OK

So I have been working  a week or two now on the Dream rig to essentially move my Variax 500/ PodXT Live setup onto the new Dream rig platform so I can start gigging with the new stuff.

It is obvious to me now that one has to put some time in on this thing to beat it into submission. BUT - I have made a lot of progress and the versions of my transplanted setups are better sounding, more touch sensitive, and more realistic than with my older rig. (which I love to death by the way). The Super O gives me chills. Nice!

The Expression pedal setup made me crazy. I have always had the second expression pedal for volume and used the first as a wah. You just plug it into the XT Live and it works. I could not, after reading manuals and trying to understand the setup guides, get the pedals to behave, I had to plug and unplug the EXP 2 to get the HD500 to recognize that it was a volume pedal. Sheesh! I cannot do that at a gig. I also do not like the random assignment of effects to foot switches. On my Xt Live I always knew which switch was what effect. When you are playing a gig you cannot consult an encyclopedia to figure out what is where.

I finally found a patch for the HD500 where the pedals and effects behaved the way I wanted them to consistently, so I now use it as a template and put everything else that I need around it.

Same deal for getting acoustic sounds to go to the house and not the DT25 and electric sounds to go to the house and the amp. It is a mystery again after reading the manuals and watching one of the videos. Same solution - I found a patch that works that way and I use it as a template.

Some better documentation is in order Line 6 folks.... I am not a rook and it was a challenge to get things working the way I wanted them to.

I love this rig. It sounds fabulous. I am still tweaking my JTV69 but I did that with my Variax 500 as I used it more and more. The JTV69 is going to my luthier for an industrial setup soon and a change over to GHS boomers.

Bottom line - don't take this stuff out of the box and expect to play a gig the next day. I almost have everything whipped into shape but it took a few weeks and a lot of time with my computer and the HD500 Editor software and also Variax workbench to tweak a few guitar models to make them behave with the new HD500 and DT25.

I think there is absolutely no way I could have done what I needed to do without the computer by the way. The HD500 on screen functions are very enigmatic, Thank heavens for the Software editor.

Still in general - thumbs up! - Gig coming up in Minneapolis in a few weeks. We will shake it down then.

Justo be completely honest -- I will have my old Pod XTLive and Variax 500 in the wings in case anything wigs out,

Wish me luck brothers.

Kind regards

AAB