DunedinDragon

Just guessing here, but given it's under the label of "Footswitch" I suspect it's some form of proprietary switching mechanism used by Crate for changing effects...thus the DSP for Digital Signal Processing. Probably similar to the footswitch mechanisms used on many Fender amps.

This appears to be a standard insert channel like one would see on a mixing board for an external mono effect. Basically it uses a specially wired insert cable consisting of a 1/4" TRS plug whichsplits into two 1/4" TS plugs, one for the out signal and one for the return signal. The outbound TS plug goes into the effect and inbound TS plug returns from the effect back into the 1/4" TRS plug. I suppose you could try plugging it into the guitar line in and return back through the 1/4" mono output but I'd check the manual to see if all the impedences match up. EDIT: Oops...looks like hughanico beat me to it while I was typing......

The issue isn't line6 versus non-line6. Many people use L6 L2T's or L2M's to ensure the accuracy of what is being generated in the POD. The issue is we're discussing a modeling pedalboard. That's where the sound accuracy and feeling originate from. How that gets projected to an audience is determined by the output mechanism. If the output mechanism is, in itself, a modeled amp you're simply adding layers onto an already modeled amp and detracting from the accuracy and feel. Many people do use tradtional amps just for their amplification and speakers. But traditional guitar amps add certain sonic characteristics to the sound, so you have to take that into account when your building your patch.

Running a modeling pedal board through a modeling amplifier? Sounds a bit like overkill doesn't it? All you really need is an amplified output that's perfectly clean so it can represent the capabilities of the HD500 accurately. If you want something relatively small for use at home look at the Yamaha HS7 studio monitor. If you want something a bit more durable for outside the house look at the Alto TS212 powered speaker. Both about the same price as the THR10 but absolutely accurate and flat response.

That's why I learned to use the POD interface. All I need is a power outlet for a couple of minutes. Most tour buses and hotel rooms have that. Heck, I've even done that at a hotel registration desk with an understanding clerk. Anything more than setlist changes and I'll need my guitar and rig to check them out anyway.

It may not be for everyone, but I know I'll never go back to a traditional amp. After almost 50 years of trying to reproduce a studio sound in a live environment I finally achieved it with this rig. Even in the old days of analog recording there was always a difference between what we would hear in the studio and what we could produce on stage. I'm not really talking about nuances of the sound, but legitimate differences brought on by various things like mic and mic placement, and other stuff in the signal chain during mixing and EQ/limiters at the mastering stage. I've come closer and closer using modeling and modeling amps as the technology progressed, but the limitations always came back to the inadequacies of guitar amp speaker cabinets in comparison to professional studio monitors. The latest advancements in powered speakers using DSP, more advanced cabinet construction and high quality compression drivers really changed the game in my opinion. That opened the opportunity to ensure that the sound I designed for a specific song is heard on stage and through the PA exactly as I designed it.. I've never played with the AXEfx or Helix units, and they may have some improvements in the modeling. But those are what I refer to as nuances. All the major pieces necessary to get the precision and detail in the sound that I want is available for much less. So I'm a very happy guy now. It's just not worth another $2,000 to $4,000 to please an additional 1% of the audience the might know the difference. I've been using VST's since their inception, and they were pretty handy at first. But ultimately they're software, not hardware. So they inherently will either be less powerful or have more latency. That's just simple physics and the nature of hardware that allows the handing over of direct execution of it's logic within the device versus software that depends on an external computer bus and register structure to execute it's algotithms.

Another big thumbs up on the videos!! These were absolutely essential in getting me off and running quickly with my HD500X. Absolutely essential viewing for newbies if you ask me...

Yeah, pretty much what I thought. I think the key sound you're looking for is a harmonizer which on the POD is under the category of Pitch pedals and is called Smart Harmony which is based on the Eventide H3000 diatonic harmonizer. Of course you have two different guitar lines playing in the case of the video you posted, but they're each using a harmonizer with the tonic and the key set to whatever key they're playing in and the shift set +3 and it sounds like scale is probably set to minor, though I'd have to play a bit with it to make sure. I use this a lot when doing classic Queen style solos. Even though it's a diatonic harmonizer you can also achieve 3-part harmonies by adding an additional smart harmony into the signal chain with the shift set to +5. I normally place mine post amp and slightly lower than 50% on the mix function of the pedal to get them to blend better, but that's more a matter of personal taste. Since I use an FRFR setup I can't help you much with dialing in the amp tone. It sound very similar in feel to what Brian May used with Queen (that's technically Dr. Brian May, Phd in Astrophysics). He tended to use Vox AC30's for most of his stuff, so that's where I'd start with my rig. Since you're using your DT-50 as the amp and basic guitar tone you'd have to figure that one out for yourself. No offense, but I think most of the complications you're facing you kind of brought on yourself. I went the path of least resistance so for me it's pretty much as easy if not easier then monkeying around with VST's in a DAW. I just dial in the amp and effects to construct my signal chain, tweak them to taste and they go out one XLR cable to the PA and one to my guitar stage monitor which is a Yamaha DXR12. It's all very straightforward and no messy cord configurations or amp manipulations. The more complications you add to your setup, the more complications you have in finding your tones.

