# Zoom MS-50G vs MS-70CDR



## Greg Ellis

I'm trying to decide which one to buy.

As best I can tell, aside from the stereo inputs on the 70CDR vs mono input on the 50G, these are the same physical device?

I don't know that I would ever use the stereo inputs, but it does seems like a neat feature to have. One could, for example, use this device in the effects loop of a mixer. Hmm... which is probably a mono send anyway.

Software-wise, my near-term use case is very much focused on the chorus, delay and reverb side of things, with maybe some phaser, flanger, tremolo type things too, as a part of my acoustic rig.

BUT, I can imagine that the amp models and drives and similar might be handy to have, someday, if I want to re-purpose the pedal as a very portable "everything in one little box" tool for electric guitar.

One thing I don't understand is whether I can load amp models and similar stuff into the 70CDR. By default it ships without them.

Any thoughts?


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## CathodeRay

Google "zoom 50G vs ms70cdr" and a bunch of good reddit posts etc. come up on exactly this.
and I posted some lesser known info on the '70 over here.
I own a '70, so feel free to follow up after you have a look at those Greg.


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## Greg Ellis

Lots of good info out there, but I still can't figure out whether it's possible to obtain and load the amp sims and drive pedals onto the 70 CDR or not.


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## CathodeRay

I've never dared to try, and the first Reddit post seems to verify they're not compatible.
It's easy to brick that '70 by the way, with no way to recover from a bad firmware update...


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## troyhead

I don't think the 70 can load amp and drive sims. So the benefit of the 70 is just the stereo input. The benefit of the 50 is amp and drive sims, and a lower price.

That said, I briefly tried one looking for a nice ambient reverb, but the tails didn't sound overly realistic to me. Maybe for shorter reverb it might be okay for many, but it just wasn't for me. The only other effect I really, really wanted was tremolo, so I just bought the best multi-fx pedal of all time... a Flint!


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## Ronbeast

I have the MS50G; haven’t used it too much yet, but I like it for the price and the sounds have been good thus far.

Between the tonelib program and the recent updates made by Zoom, this whole series of pedals has become insanely versatile.

I too was trying to decided between two of these zoom pedals (50g vs 60b) a while back, and the 50g ultimately seemed to be the best for my situation. The 60b is better at bass, but lacks a lot of the cool effects the 50g has, the 70cr has a lot of cool mod effects etc., but doesn’t have the same raw versatility that the 50g has.

If you want a box purely for the modulation type stuff, the 70 is best.

If you’re like me and might think of just running the zoom + 1 or 2 other pedals in the future, I think the 50g wins in this case; between drive, amp sims and mods, I think the 50g is the jack of all trades in the family.

Honestly though, they’re all so tweakable that I don’t think you can go wrong with either.


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## troyhead

Ronbeast said:


> If you want a box purely for the modulation type stuff, the 70 is best.


With the latest firmware, I do not believe this is true anymore. The 50G can load all the same effects as the 70CDR. However, the 70CDR cannot load everything from the 50G (drives, amp sims).


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## Ronbeast

troyhead said:


> With the latest firmware, I do not believe this is true anymore. The 50G can load all the same effects as the 70CDR. However, the 70CDR cannot load everything from the 50G (drives, amp sims).


I never thought of that before; I also don’t own the 70, so it’s not something that occurred to me. I wonder why Zoom would make it so that one of their pedals can download the others’ effects, but not the other way around?

I would say that the 50g has taken the lead in versatility, if that’s the case.


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## troyhead

Ronbeast said:


> I wonder why Zoom would make it so that one of their pedals can download the others’ effects, but not the other way around?


I think they are both discontinued now, so they just opened it up to allow all of them. Perhaps it's a technical limitation on the 70 that the others don't work?


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## Greg Ellis

troyhead said:


> I think they are both discontinued now...


Really?

They're still available for sale at all the best retailers and e-tailers.


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## Greg Ellis

I stopped at Cosmo Music on the way home from work Fri night and picked up an MS-70CDR.

So far... I really like some of the sounds and I really DON'T like the user interface.

I was literally yelling at the pedal a few times last night when I couldn't figure out how to do something that really ought to be dead simple and obvious but apparently is not.

It does sound good to me though, and the idea of having all kinds of chorus and phaser and flanger and echo and trem and filter and auto-wah and similar in one small convenient package is a very good one.

I hope I can get over the UI stuff, it really is very non-intuitive to me.


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## Greg Ellis

I've spent some more time with the pedal and figured out the OTHER way to use it.

With nothing in the "favourites" queue, I can just click-scroll-click to change the preset and then it works just like a stompbox of whatever type I've just selected (chorus or phaser or whatever).

Some of the sounds are better than others, and I still have some tweaking to do, but functionality-wise it's a whole lot more useful in this config, and offers a whole lot of functionality in a very small footprint.


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## troyhead

Greg Ellis said:


> With nothing in the "favourites" queue, I can just click-scroll-click to change the preset and then it works just like a stompbox of whatever type I've just selected (chorus or phaser or whatever).


I think I might be describing the same thing, but when I had it I just setup the four or five effects I wanted in one chain and treated each effect as if it was one "pedal" on my board. Then I'd use the main stomp switch to turn that one "pedal" that was on the screen on/off, and scroll to the a different "pedal" whenever I needed it. So everything I used was on the first preset and I ignored all the others. That is the only way that made sense to me for a pedal that was only going to be used only sparingly. The pedal really could have benefited from an extra stomp switch to improve usability, but I get why it doesn't have one.

Some of the sounds are pretty good. I got rid of mine for two reasons. First, I wanted a reverb with a really long tail, but I felt that I could hear a distinct repeat sound that made it feel more like a delay than a reverb. Second, what I really wanted was something that was dead simple. I have a complicated board that requires a lot of programming, so that didn't scare me. But this was going to be on a very small board for jamming. The Zoom fit the bill for space efficiency (in fact, I can think of none better), but not the immediacy of dedicated knobs and switches of traditional pedals. It was just the wrong tool for the job I was trying to fill, but still a pretty good tool.

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, are you able to load any of the dirt pedals or amp simulations onto the 70CDR with the latest firmware?


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## sambonee

I’m convinced.


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## Greg Ellis

troyhead said:


> I think I might be describing the same thing, but when I had it I just setup the four or five effects I wanted in one chain and treated each effect as if it was one "pedal" on my board. Then I'd use the main stomp switch to turn that one "pedal" that was on the screen on/off, and scroll to the a different "pedal" whenever I needed it. So everything I used was on the first preset and I ignored all the others.


No, I have it setup to use multiple presets. Each of my presets has just a single pedal in the chain.

As long as I don't mark any presets as 'favourites', I can just click the middle knob, scroll to a different preset, click again, and now it's a chorus, or a phaser, or whatever preset I picked.



> Just to satisfy my own curiosity, are you able to load any of the dirt pedals or amp simulations onto the 70CDR with the latest firmware?


I haven't even hooked it up via USB. There was a sticker on the box that said "now version 2, with 132 sounds" or something, so I assumed it was already up to date. 

I might try that later on. Right now I'm focused on my acoustic rig for a jam at the end of May, and I won't need any dirt or amp sims for that.


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