DunedinDragon

The obvious physical differences between a guitar cab and FRFR speaker is the speaker and horn/tweeter setup in a sealed enclosure with oftentimes some form of acoustic channeling typically for better response and better control over the sound cone being projected. But that really doesn't tell the whole story. Most of what makes the difference is the power amp that's part of the FRFR speaker which is usually a class-D amp that incorporates a certain amount of digital signal processing to aid in the full-range flat-response characteristics of the output. To get a much more real-world idea play an MP3 through a guitar amp then play the same thing through an upper end powered studio or stage monitor and the difference in sound should be quite obvious. Guitar cabinets and speakers are pretty rudimentary designs especially when compared to current FRFR designs used in studio monitors or stage monitors. That's because guitar or bass cabinets aren't expected to reproduce the sonic range of any signal other than an amplified guitar or bass signal that gets pushed through them, so they don't really require a lot of sophistication in their design.

I gain stage and volume normalize all my patches and I've never experienced such a thing, but then again I'm using a normal 1/4" output to my FRFR floor monitor. It makes me wonder if somehow you're getting an errant control command sent through the L6 link due to the POD Master volume being dimed out.

Well hopefully you're on a single coil or at least something with a split coil. Bridge pickup, probably a twin reverb. I've never tried this but it might work to use the smart harmony with the shift +8 (octave) and the mix at 100%, and compress the crap out of it. That's what pops into my mind. If that didn't work or sounded too artificial I'd probably opt to Capo it up pretty high on the fretboard and then use a fairly standard clean, compressed signal path. Interesting challenge though.

As someone mentioned earlier, given the situation you may as well take the leap and start working on your own patches. Downloading patches is something of a double edged sword. It's convenient, but you rarely really learn much about how to setup your own patches because it's not always obvious what the author was trying to do. Likewise I can't say I've ever really found anything useful from a downloaded patch because of the differences in people's physical setup (guitars, amps, FRFR, etc.). I have a computer I use specifically for my HD500 and my HDPro. But all I ever really use it for is saving my own patches and setlists. I agree Edit can be nice, but it's also not very practical when you find yourself at a gig and need to make some changes to a patch. You're better off knowing your way around the manual interface so you can make quick changes if you need to in my opinion.

Old-Rocker, I'm just as perplexed as you on why you're struggling so much. I think of my rig setup as pretty simple. Direct/studio Out setting in global settings, and line setting on the 1/4" out on the POD unit itself. I come from the L/Mono 1/4" output on the POD to the DXR12 powered monitor which is set completely flat with volume set at 50%. XLR out to the mixing board channel which is gain staged appropriately and EQ'd flat then routed along with all other channels to the QSC KW181 subs then out of the sub up to the KLA12 Line array in a serial fashion. The KW181 subs are set so that they only pass the frequencies above 100hz to the line array. The sound I get from the KLA12's is virtually identical to what I get coming out of the DXR12 monitor. Aside from the GEQ settings I mentioned before I use the standard set of amps (not the pre-amp versions) and adjust the tone controls, drive and channel volume in a normal way. I really don't do a lot with EQ on my patches most of the time. In some cases of rock tones rather than depend on the amp's drive setting I'll add just a touch of drive on the amp and use an overdrive effect to get a bit more control over the sound. I generally use the Ranger Booster effect for leads. Other than that most of my patches are pretty much off-the-shelf amp models with some reverb/delay and maybe some compression on some of them. Nothing really outrageous or spectacular in terms of the signal path on most of my patches. Typically I run the master volume on the POD at around 4 1/2 which is a good match to everyone else in terms of stage volume. That's really about all I can tell you about my setup and it works flawlessly. Hope some of the information helps.

There may have been some confusion on this at some point. I went back and reviewed the v2.62 release notes from Line 6 and the only limitation cited was that it wouldn't work with the L6 Link output due to it's flexible routing. Nothing at all mentioned about Studio/Direct.

I don't know where you read it, but yes I use studio/direct mode and GEQ works just fine.

Old-Rocker, Getting a good mic'd sound from the Rocker 30 isn't exactly the same as going direct unfortunately. You have to remember the Rocker 30 is a much more limited range speaker and cabinet than your Yamaha DSR's. What Line6 didn't do a very good job at in my opinion is applying the same limited range response on their cabinet emulations, so you pretty much have to compensate for that discrepency using the Global EQ facilities...at least that's what I do. Once I discovered that little detail everything else fell into place for me. Because you and I are using very similar FRFR speaker setups why don't you give my settings a try on your Global EQ and see if that makes the same difference for you as it did for me. I only make two adjustments on Global EQ. Make sure your Global EQ is set to ON then set the Low Cut Filter to 80 Hz. Set the High Cut filter to 6.5KHz. Make sure the HPF and D-Contour switches are in the off position on the DSR115. Select various amps and cabinets and see how that works for you.

