Ideas for organizing tones using set lists

[talonmm]

I'm embarrassed to share that although I have owned a POD HD500 and HD500x and loved them for quite some time, I'm only now starting to take advantage of all the amazing things you can do with these tools.

 

For example, I used to load all my tones on User 1 and pretty much use this set exclusively.

 

Now I need use a Variax guitar on some songs, so I placed a few new tones, specificly made for a Variax guitar and different tunnings built into the custom tones, into "User 2" and renamed the set to  "Variax.".

 

Next, I'm thinking of changing "User 3" to specific tones for other specific songs my band plays.  I believe this will help me find songs much faster when I'm playing with my band.

 

So now I'm thinking, it would be great if other pod hd users shared their ideas and methods in organizing their Set lists.

 

thanks!

 

 

[AlexKenivel]

As of right now, I have one set list for all my tones I've made, one for downloaded tones, and one called Pallette that I change and add to depending on what situation I'm going to be playing and one for specific cover tones. The rest are blank.

[Matt_Brown]

I have them organised by guitar and what I'm playing through. I have a JTV list, a Strat list and then a DT list and a no amp list for when I'm plugging straight into a PA.

[Palico]

I only use 2 at the moment. One for Studio or direct. And one for the my live setup with the DT25.

[DunedinDragon]

I develop a patch for every song the band has in it's repertoire which is stored across a couple of setlists.  I then have a single setlist reserved for performances.  When we put together a show I save each song to the performance setlist in the order in which we intend to perform them.  Because each patch has the name of the song it's relatively easy to adjust on the fly should the order change or we decide to skip something.

 

Granted many of my patches are pretty similar, but this allows me to minimize the number of effects I need to assign to footswitches.  For many effects they aren't assigned at all if they're used throughout the song.  I pretty much standardize on using FS1 for lead boosts, and FS3 for big dynamic changes that make a big difference of the sound within the song.  For example going from a clean sound to an overdriven sound that requires multiple changes in effects or amps.

 

There are a few significant of advantages to this.  Because I pre-build all song patches I can normalize the volume so that all songs are at the same relative volume.  Therefore I only have to adjust the master volume at the start of sound checks.  Secondly, my POD display suffices for a real setlist for the performance and I don't have to have a hardcopy of what we'll be doing.  Thirdly each song gets it's own individual sound which is important in my case because we perform so many different styles of songs.  We may go from a hard rock song to a country song to an acoustic ballad to jazz, but for me it's just one change of a patch and I'm all set (other than switching guitars occassionally).

[pianoguyy]

Because of the situations that I run into, my usage/storage may be different than many others... 

 

But, it basically boils down to: 

Backup your files. Then backup the backup. And finally, keep a backup in a place (such as the cloud) that is less likely to break, error, burn, or be stolen. 

 

I keep the bulk of my patches listed by Song Title on the computer and then I import them in the order they are needed. Yes, sure, sometimes I use the same patch for different songs, but I still save them separately.

However, when you go from band to band, or take requests - it sure is easier to click "In A Gadda Da Vida", than it is trying to remember "well, was that the Doors patch I used for that song?'

 

And for me, set one of the night goes in setlist 1. Set 2 goes in setlist 2. It makes it real simple. 

 

If I had a Variax, obviously, I would probably need 2 copies of each song. One for guitar and one Variax. 

That way you aren't limited to "I have to switch guitars between these songs becase I need my VariAx patch" 

 

 

I mean, I have heard some of these guys having patches for EACH guitar that they use. Not me. Guitars sound different, sure. But I buy them to sound different from each other. Same patches no matter what guitar I use. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I will never use a BC Rich WarBeast to play Woody Guthrie. So when you see a patch titled, Death To All, just assume that I am not using a Flaming Pink Stratocaster with mid-level pickups. In that instance, the song patch was probably designed with a guitar that is a little more aggressive in mind. But for the most part, one patch for all guitars. 

 

 

 

 

 

***All of this changing back and forth that I do is one of the reasons why i would love a Mobile Edit. I really dislike carrying a computer around with me everywhere I go. 

[Indianrock2020]

Great stuff.  I name my setlists by guitar or gig-type, but what is really a pain is dragging presets around within a setlist.  It isn't horrible but using the mouse in HDEdit is just slow when you want ten specific  presets at the top, in specific order,  out of 40 you've created there.

