amsdenj

Regarding the difference between play/stop and on/off - if the looper is off, it should not record or play even if you press the Rec or Play/Stop switches. This is important if you want to use the switches to control some other MIDI device. That's what I'm trying to do and how I discovered the issue. "Bringing up the tuner mode, then disengaging it totally cleared any previous Loops." sounds like a bug too. Why should tuning your instrument clear a loop? But in any case its nice to know. I think the looper capabilities are incomplete in the current HD500. Hopefully some of these functions will be completed in the 2.6 update.

Room acoustics could contribute to the difference between studio and live sounds, but I don't think that's the biggest contributor. If you're tweaking a patch with a dry Pre looper in a room by yourself, at relatively low volume, or with headphones you're likely to have way too much bass and treble, and do many effects when you go live. That's because what sounds good by yourself doesn't necessarily sound good at live volumes in a mix with the rest of the band. That's the same reason you don't apply EQ, compression and effects on individual soloed tracks when mixing. You might do that with the focus track, but all others are adjusted in the context of the mix. If you get them sounding perfect by themselves, they may be terrible in the mix. This is because many instruments are competing for the same space.

Not sure about that. Maybe I overstated the note. The tube compressor is the only HD500X compressor that doesn't have high-end rolloff. It could still color the sound in other ways, perhaps adding some distortion. I tested the compressors with a pink noise generator and spectrum analyzer on my iPad. That's probably not that accurate, but it was easy to see that all the compressors except the tube compressor had significant high-end rolloff. That might not be significant for electric guitar, but it is for acoustic instruments.

The Tube Compressor works a bit backwards. The Threshold control is 0dB at 100%, and the Level control is unity gain at 2%. As you turn the Threshold down, you are lowering the threshold level, increasing the compression and adding automatic makeup gain (gain that is added after a compressor to make up for what was cut to achieve the compression). Attack and release are fixed. So this is pretty easy to use. Start with Threshold at 100% and Level at 2%. Then turn Threshold down until you get the level of compression you want. Make any final level adjustments with the Level control. You can use the Tube Compressor as a simple gain boost by setting the Threshold at 100% and adjusting the Level control as needed. Be careful not to overdrive the following effect/amp block. The Tube Compressor can add a lot of gain. Note that the Tube Compressor is the only HD500 compressor that does not color the sound in any way other than through compression. All the other compressors have some high-end cut.

See the end of page 8.1 and the beginning of page 8.2 in POD HD500X Advanced Guide - English.pdf. It shows FS4 in the performance view display controls the looper and the description for FS4 is: "LOOPER - Toggles Looper Mode On/Off. When this switch’s LED is lit, the POD HD500X Looper Mode is active. The Performance View screen will display the Looper functions when the Looper is active, as shown above. " Rather FS4 does the same thing it does with Looper mode off. This is the bug. It should turn the looper block in the signal chain on and off. That's not the same as pressing play/stop on the looper. Nor is it the same as pressing the Looper mode switch, which just reassigns the foot switches to Looper functions, which should include FS4.

The "Looper" switch doesn't do anything directly with the looper - rather it changes the configuration of FS1-FS8 to send fixed MIDI messages and control the looper. If the looper is playing, pressing the Looper switch has no effect on the running loop. Rather it allows you to change patches and effect blocks while you are playing along with the loop. The Looper switch provides a "shift" mode to redefine the 8 foot switches. I use this with MainStage to get 15 programmable foot switches. FS4 is the only odd one. It sends the same MIDI CC whether the Looper switch is on or off, and doesn't do what the manual says, or what is indicated on the foot switch display. I think this is just a bug.