Chances are if you were REALLY obsessed about that 5% warmth factor you could probably use a preamp like an ART TUBE/MP for about $35 to get it back. Personally I don't hear it, so I don't miss it.

Liesure491, As far as eliminating tube amps from my rig, I did that close to 7 years ago. But whether you can do that really depends more on your personal preferences than any specific objective criterea. As you mentioned in an earlier post you tend to be a heavy effects-laden player using ambient leads. Certainly many people have achieved such a thing through modeling without tube amps, but subjectively what appeals to them may be very different from you. For myself this transition was easy. I don't classify myself in any specific category of guitar playing. I'm just a guitar player pure and simple. I play whatever style the song calls for whether it be rock, jazz, country, blues, R&B, funk, finger-picked, etc. In my case the amp isn't the predominant factor in determining sound I'm after, the guitar is. That's why modeling worked well for me and why a pure FRFR setup was the perfect choice. I have a different patch customized to every song we play, but each patch is based on which guitar and playing style I'll be using on it. I could play a traditional rock song using my strat, but it won't have the same punch and body as my Les Paul. Likewise a funk song or Hendrix style won't feel or sound authentic played through anything but a strat. And certainly a Chet Atkins or Jerry Reed style fingerpicked song, or a Stray Cats rockabilly song wouldn't sound right through anything but my Gretsch regardless of the amp. That's not to say the amp doesn't play into the palette of sound I'm looking for in these different styles, but that's why modeling is far more important to me than SS or tube configurations. In my case the struggle is more about when will I be ready to move from the 3 or 4 guitars I need for a typical gig to a variax? I just recently felt comfortable enough to move from a traditional modeled amp to a HD500X and FRFR speaker arrangement, it may take a while for me to make the variax leap. And although I was challenged initially with finding the right settings to make me comfortable with getting the various sounds I need, within a month or so I was ready to take it live and haven't looked back. But my patches tend to be relatively simple. In my case stereo patches aren't an issue because we always route everything through the PA. And because of variations in room layout and the dispersion of the audience, a stereo effect will only be heard appropriately by a small number of people in the audience who are in the perfect position to hear it correctly. Beyond that I can achieve the sound I'm looking for through a simple configuration of the correct amp/cabinet/mic and a very limited number of effects applied sparingly such as compressor, distortion, booster, chorus, reverb, delay, and eq. In terms of your initial question, I'm not sure you're going to find a satisfying answer to when you can move to a tube-less rig until you first find someone who characterizes themselves as the same type of guitar player. Then they might have some specific ideas and guidelines about how they use the technology to make you feel comfortable making the leap.

Old-Rocker, Are you coming out of the HD500X with an XLR or 1/4" line into the DSR? I come out of the 1/4" line out into my DXR12 which has considerably less rated power than the DSR. I set my DXR at half volume and I overwhelm everyone on stage if I get anywhere close to 4.5 on my master volume. There may be some differences in the D-Contour feature, but I wouldn't think it would be that dramatic. Maybe make sure your HPF and D-Contour switches on the DSR are turned off and that your using Studio/Direct and line as far as outputs. I noticed you mentioned a mixer. Are you going directly into the DSR from the POD or through a physical mixer inot the DSR?

In my experience Old-Rocker you're exactly right. Doing a save from Edit sends the changes to the POD's active patch memory, but if there's an asterisk on the patch, it means the updates have not been committed to the POD's permanent memory. The only way to be sure the POD has committed changes to it's internal memory is manually press the 'Save' button.

I personally don't think of that as modeling, but to each their own I suppose. In my personal experience I only use the term modeling to apply to algorithmic transformations of the sound wave to simulate the behaviors of a specific amp or effect. However in the truest sense that's probably not accurate. The 3d model of the universe a child makes for a science project is still a model, even though it doesn't compete with the accuracy of a model generated on a Cray supercomputer. On the other hand I'm not sure the ADA MP-1 was actually trying to simulate, or "model" so to speak any other specific amp. Rather it just provided a variety of sound options.

