The Zoom MS-50G is Awesome (Guitar Pedal)

I’ve been looking into hardware solutions to amp simulation for a while now, because as much as I like sound of amp sim plugins, plugins in general are a pain in the ass. Move project to a new/different computer (like a laptop)? Oh wait you’re missing that one plugin. Want to coop with someone on a project? Hope they have the same OS as you, and also the same plugins. Want to share a .xrns on the Renoise forums? Oh dear god, the process of de-plugining a project to make that work…

I’ve been looking at mostly line 6 stuff, because the pods are inevitably what you see people talk about on forums, but the only affordable things I saw from them were either discontinued or sounded kind of bad. All the good shit from line 6 is a few months rent, just can’t do it.

Of course there’s Axe FX lol.

Anyways I did some googling around and stumbled across the Zoom line, which I didn’t even know they made this kind of stuff. Let me explain what this pedal is: for the same price as pretty much any boss pedal I’ve ever seen ($100) that only does one single thing like distortion, this Zoom pedal packs 100 effects, including several amp sims. Good selection of amp sims, distortions, compressors, delays, reverbs, modulation effects like tremelo, vibrato, choruses, some weirder cool stuff like slow attack, an acoustic sim, pitch shifters, and some other stuff. For each kind of thing, like distortion, there’s enough options for there to be variety, but limited enough that it’s not just 100 distortions and no room for other effects. You just pick up to 6 you want to use in a chain and save it as a preset. It has a “stomp” button, so you can select the pedal in your chain you want to be able to toggle on and off and then you can put it on the floor to use it like a normal guitar pedal.

Here’s the thing: it sounds fucking amazing. Even the cabs sound good. I’m still bypassing the cabs to use IR’s for my high gain tones, just because I’m using 2 IR’s to make it stereo, but the built in cabs are legit really good. All the effects sound really good. The sounds I’m getting out of this little thing are as good or better than any results I ever got with plugins.

So if you play guitar and would like a pluginless tone, I can’t recommend this thing enough. I don’t know why I never see this pedal mentioned anywhere, it’s incredible for $100. Hell, a Boss Overdrive pedal alone will run you $150, and you can use this as just a normal guitar pedal, you don’t have to use the amp sims, they’re just another effect.

10/10, exceeded all expectations and completely satisfies what I wanted to do with it.

Your post piqued my interest, and Ifinallyordered one. I’ve been playing around with it the last few days. It’s great.

The docs are just enough to get you started but don’t seem to cover (or properly describe) some of the more interesting options.

I’ve learned some useful things from here:http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/the-zoom-ms-50g-multistomp-a-real-review.1227247/

I want one!

Can you compare it to a Line 6 POD? I just remembered i bought an older POD with no PSU so i kinda forgot about it, but i wonder if it might be too outdated or if i should buy a PSU for it…

This might be a better solution perhaps?

It’s a bit unfair to compare them to the Boss pedals though, because those are mostly analog while the digital world has become a lot more efficient and cheap to make. If the simulated effects sounds just as good it’s a no brainer which one i’d get though.

I don’t think it’s too unfair to compare to boss pedals, because many boss pedals are digital without any reduction in price.

I haven’t used the line 6 pod stuff myself, so I can only go on comparison tests I watched on Youtube. I was originally looking to buy a pod desktop hd, but they just don’t make them anymore. My impression of the lower end pods are that they are just “ok”. The user interface for the cheaper red one looks just really bad to me. What a waste of knobs… the zoom looks much easier to use even with less knobs. From reading through guitar forums, the impression I got was that the amp sims are ok but outdated.

I couldn’t afford them at the time but zoom has bigger fancier multieffects equipment similar to the pod line, the pedal is just a tiny version of the more expensive ones with less effects modules but not lower quality. It just fills a price range niche that just doesn’t exist for the pod line.

This guys reviews are always amazing:

And this is one of the better reviews I watched for the cheaper pod:

A thing to take note of with the zoom pedals is that there may be quite a bit of noise and the output is not as strong as the pods. I have a zoom g1x and have actually got away with playing a few gigs with it but the channel on the pa had to be cranked quite a bit to match the other instruments…there was also some noise…don’t have this problem with the pods, the pod has a hotter output and is shielded way way better,…this probably isn’t a problem for home recording and I like the zoom stuff myself, hooray for china

I haven’t played live with it but I could see that being an issue. The signal really isn’t as hot as it could be. For home recording though, it really worked out for me, because my guitar clips my audio interface when used DI, and there’s just no way to pad it or lower the input gain any lower to avoid it.

