Recording - September 2010 - 34

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Zoom has been in the business of making guitar effects processors for a fairly long time; the iconic 9002 processor, which introduced the world to the quirky and attention-grabbing Zoom way to shred, was featured on the cover of our November 1991 issue. With the 9002, a full-featured processor that actually attached to a guitar strap for easy access, Zoom put forth the ideas that became its hallmarks: more features for less money, a distinct signature sound, and cool innovations that inspired a lot of guitarists and a fair number of imitators. Maybe that’s why I still think of them as a young upstart company, even after nearly 20 years.

Zoom G2.1Nu Guitar Effects and USB Audio Interface Pedal
More features, more flexibility—and now easier to use than ever
I still rely on the Zoom 505 II (reviewed July 2001) for some of my personal-favorite clean tones when playing live or in the studio, and was impressed with the company’s largest and most powerful processor to date, the G9.2tt (reviewed January 2010). So when the G2.1Nu showed up at our offices, I was curious to see what new innovations it was bringing to the table. As it turns out, I didn’t have to search very far. What you get The G2.1Nu is a mono-in/stereo-out guitar multieffects processor in a compact format, with a short-throw expression pedal built in. (Zoom’s new G2Nu loses the built-in pedal but is otherwise identical.) It offers USB audio interfacing capabilities, a wide variety of the famous Zoom tones, and combines its broad feature set with a new user interface that makes it easy and fun to program. Housed in a rugged metal case with rubberized end caps, the G2.1Nu has all the standard I/O of a modern USB-savvy pedal: 1 /4" TS input, stereo 1/4" TRS output (suitable for headphones or a Y-cable to other gear, or a standard guitar cable to your amp for mono use), a 1/4" TRS Control In jack for an optional footswitch or second pedal, USB port, and input for the included wallwart power supply. The G2.1Nu can be powered from the USB cable, from the wallwart, or by four AA batteries. Four knobs and two rugged footswitches do multiple duties
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depending on where you are in the pedal’s architecture. What it does The G2.1Nu has the following signal chain in its digital processing engine: Comp > EFX > ZNR > Drive > Equalizer > Mod > Delay > Reverb. Each of these eight signal processors, called Modules, works as a virtual stompbox or rack effect, with parameters that can be stored in memory and a variety of effect types. The Drive Module includes a variety of fuzzboxes and amp simulations, 30 in all, including an acoustic simulator; lots of favorites are here. The other Modules offer smaller, but still impressive, sets of choices; the EFX Module includes manual and auto wah, tremolo, etc., and the ZNR (Zoom Noise Reduction) Module offers several flavors of noise reduction and gating. If you just have to have delay in your patches, fear not; you’ll find one delay patch or another in all three of the final Modules, in case you want to use the Delay Module for a fancy tap-tempo effect and still have something global on top of it. For the sake of simplicity and speed of programming, each Module has three adjustable parameters, which are mapped to three Parm knobs on the front of the unit; when a Module must have more than three controls (e.g. the 6-band eq), they’re split up over two screens. And speaking of screens,

users of compact Zoom pedals who have suffered through cryptic 2-digit LED displays over the years will rejoice at the bright backlit LCD screen on the G2.1Nu, which shows patch numbers, patch names, parameter values, and settings with no more manualfumbling or guessing. One of the neatest tricks you can do with this display is to activate Pre-Select mode, where a patch doesn’t activate until you press both footswitches at once; this lets you scroll through patches while playing your current one, with the display clearly showing the old patch number and the new one so you know exactly what you’re about to activate. Ace! The built-in pedal can be mapped to control Volume or one Module in any given Patch, and Zoom has preselected which of the three parameters the pedal will control depending on the effect you choose—a small frustration if you want to use the pedal to control, say, chorus rate rather than wet/dry mix. A firm toe-push clicks a switch to turn the Module being controlled on and off. A wide variety of control possibilities are available from a footswitch or pedal connected to the Control In jack. If you connect a footswitch, you can mute the input, set tap tempo, turn the built-in rhythm machine on and off, or do tricks with the Delay Module like setting the delay to infinite repeat or muting the input while echoes ring out. An expression pedal

Recording - September 2010

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