Rumble 40 or Rumble Studio 40?

Gear
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Yeah exactly - and this is the route I would always take. Otherwise when you upgrade amps in the future you end up with a 20 pound multieffects pedal and have to lug two amps around (or lose all your effects :slight_smile:

The effects and amp/cab sims on the Zoom are likely higher quality as well.

Actually a Rumble 40 and a B1four is a solid recommendation for starter gear in general. The B1four is also useful for headphone practice away from the amp, and has a tuner, drum machine, and looper built in, in addition to all the effects sims.

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Howard and Spidey9, Just checked the B1four out and have added it to my list. I had never heard of it before, or even thought about having a pedal. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom.

** My wife will appreciate the headphone practice option, haha **

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The Zoom pedals are inexpensive and some of the best value for gear out there, for what you get.

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The only negative with the B1Four is that you may find yourself spending literally hours playing with all the different effects, time that might better be spent practicing.

I’m speaking from personal experience here. :wink:

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last question…the four or xfour?

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There’s a thread here discussing that exact thing

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Thanks All!

The order has been placed, and as I step into the Lesson Ring, the announcer grabs the microphone and yells, “Let’s Get Ready To Rumble!!!!”

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You made a wise choice. Like @howard stated, this is what I would have done, wait, aside from the Rumble 40, it is exactly what I did. I did not outgrow my amps, since I went kind of big, but I outgrew the Zoom. That said, I still have a Zoom B1x-four, and a Zoom MS-60B. I used them both on my pedal board until I got the pedals that I was using each one as.
Not only that.
The Zoom B1-Four (i had that also, but sold it after getting a B1x-four from @PamPurrs for a price that could not be refused) is invaluable as a learning tool.
Like @spidey9 said, you can get lost in playing with it, however, this is not time wasted, in fact it is time very well spent. There is no better way to learn about effects, effects chains, and it is an intro into building a pedal board if, in time you go down that route. I don’t know if it is a majority of us, but a lot of us end up going into the Pedal rabbit hole. Also, not sure if it is a majority, but alot of us also started with the Zoom B1-Four, B1x-Four, B3n, or even the MS-60B, or a combo of them first, using them as our instructor, teaching us about FX and Pedals.
This is less costly, and most likely alot less frustrating them buying pedals you read about, chaining them together, and then finding you don’t like one or all of them, and selling them off and getting something different.
Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, as I, myself to some extent have played with alot of pedals, before deciding which one I want to keep on my board, and Mike (@itsratso) is an extreme example of this, changing things all the time ( I say this in the nicest way), but there is nothing wrong with this either, cuz I had a great time experimenting with actual pedals, even after learning about the FX in the Zoom first, cuz it allowed me to be more selective when doing pedal demo’s and buying. I opted to use Amazon Free returns for this. I would get a couple, Reverb pedals for example, and test them out next to each other and then return one, two or all of them, and look at others. If it were not Covid, I probably would have just gone down to GC or Sam Ash and tried them out, but it was Covid, and Amazon Free Return policy worked out for me.

There are other threads to talk more about this, like the one @skydvr linked you to, so read thru it and ask as many questions as you need to, you will get plenty of people willing to help you with whatever you are seeking to know.

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I have physical pedals and I opted for the Studio (sold my regular Rumble 40). Why? Amp and cab sims and not tied to a PC. I couldn’t decide what amp to upgrade to and figured I’d use the Studio for a while to try to decide. Yes I could have bought a pedal with the sims but I liked all the options in the Studio. And the fact that they can add features as they go. For me it’s working well.

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I have the rumble studio 40 and the zoom. They offer different sims, so depending on what I wanted for sound would drive the use. I also use sims on my laptop (as Howard does as well). So, I like having options, the studio just gives me more tools in the tool box.

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@Sully, are there some key sims in the Zoom that you like/ use it for?
I have been trying to understand what the Zoom might offer over/above the Studio to me, hard to find a list that makes sense to me since neither really call out all the sims and what they actually represent.

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Oh, nevermind, i found it.
THere are a lot more amp/cab sims in there, interesting.

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Also a lot more effects. Many different effects of each type.

The key with the Zoom is to ignore all the factory preset patches and go right to Stompbox mode, making your own little pedal and amp chains. Easier to do this in Tonelib Zoom but not too bad on the device itself.

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You think so? I find that when I do that, i quickly get lost in the vast forest of effects to choose from and parameters to tweak. Mine is set to preset 40 “AMPG Set” most of the time. Really like the tone of that one.

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Some of the presets are good! I didn’t mean to imply that they are all bad at all. The very first one (the SansAmp clone) is really good.

Buw where I think the thing really shines is it gives you basically all the pedals. All the effects, each modeled as little individual stompboxes, that you can arrange like you like in little virtual pedalboards. I learned a lot that way.

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Yeah, this is the greatest thing about the ZOOM.
However, don’t COMPLETELY IGNORE the patches (as @howard said in the last post, they are not a complete waste)
What I did was look at ones that sounded half way decent in STOMP or EDIT mode.
Then I started tweaking settings on each pedal in that chain, to see which way to set them that is more to my liking, and which settings are not so much to my liking.
This also works with pedals within the chain, as they feed off each other, so when you tweak one, you affect the others, so it helps to understand how to tweak settings in each pedal in the chain.
PLUS
you can re-arrange the pedals, because, as you know, when you change the order, you change the result, sometimes making it better to your ear, and other times killing the whole thing.
Then
when you play around with the already created patches (that you know sounded good at one point, or at least sounded they way somebody created them, weather you like it or not,), and learn from them, you can start with a fresh blank patch and create one from scratch, and keep doing this until you get the idea of how to build chains.

THEN, after you go broke spending virtual MIND dollars, playing endlessly with the damn ZOOM machine, you can save yourself a bunch of real cash, by focusing on pedals you know you like in your chain, and not have to buy others to find out you don’t like them, or won’t use them enuf to justify buying one.

And then, if you want, you can keep that Zoom pedal around on your board, use it as a TUNER, and you can create a patch with a single effect pedal, and you can HAVE that one pedal that you didn’t really want to spend for, but you want to have it around just in case you decide to add it in the mix at some point.

Its really just showing how worthwhile and valuable these boxes for such a decent price. I figure it paid for istelf about 50 times over, and then I sold mine for $55, so in the end, it was only $15.

And, I did keep it around on my pedalboard for single pedals until I got a real pedal of that type, and I still have another zoom pedal and unit.

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Man, I have little to no use for a Zoom but you all are making it sound so attractive I might have to get one just to try it out and see how/when I would use it. Aaaarrrghhh

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They are actually surprisingly useful. The amp/cab sims alone are worth the price.

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That’s exactly what happened to me and I blame @howard :joy: :joy: :joy:

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Whew!, at least it wasn’t me this time. :wink: :rofl: