Zoom puts over 30 years of tone know-how into G11 multi-effects unit

For the last few years, the G5n has been Zoom's flagship multi-effects floor unit for guitarists, but not for much longer. After launching at the NAMM show in January, the new G11 has now gone up for pre-order.

Zoom says that more than 30 years of engineering and passion has all come together in the G11 Multi-Effects Processor with Expression Pedal, and it really is a beast of thing with effects, amps and cabinets, a stereo looper and built-in rhythm patterns. One amp emulation and up to nine chained effects can be had at the same time. It also comes with 70 impulse response emulations, and 130 more slots for users to fill up themselves.

An impulse response is a sound measurement that essentially captures a sonic fingerprint of, in this case, the output characteristics of a guitar amplifier and cabinet, accounting for conditions around the speaker cabinet, such as the room it's in and where it's positioned in that room, and the equipment used, like a microphone and pre-amp. This could allow players to send a realistic vintage amp tone straight to a PA system, for example, and leave their potentially irreplaceable rig at home.

With the addition of an optional Bluetooth adapter, users can also tap into an almost infinite universe of amp tones, effects and artist patches via Guitar Lab software, the latest version of which is coming in the (northern) summer. And the G11 can serve as a USB guitar interface for Mac and PC, with Cubase LE music production software bundled with the package.

To the top left of the 495 x 253 x 64-mm (19.5 x 10 x 2.5-in) unit is an application-driven 5-inch TFT color touchscreen display at 800 x 480 resolution for controlling the setup. Below that is a line of five stomps, each with its own backlit dot-matrix non-touch display for tweaking stomp sound. To the right of the main control panel is the amplifier control, again with its own dot-matrix display. Finally, there are six footswitches for patch selection, looper activation and tuner functionality, and an expression pedal to the far right. And around back there's a single guitar input and a 3.5-mm aux input, effects loops ins and outs, stereo outputs, MIDI in and out, USB ports and more.

This looks like quite an improvement on the G5n before it, and could well have the folks at Line 6 and Kemper sitting up and paying attention. We've no word on exactly when the unit will ship, but it's up for pre-order now for US$799.99.

Product page: Zoom G11