GFX-5 Review

The GFX-5 lets you emulate the sound of legendary guitar amps and famous effect pedals with extraordinary accuracy. From vintage combo to modern high-gain amp, you can experience them all. The GFX-5 also has an acoustic simulator with three variations that will change your electric guitar in a great-sounding to an acoustic.

Ease of Use:	8.3
Sound:	8.7
Reliability:	8.5
Impression:	8.5
Overall rating:	8.5
Users rating:	7.5
Comments:	7

Featured review by: unregistered, on september 28, 2005

Price paid: $ 327.57

Purchased from: Hickies, Reading

Ease of Use: Plugging in of cables is excellent, the sockets are spread conveniently but not too far apart across the rear of the unit. The on/off button is an excellent slide, which cannot be turned off accidently as it is quite stiff, but not too bad. The power supply cable goes through a clip to prevent loss of power on stage. Very useful. Also has battery power. Editing patches can be done easier with other pedals due to the number of knobs on them, where as buttons are used for the GFX-5. However, once you get used to it, it's really easy. There is excellent foot control, and the LCD display is superb, far better than Line 6 stuff. // 7

Sound: I use a 1989 Fender Mex Custom strat into my Laney MXD-120 Twin amp (also reviewed here), and run the pedal thru the FX loop. This means that I can either use the pedal or the standalone amp, depending on the tone I'm after. It also means I can use stomp boxes between guitar and amp for other songs. It has very good sound quality, and lots of variety. The gain knob can create lots of noise, but Zoom's ZNR is excellent for getting rid of this, the D-Gate can offer various levels of protection while still giving out the intended distortion, but does sometimes crackle. Every effect you can want is available, and you can create a sim of virtually any amp, for instance you can have a clean, warm Fender combo amp, and turn the knob, press a few buttons and you have a high gain screaming Marshall Valve Stack at full volume. The FX are good quality, only down side being you can only use one at a time. // 9

Reliability & Durability: I would depend on this pedal for sure at a gig. It is built with a clear intention for road use, using a strong metal base, and a tough expression pedal. However, I would use a flight case before packing it for any length of time in the back of a transit van. I use it through an FX loop, with my guitar going via a series of stomp boxes before it reaches the amp, so if my pedal ever cut out back-up is at hand. It has a battery low indicator so if it's getting low your gonna know about it. // 10

Impression: I play mainly rock based stuff, the large variety of distortion is highly appropriate. It is great for mixed abilites as I bought it as a new guitarist but still play it now. If I were to lose it, I would probably buy a Line 6 Pod XT Live as it is much better quality, or I might choose a Vox Valvetronix piece 'o' kit. It's generally an excellent piece of kit. // 9

overall: 7.8

Reviewed by: ¤TabMaster¤, on november 27, 2008

Price paid: $ 250

Purchased from: 8th Street Music

Ease of Use: Well, first off I really like this pedal for the most part. It does what it says it does, sometimes the sound does sound a bit "digital" but you can hardly notice it. This thing turned my $70 practice amp into a amp I can actually crank and get a decent sound out of. I love the noise reduction feature this pedal has, it really make all that white noise go away. Creating patches is really easy as well, all you have to do is turn a few nobs to get the sound you want and click the "save patch" button. // 9

Sound: I'm using a $70 practice amp and a very cheap strat copy (Hammer Slammer. This pedal made my setup sound pretty decent, some of the effects are pretty useless but the distortion is very good. it's still pretty hard to copy some artists sounds, but you could get it pretty close. The noise reduction on this pedal is great, I can crank my amp and it just starts to make a little white noise. The clean channel and the reverb's could be a bit better, but overall this is a pretty good sounding unit. // 9

Reliability & Durability: haha here is the catch, this pedal has a mind of it's own, I'll be playing something and then all of the sudden it will change the patches while I'm playing. It gets really annoying at times, but it's good for practice I guess. One thing is for sure though, I would NOT use this for a gig. When your patch changes randomly from the patch you are on, it's never a good thing. I would take your $250 and get a little nicer pedal. Sure, the general construction of this is all metal, but it doesnt't really matter since it still changes your patches by itself. // 6

