Goochster

Hi all For the last few years my preferred alternative to an amp has been to play my guitar through my PC using a Line 6 FBV Express MK II pedal with a Line 6 UX1 (Pod Studio) with Pod Farm 2. It's even great but my FBV is now intermittently faulty. This kit has been around for quite a few years now. Can anyone suggest a new set up giving me the same flexibility in the same sort of price range please? I need to be able to have amp sims and effects through my PC with the ability to change effects with some sort of floorboard. I'm happy to look for another second hand FBV Express MK II but if anyone can suggest a newer improved set up that would be great. Also are there any other floorboards that can bu used with my UX1 (Pod Studio)? Thanks all!

Thanks for your advice Napy. It's appreciated. I'm still on the lookout for a used MKII shortboard but will hopefully track one down soon! :)

Thanks again They are quite expensive. But like you say I'll try one out then maybe keep an eye on Ebay! ;)

Thanks BillBee I'm using an FBV Epress MKII not a shortboard. I was just wondering if I upgraded to the shortboard whether it would be a worthwhile investment and whether it would make banking tones easier?

Thanks for your feedback BillBee I think I'm just trying to eliminate any potential disasters in a live situation but I suppose any piece of kit can can fail on you! It seems quite fiddly trying to dial tones into this amp and then get each tone in each bank to the same volume. I just though pedals might be a bit easier to control. Maybe If I upgraded to the FBV MK II Shortboard, would that make life any easier?

Hi all I have a Spider Valve MKII 112 and FBV MKII Express which I've owned for 3-4 years. I used to use them both quite a lot at home but found the amp ridiculously loud so bought a UX1 with Pod Farm 2 which I now use 95% of the time through some desktop monitors. I'm now in a situation where I'm expecting to start gigging in the next few of months. Nothing huge just a few pub gigs playing a wide range of rock and pop covers from the 60's to present day. I took the SV MKII and FBV MKII to my first band practise a few days ago and to be honest I struggled to dial in any decent clean or crunch tones. Besides that I found that on one occasion in the middle of a song I accidentally pressed two pedals at once on the FBV MKII and somehow activated the looper which completely messed up my tone until I managed to switch it off! I've since played around trying to dial in some clean and crunch tones with mixed success. My question is. Realistically is this amp going to be usable as a regular gigging amp? For the gigging musicians out there, how do you organize and store your tones in the amp? Do you just dial in and save your different tones, clean, crunch, distorted, effects etc... and then create a different bank for each song you're going to play, making sure your tones have a similar volume? That way giving you a maximum of 4 different tones for each song. Or is there a better way of organizing your tones? Also is there a way of disabling the looper? I'm just a bit worried that there's just too much that can go wrong with this amp in a live situation and maybe I should revert to a standard 2 channel amp and some pedals. I really would appreciate some advice from gigging musicians that have used this or a similar set up. Thanks in advance for any help. :)

Thanks again TheRealZap I just thought that sound output from the UX1 was quiet quiet compared to the backing tracks. I'll probably do as you say and add the track into my recording software and have a play and see what I come up with. Thanks for your input on this. :)

Thanks TheRealZap I think that answers my first question then and also explains the problems I was having with ASIO4ALL. I just thought there would be a way of inputting my guitar signal into the UX1 then down the USB cable into the pc then back out on the other USB cable to the monitors without the use of an analogue connection between UX1 and monitors. Thanks that clears it up. :) Any ideas anyone on the other question I have reference my volume issues between Pod Farm tones and backing mp3's?

Thanks for your response BillBee. I had a play with ASIO4ALL last night but couldn't see a way of directing the input using the UX1 and the output with the Alesis monitors. I also read through the thread in the link but unfortunately there wasn't any clues to solving my situation. I'll persevere and post back if I have any luck. Thanks for your help. :)

Hi all I'm hoping someone here might be able to shed some light on a couple of questions that I have. Firstly I've just upgraded my PC speakers to a set of Alesis M1 active 320 USB monitors. I've found that the only way I can output the guitar tones from POD Farm to the monitors is if I use the 2 x analogue outs from the UX1 and plug them into the 1/4 inch line inputs on the monitors. I thought there might be a way of discarding the use of cables here as the UX1 goes into my PC via USB and the monitors are outputting via USB? I imagine there is a way of tethering the 2 if I was using some sort of recording software like Reaper etc but most of the time I'm just playing my guitar to a backing track mp3. This leads me onto the second question. When playing my guitar to a backing track I find that the output volume of the Pod Farm tone is always quite low compared to the mp3 backing track that I'm playing. So I have to ramp the volume up on my monitors to allow for the low volume of the guitar tone from Pod Farm, but then turn down the volume of the mp3 to get them to a similar level. This was always a problem with the pc speakers that I used to use but now I have some decent monitors it's even more apparent. I've tried turning up the amps used on the individual tones to full volume, turning up the output volume within Pod Farm itself to maximum and turning up the output volume on the UX1. It still doesn't get particularly loud. Any help with the above 2 questions would be very much appreciated. Thanks