Hey guys! I'm (for the first time ever) wanting to put together a stealthy rig. Cost effective as I'm not buying much gear these days. I had actually picked up the competing Tascam DR-10L for use in video work but it only records dual mono (safety gain). I later learned this Zoom unit can do stereo. Which got me thinking that perhaps it's a good stealth recorder. Reading through this looks promising. Now that it's been a while what were you all's findings? Battery box necessary for something like Church mics? In terms of rock concert volumes? I have some shows coming up in April that I am in the sweet spot for and can't open record. I also go to a fair amount of comedy shows and use my iPhone. Which is pretty good but mono. Any real world reviews of this for concert recording?
On the plus side, it is small, easy to conceal and the pre-amps are good. I really like the recordings I get. As for a battery box, the F1 certainly does not supply any more PIP than a larger deck and while I do not know the voltage, I always use a small external pre-amp, so at the least I'd say yes to a battery box. Like all small decks you may (or may not) get away with skipping it, but to me the sound quality of the recording is noticeably worse.
My one peeve and this is a reason I favor the Roland R-07 and Marantz PMD 620, is the gain control. Gain is in fixed increments and can only be adjusted up. So, if you have it set too high at the start of a show, the only recourse is to go higher and higher until it goes lower. That means, depending on how fast you can press the gain button, some distortion then a bit of total silence then the gain you desire. So, a few seconds that take will require a bit of post work, adjusting of volumes and all to get to sound ok.