If the preset files were xml or something you could do it in an editor, but I know why Line6 doesn't want that because there would be support calls from so many ham-fisted users who jacked up their files.

[talonmm]

thanks for the great advise and terrific tips!

[Smashcraaft]

Although I'd like to call up setlists by using the footswitches (ideascale link), my problem is more organising patches.

Mainly I have a patch for high gain, crunch, vintage-tone and clean tone. In addition I have some patches, which I use for specific songs.

 

Because I am still learning to tweak and still are gathering informations and hints, my patches are not fixed in any way and every tone is recurrently compared to similar tones, using similar amps (or simlilar ways f.e. to distort the tone). So said, my tones are recurrently set to get in competition to other patches of mine (or f.e. CustomeTones). 

 

So let´s say I have a patch 4A called "highgain" in my main setlist and I like to tweak it, at the moment next action would be to copy it to 5A (if it is empty in my setlist) to tweak and compare the tone. But problems start, if the next following patch like 5A or even 4B is not empty, so I have to place the copy somewhere else. The result is chaotic and it has happened, that I had overwritten good patches with worse duplicates  :ph34r: Naming patches is a problem, too.

 

Maybe it would be better to copy the example "highgain" to a clean or specialized setlist (let´s name it "Workbench") and start like this…

 

1A: highgain

1B: highgain2 (tweaked)

1C: highgain3 (tweaked)

1D: highgain4 (tweaked)

 

This way it should be easy to compare the original tone (which is always on an A) and the names of the tweaked patches are easy to edit and identifiy, simply by adding an ID-number after the name of the parent-patch.

 

How do you compare edited or downloaded patches to your preferred tones? Maybe some of you even do not feel the need to, but for me it is one part of the pleasure all the possibilities of the POD HD is offering.

[DunedinDragon]

 

How do you compare edited or downloaded patches to your preferred tones? Maybe some of you even do not feel the need to, but for me it is one part of the pleasure all the possibilities of the POD HD is offering.

 

It's pretty rare that I would feel the need to do this, but if I did I'd simply reserve a space in some other setlist and use it as a scratch pad.  In the case you're talking about I'd copy my original to the scratchpad set 1A, modify it and copy that to 1B.  As long as you don't save 1A it will revert back to the original setup when you move off of it.  So I'd go to 1B, play my sequence, move back to 1A (which is now the original) and compare.  Repeat as necessary with 1C, 1D, 2A, 2B, etc.  Select the best one and copy it back to the original setlist.  If you want to save any of the variations I'd just copy them off to disk under some meaningful name.  But I'd always reserve that area as a scratch pad so I'd know I could overwrite anything there to experiment with.

[silverhead]

I use a separate setlist for tones that are under development (e.g. Comparing different downloaded tones to existing tones). I also have a main setlist of tones that are the best I have at any given time. This is the setlist I use when actually playing with others. When a tone under development gets good enough that I'm ready to use it, it gets copied to the main setlist, often replacing my previous best of that tone type. Of course I keep a copy of the previous one just in case. It either goes back into the development setlist, or my computer, or my 'archive' setlist.

 

Like you, my development setlist sometimes gets messy and confusing. But when playing with the main setlist I can organize so that things are pretty clear.

 

Also, this way there is never really any need to change setlists during a set. All my good, gig-ready tones are there in the main setlist.

[Indianrock2020]

Organizing isn't extremely easy in HDEdit.   If I drag a tone from disk to a setlist I always place it on an empty "new tone"  first, otherwise it overwrites another tone I want to keep.   On the other hand, I can drag tones from down low in the setlist, up towards the top and it gracefully inserts it.     There also seems to be some "oddness" when I save a patch to disk with a different name, or just rename it on disk and then use it.  I have to be very careful that when I drag it back into a setlist that I'm actually editing the patch I think is highlighted ( despite numerous clicks to make sure what I'm editing is the one I'm looking at ).  Could be operator error but it happens fairly often.

[pianoguyy]

If you are in 'designing patches' mode, you aren't in 'performance' mode. 

Which means you should have no problem finding places to store your patches. ---- ASSUMING YOU HAVE EVERYTHING BACKED UP 

 

 

Who cares what gets written and overwritten and lost and created. 

As long as you have everything saved somewhere, you never have to worry.