Zoom PS-04 recorder kinda reviewed

[mgade]

I'm talking about this one: Zoom PS-04

Check those specs!

Ok, no one will ever convince an owner of a vintage “Tweed” amp, that my little 199 dollars gizmo can out-do his precious baby. And since he can easily tweak tone controls and a number of other factors, it is obvious that any old “tweeder” wont break a sweat beating the PS-04. Speaking about quality of guitar sounds, I have noticed a tendency that any of the many effects offered by said gadget, sort of cancels the guitar you are playing. It is a little like putting a full throttle fuzz pedal in the circuit, it renders choice of pups and amp, string gauge and brass saddles all seem a little futile – all that can be heard is the fuzz. This is not totally fair to the PS-04, since this criticism owns more to the nature of the effects than the implementation in the Zoom. But still, it is easier to adjust a stompbox or an real worlds amplifier, than the ready made sounds in this lite box.

Top notch sounds aren’t the Zooms raison d’être though. Versatile recording is! Being a reissue myself, I enjoyed a tour through the various CRUNCH, TWEED, PHASER, FUNKY and a host of other sounds. It felt much like a sound-museum, that brought life to a number of terms of which I had an imprecise perception. And BABY, “Mgade version one”, would have killed for some of those sounds!! “The Mgade reissue” tries to hide his drooling as best he can.

So switching from TWEED to CRUNCH is easy and enjoyable. One of the sounds converts any guitar to a bass! Useful in this environment indeed! So, there is versatile, enjoyable sounds available for recording, what else?

How about vocal effects? I’m certainly no singer. Back in the day I did Be Bob A Lula and Blue Suede Shoes. Badly. I’ll take any help, and this device provides some straight out of the box. You can have echo and stuff on your voice to help hide your thin voice. Delightful. The REAL help – however – is the effect of the training on your singing. The very reason I bought this thing, but guitar-wise. The whole thing ads up to the joy of working with guitars and – hopefully – develop better skills, not just on the guitar but “musically” as well. Singing and composing included. I expect to get a boost!

Was that it? Naa… Did I mention the tuner? My first. I used to tune up to the bass players A. We didn’t even have a tuning fork. This thing has me thinking about intonation – play any tone and says which on is being played and whether it is sharp or flat. Bend a little if it is flat and it is somewhat scaring how audible the difference is! Work is bound to happen on all four electrics here. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying slightly of tune great guitar sounds :-) Hey, I recall reading about a trick: Record two guitars playing a tight rhythm, but tune one of them slightly off key to make a bigger sound! Here you can choose the basic frequency of the A to be something different from the 440 Hz, so I could be easy?

I bought this “Personal Studio” to record two guitars on top of each other in order to try out ideas. So it is easy to loose focus, when the bargain includes a couple of hundred rhythms, each in a range of tempos. With bass. And the bass is programmable to fit to a chord progression. I WON’T get into this – but I will use the drum part of those rhythms and go buy a bass! Soon.

It says it can do 10 virtual takes on each of the 4 tracks. It can “bounce” all recorded tracks to just one track, so you gain three extra. Again and again. Dunno if I will ever get to those facilities. Not important right now.

Has it shown any shortcomings on the premises it was acquired? The faders seem a little shaky. I had problems switching the input from the (guitars) in jack, to the build in condenser microphone. Untill I got that pinned down I won’t venture into larger projects. It also have no direct connection to the computer, so a Flash Card reader is mandatory. I plan on converting the finished sounds to MP3-format on the computer and then burn them on CD’s in both formats (I have a Sony sound system in the living room that plays MP3 directly). It also takes a few peeks in the manual the first few days, until the control system dawns on you, but it isn’t that hard. It uses 4 AA batteries or an optional transformer. I bought 8 rechargeable AA-batteries and a recharger, but the PS-04 didn’t recognize them at all. Reading the fine (VERY fine) print on the batteries revealed that they were 1.2 volt only! *ARGH* It also uses Flash Cards up to 128 MB, but not just any card. Some makes it won’t accept – according to the homepage, that lists a number of approved manufacturers and some that won’t work. The problem is that the cheaper offerings a “no names” or “Kingston”, none of which – of course – is on the list. It will take an effort….

Possibly more later, if I find any other faults with it!

[Sven]

A friend has one like the MRS-1608cd. It can do lots of cool stuff, including letting you play drums on the touchpads to put fills onto a standard drum track. He took a long time to learn to use it, but he's done some incredible things with it.

[mgade]

I believe that! I expect to struggle a lot too - I found a forum discussing these gadgets, that I expect to be helpful when I run into problems!

[mgade]

Having toyed a little more: It is a great improvement as a stompbox as well. So now I can have flange, chorus and stuff I never had. It can be tailored and mixed and matched quite easily. It had me buy another chord too

I also just bought a SmartMedia reader so I have made my first PS-04-initiated mp3 file! It requires a download of software, and an MP3-encoder, but that all went smooth. So I can participate in the Jam section real soon now! (Just so that you know you ought to start running already).

Next thing to investigate will be the ability to make several takes, and then choose the best. That will require another SmartMedia card, which I am buying today. 128 MB is the maximum, and it won't accept a card from every manufacturer. But I have found a source! SmartMedia cards are going out of fashion, so bargains can probably be found, but future supplies could be shaky?

Also on the to-do list is the "song editor". I've steered clear so far, and I didn't thing much of it, but the forum I mentioned in the second post here, says it is really easy, so I figure I'll give it a try!