Regarding Live vs. Studio there are two key points to consider: the overall levels, and the interaction between the sound and the guitar itself. Our ears respond differently to louder sounds, being more sensitive to lows and highs the louder the sound. So if you want something quiet to "sound" loud, you'll probably need to scoop the mids a bit. Of course louder sounds create a different emotional response too - evolution makes us pay more attention to something loud because it might represent greater danger. The second point might be even more significant though. When you're playing live through speakers in a room, the guitar is hearing the same sounds you're hearing. The amplified sound of the guitar, as well as the sound of the rest of the band, creates sympathetic vibrations of the strings, causing physical acoustic sustain and even feedback if the sound is loud enough and you're close enough to the amp. This completely changes how the guitar sounds and feels. You can't get this feedback in a studio through headphones because the guitar isn't hearing any of the sound you're hearing. I think this is why we struggle with getting good recoded tracks with digital modelers, or using re-amping in a DAW - the guitar isn't interacting with the sound as its being recorded. If you mic a guitar cabinet in the studio, then the guitar does here the output of the amp, even if you're listening to the mix through headphones. So you'll still get some of the feel and feedback of live. If you want to recreate this in the studio through headphones, you might come close by using a compressor a the end of the guitar signal chain, or better yet, in the DAW itself while you're recording. You need to hear and interact with this compression while tracking as it effects how the instrument sounds and feels. You may want to capture the dry guitar track too so you can re-amp or change the amount of compression later in the mix. But perhaps a better idea is to record all your guitar parts without headphones in a room using good studio monitors. Play the mix and the guitar loud enough to get some interaction between the guitar and the speakers and get a live feel. This will then be captured in the DAW, even in the raw dry track, and will work fine for re-amping. The inverse of these effects is also true. If you scoop the mids, add a lot of stereo ambient effects (reverb, delay, pitch shifting, chorus, etc.), and use a lot of compression to hype the studio sound so it sounds and feels more live, this will probably sound terrible live. Its because the hyped sound is hyped again in the live setting and this won't scale well. In summary, I don't think it is possible or desirable to attempt to use a single patch for these very different contexts. Once we give up trying, getting good tones on the HD500X might be a lot easier.

Perhaps a simple best practice is to always set input 2 to "Same" unless you are using two separate instruments with input 1 going directly to path A and input 2 going directly to path B. Then the mono/stereo/amp effects work as expected in both paths.

Just a few things to add: Tone starts with the song and the context. Listen to what’s going on around you and see what’s required to fit in, complement and add to the sound, not pull it in a different or odd direction. Think about dynamics and motion. Next comes the instrument itself. Make sure it is a good instrument, is properly setup, has a good set of strings, and is well maintained. Pick the right pickup for the song, see above Its really difficult to set a single amp tone that works for all pickup combinations. Set the tone for the neck pickup, then use the tone control on the guitar to adjust the tone for the bridge pickup to avoid having it be too bright or uncomfortable Use the heaviest strings you can get away with. Heavy strings last longer, don’t break as easily, are easier to control when bending to get the right pitch and have better tone. Make sure you’re in tune - tune up, not down, stretch the strings to get out the slack so they don’t go out of tune. Make sure the instrument is at room temperature for final tuning. Believe it or not, this one is one of the most important parts of tone - pick the right pick. Thin picks make it easy to pick fast, but they’re too flexible to control string dynamics. Heavy picks have a wider dynamic range and sound warmer. Picks shouldn’t be too sharp. The rounder the point, the warmer the sound. Find picks that have beveled sides so they glide over the strings better. Use a good pick material. Wegen picks are very good. Try turning picks on their side to get different tones from the same pick. Use hybrid picking and picking with your fingers for more tone options. Don’t pick too hard, turn the amp up and pick softer, you’ll have more control, better tone, and won’t introduce a lot of fret buzz.

On a Mac, you can use Audio MIDI Setup to create an aggregate device and use the Scarlett Solo and the HD500X inputs and outputs at the same time. Use Option Click on the speaker icon in the menu bar to select the system output device. Use the HD500X for guitar input since it has the correct impedance. That's simple and effective.

I've never heard a Kemper, but an HD500X into S-Gear on a computer I already have to own for lots of other reasons has tone and flexibility I think would be very hard to beat at any cost. Its nice to have options.

I'm in Qatar for the next few weeks working, HD500X is back in the States. I'll try to get something on Custom Tone when I get home.

