As a music teacher, I find this device so useful. Students respond so much better when they are able to listen back to a performance and hear mistakes for themselves. The H4 is extremely portable and the main advantage over other field recorders in it's class is that it is so many audio devices in one unit. I use it as a USB audio interface and effects unit in the studio as well as for recording live events.

This multi-effects box is the business! The Marshell and Mesa Boogie distortion sounds are up there with the crunch of James Hetfield. The auto wah mixed with distortion is the same sound that Kirk Hammetti uses on stage and in the studio.

This box is well worth the money and I would recommend it to anybody that is wanting to buy an effects pedal. There is loads of other cool sounds I just haven't got to them yet!!

Unbelieveable for the price!

It's up there with all the others, but wins hands-down because of the XLR/jack combination inputs which will accept mics (including supplying phantom power for condensers), line level and also instrument direct inputs. In a professional sound situation who wants to be messing about with mini-jacks?

The controls are fiddly and not particularly intuitive but I soon got the hang of it. The automatic gain control seems to be fine and smooth but it is easy to set your own input levels. Switching between MP3 and WAV is easy and the selection obvious with the LED's on the front.

Transferring files to a Mac was simple, just drag and drop, and iTunes will open the files instantly. Just be aware that you can apparently delete the files using the computer, but they won't be deleted from the SD card, even though the H4 cannot see them they are still there!

There is a bit of handling noise if you are clumsy with the machine but place it on something and it's fine. The mics are good, but use the phantom and plug a decent couple of condensers in and it's very very clean.

4-tracking is a challenge but I did achieve it, although it seems a bit of an unnecessary facility, especially if you're uploading to a computer, there are much easier basic computer programs to multitrack.

All in all, excellent value for money and warrants a space in anyone's kit bag!

This bass effects has a great range of sounds, sounds great though both an amp and in a recording situation, the tuner is handy and is accurate even on the low B. good product, and not too expensive!

I only bought this to record rehersals and it works a treat. Stick it on a mike stand , dont matter how loud it gets, and let it run. Get home and put it on puter for chopping up or whatever,put it up on myspace for rest of band to listen and work on. Job done.
Will allow you to record in stereo or two pairs to mix down, but why?? If you want quality, buy some good mikes or go record in a studio.

ordered bass on sunday and received it 2 days later. really impressed with the service and the customer contact afterwards. would recommend this company,for information given on purchase, packaging and after sales contact.

First of all, a disclaimer: I'm a guitar newbie - this is the first guitar effects pedal I own, so take my review with a grain of salt.

This pedal is sturdily built. It looks tough and able to withstand abuse (within reasonable limits). It is small and easily transportable.

Mine didn't bring a dedicated power supply, but it takes normal AA batteries or you can use a USB connection to power it.

It has lots of effects to tamper with, a USB connector which allows you to record your playing sessions. It also has Cubase LE software which I haven't explored yet.

People on a tight budget may want to look for its little brother, the G2 which is the same as this minus the pedal and USB connection. It costs about half the price of this one, so it's a steal.

I think that this pedal will suit both beginner as well as intermediate and perhaps even advanced players.

Summarising, this is an excelent product definitively worth the money. 9/10.

G. Limor's sync problem exists with the H4 as well if you transfer the file directly into your editor. I find that capturing realtime audio into my editor, while defeating part of the reason for digital recording, does at least keep sync for a reasonable duration and I use mine for over an hour with two cameras.

recording quality is very good indeed.
when it's a soundcard it's 16bit, 44.1 / 48khz. ie no 24/96 joy.
when it's a soundcard and you use the mic, it always feeds some signal back to the headphones. i'd prefer it not to, when i'm putting some whacky treatments on voices and want 100% wet signal.
onboard effects are really quite neat, but not available when using as soundcard, not even mic models are available.
phantom power is available in soundcard mode.
get a £7 desk camera tripod from tesco. functional and it matches the paintwork perfectly.

build quality is patchy. my record button has hardly any play on it, the centre menu button is offcentre and, as you've probably read elsewhere, the casing and switches feel a tad toylike.

the menu system is confusing to start with. even though it has that large 5 way button, most actions are performed with the tiny jog wheel. daft, truly daft.

handling noise isn't as bad as some people have made out. yes it is transfered to the recordings, but you can minimise if you hold in such a way as you don't rub it - ie. just grip it firmly.


but despite its shortcomings it's a great piece of kit to have. can anything touch it for the price?

This is just soooooooo much more than the spec suggests. 8 tracks? well, yes, but you also get separate drum and bass tracks, and there's a separate stereo master track so already you're up to 12! And you can record up to 10 V-takes on each track, and for bounce-down purposes you can bounce all 8 tracks onto an empty V-take of one of those tracks (don't ask me how it manages this!!) so the possibilities are huge. As bouncing doesn't degrade the sound quality like it used to on the old cassete tape portastudio, you can bounce sets of 8 tracks onto up to 10 V-takes, pick the best take on each track and then mix down a final master version of 8x8 tracks -plus drums and bass!

But if you just want to record some ideas or a quick demo of your band, this is equally the tool for you. The guitar effects are excellent.

