Zoom MS-70CDR/UK Guitar Effects Pedal with Amazon Basics Batteries

The Zoom MS-70CDR certainly seems to be packing a lot of capability into a very small package, but it's a bit of a mixed offering in the end.You can see even on a casual glance that it is potentially a bit more than your typical pedal, but those three black knobs beneath the display aren't even single-function things like "rate" and "depth", instead they push to engage whatever they are supposed to do (open up the menu system, for example) and rotary to adjust values. The stomp switch itself is also surrounded by 4 navigation buttons (up/down and left/right) that scroll through the effects in any given patch and offer up the values for editing with the buttons. These values, if the patch is complex enough, also fall onto several pages through which you also need to scroll. Sounds a bit obscure? Welcome to the club!If there was ever a pedal where people would be merely inclined to stick with the presets, this would be one of them - it really doesn't encourage casual tweaking. Instead you have to get your propellorhead hat on and dive into the menu system. It's a direct equivalent to the arrival of the Yamaha DX-7 all those decades ago, packed with functionality which you had to access with value buttons and a 32-character display. It would be easier to operate a starship by poking your arms through a letterbox.It's a stereo pedal, which is essential for most of the effects in the device, at least if you want that sense of space about the sound. I position it on my board where the signal goes from mono to stereo, going in through the Mono/L jack and through to stereo out.The novel feaure is the ability of the pedal to chain several effects, so it becomes a mini pedalboard all by itself, you can start with a compressor, chuck in a chorus, then a delay, and finally a reverb - or you can try delay and then chorus in the chain to see whether that works better. If you want to be able to toggle the effect between dry and effect sounds, though, you'll have to start your chain with a "line selector" effect or remember to press the stomp switch until the pedal goes into bypass mode - yes, even the stomp switch behaves according to programming (you can even use it to do tap tempo).I could easily understand if people were to be put off by the multi-function aspects that seem to affect every control on this pedal - something not working? Well, are you in scrolling mode or not? It's that level of inscrutability. I used to work in IT, designing computer systems. I can see the elegance in this user interface, they've managed a lot with very little, but that doesn't make it intuitive by a long chalk. In the end I think Zoom are achieving a lot with the interface, but it's not very "immediate" and certainly would get in the way of sudden inspiration because you can't easily dial in a particular sound.The pedal can also tell when a patch is getting too complex for its signal processing capability and it'll refuse to add effects to an overloaded FX chain.Sounds wise it is fairly good. Since I own a Strymon Timeline and Mobius I can confidently say there's a subtle difference in sound quality, and sometimes not so subtle. On the other hand those pedals cost somewhere north of "way too much money" and the MS-70CDR is cheap as (DSP) chips. The Zoom will cover the job, just not quite as glossily. There's a tiny high-pitch whine if the pedal isn't completely bypassed, with some patches being a bit more prone than others. There's a terrible amount of noise on the signal chain if you daisy-chain this pedal along with your other pedals - it really needs its own power supply, or a non-daisychained power feed from a power brick (I use a Truetone 1-Spot Pro CS-7, where the analogue pedals are on daisychained power without a problem, and the Zoom and Strymons get their own power feed).The stinkfoot.se website covers pedal power draw and rates the CDR70 as drawing 125mA in mono and 145mA in stereo modes, about 100mA less than either of those Strymons. In other words it is a power hog relative to simple analogue pedals but not as bad as some pedals can be. It's something to bear in mind if you are powering it more simply with a dedicated wall-wart.So it's a bit of a mixed bag for me. I will be using it to set up sound washes more than specific "sounds" at which my more pricey pedals excel, so its minor sonic compromises will hopefully get lost in the mix. I will probably tweak a few of the nicer patches on there to more suit my tastes (the C-D-R patch at the top of the list is really nice and very tweakable, and the Echoplex simulation that gives a kind of Eric Johnson vibe might get a bit of tweaking too, but I can't see myself as a home recordist wasting too much time honing in on some perfect sound because with all the parts of a song to be played by me, there's just not enough time in the world to faff around menu-diving this pedal unless there's some very specific aim in mind. It would be too easy to get lost in the options.I did wonder about 3 stars for its interface obscurity right off the bat, but those were early days and I figured that I'd give it a chance to prove itself, but it has to lose at least a star for the small amount of noise it injects into the signal chain, a tiny amount of tone loss, and the initial learning curve. After a year if ownership, however, I've amended the rating to 2 stars. I can get used to the interface, but the noise is very obtrusive. Even a friend that is hard-of-hearing complained about it! Using buffers and better cables made no difference, and noise suppressor pedals likewise. It's now set aside and I doubt I'll use it in future. It's a jack of all trades and a master of none, which would be somewhat forgivable if not for the noise on the signal, which makes its presence on my pedal board a detriment - so I can't be neutral about it.It's one of those pedals where you open the door and its a lot bigger inside, a bit of a TARDIS. The problem is that the noise means that you just want to close the door again. The opinion online is that the DSP chips inside are putting noise onto the signal and nothing can be done about it in the pedal firmware - because otherwise Zoom would have done something by now.

I bought this for my nephew's set up to be used with synthesizers. It is amazing value. It has a lot of optional effects. Very many are of a high quality. It is fairly easy to use. With v2.0 firmware zoom have added alot more effects away from mods, delays,reverbs. So there's compressors and all sorts of useable ones. The new exciter being the star. At such a low price you would think this as cheap sounding and cheap made. You would be wrong it isn't. It stands pretty well compared to even my eventide. And that I mean it. It's slightly mudier in the tales but a h9 is £580. And this is something incredibly wonderful for the money.After listening to it I am now tempted to add it in to my rig for a single synths use.It's 32 bit processing and 24bit a/d

Really happy with this pedal. I wanted something to run my synths through for a while and all the advice led me to the CDR 70. Small footprint, battery powered and a good range of Chorus, Delay and Reverb that you can chain together for some great effects. Slight learning curve for the menus etc but pretty easy after a little experimentation. Solid construction, can be used with a power adapter but one isn't included, not a big deal. I'd suggest buying one as powering it with AA batteries can be a bit frustrating when they start to die out and you're in the middle of something Overall a great little pedal for a decent price

The MS-70CDR has had a bit of a boost since Zoom released the new v2 firmware, there are some really nice chorus sounds that sound great on ether guitar or bass (give the silky chorus a try on bass). Equally there are some terrible effect units on there.In terms of software, google zoom-ms-utility It's a shame Zoom don't provide something like this, even if it was a couple of quid. - a hardware VST or Audio Unit for logic or garageband etc (working as a hardware control panel) would make this much more useable as the knobs and menus, although functional, aren't the easiest to use and probably a source of frustration for many.Even if you use just a few of the effect units, it makes sense from cost point of view.

Great value and loads of useable, tweakable sounds. Can't quite give it 5 stars yet though as I am struggling to find the best way of using it live. It's purpose on my pedal board is to provide me with a single pedal producing numerous effects. I already have a good delay pedal there, so it's mainly for the chorus and reverb, albeit there is also tremolo, vibrato, flanger, phaser and to my ears a great vibe amongst others available. The trouble is you cannot easily use the footswitch to just scroll through or even bypass an effect - you often have to bend down and manually scroll the middle black knob.Having said that there appears to be a compromised way of at least accessing a few effects by the footswitch - check out the online YT videos and it's early days so I'm still experimenting! For the money though it ain't half bad.

Excellent product.After using many more expensive products over the years,either pedal type or rack mount and custom built units,this is probably the best for me.I work with a band playing music from the late 50s to mid 60s,part of our act being a tribute to one of my all time favourite acts The Shadows.Therefore I use the echo settings mainly and maybe a little reverb here and there.This pedal may be a bit daunting for some because you need to programme the settings to get to the sound you are happy with.Just dig into it with the help of the instruction manual and you will get there.Wonderful piece of kit.