Re: questions for one and all

["T.W. Hartnett" <hartnett.t@apple.com>]

>sorry to bring up the zoom 508 again, but...
>if you were to pony up for the expression pedal to go with it, what
>parameters are controlable by it? 

As far as I can tell, you can only control the mix level of the dry and 
wet signals with the expression pedal.  You can also hook a momentary 
switch up to activate the hold feature (much easier for me than 
simultaneously hitting both of the pedal mounting switches at the same 
time).  I didn't expect to be able to assign the pedal to those features, 
but once I saw that they'd bothered to include the jack for the mix 
level, it did prompt me to wonder why not make it assignable.

feedback, delay level, delay time? is it's
>output true stereo? could delays be panable? i have for a while been
>considering two parallel signal chains fed by a panning pedal allowing me 
>to
>mix (or ultimately choose one of) two considerably different sounds on the
>fly-kind of the poor man's morphing, only not so processor
>dependent/intensive. 

There is a stereo tap and ping-pong setting for the delays and the 
reverb/echo, but no panning.  For the 508 you should be thinking 
4-second, programable, tapable delay pedal, with a built in tuner.    
It's a simple pedal with more memory than ANY other pedal I know of, at 
that price point.  That I believe is it's selling point.  It's not as 
rugged as the Boss pedals, but it's costs half as much, is programmable, 
and has four-seconds of delay.  

Again, this is a pedal I would strongly recommend to someone who wants to 
get into looping and already has a pedal-based guitar setup.  For $150 
(including the adaptor), you've got a good taste of a whole new world of 
sound.  If you want to get a JamMan or Echoplex later, the 508 is still 
extremely useful as a floor-based unit to use in real time.  You can't 
twiddle the knobs in realvtime, a la Belew in '80's King Crimson, but it 
is programable, so you could have a four second looper, a four-tap volume 
swell sound, slap-back echo, soloing delay, etc available without having 
to bend over and mess with the knobs.  Remember, the delay time is also 
tapable.

No it's not perfect, and we're all somewhat spoiled in our rising 
expectations for gear flexibility, but I still say the 508 is a great 
starter unit or addition to anyone's looping rig, even with it's 
limitations.  I've gotten years and years of enjoyment out of a plain 3.6 
second rack mount, non-programmable delay--I anticipate years of use from 
the Zoom.

Travis Hartnett