Impression: I play anything from AC/DC to Metallica. I am a really big fan of high gain stuff. and this pedal does a good job giving me that high gain, when it doesnt't change my patch on me. I've been playing guitar somewhere between 1 1/2 to 2 years. If this pedal was stolen I really doubt I would buy the same one again, it would be a really nice pedal if it didn't change your sound on you. I love the all metal construction, and how easy it is to edit and save patches. My favorite feature is probably all the different distortion tones you can get out of this thing. // 7

overall: 7.5

Reviewed by: zilie5555, on june 11, 2007

Purchased from: camcole

Ease of Use: I personally like the GFX-5 because he's so easy to use. he has 2 buttons to Switch a bank up or down and 3 buttons to Switch patches within the current bank. very easy to use. You have 120 patches. User patches and preset patches. Only the user patches can be edited. Editing patches is easy. You have the effect module where you can toggle effects on or of with one button. With the edit button you can edit every effect. The GFX-5 has an expression pedal. With this you can control several things: WAH, pitch, mod, gain, reverb, volume and the sampler. very usefull. It also has an internal drum Machine which can generate up to 60 paterns. In the Drive module you can choose 11 effects. (acoustic, metal, fuzz, distortion, Overdrive, Zoom, hi-gain, clean, BG, MS, FDR) It also has a turbo and an edge button to have an even better control. Connecting is easy. The inputs are good. It has a clip for the power cable to make sure he wouldn't get loose. The GFX-5 contains an operation manual in several languages. They are well explained, with a very usefull patchlist at the back. // 8

Sound: The sound I get is superb! I use an Ibanez EDR470EX. and a Fender amp. When I use distortion I do notice a litle noise. The effects are great and fully adjustable. You can use the energize knob to adjust the sound to the room you're in. The wah-wah is great to. // 7

Reliability & Durability: The GFX-5 is very durable. It's made out of metal. A negative point is that he doesn't work well at cold temteratures. This can be a problem in the winter. When you are going to play a gig make sure it doesn't get to cold for the GFX-5. Keep it warm. This has no effect on the sound. // 7

Impression: My overall impression is that the Zoom GFX-5 is ideal for stage performances. I play rock songs and I can't imagine a life without it. It has so much to offer. I play it for 2 years and I'm not changing soon. It sounds great. // 8

overall: 9

Reviewed by: Radius_Vector, on june 05, 2006

Price paid: $ 200

Ease of Use: I bought this pedal around 7 months back. I didn't find the factory made presets any good, and was rather put down by them, but the versatility of the effects and their tweaking abilities makes up for it. Careful tweaking can really get you a great sound. I play rock, metal, shred, and styles of Indian music. I've replaced almost all the factory presets with my own tweaked ones, and I'm more than happy with this. // 8

Sound: I'm using a Korean made strat ripoff (not very high end), and a Vox Valvetronix amp. The unit can sometimes produce high levels of gain, but the Zoom Noise Reduction there is a god send and it works like a charm. I'm not sure if you can emulate other artists with this since I'm more into original music, but good tweaking should get you there. The ARRM effect is good, and I specifically enjoy the Wah. The pitch bender sounds very digital and artificial, but it's still there to get you some cool sounds. I don't like the EQ on this unit though, it doesn't seem to help much. For this, I bought myself a Boss 7 band EQ stompbox, which really helps. // 9

Reliability & Durability: It's made of metal, I've dropped it through 10 feet and it's still solid and working great. You can depend on it for the hardest of gigs, and more over it just requires 4 batteries, as opposed to the others which use 6+. // 10

Impression: I have been playing for around 2 years and I really dig this product. If it was stolen, I'd probably go in for individual stompboxes since nothing beats their sound, apart from castrating the bastard Who stole it. I love the wah, and the overal 'tweak-ability' of the unit, and the amp modelling is also handy. It's not a very good buy for the beginner who doesn't know much about effects, since a lot of tweaking is required, but if you can overcome that, you will love the GFX-5. // 9