This is one of those things that truly baffles me when it comes up. Why in the world would you be fiddling with your presets during a live performance? Ideally, you have them pretty well dialed in even before rehearsal. Maybe at rehearsal you need a couple of tweaks to something to mix better with the band. But by the time you get to the performance everything should be set pretty well. Maybe a couple of tweaks to the master volume or some adjustment to the Global EQ during sound checks. But during performance??? If you're not ready by the time the lights go up and the audience is there, you're never going to be ready. And I can't imagine the band would be too forgiving about you tinkering with your settings mid-song or between songs. I would think trying to have an edit program on stage is just an invitation to play with the technology rather than perform.

I'm sure some of them do, but I suspect a lot has to do with the specific guitar and pickups they're using as well as some of the system i/o and global parameter settings they're using which aren't captured as part of the patch.

I think if you want to get some input on this you'll need to be more specific about what you're trying to accomplish. "Axe-FX-ish, Intervals, Polyphia" doesn't really convey what exactly you're trying to do. I assume that maybe you might be referring to polyphonic tones, but that's just a guess. We would need either a general description or perhaps a link to a sample. As far as the DT50 integration, again...integrate in what way? You want to employ the various pre-amp and amp tone configurations of the DT50 as far as both the pre-amp and amp configuration with the effects in the POD? I'm sure it's clear in your mind what you want to do. It's just not clear from your description.

This is very normal and has been discussed numerous times around here. It's probably best to think of Customtone as a teaching tool than a resource for gathering up useful tones. Although the patch may get saved to Customtone there are lots of variables the have a great bearing on the tone that aren't saved. The most obvious is the guitar and guitar rig. Although the patch may say it's for humbuckers or single coil, there are a wide range of pickups that fit into those categories. And often even the guitar can make a difference. For example a Gibson 335 and a Les Paul can have the same type of humbuckers, but sound very different on the same signal chain. The biggest difference comes in the guitar rig however. As you mentioned you use a powered PA speaker, but many use a standard guitar amp as their output. Or they could be using a standard amp withj the 4 cable method. Different amps and different powered PA speakers all have different effects on what you will hear. Another consideration with Customtone patches is they only provide the patch information, but they don't provide anything as far as setup information in that user's System I/O or global configuration of his unit. Some of these things can make a significant difference in the output. Not to mention the mechanism that was used to record that tone to video, or the system you're playing it back on. Bottom line, I would be more surprised if you downloaded a tone that sounded exactly as you expected it would. That's why it's so important to stress to new users that they take the time to learn the equipment and to build patches themselves. There really is no shortcut to getting what you will be happy with from this equipment. Downloading a tone and dissecting it to learn a few things you may not have thought of before can be useful. But ultimately there are many ideas that are shared and discussed on this forum that will probably serve you better than any tone you may download.

I don't know that it's any better, but it certainly provides more options for managing the sound than what's provided on the POD. In my case it was in place before I got the POD, so it was just easier to hook up the POD to it.

Make sure you have Studio/Direct selected in you System and I/O setup for the unit.

I record with the POD HD ProX -> XLR -> MOTU Ultralite MK3 -> USB -> Sonar X2 with great results. I'm not sure how much you should gauge anything based on what you find on Customtone. In many cases I'm not sure the posters in Customtone are all that experienced in using the POD HD in any real practical sense either in live performance or recording. Most seem to be toying with different possibilities of the capabilities of the POD, thus the over abundance of effects and complexity of the signal chains. I asked that question recently in here and the response from most people indicated that, like myself, our signal chain creations were relatively simple. It seems to me there are quite a few people that put together complex creations just because they can, not because it's really necessary.

Generally speaking, because the POD HD has so much power and flexibility built into it, the users that take the time to understand it's intricacies seem to have the most success with it. It is far more flexible than any modeler I've ever dealt with, but it does take some investment in time to master it. Personally I'm glad I made the leap to change my entire rig and go to an FRFR style setup when I went to the POD HD. There were still a few issues there I had to overcome, but I think it provides an environment that can fully exploit the all the capabilities of the unit. At this point I'm getting true studio quality sound from my guitar rig in a live environment which I've never been able to achieve in any other type of rig. And I get FAR more positive comments from both the band and the audience about my guitar tone than I've ever gotten before. I may have been able to achieve the same thing with a hybrid style system of a POD HD and an amp. I don't know because I never tried it that way. But I know in this setup I can dial in whatever tone I'm looking for with extraordinary precision. And I know that what I'm hearing on stage is exactly what the audience is hearing through the PA. As far as downloaded presets, I've learned from past modelers that tends to be a waste of time. Because there's such a wide variety in configuration of guitars and rigs, it's almost impossible to get what the original creator was getting without significantly modifying the patch. It's much better and faster to just learn to create your own. You'll also learn a lot more about how to tweak the POD HD that way as well.