I try to get the most out of a each patch, and avoid switching patches too often. I setup four patches, each configured with the same effects, but using different amp and cabinet models for the specific purpose. The patches are all in the same bank, and progress from clean and mellow to distorted and aggressive. Clean - Blackface Dbl Vib, 2x12 Blackface Dbl Blues - Tweed B-Man Brt, 1x12 Blackface 'Lux Crunch - Class A-30 TB, 2x12 Silver Bell Metal - Solo-100 Overdirve, 4x12 Blackback 30 (or some Marshall-style amp) I don't tend to use a lot of effects. Most of the effect blocks are taken up to support gain staging allowing a single amp to have a range of distortion tones and voicings. This results in a little overlap between the patches. But since the amps and cabinets are all different, the overlap is more in how the patch could be used rather than the actual tone. This overlap is actually useful because it allows each amp to be able to be used for a wide range of tones using just a couple of foot switches. Front of the amp effects: Tube Comp - I use this to smooth things out a bit and provide a little extra boost in front of the first two patches since Fender amp models don't have that much gain. I did some experimenting with a spectrum analyzer (my iPad) and found the Tube Comp was the only compressor that didn't have high-end rolloff. Fassel Wah Screamer - This provides the most aggressive tone in the patch. I use the TONE control as an amp voicing control, roll of a little bass to reduce the mud, and roll of a little treble to manage any remaining fizz/ice pick. Vintage Pre - this is the secret ingredient. I use the Vintage Pre essentially as another tube stage in the amp. It provides the first level of gain boost using the HPF and LPF as simple voicing controls in that gain stage to focus on the mids. Again, the Vintage Pre doesn't do any other strange things to the tone and its simple, has its own drive control to add a little of its own color. This allows each amp to have a progression of distortion levels and voicings. As the distortion increases, the voicing has to change, usually additional high and low cuts Tube Comp, Screamer and Vintage Pre off - the straight amp with the Gain control set to the minimum distortion level for that patch (not necessarily clean) Tube Comp on - just a bit more gain to push the front of the amp a little harder and provide some compression - this is often left on all the time Vintage Pre on - the first increase in distortion and subtle voicing change for warm bluesy leads Vintage Pre off, Screamer on - the next increase in distortion with a warmer voicing to mellow out the increased distortion Vintage Pre on, Screamer on - the greatest level of distortion with the combined voicings to reduce bass and treble. I also use the volume and tone controls on my guitar to fine tune the tone based on the song needs. After the amp effects: Analog Chorus Digital Delay Chamber reverb FX Loop - mostly used for a Boss JamMan for longer loops. I keep the delay and reverb on all the time for ambience, but they're pretty dry. Chorus comes and goes as needed. I make sure there is only one input going into the signal chain - setting Input 1 to Guitar and Input 2 to Variax (to essentially turn it off unless a variax is plugged in). I run the mixer right after the amp model and all the front of the amp effects in mono. All the after the amp effects are stereo. I run a bit of sag to provide some power amp compression and keep the Cab Resonance to 0 to avoid over-hyping the bass and treble. This keeps the tone warmer, more natural, less fatiguing and puts the control back into the voicings at the front of the amp. When the global EQ is available, I'll use this for after the amp/effects final output voicing. This will be used to tweak the tone for the volume level. Quieter settings might require some additional bass and treble.

I'm a new HD500X owner, but I had been a loyal Line6 customer for the whole POD series. What pushed me over was the 2.6 update. To me the HD500X provides: The Variax input (I have a 700 acoustic and a 300 with a Fishman Triple Play added) A pretty good audio interface Stable and flexible MIDI controller Some useful front of the amp effects Decent tones Pretty solid construction I've been using S-Gear from www.scuffhamamps.com for a while now, and my experience is that every amp in S-Gear is a pleasure to play. They sound and feel good on almost any setting and make you just want to play. Each one becomes my favorite every time I switch amps. The HD500X doesn't do that. It sounds OK if you tweak it hard enough, but not stellar. However, the HD500X with MainStage and S-Gear is a killer combination. Takes some configuration effort to get it all working. But its worth the effort. I'm working on a blog entry with the details. And the HD500X is certainly serviceable by itself for a simpler setup. Both use the same FRFR amp. I only use S-Gear for recording, but might eventually use some of the HD500X from of the amp effects instead of the Logic Pro X pedal board. What I found is that using Jeff McErlain's Guitar Effects Survival Guide course, and using S-Gear to provide reference amps, I've become significantly more productive tweaking the HD500X. I'm pretty happy with the tones now and am getting good use out of a very flexible unit. This provides some targets to strive for and provides a method to tweaking. Read the Positive Grid BIAS Amp Design Features too. This provides a lot of useful information about amp controls and design that take some of the mystery out of all the parameters. The end result doesn't sound as good as S-Gear, but its pretty nice playing live.

Not sure I understand your second question. I think you are attempting to put two devices into the HD500X, perhaps a guitar and the output of a MIDI keyboard. And you want different effects on each device. To do that, you would leverage the A and B signal paths in the HD500X. Set the input for the A path to Guitar, and probably Aux for the keyboard. Put all the guitar effects and amplifier blocks in the A path, and all the keyboard blocks in the B path. Then use the mixer at the end of both paths to blend them together.

Its not possible to put any effects blocks between the amp block preamp, power amp, speaker and/or mic, these are an integrated configuration unit. Effect blocks after the HD500 amp block are post-amp, but pre-FRFR or whatever amplifier is processing the POD output. The effect here is likely caused by the compressor. A compressor senses the input signal, and lowers the output gain based on the threshold and compression ratio. The attack and release times, and compression ratio is fixed in all the POD compressors, so the only control you have is the choice of the compressor, threshold and makeup gain. A distorted guitar is already pretty compressed or limited by the clipping in the preamps and power amps. So the compressor sees a relatively constant input at a pretty high level that's probably well over the threshold. So the compressor is on most of the time, smoothing out the guitar sound even more, making it sing with sustain. I think its pretty common in a studio to put EQ, compression, delay and reverb after a mic'd guitar amp to tailor the sound. So this preset is simulating that setup.

