under warranty), so I was very satisfied. All in all, this is a great pedal, and I hope to be able to use it for the rest of my life. I don't know that any other pedal exists that is this easy to use, and contains as many features as this one does.

Paid 200$ for it and won't switch on, replaced the power cable as that was damaged as well, but still didn't help, so the pedal is now in with an electronics guy, dreading the price of repair. Not happy at all

Still on the fence about this one...it doesn't really lend itself to practical stage use as well as something like a BOSS GT or ME pedal does, where you can set up patches, etc. And the necessity of purchasing an additional footswitch to use some of the functions is annoying as well. Also, on a lot of patches there's an extreme amount of noise...pretty lame.

I watched as many videos and read as many reviews on this pedal as I could find, before I decided to drop the cash on it. I was mainly interested in the Engl amp model and the ability to plug directly into my PC via USB cable. What sold me on this pedal is the addition of having a real tube in the pedal. If you can afford to buy an Axe FX or a real high end tube amplifier, please do so. However, if you are like me and can't afford to buy gear that costs more than your vehicle, I can't recommend this pedal enough. In my current living situation, I have neighbors on either side of the room where I play my instruments. I can push the volume if I choose to, but I don't want to be "that guy". I have a nice set of Sony headphones that sound great plugged into this pedal. It sounds like there is a half-stack standing right in front of me, but without all of the vibration that you would feel sitting in front of one. I'm not really big on effects and making strange sounds, but the quality of effects seem much better than what I have on my Line6 POD Pro. The expression pedal is more than what I could ever want and the added side-to-side motion is a nice touch for the pitch shifter and wah sounds. The tube booster function sounds great. The looper and drum machine are really fun to mess around with, too. If you are reading this review, I imagine you are already aware of these capabilities and I will not go into detail. On the subject of recording with the G5, I have not attempted anything as of yet. It does not come with a standard USB cable (think printer USB) that is required to plug into your PC and I have not thought to purchase one, while at a store. It comes with a copy of Cubase for recording, which was a nice surprise. However, my disc drive on my PC refuses to open and I can't find my external drive. I have used Cubase in the past and it's a good tool, so I don't expect to be disappointed. Overall, I would recommend this pedal to any guitarist. Regardless of musical tastes, there is an amp model for you!

Great sound quality, great user interface, easy to operate, and the price is just $299. I'm very pleased with this unit and I'll be using this for a long, long while. At first, I wasn't convinced with the G5. The default patches didn't sound good on my amp; everything sounded way too bright with a very razor-cutting tone. During tweaking and getting to know the unit better, I realized that it had many output options: -Direct (The unit was set to this) -Combo front -Combo PreAmp -Stack Front -Stack PreAmp As soon as I switched the output to "Combo Front" (I was using the G5 on my amp's normal input) The sound coming out of it was much, much better. Pretty much all of the amp models and drive/overdrive stompboxes sound amazing and are very realistic! If you are using the unit in front of the amp, make sure to turn the "Cab" Off on the modeled amp settings of your G5. That way you will be using the modeled amp as a regular stompbox and you will get a great tone out of it. As always, default patches never sound great. But if you create your own patch from scratch, you are able to get an amazing tone out of it. The tube booster on this thing is just amazing. You can add an extra boost and you can also get a tube warmth, or a tube sparkling tone with this depending on your taste. Zoom really made something wonderful here. I haven't tried the Z-Pedal that much so I don't have much to say about it, but there are many effects that you can use with it and the few I've tried have been pretty cool. Besides this, I'm also using the MS-70CDR on the FX Loop for my delays, reverbs, chorus, etc. Once again, I would like to congratulate Zoom Corp for doing an outstanding Job on this new products!! Cheers.

So I've had some time to dig into this thing and thought I'd update my review. -Pros: Excellent sound. Wide range of effects; modulations, filters, wahs, trems, pans, amp sims, overdrives, and some really wacky stuff are all there and all sound very usable. Very transparent processing; excellent tone reproduction and works well with other pedals on the front end, works great in the effects return or the preamp. Tube boost is a nice plus as long as the tube sounds decent, and they can be changed to suit your taste. Z pedal, although it has been dumbed down and is not as functional on the parameter side of things as the last generation, it is still pretty cool and more versatile than most expression pedals. Easy to program. This unit excels at what counts... Sound. It sounds really real and feels pretty real as well. A ton of fun and very functional on that level. -Cons: Not so great live for ease of use. Trying to scroll through effects in mid song is a nightmare (you have to see them to turn them on and off). You have nine effects and four screens. To scroll you have to stomp on two buttons at once and hopefully not engage/disengage an effect by accident. I try to set it up so I never need to scroll, but inevitably I find myself wanting to able to turn stuff on and off. There is no channel switching. If you want to have two different amp simulations; say a clean and a dirty channel, you can't. You can use overdrives and distortions to get around this, or if your amp has a good clean it may not be an issue. Again in the previous generation there was an excellent channel switching format. This one, not so much, not at all really... Major oversight. multi-functionality switches clumsy; If you stand on any of the switches for longer than a second, you either bypass the unit and turn on the tuner, turn on the looper, change a patch, or edit loops. Everything is super simple to understand but not so easy to execute because of the lack dedicated switches. It has made for some less than professional moments on stage. All that in account it still is best for the buck in my opinion. It feels and sounds really good and that is my main concern.

The best in this price range

Absolutely love this thing

Does a lot of cool things, definitely going to use the Edit and Share to set up custom sounds rather than the board itself, because it is so much faster. This thing is clunky to use and feels unresponsive. Any sort of real-time parameter changes for creative use are sort of out of the question on this, too jumpy. For e.g. modifying the delay time and feedback (common trick) is something best done on a real pedal if you want to do that. The effects are all quite high quality and on par with many digital effects with the exception of anything related to pitch. Pitch bend, harmonization, the organ sim, etc all sound terrible. The pitch dive Z pedal effect is ok but you don't want to spend any lengthy time playing in a new pitch either down or up (down is better though, but that's a given with most algorithms). Amp models are pretty good but don't have very good dynamics response. Compare them to something like Thermionik or Scuffam on the computer side of things and they don't hold any chance. That said they are plenty 'fine', I just want more. They are certainly good enough to use live and not having to use an amp is really nice :). The engineer will like it, too. Less sound sources on stage makes their job easier, so they can focus on getting you your best sound. Pedal is adjustable and feels good. Stable. It is a bit hard to feel whether you've pressed the switch under the pedal or not (which turns on/off any effect that is tied to the pedal automatically ... smart feature). IO is good but there is one issue, the output volume for the stereo outs and the headphone out is the same. This means that for live use you set it at 100 for a hearty line signal but then for home use with headphones you have to turn the volume down to around 8-12, so you have to remember to change that again next gig or your sound will be really quiet. Forgetting this could result in a lot of noise as the engineer will boost you a lot (and then curse about guitar players and their stupid toys).

The digital sampling is very poor if you're planning on using it for amp modeling. It's better at being used for the stomp box simulation, and even then it's still not great.

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