Zoom Multi Stomp MS-50G

Work Horse

Using for years now, never let me down. Great effects

A severely underappreciated gem!

There is a reason why the Zoom MS-50G MultiStomp has remained on the market for over a decade. Do not let its comparably low price fool you into thinking that it is an amateurish toy. It is not. While its pixelated display and cute icons might make it look like an oversized rectangular Tamagotchi, there is a capable multi-effects unit under the skin. With such respectable specifications as 24-bit analog-to-digital (and vice versa) conversion and 32-bit floating-point signal processing, it can easily keep up with today's best.

Build quality: Unlike some other Zoom multi-effects pedals, the MS-50G is made out of metal. The only plastic parts are the screen, the battery compartment cover, the knobs, and the buttons. Speaking of buttons, they give off a satisfying click and feel sturdy. The knobs, however, do not inspire as much confidence, but they are placed in such a way that stepping on them by accident is highly unlikely. If I wore a hat, I would raise it to the Zoom designers because the layout of the buttons and knobs is nothing short of ingenious!

Handling: The user interface is so intuitive, that I was able to figure it out without a single glance at the included user manual! Truly, it could hardly be made any better: the physical knobs below the pedal's display correspond to the virtual knobs shown on screen, and the buttons surrounding the footswitch are used for navigating the menus. Yes, it is true that the buttons cannot be operated hands-free, but this pedal was designed to save space. For those who need to easily change settings on the fly, there are many times larger Zoom units with multiple footswitches. The settings on the MS-50G are highly customizable, but only if you want to. The menus are cleverly structured in such a way that you do not have to scroll past the settings that you will likely never need every time you want to perform some basic task. In short, the unit does not overwhelm the user with its wide array of options. Yes, the cute pixelated icons might look Tamagotchi-like, but they make it much easier to differentiate one emulation or effect from another than the more serious-looking geometric shapes on the Boss and Line 6 alternatives. I consider myself a visually-oriented person, so to me, Zoom UI is the best. I never need to put on my eyeglasses to read some tiny letters — a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. The only criticism I have in regard to this pedal and its features is that it lacks a headphone jack. It would be great to be able to plug my headphones straight into the unit for practicing at night, for example. But I liked it so much, that I bought its slightly larger sibling, the Zoom G1 Four, which not only has a headphone jack but also a built-in 30-second looper!

Sound quality: Since I mostly play “clean”, I am not the right person to comment on the “dirty” tones, but I will say that the ones I have tried so far did not sound artificial at all. Rather convincing, in fact, especially when used in the mix. The key to success, I think, is to discard all the factory presets (nearly all of which sounded pretty terrible to me, to be fair) and create your own by carefully adjusting each parameter to suit your playing style and instrument. I did exactly that and was shocked by how much better my tone was (to my ears, at least). I think, the reason some people do not like the sound is that they judge it based on the factory presets. Personally, in less than a quarter of an hour, I was able to dial in a pretty spot-on Fender Twin. The same with a Vox AC30. I believe that the main problem here is that we tend to judge equipment based on its price. Just because something is cheap or — God forbid! — digital, does not at all mean that it has to sound worse. Yes, it is lovely to think oneself a gourmet of tone, able to notice the difference between a Duracell and an Energizer battery in a vintage Dunlop Fuzz Face, but is it really worth spending 20% of your life chasing a mere 2% improvement in tone? For me, it is not, so the MS-50G serves me just fine. I look at it as a whole bunch of plug-ins in a box. Give it a try and perform some blind-tests, and it might just surprise you!

Bang for buck

If you are an amateur guitar/bass player this should be your first pedal. You wont regret it ;)

unlimited sound possibilities in a small box - you can't go wrong!

Nice ambient sounds

Very good multi effects pedal, that can give a you a lot of ambient effects, for a small price. Saw this pedal used on someone's youtube channel, that used it for jazz. Really impressing what this little pedal can do.

Wouldn't recommend it for it's drive sounds. Not it's strongest point )

The only thing I miss here is probably a headphones out, for late night playing.

Versatile Little Pedal

This is a great little utility pedal, there are loads of individual effects and amp models to try.

You can chain the FX and amps together or have them on individually.