Reviewed by: unregistered, on june 20, 2005

Price paid: $ 272.67

Purchased from: Soundslive.co.uk

Ease of Use: The GFX-5 has 75 preset effects to start off with, so as soon as you get it out of the box you can get an excellent sound out of it. The effects are arranged in groups of three, the group controlled by the two left-hand pedals and the singular effect modes by the 1. 2. 3. pedals in the centre. The expression pedal is perfectly weighted and allows easy control for both volume and wah effects. Editing patches couldn't be more simple, by pressing the "edit" button you can change any of the modes needed for your desired effect, having up to 10 modes played simultaneously. You can then easily store the effect in any place you need without fear of delelting any other effect. The manual, to be honest is needlessle complicated, I never used it and have already worked out the pedal myself, being able to get any song a desire from it with ease. // 10

Sound: Currently I'm using the GFX-5 in combination with a Fender Strat but I have also experimented around with a Gibson Les Paul borrowed from a friend. Both guitars, when combined with my Line 6 Spider II amp and the effects pedal give great sounds. The effects pedal even allows you to change between 30 amp models as well as the the 75 preset effects, meaning if you don't have a fantastic guitar or amp, you can get a pretty awesome sound out of it. All of the preset and custom patches sound great with the exception of an effect called U-Fuzz which to be honest sounds awful, the others cannot be faulted and if you so wish you can re-create sounds from bands from al sides of music, from the Chili Peppers to Matchbox 20 to Dave Gilmour to The Killers. The flange and phase effects are probably my favourite two effects on the pedal purely because of the depth of which you can change them. The range of distortion models and gain you can change is ming boggling, giving you as much or as little as you could ever need. // 10

Reliability & Durability: Since the pedal is made from solid steel, it is 100% durable, it could probably survive a fall from an aircraft, however, this does make the GFX-5 quite heavy, which could be seen as a problem. I have never seen any problem with the pedal, the only problem I have had is that the adaptor connectors (no bought with the pedal) occasionaly come loose, but this has been fixed because I purchased a new adaptor, so it was nto a problem with the pedal itself. I'd never use anything without a backup, purely because any freak accident could happen, but this pedal comes close to changing my mind, even so I have not had it for a year yet, so problems could emerge in the future, this is the only reason it gets a four not a five rating. // 8

Impression: I play pretty much all types of rock, but mostly I play music from bands such as Matchbox 20, the Chili Peppers and Green Day, which are pretty disimilar. This shows the variety of the pedal's effects and amp models. Becasue the GFX-5 has no determined style, it can be used by anyone for anything, making it even more useful. It my GFX-5 was lost or stolen I would certainly buy a new one, I can now not imagine playing without it, the only problem being the £149 price tag, which although is good value for this piece of kit, it is stil a lot of money to spend. Make sure you only bu one if you are serious about playing. Originally I was going to buy a 707II guitar effects pedal, but they had been discontinued so I instead bought this stomp box version. I am now very glad the 707II had been discontinued! The effects pedal does not really need anything added to it, but if I was to be really critical I suppose it would be useful if you could play some effects such as flange and tremolo simutaneously. luckily, with my SpiderII amp I can do this anyway, but it would stuill be useful if the GFX-5 could do it alone. I have now been playing for about 3 years and am currently in "Jamming Sessions" for a possible future band, the effects pedal has already come in useful for getting unique sounds for our own material and will undoubtedly come in more useful in the future. // 10

overall: 8.5

Reviewed by: thegenerator, on march 28, 2005

Purchased from: The Rock Inn, Mount Lawley (Perth)

Ease of Use: It takes a while to get used to the layout of the setup if you're used to stompboxes (as I am, I've been using 10 of them for about 2 years now) but once thats out of the way, the task of getting a decent sound is as easy as anything. The presence and energy controls allow a veryd etailed control of the sound's power (allowing both rolled back levels if using as a rhythm-based patch and giving more energy to leads) and the EQ is nice and accurate. Editing patches, once knowledged, is very easy to do, clear layouts on the actual pedal, seperate effect parameter leds and controls mean that it takes very little work to edit a patch. It only takes me around 10 seconds to readjust a delay patch from a huge ranging reverb to a short slap-back echo. The manual was easy to understand, though you definitely learn more from experience of using it rather than reading it. It explains some of the more complex functions of the multifx (hold delay utilising the sampler) in terms that make it very simple. // 8

Sound: I use this multi-FX in my practice rig at home and in small gigs where the stompboxes aren't really convinient. I run a Gibson Melody Maker with a Seymour Duncan Hot P90 Stack pickup through the GFX-5 into either a Laney 65W XCore solid-state combo or a Fender Frontman 25R. It is occasionally noisy, especially on the fuzz settings (well, what do you expect? It's fuzz), but the Zoom Noise Reduction function on this pedal is a godsend. It controls the noise amount rather thoroughly and is adjustable so that if you want, you can roll it back and allow a bit of noise but keep some more of the tone. Its a very useful function, especially on this unit.

