I’m surprised by the negative reviews of this thing. I rarely write reviews, but I needed to counter the smack talk. First of all this thing sounds really good! The sound itself makes it well worth the money, but it really does many things. What you need to understand however…this isn’t all loaded up with a bunch of presets. You have to make your own and store them, which is really simple once you get your head around it a little bit…then you can call the stuff up during performances with no problems. The knob layout is a little bit awkward and I would have put knurled knobs on there instead of brushed, but that is so minor. And I agree with the person who complained about effect one only being guitar models. It seems like if you already have a good guitar then you should have the option to use #1 as some other effect like #2 and #3. I would have given 4 stars for those small gripes, but I needed to cancel out some of the 1 star nonsense…because this thing isn’t perfection, but it’s so far from a dud…especially at 9.00! It’s one of the best sounding acoustic multi processors I’ve ever heard.

The pedal itself is excellent for the money. I’m not sure what people expect for 0? It’s intended to provide guitarists with ways to modify the sound coming out of the speaker and it does that very well with many options (body types, effects, boost, etc.). The one drawback is the manual. It just isn’t very good. However, check out the various Youtube vids and other online resources and you can figure things out pretty quickly.

It’s interesting how many mixed or negative reviews the Zoom A3 gets on Amazon due to its complexity compared to reviews on specialty musician sites. However, I will agree that the Zoom’s documentation is weak and that there is a learning curve to operating the unit. I’ve been using stomp-boxes and multi-effects pedals for years but it took several tries (and a viewing of a YouTube video) to simply figure out how to access and chain various effects. Once I understood the Zoom’s conventions things went smoothly.

Overall, I’m impressed by the unit’s sound with both piezo and magnetic pickups. The guitar models seem well-done and it’s easy to control how much of the modeled sound comes through. With respect to the effects, most are fine although Zoom could have done a much better job of outlining each effects control parameters. The anti-feedback works. I do wish it would adult both the frequency and depth of the filter automatically (it defaults to deep) but that can be changed by the user for individual frequencies.

A common objection to the A3 is that the knobs and adjustments are small and that it would be difficult to make changes during a live performance. I’m not sure that’s a valid criticism; the knobs on the A3 are no smaller than on any other stomp-box or multi-effects unit I’ve used. Further, Zoom’s assumption is that you’ll pre-program those patches for live performance prior to the gig. Each patch can be assigned an alphabetic priority and can be accessed by simply tapping the foot switch to cycle through the assigned patches. I can’t imagine trying to adjust the settings of any stomp box on the fly in a performance.

This unit may not please everyone but if you’re considering it I’d encourage you to check out some of the reviews on specialty music sites to gain a broader perspective.