I've had good luck using a POD with a Roland AC90, going into the stereo inputs in the back. This works great for low demand situations, and is useful for acoustic guitar and vocals at the same time. I also have an home-made Tremolux Cabinet with two Eminence Beta-10CX 10†coaxial speakers, ASD:1001 compression drivers and crossovers that is driven by a Haffler Transnova power amp. I use this with the HD500X or with MainStage and S-Gear. I don't remember what this cost as I built it in pieces. Probably don't what to know. But it does sound pretty good.

Why don't you want to use the POD as you're audio input device? Its not an audio quality issue because you're going through the POD anyway, and putting it through another audio interface will never improve the quality. That said, most modern analog to digital converters do a pretty good job and you should't notice much difference going through an extra conversion. But usually the shorter and simpler the signal chain the better. If you'r on a Mac, then you can create an aggregate I/O device and use the POD and Scarlet together at the same time. This is simple and convenient. You didn't say which POD you have. If its the PODX3, then it provides different audio devices for wet vs. dry. The HD500 takes a different approach using a Monitor control on the audio input device. Turn it all the way down and you're feeding the dry guitar to the DAW. Turn it all the way up and you're feeding the wet signal. If you record dry, the HD500 is difficult to use for re-amping. You might prefer to use a plugin. I find S-Gear to be an excellent choice.

Thanks for the great information. I have a Variax 300 that I did some work on and it actually plays reasonably well. I put locking tuning gears on it, added a bone nut and set the depth correctly, use some lemon neck oil on the fret board (it really works!) and did a good setup and set the intonation. I recently added a Fishman Triple Play as well. So this guitar will now make a LOT of different sounds. What I'm struggling with is should I gig with it or not. I currently use a Variax 700 Acoustic and Strat Deluxe (with Tom Anderson stacked humbuckers). The Variax 300 doesn't sound as good on the acoustic or electric tones - but its not that bad either - to some extent, just different. Of course the strings are very different on the 300 vs the 700, and so it plays different for acoustic sounds. Its nice to get some advice from pros who do this for a living and have more experience.

Not sure I understand your question. If MainStage is playing a backing track (pre-recorded material), or you recorded a loop that is playing back, then you and the rest of the band do need to hear the track to keep on time. The suggestion from jandrio sounds very good. However, if you're just using MainStage to host software instruments that you play in real time, then is is no different than playing any other instrument live with others. You keep in sync by listening to and responding to changes in tempo that naturally flow through the music. MainStage can provide a tempo and click for the song if you want, but its not necessary if you're just playing live.

That may be true of modern high gain amps with a lot of preamp stages. But distortion in the old Fender Twin, Showman, Deluxe, Baseman was definitely caused by the power tubes. Those amps didn't have enough gain to clip the phase inverter. I recall my friend Doug and I attempting to duplicate what those power tubes were doing with biased diode clipping circuits back in the late 60's, early 70's. I still have the old Showman with an external Fender reverb unit in which I added an extra tube, low voltage DC power supply (off the tube heater supply) and high-speed switching diodes biased at 1.5 volts. It was remarkably close, missing the class B notch. We spent many hours in the Physics Lab at UMO with a scope and signal generator exploring and building. Doug's gone now, died young at 54. I still have some of the old notes we kept. He's missed.

Anyone know how the JTV 69 compares to the old Variax 300 for tones?

In a post Power User said "the main things you need to tweak are the 2 sources of tube distortion: drive and amp master volume (not to be confused with the master volume physical knob or the channel volume).." regarding the Brit 800, but this would likely apply to may of the high-gain amplifiers. I wonder what your experiences are on the differences between preamp and power amp distortion? On a typical Fender amp, you don't get much preamp distortion unless you add some gain effect in front of the amp to drive it harder. When these amps do distort, they do so symmetrically, the top and bottom half of the wave form are clipped the same since these are push-pull power amplifiers. Preamp distortion, from a typical triode tube, is not symmetric. The top half of the wave clips while the bottom half goes into saturation which is not as sharp. How do you balance preamp distortion and drive vs. master amp distortion? What is the difference in tone to you? How does it effect how the guitar feels when playing?