The effects range in their quality. I especially like the sweep of the wah, especially when utilising the ARRM control (more on that in a moment) but some others, like the Pitch bend (Whammy) are quite digital and unrealistic. The Overdrive and distortion functions, when combined with the cabinets and reverb banks, are surprisingly very realistic and sound very nice. The ARRM control is an automatic real-time modulation feature that basically acts to adjust the parameters for you, like using the pedal as an expression pedal but it does it for you. As such, if you use the pedal at the same time, you can get double-modulation and it opens up a whole new load of possibilities.

It has a few artist patches, but I dont really use them to try and play artists' styles. I find that self-programming patches seems to work better in those respects. The effetcs I mainly use this for are the reverberation module, Overdrive, sound-shaping (re-equalisation & energy/presence controls) and occasionally a wah. These are all excellent on this multi-fx, as are the tremolo and the vibrato functions. Unfortunately, the pitch bend in particular, and others like ring modulation sound unnecessarily weird and unrealistic. If you were using this to play stuff like shred, you'd probably want to invest in a stompbox phaser and Whammy pedal, because this won't do you too good. // 8

Reliability & Durability: I can depend on it, it's made of metal, never drops out on my power supply and is easy to control to do what I want it to. A backup would be very, very weird considering it's a multi-FX, but it would be completely unnecessary in this case. // 10

Impression: I've been playing about 5 or so years, and this pedal matches the indie and blues stuff I mainly stick to. It'll never match the Marshall Shredmaster, Visual Sound Jekyll And Hyde or Boss Chorus Ensemble I use at gigs, but it's very good for a practice rig at home where it's about ease rather than excessive quality. It's a very nice sounding pedal on most settings, but I could probably use another pedal for a pitch-bend if I was to use it. Compared to the GFX-8, it's a very good buy. I would have bought the GFX-8 has I had the extra money on me, but this serves me just as well; it's cheaper, and has exactly the same functions except for an extra patch bank and a few extra effects (synth etc). I definitely recommend you play before you buy, because it's a very hit and miss kinda thing depending on which styles you play and as such which effects you'll use. // 8

Comments

[gumbloid]

I use a Gibson Les Paul Special (faded) and a Roland Cube 60 amp with this effects board. It suits my purpose and I love the versatility

[Out of Exile]

Is the pitch-bender of the GFX-5 or Zoom Products in general better than the Digitech Whammy?

[mannyfresh]

I own this pedal.
Sometimes it starts switching effects at random while im playing!
It started doing this right after the 1 yr. warranty ended.
Does anyone else have this problem?

[mannyfresh]

Out of Exile wrote:

Is the pitch-bender of the GFX-5 or Zoom Products in general better than the Digitech Whammy?

NNOOOOOooo
the gfx 5 has low bit rate sound quality sometimes making it sound "digitized" coming out ur amp

[letterkills]

seriously, should i get this or the Zoom G2.1u? which one sound better? thanks
i'd love the g7.1ut..but its too expensive...

[allanex65]

I sold my GFX-5 and picked up a GNX3000. The sooner I realized that the GNX3000 is so lame compared to the GFX-5, I switched back. Now I'm happy. The only thing I regretted was that I dumped my old GFX-5 for a unit that is created by hype. Don;t be fooled. Get a Zoom instead of a GNX3000

[Black Label93]

allanex65 wrote:

I sold my GFX-5 and picked up a GNX3000. The sooner I realized that the GNX3000 is so lame compared to the GFX-5, I switched back. Now I'm happy. The only thing I regretted was that I dumped my old GFX-5 for a unit that is created by hype. Don;t be fooled. Get a Zoom instead of a GNX3000

test before buying folks, that is your lesson for today.