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Zoom B3 - HELP!


MJE
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I've posted this on an older thread, but thought it might be better to create a new one to hopefully get some help

I've had a B3 for a while now and never really sat and used it to it's full potential. Essentially, it's been a glorified tuner... 

I'm just recently getting to grips with it, but I'm not really sure I fully understand the concept - I'm looking for an expert to help me out!

- Can you only access three pedals at a time?

- If I'm on a patch and I turn off all three pedals, am I back to a completely dry signal?

- How does the bank function work? Is it just me that can't seem to press the two pedals simultaneously?! Does the bank function mean that you can access more than 3 pedals within one patch? So essentially you can keep the clean amp sim sound and the move between other effects such as wah, octave if/when needed during a set list?

- Can you only overwrite pre-loaded patches to create your own? Is there no option to go past J9 and create K0, 1, 2, 3 etc?

Any help greatly appreciated so I can finally get some proper use out of this machine.  

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18 minutes ago, MJE said:

I've posted this on an older thread, but thought it might be better to create a new one to hopefully get some help

I've had a B3 for a while now and never really sat and used it to it's full potential. Essentially, it's been a glorified tuner... 

I'm just recently getting to grips with it, but I'm not really sure I fully understand the concept - I'm looking for an expert to help me out!

- Can you only access three pedals at a time?

- If I'm on a patch and I turn off all three pedals, am I back to a completely dry signal?

More or less - but I think you'd still be going through the B3's input buffer and global volume control

- How does the bank function work?

It's just a quicker way to skip past lots of presets at once. If you think of the letters as numbers instead, preset A0 becomes 00, A1 becomes 01, B0 becomes 10, B1 becomes 11 etc... so if you wanted to jump from preset 01 to preset 11 you could just go up a bank  rather than going up 10 presets individually.

Is it just me that can't seem to press the two pedals simultaneously?!

I never had too much trouble with it, but I've got big feet. 

Does the bank function mean that you can access more than 3 pedals within one patch?

Not on the B3. The hardware would be capable of it - the G3 got a firmware update which let you have 6 effects in one patch, but they never updated the B3 in the same way.

So essentially you can keep the clean amp sim sound and the move between other effects such as wah, octave if/when needed during a set list?

That's not what banks are for, no. You could just copy a preset with your clean amp sim sound to another preset, and then change the other effects within it though.

- Can you only overwrite pre-loaded patches to create your own? Is there no option to go past J9 and create K0, 1, 2, 3 etc?

Any help greatly appreciated so I can finally get some proper use out of this machine. 

You can't change the number of presets available, but you could hook the Zoom up to a computer and use Zoom's Edit & Share  (or ToneLib Zoom) software to back up presets you don't want to lose permanently.

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14 minutes ago, stoo said:

 

 

More or less - but I think you'd still be going through the B3's input buffer and global volume control

 

 

It's just a quicker way to skip past lots of presets at once. If you think of the letters as numbers instead, preset A0 becomes 00, A1 becomes 01, B0 becomes 10, B1 becomes 11 etc... so if you wanted to jump from preset 01 to preset 11 you could just go up a bank  rather than going up 10 presets individually.

 

 

I never had too much trouble with it, but I've got big feet. 

 

 

Not on the B3. The hardware would be capable of it - the G3 got a firmware update which let you have 6 effects in one patch, but they never updated the B3 in the same way.

 

 

That's not what banks are for, no. You could just copy a preset with your clean amp sim sound to another preset, and then change the other effects within it though.

 

 

Thanks for your help, you've explained a lot in a way that I can understand! 

So if I understand it correctly, if I'm looking to use this in a live show environment as an amp sim with additional stompboxes for certain tunes...

I need to build a series of patches which have an amp sim as a constant with two pedals either side which are closely related in a certain song/set list and move between them accordingly. Using the Edit and Share software I can then place the patches next to each other for ease.

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