High quality effects, easy programming and a budget price - Ian Waugh asks who's Zoomin' who?

The more sophisticated hi-tech gear becomes, the steeper the learning curve which must be assailed by those trying to get the best out of it. A simple fact of life, this is particularly true of equipment such as FX units which may sport dozens of seemingly inscrutable parameters such as spectrum shift, diffusion and high frequency decay.

It makes a refreshing change, then, to find a multi-FX unit you can use while supping your scrumpy and without getting lost in a hornet's nest of recursive menus looking for the post-FX early reflection pre-delay parameter.

The Zoom 9001 gives you none of this. In fact, it looks more like a foot pedal than a studio FX unit. It doesn't have MIDI (be honest - do you really use MIDI to program your FX unit on the fly, or even use program changes to select new patches?) and it's mercifully short on psychoacoustic parameters, yet still retains a high level of programmability.

For such a small unit, it's surprising to find jack sockets instead of phonos - 10 out of 10, Zoom. There are stereo Ins and Outs on the back - although the Left In can be used as a Mono input - and there's a mini-jack headphone socket on the side. The On/Off button is also on the back along with a socket for a mains adaptor. The unit runs quite happily off batteries, but with a life of only three to six hours you really need to budget for an adaptor too.

Underneath the unit you'll find a Remote socket to which you can connect an optional FC01 foot controller. This has Bank and Patch switches for selecting patches, and it can activate the Bypass function.

The effects are arranged into eight banks and named to give you an indication of the area in which they would be most useful - although, as the manual points out, these are suggestions only. You are encouraged to experiment. In spite of the limited number of effects (compared to the 100-plus typically found on most current FX units), there is a surprisingly broad range. Zoom have obviously tried to cater for all potential users. We're not just talking keyboards here, but drums, guitars and vocals too.

Perhaps because of the limited memory, the effects tend to be quite different from each other - no room for subtle variations here. Of course, the mainstay of any FX unit is its reverb programs, and the 9001 is no exception. While these are generally good for a processor at this price, one has to conclude there aren't enough of them.

The Leslie speaker simulation in the Organ effects is also impressive, and can be switched to slow or fast rotor speeds. Some of the Piano effects add a nice cutting edge to the sound, while the chorus and reverb of the Strings program could sweeten any pad.

I particularly liked the way all of the effects and their parameters were listed in the manual, and the way it showed the signal path through the various effects with the aid of schematic diagrams. This enables the user to see quite clearly how their signals are being effected.

There are also diagrams to illustrate the principles associated with each of the parameters - including those found in reverb programs (level, direct, predelay, early reflection and reverb time), chorus, echo, gate reverb and comb filters - and additional listings of parameters for the 40 additional effects which you can program yourself.

What the manual doesn't give you are any detailed specs on the unit itself, so I can't quote a signal-to-noise ratio or a dynamic range at you. Subjectively, the unit is a touch noisy. Some effects (such as chorus) are worse than others, and even the Effect Off button doesn't mask the noise completely.

This shouldn't prevent you from using the unit in a recording, but you'll need to keep a check on the noise and familiarise yourself with the Direct Mix limitation (if you want to use it with a mixer).

Although a more up-market FX unit would almost certainly be more versatile, it will obviously cost more. But not necessarily that much more, so you need to work out what you want and how much you can bear to part with. The 9001 is certainly easier to program than any rackmounted FX unit, but it's not capable of the subtleties of many such units.

I suspect it will find a home with musos who play live, especially those who only need a handful of different effects throughout a set.

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