ZOOM 606 Review
Zoom pedals take more than their fair share of criticism, but if you're looking for a compact, versatile pedal for practice or if you're just starting out and you want some decent sounds, the 606 provides good value for money and more than enough variety to make it worthwhile.
I bought a 505 twenty years ago and still used it for practice up until this year, so I never found reliability a problem with Zoom. Professional, recording quality it ain't, and it is more useful for certain kinds of sounds than others - metal distortion is pretty good, for example, but the cleaner rock sounds need a little bit of work, and this is the real trick with a Zoom. To get the most out of it, you have to get into editing your own sounds.
Personally, I found the editing a breeze once I understood the process, though the manual makes it sound harder than it really is. You find your core sound with the left dial (Blues, rock, metal etc), and with the right dial you can edit each individual facet like tone, reverb, effect and so on. You can edit the volume level of each effect to find a balance which is crucial if you like to switch between clean and lead sounds, because switching between the preset clean and leads is no good - the preset cleans are way too low on volume. As a tip, I would recommend editing each effect and changing the level to about 25 ("Level" on the right dial), and turn up your amp a bit. You won't get the buzz that comes at the higher levels and everything will be balanced out, nicely. Then, once you've found your sound, click "Store" twice and you're done.
Overall, you can't go far wrong with a Zoom if you're willing to spend a little time to find the sound that you're looking for. You won't get everything that you could ask for, but for the price of another single effect pedal, you can get a variety of different sounds to tinker with. Great fun!
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned