Cracking the code on the Zoom G3
I’ve made a number of runs at the G3 in the last few days, and I have about 8-9 patches that sound very good to me. The count is somewhat misleading. Because you can use dedicated footswitches to bring FX modules in and out of a patch, it’s more like operating an amp plus stompboxes than selecting from a set of preprogrammed sounds. So a single patch that includes vibrato, pitch shift, autowah, delay, reverb, and amp modeling could be played as any combination of these FX, from a straight-up amped sound to the same sound with reverb and/or delay, to additional combinations of modulation FX. That’s something like 9-10 “patches” from a single patch.
I’ve set up one patch with pitch shifters in the following order: 1 octave down, then two octaves up, then a perfect 4th down. That gives me roots and 5ths in each of 4 octaves (8 notes every time I play a single note), and I’ve only used up 3 mod FX, leaving room for an auto-wah, a vibrato, AND an amp model. Fat, fat, fat.
I’ll post a few samples of these new sounds to this site soon. In the meantime, stay tuned.
6 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I don’t disagree with some of the mod FX not being as good as the Digitech. I did find, though, that I really liked the phaser, ring mod, synth, and auto-wah. The pitch shfiter works well for low sounds, but the octave effect doesn’t. I haven’t noodled with too many of the pitch shifters beyond that, though. I do enjoy the pitch delay paired with the HD reverb, though!
Regarding the amp models, I found them to be pretty hard to dial in for warm cleans sounds. For blues sounds, though, the Zoom stuff sounds really really solid.
Digitech has a “Clean” (or is it “Z-Clean”?) amp model that sounded very warm and sweet on the G2NU. I’m looking forward to checking it out on the G3. Haven’t tried the pitch delay–wasn’t really sure what it did!–but after reading your description of it I plan to check it out. I agree that the G3 has a solid sound for amped blues.
I’m not really crazy about each and every mod effect on its own, but the ability to stack them in any order opens up a lot of interesting stuff.
Richard – What do you think about the G3 looper? I have the RP 250 with your patches and love the sound, but the looper in the RP is not that great. I tried the Vox Little Looper and the looper is great but the effects are terrible. The G3 looks like a good option. I don’t need a fancy looper , just the basics : loop , overdub and undo.
Also, are you planning on selling patches for the G3? I’m keeping my RP 250, but the combination of DI, looper and batteries make the G3 very interesting.
Yo Gus, I really haven’t paid any attention to the looper yet. My energy on the G3 is going into making patches, and yes I will sell them. I haven’t figured out how I’ll price them yet or how many I’ll offer in a set; on the latter point, the layout of the G3 makes it easier to pull a patch into its parts in performance, so one patch can be more like 3-4.
I solved my looper issues by using a dedicated looper in the FX chain. Among other things, with a full-on looper in the chain you can put other stuff besides the harp through the looper.
Anyway, I’ll get to the looper sometime soon, but the patches come first.
Regards, RH
Hi. I am new to the g3. Having trouble loading patches that I downloaded from the net. Trying to load individual but when I drag to the folder I get ‘patch load error’. Can anyone advise me? Thanks. Jim
Looking for some nice fat solo patches as well.
Hi Jim, my advice is to check with Zoom tech support. We haven’t encountered this problem ourselves.