Zoom 707II Multi Effects Pedal Review

Price Bought

£150

Review

The Zoom 707 II is the slightly newer version of the 707. It has everything the 707 has plus the ability to insert a smart media card, which you can use to longer record samples, and / or exchange patches (the name given to the setting of the pedal, i.e. distortion, reverb settings etc...) on the internet.

I bought the pedal several years ago when I had just started playing the guitar at a price of around 150 pounds. It comes with the unit itself and instruction manuals. If I remember correctly I had to purchase the power unit myself, but this was only around 5 pounds. The pedal can however be powered by 4 AA batteries instead.

With 74 different effect types I feel this pedal provides more than enough for the beginner guitarist. There is a huge range of things you can do with this little pedal - the guitar signal goes through the following stages before being outputted:

• Boost - The ability to boost your guitar signal. There are two types of boosts, one just makes the guitar louder and the other also distorts the signal a little.
• ISO / Comp - To be honest I've forgotten what ISO was but the other is a in-built compressor.
• Drive - Choose from a huge range of distortion, fuzz, overdrive etc...
• Eq - The equalizer. This allows you to adjust the low, mid and high tones within the guitar sound.
• ZNR - A noise gate. This is useful for filtering out the unwanted sounds in your playing.
• CABI - Cabinet emulator. Can be turned on to emulate the sound of certain speaker stacks etc...
• MOD - Apply effects such as a phaser, tremolo, wah-wah, vibrato, pitch shifter, chorus, etc...
• Rev - Allows reverb/delay to be added.

This pedal also incorporates a drum machine, which is not very useful except for the metronome which is also a part of it. As I believe this pedal is suited for beginner guitarists, a metronome will come in very handy as using it is a critical part of practicing.

This unit has an Aux In (6mm) which you can use to play backing tracks. Also the sampling ability allows you to record guitar solos from an external source via the Aux In, and slow it down to a 1/4 of the original speed without change in pitch. However the quality of the sound does degrade.

Here are the good/bad points of this unit:

Advantages

• Very Cheap - although for me it was expensive, it can be bought at a more reasonable price now. I even found a website selling it for 130 dollars which is about 80 pounds? (Correct me if I'm wrong - not good with exchange rates!)
• A Large Range of Effects - You can do a lot with this little pedal. Some of the effects include pitch shifter, phaser, tremolo, wah-wah, equaliser etc...
• Portable - This is a small and light effects unit so is very portable, which is an advantage for band practices etc...
• Ease of Use - The pedal is pretty self-explanatory and therefore is very easy to use. It also allows the user to make their own patch and save it onto the pedal in one of the 60 (?) spaces it provides in the "User Bank".

Disadvantages

• The Quality of Effects - Some of the effects don't sound as good as they should. For example the pitch shifter sounds a bit harsh at times.
• Time Delay - By this I am referring to the time it takes to switch between different patches. I used to use several patches in one song when I used this thing live, and it did have a slight delay which was caused by the unit loading the next patch. Not a big problem but just thought I should mention it.
• Expression Pedal - The 707II also has an added feature which is the ability to turn on / off a certain effect within the patch by pressing firmly down on the expression pedal. This allows the user to turn on the distortion at the chorus etc... This leads to the next problem.
  
  For example say you have set the expression pedal to control the pitch shifter. You press down on the expression pedal to shift the note up 2 octaves but if you press it too firmly it will turn off the effect all together! This problem can be slightly minimized by playing with the settings.

Conclusion

For the price of this pedal I think it is a very good pedal to start off with. It provides most if not all of the effects a beginner will be interested in at a reasonable price.

Sound Quality: 6 out of 10
Build Quality: 6 out of 10

Reviewer

H.Hashi (Webmaster IGDb.co.uk)