Zoom G1 - Guitar Multi Effects Pedal Inc PSU
I'm returning to the guitar after 30 something years, I'll only ever be playing in my bedroom for my own amusement but even so, I think this is a great gizzmo and worth every penny of the few pounds it costs. It appears sturdily made and the various sounds can be cycled through with the two foot switches. Changing other settings like the drum sounds really need to be made by hand as the buttons for that are a lot smaller. There are 40 sounds the box provides and space for another 40 of your own devising. You could spend many evenings playing with all the permuations. Maybe some of the sounds will never get used but they're great fun to play with. Even though I'm an awful guitarist with this little box I can make two notes sound really cool. It does amplify up the sound from your guitar so when it's connected to the amp the volume can be really loud. The box does have a volume control to help offset this. The drum machine plays 40 rythms, mainly 4/4, some 3/4 and a couple of 5/4. Added to my two note chords and I can almost think I sound good. So, not only can you make lots of different sounds there's a drum machine with variable volume and tempo and you can use it to tune your strings - easily. For output, plug into your amp - very loud - or use headphones. As I don't want to annoy my neighbours or deafen myself I've ditched my 15W amp and connected it to a pair of old pc speakers I found in the loft. I get all the effects but without rattliing the windows. If I was starting again I wouldn't buy a kit, I'd spend more money on the guitar and get one of these as I can tune my guitar with it, use it as a metronome and have lots of fun with the sounds. Highly recommended and so are Dolphin. Ordered late afternoon it arrived next day.

One of the best guitar processors out there. This product is not just a FX processor, it is a high quality guitar preamp with two 12AX7 tubes that really make a difference. It doesn't have more features than other products in this class but it definitely sounds much better than the competition. The heart of this beast is the preamp section where you choose a preamp model or stomp box and the VERY effective EQ that helps you sculpt the sound you want. With the help of the tubes the models are very dynamic responsive (very close to a tube amp) and for the perfect sound you should really incoporate your guitar's controls. Unlike other units, the cabinet emulation follows a different approach as it does not model popular cabinets but instead it respects the sound of the choosen preamp and places it in a 'real space' giving it a deeper character. This way your patches sound much more uniform and you can concentrate on things that really matter, and the sounds you make will sound the same no matter if you hear it through an Guitar Amp, a Guitar Cabinet or a PA, which is great. I know that it sounds good on paper when you can choose between 30 cab models but at the end of the day it's just counter-productive, i mean if your want the sound of a VOX AC30 that is what you want and there's no point in passing it through a Peavey cabinet, is there?

The rest of the effects are fairly good and very guitar oriented with the reverbs being the best amongst them. There are a lot to choose from but if you're serius about your playing you'll stick to classics. One of the most interesting though is the Z-oscillator which transforms your guitar into a theremin and with careful performance you can have amazing results.
The best feature of this product are the 3 pedals (2 horizontal and 1 vertical) that let you control in real time varius aspects of your sound. Each pedal can control up to 4 parameters of your modules so if you're really into FX you can make beautiful moving soundscapes.
Overall this unit is much better than BOSS GT-8, POD LIVE XT and even VOX Tonelab (except the amazing reverse delay) and comes at a killer price so i recommend it 100% without second thought.

Well, this has to be the best bang for buck out there right now. Very high quality sound capture - easily up there with professional machines costing way way more. Impressive list of "added-extra" features - phantom power, mic modelling, effects, four-track bouncing, etc. Not to mention the totally briliant Cubase Lite bundled.

I'm expecting my 4GB SD to be compatible so long as a single take doesn't exceed 2GB - no doubt firmware upgrades will take care of this in due course.

So it's got to be a 9.

Now the cons:

Lots of handling noise means you can't use it as a handheld interview mic.
Excellent built-in condensers but high proximity effect - however switch on the limiter and forget overloads.
Cheap cheesy feel. Flimsy battery/SD compartment cover.

Nothing really serious, mind - and balanced against the totally pro sound quality overall I think Zoom got this right for the price. Very happy with mine.

I just got the b2 and have been very impressed with range of sounds and amount of control over the effects. The sound quality is excellent.I will use it for recording to computer and it seems well suited for this, as opposed to adding effects to a dry sound, I have not played it through an amp yet but would expect good results . Also for rehearsing etc you just plug in headphones. At this price you cant go wrong.I have had other Zoom products in the past and have always been pleased with them.

I recieved the H4 late last week and after the initial excitement had passed i opened up the box and found a well packaged H4, usb lead, windshield, tripod fitting and mains adapter. I wanted to hear some recordings from the H4 in as many different environments as possible as its uses for me will not be strictly fixed. So i attached the plastic tripod attachment via the velcro straps which seem to hold the unit together fairly well. I then set-up the H4 in a science class at the back of the room. The menu and set-up functions are pretty simple so it won't take you long to get the H4 up and running, especially in stereo mode. Once you have selected the recording format that you require its pretty much a case of setting the levels (or it can be done automatically - which is fairly effective) then pressing the record button twice and away you go. I was really really impressed with the quality and precsion of the recording i got back. Very detailed, despite all that was going on in the room. I then tested the unit on a few one on one interview recordings. Again the H4 passed with flying colours, both in terms of detail and ease of use. When trying to extract all the files from the H4 back to my laptop, i decided to install the bundled software and found that it was incredibly easy to set-up as both mass storage device and as an audio interface. All in all I am very impressed with the Zoom H4 and its ability to cover a number of tasks and all for an excellent price. Great for all sorts of musicians, broadcasters and sound fx hunters. The only criticism i have for the H4 is the fiddly buttons down the side and the plastic nature of the body; but for the price you can hardly grumble.