#Vox Somplab

[s3rtx]

Vox Stomplab vs. Zoom 505

This may look like a weird post, comparing an ancient pedal with a relatively new one. The Zoom 505 was sold as the “THE WORLD'S FIRST MULTI-EFFECTS SYSTEM IN A COMPACT PEDAL “ back in the early 2000s. I just had bought my first electric guitar and my guitar teacher advised me to get one of those, my amp would “sound like a Marshall”. So I did. This pedal back in the day was extremely complete with amp simulators, distortions, delay, echo, acoustic simulator, flanger, etc... Some time later I also bought an expression pedal that would work with it.

This pedal I have used for about 15 years with a single guitar. That means that basically I got it extremely well tuned to my needs + taste + gear. In fact, I would still be using it if it weren’t for the plastic switches. Unfortunately, everything wears off, and pedals do too. So the Zoom 505 started missing my button presses and had to try and try, and became very annoying to use. For this reason I bought a replacement, the Vox Stomplab.

The Vox Stomplab would not be my first choice if it weren’t because I leave in a remote place and the local dealer only had a single compact multi effect pedal. Nonetheless, before buying a did some research and I knew more or less what I was getting into. I have had it for several months, and I think I can provide a useful review for those considering it.

Let’s start with the form factor. This is a really small pedal, a little wider than the 505 but shorter. The Stomplab can, as well as the 505, run off batteries for few hours. This pedal comes with an integrated expression pedal, a quite small one in fact. The expression pedal is usable, mostly for volume and altering effects that do not require you to mess with it continuously. For wahwah, using it becomes a bit of a challenge since just getting your foot on it the right way is not easy. Still on the features, the Stomplab is very very basic. It just has an input and an output. No USB connection, no external expression pedals, no ANYTHING! This is not quite ok by today’s standards. It was ok on the 505 15 years ago, but you should not expect that we will enter effect patches manually, and back them up by literally writing them on a sheet of paper. The are other pedal in this price range that do provide a USB port. Both the 505 and the Vox come with onboard tuners. The Stomplab works quite well, using the intensity of  the light (left or right LED) to provide feedback while the 505 would use a set of 4 leds for the same purpose. I marginally prefer the Stomplab approach.

One of the things that motivated me to buy it the casing. I wanted to avoid again plastic pedals. Not only they look cheap, the wear off more and are less rugged. The Somplab has a metal casing and 2 nice switch metal buttons that I doubt I can break even if trying hard. Another thing that is visible is that it shares the look and feel of single purpose pedals with 3 potentiometers to regulate the values of the effects. That can be very good at times, and a pain the rest of the time.

The good thing of the potentiometers is that makes editing the effects a breeze. By switching the leftmost switch you can access 9 effect banks with 10 effects each, organized by genre (jazz, metal, hard rock, etc...), and 20 user defined ones. 120 effects in total. You navigate up and down through the 10 effects of each bank using the pedal switch buttons. When you are on an effect, you can change the gain and level directly with the potentiometers, and if you press edit, you can change virtually anything very efficiently. This method is much more effective than the used by the Zoom 505, that you have to press the plus and minus buttons repeatedly instead of simply rotating the potentiometer to the right value. On the other hand, the fact that there is a physical potentiometer causes some trouble. Why is that? Because because when you switch effect, the configuration values of the effect change, but the potentiometer remains where it was. Meaning that you do not know at a glance what the gain, level or any other value for an effect is, and thus, you do not know to adjust it.

In this pedal you can combine 8 simultaneous effects, amp, pedal, cab, delay, reverb, etc... which is not bad. The truth is that I like simpler sounds, so I won’t use so many effects at the same time. One thing that really shocked me was that something that was already solved in the Zoom 505, it was not here. The 505 had this very nice way of either 1) instantaneous effect switch, or 2) you could navigate with the foot switches to the effect while still playing the previous one, and only switch to the new one when both switches (right and left buttons) were pressed simultaneously. This can not be done on the Stomplab, and I think is a killer. That basically means you can not use it for gigs, since you can only switch between adjacent effects. The only alternative you have is to use the user defined presets and quickly navigate up and down. You won’t be able to do so with the factory presets, since for those you need to rotate a switch and that is not very practical while performing in the middle of a song.

