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I had some spare change, so i decided to get the Zoom G1on for fun. It was about the price of a boss od pedal new as well. So let's see what i like about it.
Build:
Plastic body, metal base plate. Bare bones I/0. Mono 1/4" in, 3.5mm aux in & headphone out 1/4" stereo. Works on 4 AA cells or 9V DC. Two footswitches. Overall fragile to gig with.
Features:
Drum tracks & 30 sec looper, the drums can quantize with the first recorded loop, subsequent overdubs are made over the intial loop without drum sync. It allows max 5 fx blocks in a chain, although some effects occupy more DSP, so at times max available is three to four fx depending on fx choices.
Sounds:
This unit is a strip down version of the zoom G3, same processor & algos but restricted through software implementation, not all effects are carrierd over but it does have some that aren't available in the G3/5 either. I specifically got this for headphone use & for its compact/portable form and cheap price. I have a boss gt10 which i never bonded with for headphone use, plus it involves deeper editing to get the amps to sound good for me. The zoom is easier in this regard with less parameters available, plus most effects are in stereo with a nicer spread which helps for me. The reverbs are excellent to give a fuller sound using phones.
I have been using the hiwatt sim with guvnor od sim for gainier sounds. I add a para eq with a -8dB cut at 8kHz or 6.3kHz with a Q of 4 to make the sims sound better & reverb set to Air or Early reflections type followed by a delay or another verb like plate for fun. The unit isn't grounded if using phones, so noise can creep in with high gain, the ZNR gate sim takes care of that but perhaps grounding the baseplate might help, haven't tried that yet. I need to dig into some of the amps since i haven't spent alot of time editing their parameters much. One thing that surprised me was the amp sims react very nice to volume knob roll off, far better than the gt10 or joyo sound pedals i have.
The OD sims start out with a ton of gain when scrolling through them, they seem to have focussed on high gain sounds exclusively with the od & amp sims at default settings. The other effects sound good as well, rotary could have been better with a speed control dial than a speed toggle, etc.. So some minor drawbacks here & there but not too annoying.
Overall:
Very happy with it. For the price, nice looping & sounds. Not meant for gigs but fantastic for silent practicing, the looper is fun with the drums. Can't record with it since there isn't a usb interface feature in it, the usb port is used for updating the firmware only. So yeah, a fun box to have around.
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