Review: Zoom MS-70CDR+
The Zoom MS-70CDR+ is a single pedal sized multi-effect unit with a wide variety of effects available. The full specs can be found here. I bought the pedal roughly a year ago to go on my secondary pedal board. I've played the unit for a while and have experimented with it in multiple configurations. I'm currently using it at the end of my signal chain to handle reverb, delay, compression, and chorus.
First Impression
I bought the unit when I was building out my secondary pedal board to serve as a swiss army knife of effects. My goal was to have a smaller board that was still quite capable in terms of versatility. I initially put the pedal at the front of my chain and setup presets for chorus/phaser/octave/tremolo/etc. This worked well and I was pretty satisfied with the quality of the sounds I was getting. The modeled effects aren't a perfect 1-1 of the pedals they copy but they are close and definitely good enough for a pedal at this price point. I was mainly comparing the unit's copy of an EHX Small Clone with the actual pedal on my main board. While I could hear a difference, it was still a usable sound and perfectly gig worthy. For the price and amount of effects available, I was thoroughly satisfied with my purchase. The pedal lived on my small board like this for quite some time.
Current Usage
After a while of using the pedal at the front of my chain, I felt like I wasn't quite exploring it's full feature set. I was only running one effect at a time and I had a preset for each effect, which didn't seem quite right. This led to me completely rebuilding my small board and moving the unit to the end of the chain. I'm now using it to run reverb, delay, compression, and chorus all on a single patch. I use the navigation buttons to toggle effects as needed mostly leaving reverb/delay/comp on all the time and only toggling chorus. This works well as I can just leave the screen on the chorus while the other effects stay on while not selected. I think this setup is where the pedal really shines. Before doing this, I had separate reverb/delay/comp pedals and was able to remove them all from the board. The main drawback here is that I'm missing the effects that I like to run before my overdrives, chorus/phaser/octave and such. I'm stuck in a situation where I can either save pedalboard space at the front or end my signal path but not both. This has led me to consider buying a second unit to put at the front of the chain. This seems overkill but would save a ton of board real estate while still having lots of sounds available.
Final Thoughts
The quality of effects is excellent and the unit can easily replace multiple standalone pedals. It is gig worthy and I would buy the pedal again if I needed to. For the money, you really can't complain too much, but I will anyways. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't have an effects loop with programmable routing. You have to pick where it's going to sit in the chain and accept that some effects might not sound how you like. The wide variety of effects available is great until you realize that you can't use all of them effectively if you prefer them somewhere else in the path. I.E. if you want to have delay/reverb after your overdrives and phaser before. This is a relatively common setup that this unit can't accommodate. I would gladly sacrifice the stereo IO for mono if it meant the extra jacks served as an effects loop instead. I have some older Boss GT units that have this feature so I'm a bit annoyed Zoom chose stereo IO over what I think would be a much more useful feature. This would also allow setting up the pedal using the 4-cable-method which would be quite handy. With the right multi-channel amp, you could potentially use the MS-70CDR+ to replace your whole pedalboard or as a backup rig you could chuck in your guitar case.
In conclusion, the pedal is great for the money and a worthwhile purchase in my opinion. I just wish it had an effects loop instead of stereo IO.