Sound wise, I appreciate improved effects on the Vox. More “analog” like and less transistor based. In fact, it provides simulators of known amps and cabinets. I can not tell the quality of those since I do not own any of the simulated devices. However, I can tell the difference from the 505. On the other hand, effects seem overcomplicated. It is not just like choosing a distortion and that is it. You have to decide on the amp, the equalizer, cab, effects pedal, delay, rev, nore reduction and yet some fancy effects that I will never use in my lifetime. This makes it a little complicated to find the right sound. I have spent the whole afternoon today configuring some user presets and I’m not yet satisfied. I compiled some information that will help you decode what each effect is and what each simulated amp is.

So, to conclude. The Vox Stomplab is a very versatile, cheap and well built pedal for the price. I would have liked the usb port, and the option of navigating through effects without switching (just like my old Zoom 505). Despite these limitations, I think I still have a lot to learn with/of it. When I had one guitar and one pedal... everything was very linear. Now with 3 electric guitars and this new pedal, I am aware it is very difficult to get the exact sound I want. So I will go slowly and try to learn how the get the best of each guitar and each effect.

Now, if you have got one of these tiny pedals, you have few great resources to explore:

1-  Metastable’s spreadsheet. A comprehensive document containing all effects and parameters, settings and more: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wj5YnBIp9_IAtypoiKEjm4f1bcqY83UMDN3VR0Zu8dQ/edit#gid=0

2- His list of equivalence Stomplab simulated <-> real equipment

AMPLIFIERS

AC15 - Channel 2 of a 1962 Vox AC15 AC15TB - 1990's Vox AC15TBX ('top boost' channel) AC30 - Vox AC30 (normal channel) AC30TB - Vox AC30 ('Top-boost' channel) BLACK 2x12 - Fender 'Blackface' Twin Reverb (clean channel) TWEED 1x12 - 1958 (Vox describe as 18w but this is more likely 15w) 'narrow panel' Fender Deluxe (NOTE: following an interesting post from JoeM and some digging around of my own, I'm now convinced this is the Deluxe & NOT (as described in the article below) the Princeton, due to the power rating, 2x6V6 valve complement in the power stage, & 1x12" speaker size!) TWEED 4x10 - 1959 Fender 4x10 Bassman UK BLUES - 1960's Marshall JTM45 head (high treble channel) UK ’70s - 1969 Marshall 100w Plexi head (high treble channel) UK ’80s - 1983 100w Marshall JCM800 head UK 90's - 1990's 100w Marshall JCM900 head (lead channel) UK MODERN - Marshall JCM2000 DSL100 head (Hi-gain channel) RECTO - 150w Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier (modern high gain channel) US HIGAIN - 1991 100w Soldano SLO100 Head (hi-gain channel) BOUTIQUE OD - Dumble Overdrive Special 100w head (overdrive channel) BOUTIQUE CL - Dumble 100w head (clean channel) PEDAL MODELS COMP MXR RED COMPRESSOR ACOUSTIC ORIGINAL VOX WAH VOX WAH U-VIBE UniVox Uni-Vibe OCTAVE ORIGINAL TREBLE BOOST VOX TREBLE BOOSTER TUBE OD Ibanez Tube Screamer BOUTIQUE KLON CENTAUR KENTAUROS ORANGE DIST BOSS DS-1 METAL DIST BOSS HM-1 FUZZ DALAS Fuzz Face MOD/DELAY CLASSIC CHORUS MXR CHORUS MULTI TAP CHORUS ORIGINAL CLASSIC FLANGER MXR FLANGER PHASER MXR Phase90 TEXTREM Tremoro on Fender Combo Amp ROTARY Rotary Speaker PITCH SHIFTER ORIGINAL FILTRON Mu-TRON Filter ECHO PLUS Echo Plex DELAY ORIGINAL 70's Analog BBD Like Delay CHORUS+DELAY ORIGINAL COMBI FX

and 3) this resource with some (not yet many) patches. I have tested the Metallica patch and is really good: http://guitarpatches.com/patches.php?unit=StompLabG

Enjoy your Vox!