Got my firehawk - time to jam - opening thoughts and suggestions

[davebyers44]

Got mine yesterday. Kicked the tires last night and this morning. First gig is this Friday with it.

 

I mainly use a few sounds:

 

- Fenderish clean with tube screamer add on with footswitch

- Marshallish plexi grit with some tube gain footswitch

- Acoustic guitar sim so I don't have to drag out another guitar

- wah kick in option

- volume at 65% and 100% to go from rhythm to solo

- delay to kick in on solos

- chorus or simila to kick in when it needs it

 

This pedal seems to cover those needs fairly well.

 

History:

Guitarists since the late 70's using tube amps. Lugged around the twin on top of a 4x12 cause it looked and sounded cool. Then I got old... lol! The cool factor wore off.

 

Now I want as light and qucik a load in as possible. Tried the 1x12 tube combo but that needed floor pedals to really cover all the tones. To much stuff! I've went back and forth from digitech, boss and L6 pedals. Did the single stomp and big multis. Have done the older and newer L6 beans, HD500 etc. I like that this pedal is smaller than the huge pod hd500. I like that it has the pedals though unlike the bean version. I even tried that with the add on 4 button/volume fs. Ahh! I'm just tired of chasing tones honestly. Lastly I was hot on a Sans Amp FL5. Awesome little cool pedal. The clean just wasn't fender sparkle enough. The plexi was ok but I longed for more of a tube screamerish kick in. So I mounted it to a pedaltrain and added pedals with it. They actually played nicely together but I just couldn't nail down the sound. I was still missing the fenderish clean and wasn't digging totally the overdrive. Seemed silly cramming all of the pedals on a 24" pedaltrain. Oh yea, I even did the jamup thing. Jamup is a cool app for ios. Sounds are cool but I needed to have a pedal on the floor. They're coming out with a blue tooth pedal someday but I need it now. Also, as an older guitarist messing with my phone or ipad all the time wasn't my thing. I like that the firehwak has a decent # of guitarists amp knobs to reach down and twist when the sound is a bit bright, delay to short etc. 

 

So I heard about the firehawk. Really already knew the sounds from the pod hd500 and bean I had. But loved it's sixe and also that the ipad could edit it. Was a MAJOR PITA to connect to a pc/mac to edit or fool around with the screens to me.

 

This fits on the 24" pedaltrain I have and gives me just enough room to keep the wireless reciever and vocal tc helicon effects pedal on there. I'm trying to resolve myself to suck it up and go with this. Like I said, I'm just tired of chasing down pedals and trying this and that all the time. Wasting time playing. ;-) A shout out to DC Music Store where I got mine.

 

Thoughts on the firehawk after a few hours:

 

Clean is decent. Marshall-ish sounds are decent. TS and overdrive stomp sounds are ok.

Acoustic guitar I'm not feeling is as good as I heard from the Boss GT100 and it's little brother. They seem to have the one emulator but I'd like to see L6 dive into the acoustic a good bit more. Seemed to be the weakest tone emulated. First gig is Friday so hopefully it will sound decent in the pa.

Effects are pretty decent. Haven't dug to deep into the wah yet but the delay, verb stuff was decent enough.

 

The connection to the ipad concerns me a bit. Lost conection a couple times and had to fiddle around. My hope is that once my sounds are set I won't have to mess with them live. I do take an ipad for lyrics to gigs. I use a powered WSC K12 for band monitor as well as my keyboard and guitar's monitor. No amp. I really wouldn't have time to mess with things other than on a break and hopefully that won't happen at least after I get basic levels set.

 

One other thing I'll point out. IN the headphones I noticed a lag between changing presets. Not adding stomp pedals in and out but when switching presets. I sure wish that wasn't the case. Would be a pain going from a rhythm to a solo and switching to another preset for a lead with that weird short pause. Also, especially with presets with lots of effecst I noted a pop or weird tone that was a bit loud that happened when switching presets. Going direct to a sound system this could be a pain and I hope this is someting that can be eiminated.

 

Also, on one preset I attempted to set the minimum and max volumes but regardless of what I set it ignored it and insists on full volume. Yea, the pedal was turned on in the screen. Weird. Tried it several times. Worked fine on every other preset also. So I ended up changing a different preset to be like that presets sound and overwrote it. Problem solved. Just odd.