MainStage is a program that can be used to develop a live gigging rig. With MainStage you can select from a palette of screen controls (buttons, dials, drawbars, channel strips, etc.) and create a user interface for your setup. You can then map MIDI messages from hardware devices to these controls so that they can be change remotely. Each control can then be mapped to one or more parameters in a channel. The channels in MainStage look just like the channel strips for tracks in Logic Pro X and share the same software instruments, plugins and parameters. You can set the input of a channel strip, add audio or MIDI plugins, have bus sends, a fader, and mute/solo buttons. MainStage concerts consists of sets (folders) and each set contains a set of patches. The channel strips added at the concert level appear in all sets and patches. The channel strips in the set add specific instruments of the set, and /or override channel strips at the concert level. Patches in the set are for specific songs, and add channel strips or override channel strips in the set or concert for the particular song. MainStage also supports tracks that have loopers or backing tracks and you can map MIDI controls to the parameters for these plugins as well. I'm using the POD HD500X in a hybrid mode. I use a number of "front of the amp" effects from the POD (tube compressor, phaser, distortion, etc.) and these are configure for some of the foot switches. Other foot switches are used control things in MainStage (patch up/down, S-Gear Mod thing, Channel and Boost, MainStage looper, backing track playback, etc.). Regarding the lights, MainStage has the ability to send a MIDI command back thru to some other device, including the device that sent the message. I used this to control the lights on an Apogee GiO. It works great. I tried the same approach with the HD500X and it doesn't control the lights. Rather with I think happens is you can configure MIDI sends to control the HD500X effect block states, and these will in turn control the lights on the foot switches that are mapped to the effect blocks. It appears that just sending the MIDI message doesn't don anything if the foot switch is not mapped to an internal HD500X effect block. Since I'm using all the effect blocks for HD500X internal effects, there aren't any dummy effect blocks left to use simply to control the lights. Hopefully Line 6 will see this as a bug and allow MIDI sends to a foot switch that is not mapped to any effect block to control the light state. This would work the same as the Apogee GiO. I'm not finding this a big issue in practice. I can easily hear when the S-Gear Mod Thing is turned on, and the channel and boost switches make a big difference in the amp gain and voicing. So its pretty easy to hear the state of the foot switches, or see them in the MainStage display, or on an iPad using Logic Remote.

This has been discussed many times on many forums. It's not a problem unique to POD products - most people using amp modelers have similar problems. There are many reasons. Most are all based on tweaking out of context - headphones instead of speakers, low volume instead of gig-level volumes, by yourself instead of with the whole band, controlled situation instead of the chaos of playing live, long tweak times instead of having to do everything in a hurry. All these accumulate to fool us into thinking that something that sounds big, fat, wide, swirly, whooshie, big ambience, lots of sustain, etc. by yourself at low volume will be even better turned up and in the mix with the rest of the band. But the opposite is often true. Less is more when you're playing live with a whole band. Here's some possible guidelines/things to try: start simple focusing on the amp, speakers and mic before adding anything else Keep the cabinet resonance low or at 0. Pick the microphone carefully. Mics that sound bright and full by yourself can sound fizzy and icy when turned up and with the rest of the band. do all the tweaking with a backing track, hopefully made from your band, but something similar will do start the adjustments at low volume so you don't tire/kill your ears, but check periodically at the volume closest to gig level you can get adjust patches on the same FRFR amp you're using for live playing. Headphones or studio monitors are likely to sound a lot different then the PA If you have to use a guitar amp with the POD, try to use a power amp input or effects return and turn off cabinet emulation in the POD. Going into the front of a guitar amp will be challenging, and patches will sound entirely different than in your headphones. when adding effects, be conservative, keep mixes pretty dry. Effects can add a lot of mud into a mix making your guitar become indistinct. Don't overdo the gain/distortion. These can kill definition and the tone of your actual guitar. Check your gain staging between effects. Bypass all effects and add them back in one at a time making sure no effect is so hot its overdriving the input of the next effect in the chain. I like to keep effects at mostly unity gain - they're the same volume on or off. There are exceptions, when I use something like the compressor or vintage pre to intentionally drive the amp harder. This works good for Fender amps which are naturally lower gain, but should be unnecessary for high gain amps. Use the drive control instead Use a dB meeter (or audio tools on your phone) to set the channel volume so that you get the intended volume differences between patches. Once you get some patches you like in a live setting, use them as reference patches for tweaking at home. Once you know what these good patches sound like at home and through headphones, you'll have a good reference point for building other patches. Switch back and forth between the patch you're working on and the reference patch and think about the differences and how they translate to the song or what you're trying to achieve. Make sure you're not clipping the input of you FRFR amp.