I promised a review of the Zoom GCE-3 interface...

[Old Guy]

I bought this the other day and had high hopes it would be a decent way to play with good sounds into my Mac to just record some ideas and have fun.

Basically, what it is, is an interface that lets you use all the presets from any of the Zoom multi-effects pedal units available. Plug your guitar into the interface, interface into your Mac/PC, use the free downloadable software to manipulate the presets/effects, and use headphones to play. For $100, I figured I would give it a try.

Now something I only considered after the fact, was that I was coming from an Axe Fx II, although I wasn't expecting close to that quality of presets. I was expecting it to be usable, though.

I plugged it in and tried about 200 different presets, and couldn't find not even one that was pleasing to my ears. Very digital sounding, and even the clean presets were clipping all over the place. It sounded like the noise gates and compression of each preset were waaaaay off. One reason for this is that these presets are really meant to be used in a live setting, out of speakers. Listening in headphones is another sound altogether. I learned that very early in my digital gear days. You can't create a preset for live settings and expect to sound amazing in headphones. It just doesn't work that way. You always have to tweak things to get it to sound right.

I didn't really buy the unit to spend ages tweaking each preset to make them workable. That's my fault, but jeez, the presets were TERRIBLE. I would have had to really go into the complex settings to "fix" them and make them workable.

Sadly, it's going back. I'm quite disappointed as I've had great luck with Zoom products way back when, but this little unit is really not worth the effort. My Sweetwater rep recommended I try the Helix Stomp, but at $599, I wasn't spending that just to noodle around. My work around will be to record into my phone from the speaker on my little 15W practice amp when an idea strikes. I have my on little studio, so don't have to worry about recording silently much.

Live and learn!