Zoom G3 First Impressions

[Will Chen]

The new Zoom G3 has been getting some positive reviews on several boards and there were some compelling YouTube demos so I recently picked one up. Overall, a pretty impressive unit. Zoom doesn't quite have the market penetration (nor marketing team) of Line 6 or even Digitech so the launch was fairly quiet and delayed several times (likely due to the recent earthquake in Japan) but the unit offers up a new processor promising a bit upgrade over their previous tech. If you're not familiar with the unit, its a direct competitor functionally to the Line 6 M9 but additionally offers amp modeling.

 

Modeling:

 

Well, honestly its pretty good though focused heavily on higher gain sounds. Even the cleaner amps in the collection seem have a significant amount of crunch when you push them. For example, their Twin model needs to be backed down to a gain level less than 10 (on a scale from 1 to something like 170, unit's not in front of me now) to approach anywhere near clean (and I mean jazz clean). They have provided a Z Clean stomp box, but then you don't get any speaker modeling.

 

Anyway, on the whole the amps are pretty convincing and dynamically reactive with some amps being able to run the gamut from clean to chunky grit with your volume knob. I was very impressed by this actually. Don't think another model I've used has been so reactive. In fact, I would say a couple of the amp models are more reactive to volume knob changes than both the Digitech RP series and Line 6's HD. I would also concur with Lution that with the Senheiser HD280 headphones, the unit out performs the HD fairly significantly when monitoring directly from the unit. When monitored via my monitors though, it really was a mixed bag compared to the others and would really depend on the types of tones one is looking for.

 

Drives:

 

I haven't gotten much of a chance to audition them other than run through each very quickly, but my review of the G2.1nu pretty much applies here as well. Compared with the real world pedals I've had experience Zoom captures the vibe well but typically offers a bit more gain and potentially more output. Not necessarily a bad thing. They also haven't modeled the pedals actual controls, you just get a gain, tone, and volume control. In Zoom tradition, metal is represented well. In fact, their offering of high gain distortion pedals beats both Line 6 and Digitech.

 

Mod/Delay/Reverb

 

I've always felt Zoom did a good job in this area and the flexibility of the unit combined with the quality of time/mod effects is probably worth the unit cost. You get multiple varieties of everything and the quality is excellent. that being said, ZOOM has a more "clean" approach to modeling in this area, think more rack less stomp. You don't quite get the lo fi stompbox charm which Digitech excels at nor 100% of modeled units controls. Plus there are some pretty innovative takes on these effects such as a dual phasor, filtered delay, slicer, etc

 

Special Effects

 

This is the area I was most looking forward too...and the area in which the unit disappoints. The pitch processing latency and signal warbling of the G2.1nu is still here making all pitch effects useless IMHO. The Z Organ is indeed a model of the Micro POG but it doesn't come anywhere near matching the quality of the original. At this point in the game, if you can't process pitch near real time, best leave it off your device. And the monosynth tracking is poor (and that's being generous).

 

Alright I'll have a more in depth review at my site when I get around to it. Also will be working up a head to head clip comparison with the Digitech RP series and Line 6 HD series, but that's going to take some time.