I’m trying to update the firmware because it’s supposed to add 45 more effects (!!!). But am I just being stupid or what, how the fuck do you turn the pedal off? Instructions say to turn the pedal off and then hold up and down. Well great, how do you turn it off?

edit: Figured it out. I misunderstood the wording in the instructions. You can’t turn it off with it plugged in by usb, it’s impossible. Instead, the process is this:

  1. Plug it in to USB so it can install the driver.

  2. Unplug it from USB, and with nothing else plugged into it, it will turn off.

  3. Hold up and down, and while holding, plug USB back in

  4. Noooooow you can update the firmware.

edit2: holy shit there’s a, there’s a rotary sim, and a synth, and a bunch of new delays, and bunch of other shit, if you haven’t already, def update your firmware

A thing to take note of with the zoom pedals is that there may be quite a bit of noise and the output is not as strong as the pods. I have a zoom g1x and have actually got away with playing a few gigs with it but the channel on the pa had to be cranked quite a bit to match the other instruments…there was also some noise…don’t have this problem with the pods, the pod has a hotter output and is shielded way way better,…this probably isn’t a problem for home recording and I like the zoom stuff myself, hooray for china

Ok I have started noticing the noise issue since changing my main tone. I went from overdrive stomp>not very driven amp sim to just a driven amp sim, because typically I just like the sound better with any setup software or otherwise. Too much overdrive pedal effect kind of squishes the tone, not really sure how to describe what I mean but it’s like the same timbre as just a higher gain amp but squished.

Anyways, I’ve done some research and I’ve found that it’s a problem with the amp sims. The more expensive bigger zoom pedals don’t have this problem, they cut some corners with this model for the sake of battery life. They could technically fix it with a firmware update but it would murder the battery life. So you have 2 options:

  1. Because it’s a problem with the amp sims, using a distortion/overdrive/whatever effect to get your gain instead of turning up the gain on an amp sim will almost completely remove the noise, certainly below the point of mattering.

  2. If you don’t want to do #1, you can also almost completely obliterate the noise by putting 2 parametric eq’s before the the amp sim and cut 16khz hard with .5 Q. Use both bands of each para eq to cut 16 khz as hard as you can, you’re basically low passing the shit out of the signal before it hits the amp sim. There’s not much up there you need anyways, there will be plenty of highs added from the high gain.

Option 2 is pretty much mandatory if you want to use the acoustic sim. The same noise problem that exists with the amp sims exists with the acoustic sim, and it’s much worse because you won’t have super high distortion disguising it, it just sounds bad. But go through option 2, and watch the noise just disappear like magic.

I don’t fully understand WHY option 2 works, because the noise isn’t even above 16khz, it’s sitting right on top of the mids, and it’s low passing before the the modules that have the problem. But damned if it doesn’t work.

I don’t think it’s too unfair to compare to boss pedals, because many boss pedals are digital without any reduction in price.

Yes, but i bet Zoom has used cheap/simple code or open source software to build their effects and may therefore offer quantity instead of perfecting the quality, while Boss probably spends a lot on developing the particular effects to perfection.

I still want one though…

Boss pedals are quality for sure, and well worth the price they charge for them. I guess I wasn’t trying to say boss pedals are too expensive for what you get, just that the zoom is an incredibly good deal. Even a shitty single effect pedal will usually run you $50 usually.

Boss pedals are quality for sure, and well worth the price they charge for them. I guess I wasn’t trying to say boss pedals are too expensive for what you get, just that the zoom is an incredibly good deal. Even a shitty single effect pedal will usually run you $50 usually.

I was on the fence about getting this (what with a propensity to buy stuff that does not get enough use), but the option for a compressor plus configurable sounds did the trick.

I hardly expect every effect to be top-notch, but if some key ones are good enough I’m happy.

In playing around I found that there are all sorts of ways to get freaky cool noises from the thing.

Even when things don’t work as I intended they have aweirdunexpected value. For example, I was playing around with compression on theacousticguitar effect.

I kept dicking with the settings. At one point I got a sound that added some really harsh limiting. Not was I was aiming for, but it had an interestingpercussivequality.

WOW! Thats cool!!

Zoom’s making a lot of great radical pro-sumer products! Didnt know they made a guitar pedal - with 100 efx !!?? cant wait to check this out - sounds like a “muss-ave”.

I can see they made a whole BUNCH of those pedals without telling me! … Anyone had xperience with some of the others? Theres one with bluetooth…