The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello everyone,

I'm a newcomer to this forum, so please excuse me if I went wrong somewhere.

I am 53 and have been playing the steel electric and acoustic for ages (since I was 5 I think). However, the fancy of guitar effects never really caught on to me till I was matured enough to realise their usefulness and at times their necessity.

In 2004 I bought the Zoom 505 only to be replaced with a 707II Guitar after a "deadly" buyback scheme offered by the dealer.

I have been very successfully playing my steel double neck with the Zoom 707II Guitar and a Marshall bedroom practice amp 15 W power.

Recently I tried to resume playing but the complexity of the 707II told me I'm now too old for a learning curve. I have forgotten everything, thanks to lack of touch and my diabetes.

This is why I joined the forum, to find some help in re-understanding my machine, how to set it up for steel etc. I'm basically looking for a tutorial. Is there something available?
Regards

In my opinion, multi-effects units are best used as paperweights.
They drive me buggy, and I prefer individual boxes.

Hello Sumit.

I don't have a Zoom 707II to work on but from what I see of the manual, you have an eq function on that unit. That is probably the most important setting.

The center point of the midrange frequency is 800 which is just fine for pedal steel. The peavey Nashville 112 manual recommends these settings for E9th with mid shifted at 800:

Low: +9
Mid: somewhere between -6 and -3
High: between 0 and +3
Presence: between 3 and 9

You can add some reverb from your reverb function. The peavey 112 manual gives you a recommended starting point of +3. From there you can adjust to your own tastes.

So with just those two functions enabled you should be able to get started. I hope this works for you.

Zoom 707II manual: https://www.zoom-na.com/sites/default/f ... _707II.pdf

Peavey Nasville 112 manual: https://assets.peavey.com//literature/m ... 459770.pdf

I have found that the secret with with multi effects units is to keep it very simple. The presets pretty much always have lots of compression, reverb chorus and goodness knows what else in them.

I start by making a patch with absolutely nothing, and completely flat EQ, no volume boost. I test this by going from bypass to my "empty" patch and the sound should not change - if it does, you've missed something. I always use this as my starting point.

Then I just add what I want - if I need reverb, I just add that and adjust the depth to what sounds good. If something is missing I'll try a bit of EQ or whatever but I try not to go overboard and try to meke each patch sound like my basic sound but with that effect added - no big jumps in volume or tone. Then I might make another patch with phaser or delay or whatever, again starting with my empty one. With some sounds, like distortion, you may need to adjust the overall volume of that patch so it blends with the other patches. You might want a couple of wild patches with lots of stuff going on but generally, I've found that simpler patches sound a lot better.

Extremely sorry for this delayed response by 6 years. Can’t even explain but basically I have been terribly sick for a long time followed by a series of long overseas postings thanks to my bread and butter job of a metro transit engineer.

I have resumed playing and will immediately apply these suggestions to my zoom.