Problem with HD500x - clipping/distorted sound

Loreth · June 7, 2015

Hello. It's gonna be a long post, appreciate if u read through. Let me start by saying that I'm a begginer guitarist, so my knowledge is slim; started ~4 months ago. After some time with a crappy 3/4 sized old classic guitar I got a proper electric one for my birthday and began playing with Rocksmith, wchich makes learning proccess much more enjoyable. Sadly I get a lot of noise to my guitar sound from my onboard sound card, spent a lot time trying to find any fix, nothing to be done sadly.

So I decided that to get a multieffect and start getting the hang of how things are done and set the sound by myself. Just bought the pod HD500x. Ofcourse, as everything in my life lately - it doesn't work as expected at all.

So the thing is - If I pluck more than one string at the time, depending on preset, I get clipping and/or distorted sound. Even the cleans. I noticed earlier that my guitar would clip a little even in Rocksmith when plucking the 2-3 heavier strings together on higher frets (12+) with some more strenght put into it.

My guitar is an Epiphone prophecy em2 custom-ex. As said before - got it as a gift, asked for Vintage V100 but "the buyers" didn't fully trust my ability to judge used guitars yet. They have a friend in radio that knows a lot of people and she got a guitar directly from guitarist of one of the biggest rock-ish bands in my country. It's guitar that his son used to play so it's pretty used up, but as it is from a pro, he probably tested it right and it worked fine. It had strings replaced and been set up by a luthier for me. The cable for the battery was in a bad shape (this guitar has active pickups, called EpiActive - basically EMG's i think) so I replaced it, got a new battery too.

Now I can't tell what is the exact cause of what's happenig with the sound on the POD. Looked through many topics. I switched input 2 to Variax, guitar in to PAD. Output to studio/direct and guitar in-Z to auto. I'm running through speakers connected with 1/4 to 3/4 adapter. There is a pull/pull option with my volume knob on the guitar to switch pickups to passive mode. They don't sound too great that way, and the clipping is smaller but still existent if I pluck a little stronger. The higher I turn the volume/tone on guitar, the more clipping and distortion I get. I'm sorry for not attaching examples but I'm really tired of this crap now. Assuming we can't find a quick fix (doubt that -.-) I'll get you some in a few days.

Tried connecting Rocksmith cable through FX SEND and setting return and mix to 0%, cause I heard of a guy does that and that it works for him. When doing that, in addition to guitar sound I get high pitched persistent sound (both from the game) when doing that, kinda like a groundloop I guess.

Also, there is a lot of gaps in volume levels of presets, but that is a thing with the unit as I heard. Why can't a one damn thing be simple :/.

Sorry for a long post and my english, which is not my native language.