Zoom B3n annoyances

[geoham]

I do love the sounds of the B3n, but there’s a few things that drive me a bit crazy. I’m trying to convince myself that I don’t need to buy something Helix-y! I’m keen to hear other people’s views.

- Double-unit effects in stompbox mode. If I want to set up a patch like a mini-pedalboard, say noise-reduction > compressor > octave > Sansamp > chorus, I’d ideally like to have the last three visible and assigned to the foot switches. However, the double unit Sansamp takes up two footswitches, even though I’d never use the 2nd - making it pretty annoying to use live. It’d be useful to be able to hide the 2nd half of the pedal.

- Poor expression pedal configuration. It’d be useful to be able to just the expression pedal as a master-volume, or be able to change parameters of effects like you could on the original B3. However, you need to add the expression pedal as an effects unit - again adding to the first issue above if you for example want to place it before a drive unit a a volume pedal to control the gain.

I’ce found myself making a tonne of presets to overcome these issues - which has become quite a time consuming process to manage.

Overall, there are definite improvements to the original B3, but it frustrates me as much as I love the sounds. 

Something like an external midi controller could help if someone could figure it out. Or Zoom could probably do it with a firmware update!

George

Edited February 8, 2019 by geoham

[Elfrasho]

On 08/02/2019 at 21:27, geoham said:

I do love the sounds of the B3n, but there’s a few things that drive me a bit crazy. I’m trying to convince myself that I don’t need to buy something Helix-y! I’m keen to hear other people’s views.

- Double-unit effects in stompbox mode. If I want to set up a patch like a mini-pedalboard, say noise-reduction > compressor > octave > Sansamp > chorus, I’d ideally like to have the last three visible and assigned to the foot switches. However, the double unit Sansamp takes up two footswitches, even though I’d never use the 2nd - making it pretty annoying to use live. It’d be useful to be able to hide the 2nd half of the pedal.

I agree with this completely. Even if it still took 2 slots of memory but we only saw one then it would make it better. 

 

Or even better... If there was a way to configure what 3 pedals are shown at any one time, rather than relying on scrolling left and right. I find that in practice not easy. I'd imagine folk are like me in that alot of the chain will always be switched on so wouldn't really need to have to scroll through them each time.  

 

It's probably a much more complicated solution than I'm imagining,but I think there's definitely something in it! 

[geoham]

2 hours ago, Elfrasho said:

I agree with this completely. Even if it still took 2 slots of memory but we only saw one then it would make it better. 

 

Or even better... If there was a way to configure what 3 pedals are shown at any one time, rather than relying on scrolling left and right. I find that in practice not easy. I'd imagine folk are like me in that alot of the chain will always be switched on so wouldn't really need to have to scroll through them each time.  

 

It's probably a much more complicated solution than I'm imagining,but I think there's definitely something in it! 

I reckon a solution like this would work well, it would totally transform how I use the pedal  - really simplifing live usage.

[operative451]

Fortunately there are 150 patch slots..!  I've got a bunch of patches set up that are variants on the same thing but with the thing that would be switched off, not there on one patch and there on the next.  It takes a bit of brain retraining not to treat it as a pedalboard..! Where i do have different sounds for the same songs i just put them next to each other!

Oddly i'm now mostly using mine for guitar now..!