Review: Zoom GFX-3

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today I'm proceeding with my walk through the memory lane by reviewing another one of the gadgets I have owned during the years, this time a pedalboard by Zoom, called GFX-3.

Back then, in the mid 2000s I had just switched from a rack system to a head+cabinet one, I was tired of the wirings, patchings and so on, and I wanted the simpliest solution possible, so I needed something with these features:

- at least 3 footswitches for various effect combinations

- lightweight and battery powered

- cheap

- with an in-built tuner

- capable of giving me what I needed with max 1 minute of tweaking


I looked around and this small Zoom one seemed the best choice, but I didn't consider a fundamental thing: I needed something that would allow me to use only the effect section going into the loop, so I could use the amp section of my tube amp (I think it was a Randall or a 5150 back then), and I didn't want to pass through the multi effect preamp section; unfortunately I realized this only some day after I bought it.

The unit was very solid and with a very simple interface, it was clear that after going through the '90s in a direction of complicating the interfaces to the impossible, the manufacturers were trying to move back towards a much simplier approach, and this user friendliness luckily has remained in most of the multi effects still today.
The Zoom Gfx-3 offered (and still offers, if you happen to find it second hand) a selection of 60 presets plus 60 user ones, in which you can choose among 10 amps and 10 distortion types, several cabinets and a 50 effects, with a maximum chain lenght of 8 effects.
Sound wise the effects were pretty good: they tried to model the analog delays and reverbs by making them sound warmer (that in practice it means less hi-fi, a bit dirtier and more saturated) and they were very pleasant and usable, but the preamp section was good only in the department in which these budget multi effect shines: cleans and overdrives.
The hi-gain tones, instead, were basically unusable: fuzzy, thin and extremely "digital sounding" meaning that they sounded like sand paper.

Eventually I stuck with it for a while by applying the effects before entering the preamp of my amp head, but this way the tone was bad (imagine having the delay BEFORE the distortion) and there was no other way to use this unit, therefore, since I wanted to use the amp's preamp section, I decided to sell it.

What can I say? As many Zoom products, also this is very cute looking, it had a very affordable price, a nice interface and a lot of features, but if we talk about preamp tone, at least this one didn't sound particularly well.

Thumbs down!


Specs taken from the website:


- Large Foot Switches and Metal Chassis

- Built-in Auto-chromatic Tuner

- Built-in Expression Pedal

- 10 Amp and 10 Distortion Types

- 50 built-in Effects / 60 preset Patches

- 8 Simultaneous Effects

- 60 Available User Memory Presets


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