 

So so far I'm sorta pleased and looking forward to the hope of this solving the tone problem. At least for a few years...

 

Good start. If L6 will tidy up the acoustic guitar tones,eliminate the pause and pops from switching presets this pedal can do the job.

 

Dave Byers

davebyersmusic.com

 

 

 

[bond19]

Yes, I am with you, on the lag, and the sounds which happen when switching between some effects - a bit agravating. Also, I noticed what seemed to be a ground hum on some of the high gain effects, i changed the guitar, the cable, even plugged into a different power source, but it seemed to do no good. I am gonna look into this more.

[davebyers44]

1st gig last night. Thought I had my levels even but will need to tweak patch levels a bit more. Overall liked the cleans and most of the overdrives. Will tweak a little. Need to remember better these foot switches and what each does.I get scatterbrained during a set and forget the delay etc.

 

I wish the contrast between a fs being on and off were more. Not always sure if the thing is on or off. Screen window was sorta visibile but may need to tweak that in darker venues. Tuner real easy to see. Love it.

 

Still feeling the acoustic guitar tone is by far the weakest. Live gig seemed to easily confirm that.

[Jazzmandan]

Beautiful, should have filmed the unboxing. But that is sooo geeky!

Simple to set up, guitar 1/4in, 1/4 out to Motu Interface - but nothing!! So I switched to just the turner - no signal going in?? After a few minutes realized I had the wrong guitar cable plugged in, there are so many laying on my floor.

So I then see I have input signal but no sound coming out. After a few minutes I realized the volume pedal was in the off position. A slight push in the on position and --Houston we have liftoff!!

At this point I quickly hung up the emergency call to my tech support guy at Sweetwater. Didn't want to embarrass myself any more.

[mcbeddall]

1st gig last night. Thought I had my levels even but will need to tweak patch levels a bit more. Overall liked the cleans and most of the overdrives. Will tweak a little. Need to remember better these foot switches and what each does.I get scatterbrained during a set and forget the delay etc.

 

I wish the contrast between a fs being on and off were more. Not always sure if the thing is on or off. Screen window was sorta visibile but may need to tweak that in darker venues. Tuner real easy to see. Love it.

 

Still feeling the acoustic guitar tone is by far the weakest. Live gig seemed to easily confirm that.

When you say acoustic guitar tone is the worst what acoustic are you using? Does it have a piezo pickup? I noticed in the amp list that some amp models are designed for different type of acoustics, might be worth having a look at that

[davebyers44]

No, I'm referring to getting the electric to sound acoustic. Don't want to drag out both an electric AND and acoustic. Many mutli effect pedals have a patch that gives an electric and acoustic sound that does well enough to get you through some songs or parts of songs. Roland's gt100 and it's mini version has a very strong bit of patches for that. The jamup has a real good tone for it also. I was hoping for it here on the firehawk but the acoustic patch sounds more like an electric without an amp.

 

This is one area I think needs addressed by L6 and I'm ghoping it will be on a release though since these sounds seem pulled mainly from the hd500x I would have thought it would be here by now.

 

Maybe if enough of us are mentioning it they'll add one. Would be mighty nice. I intend of banging around on the wah's tomorrow. Haven't gotten into those patches yet.

[mcbeddall]

I don't think the Firehawk does acoustic simulation, the hd500 doesn't either as far as I know but I could be wrong, I think the acoustic amps are designed to be used with an actual acoustic guitar plugged in, my Zoom G5 has an acoustic sim and I'll really miss it if I switch to firehawk but I don't think I've ever seen a line 6 acoustic sim in pedal form as that's covered by the variax guitars

[davebyers44]

Mega bummer.

 

Used the L6 Firehawk at church yesterday. We use in ears there. Yucko. Gonna need to do some tweaking... The overdrive on top of a fenderish clean just wasn't the tone I was hoping for.

 

I love the size of this pedal (smaller than many other big dudes) but not having an acoustic is a big bummer and I sure not hearing what I hoped for in the in ears. I'll attempt some more tweaking. It wasn't to bad in the powered QSC K10 I use as a monitor but I need it to sound good in the in-ears also.