MS-70CDR MultiStomp Chorus / Delay / Reverb Pedal Review

Best multi FX pedal available for the price. Period.

I was wondering to give it 4.5 stars, but went for the 5 stars after I wrote the title of the review. As far as multi FX pedals go, this one is the the best in its price range and with a margin. I use this pedal with my synthesizers and I find it superb for this purpose. I am even considering getting another one or even two. Granted, the reverbs are not the best in the world, but… read more they are still very good. And no, the chorus is not comparable with analogue chorus effects, but again they are still very good nonetheless. There seem to be people struggling with the menus. I don't. I find it all extremely straightforward. Yes, you will need to read the manual, if you don't then you potentially could get lost. There are some people who seem to think that you cannot switch off entire effect chains, but that is not true, you can. Again, the manual explains this very clearly. There is a special effect called Line Select. By switching off the Line Select with the foot switch, all effects downstream from it will switch off also. This is a really neat feature, because it means you can decide which effects should switch off and which should remain switched on. The only minor issue I have with the pedal is that there is no manual way to set the BPM or a live syncing feature to sync the timed effects. That said, using the ms adjustment works well enough, and this certainly changes my mind about how good this box is. If you use synthesizers and are really interested to see how this sounds and how to get the best out of the MS-70CDR, I recommend you search on YouTube for a channel called Waveformer. He uses this pedal extensively and has various tutorials on how to get various effects. Highly recommended.

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Love this

As you can tell by all the other reviews it's a fun and versatile pedal. No it's not analog but for the amount of fx you get and the ability to stack those fx this became my go to instead of VST plugins. There's plenty of user created presets around the web. Some users have even mimicked other pedals. You can arecreate pedals that are twice as expensive. It just takes some knowledge… read more of signal chains, experimentation, and a bit of patience.

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Zoom MS-70CDR

This is one of the best effects pedal I have used, It is small and powerful, Does 6 effects at once and also has a Noise gate that works great. I run this through my effects loop on a Jet City JC50C and it works perfect.

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Download the manual and the effects details sheets...they help a lot

I generally agree with the other rave reviews, so need to go over all that. Very satisfied. I just want to advise anyone buying it to go to the Zoom website and download all the info for this unit, because it'll really help you. There's definitely a learning curve involved to figure out how to edit effects, combine different effects together, name your patches, etc. Once you get… read more it down it's pretty easy to use, but it takes some time and practice to figure out how it works. I think the only players who wouldn't like this pedal are the gear snobs who figure their pedalboard won't look cool enough with a Zoom pedal on it. Their loss ! This unit holds its own with any other mod pedals out there, at a price you can't beat. If your pedal board is tight on space like mine is, this really is the only mod/delay/reverb unit you need. It covers all the bases and you can tweak the effects all you want.

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Killer Drones

If you're into making a racket with synths, samplers, and other such electrical machinery, this pedal can't be beat for the price. I wish I had known about it years ago. It has instantly become a centerpiece in my setup as I'm finally getting some new and exciting sounds since forever. I'll probably buy another one at some point. I've mostly been using it with Blackbox, which… read more is a pretty stellar combination. I have it set up as an FX send/return so I can dink around with patches and resample the sounds for further processing/sequencing. Not many better ways to kill time during a pandemic. My opinion: 1) Sound quality - An Eventide it is not. But it makes some mental sounds that I'm not sure any other FX pedal in this price range can touch. I mostly use the reverbs and delays, which are perfect for my needs (the spring and plate are nice on a 303, but the spring doesn't sound anything like a spring is supposed to; it has its own flavor that I quite like). A few of the delays can be used like a rudimentary looper if you're into that sort of thing (Smooth Delay and Stomp Dly are my current favorites for that). I wouldn't call it lush sounding but you can coax some pretty cozy sounds out of it. It's great for drones. If you're used to fancy pedals that sound expensive, try before you buy. If you're into experimenting and coming up with new sounds to sample & process then this thing will be your pal. 2) Usability - Super easy to learn and navigate but I'm the kind of person who RTFM. Not too menu-divey; you're usually only one page away from where you want to go. It hasn't made me swear once. Well, I said WTF a couple times but it was a cheer. 3) Build quality - It's in a metal case so that's good. I worry about the longevity of the encoders. Those buggers always go wonky after too much twiddling, and too much twiddling this thing will get. I saw someone on ebay selling one with a cracked screen so that's a thing. I'm also not super confident in the push buttons & stomp switch but time will tell. It seems solid out of the box though (but a reminder: it's not an Eventide). 4) Power - This thing can be powered three ways: 2 AA batteries, USB, or wall wart. I'm building a battery powered setup so this is a key reason I bought it. Beware that it can suffer from the dreaded USB whine if you're not careful. I tried powering it from the USB host port on both Blackbox and MPC Live and "whheeeeeeee" it went like I stepped on its toe. This isn't necessarily a fault with the unit; USB noise just happens if you're not doing it right. I have other USB gear that can whine too. Sounds fine on AA batteries, USB power supply, and USB battery brick. I haven't tried powering it with a wall wart but I don't see the need with all the phone chargers I have sitting around. There's a lot of fun here in a small, mobile package. 5) Sync - This is the only real problem area for me. You can only sync via tap tempo. That's it. You can't dial in the tempo using an encoder and there is no clock or MIDI in. Tempo can only be set in integers, so you can't set a tempo of 66.6 BPM. The good news is most of the delays and a few other time-based FX can be synced via tap tempo. So far I've not had a problem hitting the target (you can tap either the stomp switch or an encoder–the encoder has been more accurate for me). You can also set the units with an encoder (like 8th notes or whatever) so that's handy (heads-up: the time units are hidden way at the top of the dial, easy to miss). I've read that the USB port does have some MIDI capability–like you can use CCs to engage the tuner and change patches–but it doesn't take MIDI clock. That would be a sweet firmware update, Zoom. 6) Changing patches - I've seen some noodlers complain about the way you have to change patches on the unit–I guess their hands are busy–so if you're a guitar player you might not like this thing for live use if you need to play footsie with it. I've seem some third-party switches for it that solve that problem though. But for my setup the patch change buttons are preferred. That said, it is a bit of a drag scrolling through 137 FX but they're at least organized by category (reverbs, delays, etc.), which gets you there a lot faster. In the end, great pedal for sound design and experimentation at relatively little cost. To make it better I would add 1) MIDI or clock sync and 2) A soft touch momentary button instead of the stomp switch.

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