I have it set as a chorus on my pedalboard and if my amp were to break mid gig, I can easily pull this out and go straight into the PA.

The sounds are easily good enough to get you through a gig.

There are a couple of free patch editors online which make setting your amps and FX rigs much easier than doing it through the interface on the pedal.

As it's only got one footswitch switching between a load of different patches just means you have to keep pressing it until you reach your desired patch.

It's the trade off I suppose, having so much crammed into a pedal the size of a normal Boss stompbox.

It's never going to replace your Helix, but it was never designed to.

You can connect it to a computer and swap around your FX and amp models

It has limited storage space so you have a trade off to make when selecting which FX and amps you want.

It's easy enough to change them but not at a gig.

Overall it's a very useful pedal, loads of FX that are really good, and certainly get you in the ballpark of whatever that model is trying to replicate. It can be used as either a self contained FX board, amp modeller, or both.

Given the price it's definitely worth it for the versatility.

Nice little gem!

Prior to this pedal I owned a Digitech RP360 XP and a Boss Katana amp. Both feature desktop software that you can use to modify their behaviour. That may sound nice but it also a drawback as one may find himself more at his computer than playing guitar. In contrast, the MS-50G has its own simple user interface with a bright screen and computer software is only used to add even more (very useful) effects.

It?s quite easy to operate once you understand its principles: each preset can hold zero to many effects. Just add, move or delete effects to your liking to a preset. Each effect can be switched on or off by the foot switch and the pedal will automatically remember the settings.

Alternatively you can use the foot switch to scroll through presets. To do so you simple assign a letter to a preset. Suppose you have created twenty presets and you want to use 11 through 13 for a certain gig. Simply assign the letter ?a? to preset 11, ?b? to 12 and ?c? to 13. Now you can use the foot switch to scroll through these presets, from ?a? to ?b? to ?c? back to ?a? etc. If you don?t want any effects at all, create an empty preset and assign letter ?d? to it. Now you have three active presets and an ?off? option.

The fun thing about this pedal that is actually invites you to discover new sounds and to experiment. You can even use it as a sampler to get a taste of well-know effects. I like it!

Very Good delays and reverbs, amp sims and dirt boxes not as good

I use this pedal as a tool to tailor my main sound, which derives from a preamp pedal. Aside from the delay and reverb effects, there are some featurs to color your main tone: compressor, EQ, exciter, rock comp, and many others, they all proved to be useable in jamming situations and live gigs.

It is a swiss army knife for guitar players given the number of units to choose from. The modulation effects have very good quality, the amp simulations and distortions are not as good, but for the price and aside from that it's worth the shot.

The Zoom Noise Gate feature is effective for reducing the noise resulted from inside the effects chain created in the MS-50G, but when it comes to high gain pedals stacked into this pedal, or amp distortion, it isn't as effective.

There is an option to switch from one patch to another by putting them in order.

The built in tuner is very practical, and since every guitar player must have one, it is definitely a pro.

If you're looking for an all in one solution, this does the job.

It is easy to use, and well built, I recommend it.

For the price and compactness 10/10

For the sheer size of the device, the features it packs are amazing. I just use it as a stock multistomp to hook up to an amp or whatever speaker is available when practicing, but honestly its a pedal sized multistomp in my pocket all the time. Very handy and well built

Great reverb and delay's and mod effects.

Bought this because i wanted a reverb and delay, and it was cheaper than buying the two separate, and boy did it deliver. The reverb and delays are great, and worth the buy alone. The modulation effects are pretty decent too. All of them highly tweakable, and i really liked the trail option on the reverb's and such.

The amp sims are OK, the distortions and overdrives were really sharp, muddy and digital, unusable for me, but that's not what i bought it for. The two octave effects are really just poor, but the pitch shifter was suprisingly decent. It has a really great boost called the exciter as well, which i always leave on. It also has two usable eq's, but they produce a very noticable hiss.

Pros:

Good sounding highly tweakable Reverbs delays and mod effects.

Good boost, some ok amp sims.

Easy to use.

Good value, has tons of effects, and can be updated or switched out for free using your computer.

Cons:

Bad sounding distortion and overdrives

Tuner is not very accurate

All in all i definitely recommend this great little stompbox to anyone.