Zoom B1on Bass Effects Pedal

I have to preface this glowing review for the Zoom B1on with an admission - I'm not a "real" bass player. I have about 20 years of guitar experience and really enjoy playing, researching, and reviewing every guitar-related gadget imaginable, but my bass experience is limited to a single Squier P-Bass and as much knowledge/ability as I might need to lay down a bass track for something I'm recording at home. So I can't represent that I understand the nuances between this bass effects unit and a $2,000 bass rig.Fortunately, at $49.99, Zoom has made a quality product here that allows me to cycle through thousands of dollars of gear (as easily as changing to the next preset) and sound great through a set of headphones. At present, I don't have a bass combo amp at my house, but if you do, I've heard the B1on sounds great as a tone shaper/effects unit into the front end of your amp.Compared to the excellent G1on (for guitar), I found the factory presets on the B1on to be infinitely more practical and useful. A lot of bass tones can sound "same-ish" to the untrained ear, but the B1on assembles a great suite of varied amp models, plus effects that range from simple compression and overdrive to wild synth and octave effects. If you want straightforward rock bass tones, the B1on has dozens of them. If you want crazy, fuzzed-out, sustaining notes that sound more like an analog synthesizer playing a distorted square wave, the B1on can do that too. Best of all, there's a pretty effective noise gate/suppressor included, so even the most effects-laden tones remain relatively quiet and functional.BUILD QUALITY/INTERFACE - Zoom is really it's own worst enemy when it comes to the aesthetics of their devices. I remember the first time I saw the G1on, I scrolled right past it and didn't even pay attention to the features. I was certain that this $50 piece of plastic out of the mid-90's had to be a piece of garbage. It wasn't until I did some more research and (ultimately) tried one for myself that I realized how much technology was crammed under the hood. And, actually, once you acclimate yourself to the interface, I find both the G1on and B1on to be fairly durable and easy to program. There's a great 30-second looper that time-syncs with the programmed drum patterns, and it's better-implemented than units I've tried from DigiTech and other companies costing 3 times as much. The colored knob turns in notched increments, so it's fairly predictable if you have to skip over three pedals to the right, for example, to adjust a gain or EQ setting. Best of all, all of your changes auto-save, so if you find that preset is too loud and fix it, you won't have to do that a second time.RECORDING/DI FUNCTIONALITY - I want clarify one thing about the output and recording functionality of the B1on, since I still had some questions after reading the other reviews. The B1on, unlike the more-expensive B3, does not operate as a USB audio interface. The USB jack is strictly for firmware updates, and cannot send/receive audio. There is only one "output" jack on the device, which is a 1/4" instrument cable. This can be fed to the front end of a combo amp, or to headphones with a 1/4" adapter. HOWEVER, the output is not "line level" in the sense that it is meant to go directly into a mixer or recording device. In other words, you should think of the B1on as an effects pedal that does modeling and tone shaping, but it is not a "preamp", and will require additional amplification before you send it to a power amp or mixer.That being said, there are workarounds that allow you to record with the B1on quite easily. If you have an interface that is already designed to accept instrument level signal (such as the Apogee JAM for iOS devices), then you can run the B1on in front of that like a simple effects pedal and end up with a raw audio signal that includes all of the amp and cabinet models in that signal. Alternatively, I believe you could run the B1on into a preamp/DI box like the $30 Behringer BDI21, and then run that pedal into a mixer or interface, and that should generally work too. These options won't be as "clean" or "authentic" as using a true DI or USB Audio solution, but it's completely functional for my needs.CONCLUSION - I think the Zoom B1on is a outstanding unit that could be useful to a broad range of musicians. If you're an experienced bass player with some decent gear, it seem pretty likely that you could find $50 of value out of the dozens of effects and different sounds offered by the B1on. Even if you aren't much of a bass player at all, or are just starting out on bass, this is a $50 device that allows you to experience a huge variety of studio-quality tones, practice with headphones, and even play along with drums and a looper without having to commit to buying large bass amp for your home. It even can be used as a bass amp modeler for recording, using a few of the tips/tricks I discussed above. Like it's guitar FX sibling, the B1on is an impossible value, producing beautiful sounds from a less-than-beautiful plastic enclosure.

Original Review - 1 StarDefective out of the box. Powering on, I get a faint, fuzzy static for all features. Disappointed. Troubleshooting and a reset produced no results.June 19 Update - 4 StarsAn update. Amazon return/replacement is fast and convenient. As soon as I contacted Amazon Returns, they provided a link that allowed the printing of a return slip. This was during a weekend, but on Monday UPS picked up the defective item. The very next day UPS delivered the new, replacement Zoom.Amazon has been great, to say the least.About the Zoom ... I don't typically have need for an effects pedal, but I bought the Zoom because I specifically wanted two effects: polyphonic octaving and delay.The various amps and distortions are great, as well as the overdrive and chorus, and I will use them, but I really wanted polyphonic octaving to give the bass an 8 string effect (octave up, not down) for some songs. Happily, Zoom can do this (up or down). While not a perfect emulation, it certainly sounds good, which is good enough for my purposes not wanting to spend $1000 or more on an 8 string guitar. The delays aren't exactly what I'd hoped for (even the lowest settings are too long for what I wanted), but happily the Zoom has a fretless effect which turned out to be almost exactly the sound that I was looking for. So, well done to Zoom, especially for less than $75.The musicians who developed the patches obviously put a lot of thought into them. Many of the clean and distortion patches (along with the amp effects by themselves) are so similar that one has to have a discriminating ear to favor one over another, especially when heard through a combo amp or cabinet (like my Peavey and Behringers). Listening through headphones is a good idea here because naturally the effect becomes more attenuated when heard through a sound system. That's not Zoom's problem; it's just a fact of life when dealing with sound equipment.Several of the patches do sound goofy and unnecessary, like some of the cheesey 70's disco effects, or the Space Martian-ey sounds, but I assume they were created to demonstrate the versatility of the pedal itself.The ability to use 5 effects at once, and to put them in whatever order you want, adds another order of magnitude of sounds that might be produced. It will be some time before I've had a chance to explore just some of the thousands of permutations this little pedal offers. In fact, between bass, Zoom pedal, and sound system, there is no reason why anybody couldn't create their own sound thumbprint that nobody could ever duplicate.Another plus is that your changes to a particular patch can be saved automatically, or the unit can prompt you whether you want to save it or not. I don't auto save. I'm glad for the option to discard a patch, because my initial impulse is to experiment with every patch I play, and not every experiment goes as planned or needs to be saved.Now, one negative I will mention is that there is no On/Off switch with the Zoom. Why I don't know, but it adds an unnecessary set up step (plugging in somewhere, depending on how you decide to power it) each time it is used. It's not a huge deal but it would be nice just to flip a switch with a foot and play.Another negative is the lack of blank memory space for patches. If you want to save a patch you've created, then you have to overwrite a patch that somebody at Zoom put thought into creating. Losing any patch is a pity. Even if I don't plan to use a patch, like the goofy disco sounding patches, someday I might want to reference them for some reason just to see how the experts created it. A reset would get those patches back, true, so I'll have to save my created patches to a notebook for that possibility.Now, if this had cost $150 or 200, I would be inclined to give Zoom a lower rating because of the negatives mentioned above. The original I received was defective, too.But I didn't pay $150 or 200 for this box, not even close. There are lots of effects, and they sound good. The only limitation to this pedal in the near future is my own imagination. And Amazon got a replacement into my hands within two business days of my reporting a problem. Taking everything into consideration, I can give the Zoom 4 Stars. It's well worth the money.