I've done a bit of this myself over the last two days. Even though I wasn't experiencing any dreadful tone issues, but Hughanico and Pianoguy's comments regarding making things a bit easier and more consistent with the actual behavior of the real equipment intrigued me. I've long thought that the type of adjustments I've been making to achieve the tones I want seemed to be a bit out of line with what I've always done in the past, so I wanted to see if it made a difference. I've only tested out 4 of my patches, but I have to admit the change in inputs seemed to make my settings more in line with what I've always been used to in the past. Particularly the response of the tone controls and the settings on the tube compressor, tube screamer, and studio EQ. I also noticed a little more of a sonic change in the presence control as well as resonance. So on first blush through this I've got to say, this doesn't appear to be myth at all. It may not be as bad as the original poster made out, but that may be due to the rig he was using. I know the Yamaha DXR12 I use is pretty resistant to overdriven signals and that may account for why I didn't experience any significant problems. But for myself it did seem to address one of the smaller but somewhat aggravating aspect of not getting the behaviors I expected from my settings.

The signal level used by the XLR line is designed for going to a mixing board with it's own preamp, whereas the 1/4" line is standard level for going direct into amps. I don't know why you would have a spike when switching patches in HD Edit unless there's something in the program that somehow tests the input source. Bottom line, the correct way electronically to connect direct to a powered speaker would either be through a 1/4" output or first into a preamp via XLR then out of the preamp to the speaker via XLR.

This may fall into the urban myth category of tweaks. I agree that everyone has to judge this for themselves, and in some cases it may turn out to be a problem. But I can't say having it set to guitar and same has been an issue for me. I will say changing it to some other settings clearly has an effect on the general output and tone to some degree, but I can't say I ever experienced anything at all like what the OP deanesque described in my setup.

I go direct XLR out to the soundboard and 1/4" out to the monitor. I normalize the volume on all of my patches to be a consistent volume output so that I only set my master volume once at sound checks. As long as everyone in the band sets (and maintains) their volumes at sound check and stays there (which they should), I never have to touch my master volume after sound checks. If I start getting buried by someone else getting into a volume war, we have a much bigger problem that can only be fixed by some professionalism and stage discipline.

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).

Unfortunately in my almost 50 years of playing live and in recording studios it seems like the curiosity level of people new to the business seems to have dropped off considerably. Granted 40 years ago technology was just beginning to make it's entrance into the business. But most people were eager to understand it and learn how to use it and tame it. That's what I really appreciated about this original poster of this thread. I work with a lot of younger musicians and the trend has been to jump on the bandwagon of something new without really understanding what's under the hood. I realize there's a lot more technology not only in the market, but amassed into the small footprint of a unit like the POD HD. At least this poster seems to be genuinely interested in how things work and what they do, which means he'll likely be more successful at using the unit and getting what he wants out of it. I know through the years I spend countless hours in book stores and later on the internet reading and trying to grasp the intricacies of these technological advances. Now we feel blessed if a new user comes on here and has actually read the manuals. In my younger days I would have traded my left leg for access to the depth of information available instantaneously like we have now.

Here's a really good tutorial video by Peter Hanmer that goes through building a decent Les Paul tone. Excellent ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ9v7SCCt_c

You can make an adjustment in the operating system as is pointed out in the above link to raise your raw signal level, but I just want to point out that -8db isn't that far off from what's seen in a lot of pro studios. A lot of them target -4 to -6db as the mix output level to leave ample room for mastering after the mixing process is done. I know in my recordings I tend to keep the bass pretty near that range to leave space for the vocals and spikes from the drums without having to worry about clipping if I need to tidy some things up with plug-ins in the recording software.

What gave you the impression we admired them? However, I'll give you the fact that each person has to come to a conclusion about gain to match their own tastes. But to say Whitesnake is the example we all want to follow? Hendrix used relatively little gain in most of this songs, Clapton or George Harrison or even Stevie Ray Vaughan weren't huge gain monsters. That being said, if you're taste is purely hard core metal, then gain is likely your best friend. But you should be aware of the double-edged sword that comes with it. That's why we choose to use equipment that provides presets so we can have a variety of tones.