I'm not a whole lot different than you in that out of the 50 years I've been playing probably close to half of that has been involved with modeling in the picture. My first encounters were in the studio, but eventually I felt comfortable bringing it onstage. Unlike you I haven't felt the need to go through the wide variety of equipment you've gone through in my quest for a presentable tone. My primary limitations have come from the constraints of available processing power and modeling algorithms used over the years. Most of these limitations were things that could be worked around in the earlier days, but I certainly feel that the available computing power has allowed us to make significant headway in modeling, particularly over the last 10 years at least and there's not as much need, if any, to have to work around limitations. Like you, my goal for onstage modeling was to ultimately limit the amount of gear and complexity in my guitar rig. Late last year I finally felt comfortable enough with the state of progress in both modeling and live sound reproduction technologies to make that final leap. Having initially come from a studio environment I always felt the primary limitation in live modeling was the ability to duplicate the precision and flexibility of the studio environment onto the stage. The POD HD series made a significant step in that regard by providing more options in terms of amps, cabinets, mics, and (to some degree) mic placement. But the big advance was in the flexibility they provided in construction of the signal chain, including multiple, flexible signal chains. However the surprising factor that I hadn't predicted was the advancement of very effective live sound reproduction technology in packages that were affordable to common everyday people. Most of this came from the incorporation of DSR driver technology into live speaker arrangements which initially resulted in affordable, smaller line array systems capable of being used in clubs. In the last few years these same DSR driver technologies have begun to show up in the powered monitor/speaker systems market. The result of that advance was the ability to truly mimic the precision and clarity of studio monitors. It was both of those advancement that finally lead me to make the decision to go to a stage rig that uses a HD500X routed to a Yamaha DXR12 stage monitor with a line direct to the mixer. Taming that level of clarity and articulation for onstage use was at first a bit of a challenge. But I think that's a normal artifict of major shifts in a common paradigm. At this point I think I've gotten over the hump and I commonly get a lot of positive feedback from my bandmates as well as my audience about the tones I'm able to achieve, and the benefit my rig has in helping the band achieve a polished studio sound in our live performances. The biggest advantage of all of this that I had not realized I would get was the ability to ensure that the sound I had onstage was exactly the sound my audience was hearing. The biggest challenge I hadn't predicted was how much harder I needed to focus on my technique...because EVERYTHING comes through...both good stuff and not-so-good stuff.

I use a Yamaha DXR12 as my main stage powered monitor. Of course right after I bought it Line 6 lowered the prices on their powered speakers to roughly what I paid for the DXR12. But I can't say I've been disappointed. This has been discussed several times around here, but one of the challenges with typical off-the-shelf powered monitors is the flat response across a wide frequency range. That's very nice, but it tends to get a little much when trying to get a guitar tone you're normally used to on a traditional guitar amp since guitar amps by design work in a much more confined frequency range. I don't know if Line 6 accounts for this when using their powered monitors, but with my DXR I had to use the Global EQ to limit the response of the speaker below 125 hz and above about 8.5 khz to make it respond a bit more like a traditional guitar cabinet. Thats still quite a bit more than a traditional cabinet, but I wanted to retain a some of the frequency response to help out with clarity and articulation. There are other ways to do it within individual patches of course, but for me this removed the unecessary bass and high treble responses that plagued me when putting together a patch. However unlike you I do send a line direct to the PA, but at least my configuration will ensure that what comes out of the FOH speakers matches up with what I'm hearing on stage. In my case we're a 7 piece band playing a variety of styles, so I'm not as concerned with pushing air as I am blending with the rest of the instruments. YMMV

No problem StrayFalcon. We've all been through the same learning curve. I've been using modeling in one way or another for several years now and most of what I struggled through in learning to tame it translated over when I went to the HD500X. So just know that the things you're learning now will serve you well in the future no mater where you may go with modeling technology.

I don't personally own the Audiobox so I don't know what comes with it. I use a MOTU UltraLite MK and I bought my DAW software separate (Cakewalk Sonar Producer).

I'm thinking some razor wire at about knee height on the front of your POD should cure her in no time at all..... :rolleyes:

On the limited budget your talking about I think you're more likely to get an FRFR style setup using some small studio monitors rather than a pair of headphones. Most of the studio headphones that would even come close to an uncolored full range are going to be MUCH higher in price than your budget allows. But there's a nice range of small studio reference monitors that fit the bill.

