NPD - Zoom G3n

[jonfields45]

I switched to playing a PRS McCarty Thinline in my "acoustic duo" last summer and am getting good audience feedback and liking it a lot. I'm currently gigging (I plug the headphone out into our PA), practicing with my duo, and playing guitar at parties using a THR5 (clean amp model) and it sounds great. I set the gain up for light to no distortion with the guitar volume rolled back a bit and then up the guitar volume for leads with a bit of distortion. The single tone control is actually a feature. If you run Yamaha's software you will see it sweep bass, middle, and treble through a bunch of different combinations as you turn the tone knob. It seems to find settings that go from great with a K&K type SBT in an acoustic to perfect for my PRS and all with just one knob to turn.

But I had a large amount of reward dollars built up at Musicians Friend and thought a do everything pedal would be still a good thing to have.

I previously bought/sold a Zoom G1 Four because the UI was too difficult and the pedal was flimsy (and I became obsessed with acoustic guitar IRs which it could not load).

I also bought and sold an HX Stomp. It can load IRs so it was part of that whole hobby deal which has passed for me as of late... It was well built and the UI was bearable but still kind of complicated. The foot switches were not fully programmable and too close together which was another problem. It also required a unique bulky power supply to run correctly 100% of the time (with an adapter a 2 amp effects pedal wall wart can work but sometimes the pedal hung during boot).

So here is the Zoom G3n with lots of knobs and a very simple UI.



The switches are far enough apart and easy to assign to anything. It is sturdy. It runs fine off the tiniest stomp box power supply. This one could really work well at a gig (not happening until the spring I guess). And a big bonus is the acoustic guitar simulation effect sounds quite good and usable. You can have up to 7 effects and see/adjust/switch three of them at a time with real knobs and switches. There are other footswitches to scroll left and right through the virtual stomp boxes, select an alternate patch view (and select patches), or bring up a tuner. It also has the best looper I've ever used as the display clearly says exactly what is going on and you can choose to assign one or two switches to its operation.

So far I've also tried out most of the reverbs, the Fender Twin amp, the 2x12 Fender open back cabinet model, and the Tube Screamer. They all sound really good to me.

This pedal would certainly also work well for acoustic guitar covering EQ, feedback notching, boost, reverb, compression, tuner, etc.

I really like it!