I use a Yamaha DXR12 powered monitor as the only source of my sound. Although I also normally run a line out to the mixer in addition to the monitor, I have more than enough headroom left on the monitor that I could use it standalone in a small venue and it would work just fine. The DXR12 is "realisticallly" rated at around 800 watts so it has the horsepower. To be honest though, if our normal stage volume isn't enough to fill the space I would likely opt to go direct into the PA rather than turn everyone on stage up. That just creates more problems than it's worth trying to hear everyone and blend together. As far as the volume for my patches I set everything up using the same DXR12 monitor. I set my master volume control of the POD at a specific level and tweak each of my patches until I have them all at the same relative volume. Once I get to rehearsal I adjust the POD's master volume to mix with the rest of the band and all of the patches go up the same relative amount. I build all of my patches from scratch rather than use the ones that came with the POD or ones that are downloaded. I pretty much depend on a handful of specific amp models for my different base tones, but because there's a fairlly wide range of volumes between some of the amps, if I can't even them out just using the channel volume or mixer volume I'll sometimes use the Studio EQ as the last effect in the signal chain and bump up the volume to match the other patches. This is fairly rare since I often use a compressor in my signal chain which is enough to level out the volume. All of these adjustments are done at home outside of rehearsal/performance, so by the time I show up with the band it's simply a matter of adjusting my POD's master volume to match the levels of the rest of the band.

I'll go along with the Soldano Clean. I used to use the Twin for my clean stuff, but I've since started using the Soldano. It still has that Twin sparkle but with lot more body to it. I haven't used the drive much on it as I typically depend on effects pedals for most of that.

You can get a Focusrite Audiobox 2x2 Audio Interface street price at Guitar Center or Amazon for $99. Sounds like a good deal to me. Then just leave your JBLs plugged into it and then use either the XLR or 1/4 " outs from your POD when you want to connect into it. That's what I do and I get great sound and a clean recording signal as well through the audio interface.

Old-Rocker: Don't worry about the age thing. I'm 62 and still having a blast learning new things. That's what keeps us "vintage" guys fresh.... B)

I think you're beginning to get a feel for what drives many of us using FRFR rigs Old-Rocker. Ultimately it's about getting precise control over where our guitar sits in the live mix. It can be done with a regular amp, but it's just easier and more precise with an FRFR rig. Because you aren't familiar with recording I'll diverge a bit to help you understand a bit more. One major element in professionally recorded tracks is finding where each instrument will sit in the mix of instruments so it can be clearly heard. This is a combination of volume, area in the frequency range, and spatial (pan left/right). By manipulating this three things you create a "sound stage" so that the listener can hear each instrument and voice clearly in a mix in a way that's pleasing to the ear. What modeling and the 500X brings to the table in general is an extraordinary amount of control over one's sound in a way that's similar to the tricks used by recording engineers to make that sort of thing happen. A physical guitar amp and cabinet will always have a certain timbre to it, and because of that some of the manipulations you might apply on a patch won't achieve the full affect it might have were you to be using an FRFR rig, because the FRFR rig by design targets eliminating these type of colorations. The result is that when you apply changes to the patch on the 500X, they will be more obvious and therefore help you get to that point of getting the guitar to play nicely within the mix of all the intruments on stage. A big factor in all of this for guitar in particular is clarity and articulation. Recording engineers go through a lot of manipulations in some cases to achieve this such as combining a mic'd (or dual mic'd) cabinet with a raw DI signal. However with a FRFR rig this aspect kind of comes for free because the drivers used in FRFR cabinets have gotten so advanced over the last few years that they are, in effect, pretty much the same as studio monitors and therefore by their nature will accurately reflect nuances like pick attack, string separation, and guitar timbre on various different types of guitar and pickup combinations which really helps in isolating the guitar from the rest of the instruments. For some people this may not be as important as it is for some of us. In my case we play a very wide range of styles and I choose which guitar I'm playing on a given song based on the style of the song. Therefore if I'm playing a rockabilly sound or early 60's type style I'll likely use my Gretsch, and I want that unique Gretsch sound to come through to the audience because it's an important factor in how that song should sound. Likewise I'll play my Les Paul for a heavier rock sound and I want that sound to clearly have the identifiable Les Paul mid-scooped sound because it's important to the feel of the song. All of that is more easily accomplished with a setup that doesn't add any coloration to the sound....therefore for me FRFR is a perfect fit. I know this was long-winded but you seemed to be honestly curious about what brings many people to an FRFR rig and I just wanted to fill in some of the holes in your knowledge about such things. I hope that helps.

It's probably best to think about this as an exercise in finding some open space in the frequency range where the guitar can come through without having to boost volume too much. That will give you a more polished/finished sound to the overall mix.