sidroe

Fenders for clean. Marshalls for grind. Phd Motorway for blues and country. That's about it but there is usually a good bit of tweaking with the cabs going on. I also tend to not use the overdrive or distortion boxes. I use the drive knob and the master volume to drive the amp sim in to distortion just like you would a real amp. Also a little compression to even things after the amp. I like compression after the amp because the amp reacts to my volume changes on my guitar very much like the real thing.

I learned to keep my knobs turned off from my old POD 2.0. The Mid knob would sometimes get crud in it and the setting would switch to edit from vibration. After finding out what the problem was, I simply would turn the knob back and forth a few times and it would be fine but out of distrust I found that unless I was using the knobs it was best to just leave them turned down.

I have to admit I do tinker around on my tube amps and pedals at home and I will fire one up and mic it for a classic sounding track every once and a while. But, since the POD 2.0 days most all of my recording work and live playing has been pretty much covered by the PODs. Even the 2.0 fooled a lot of people in the early days. I am very happy with my HD500 and unless there has been a huge sound quality jump in Helix I will probably stay with it for a long time. My main battles with going direct live was convincing the bandmates that this was not a BETTER way for me to get great tone, only a DIFFERENT way of doing it. After I played around the area a while it became a no-brainer to the rest of the guys and has been better accepted. Some of them have actually made the jump themselves. I must tell this story! Back in the mid-80's, pre-POD days, my regular group had taken a few weeks off from the road and my keyboard player's brother, a drummer himself, called me and ask if I would like to play some weekend gigs with him. I told him yes it sounded like a lot of fun. PROBLEM? My amps were in the equipment truck 100 miles away! Thankfully, I had my guitars and pedal board. We set up that afternoon at the club when the bass player walked in and informed us his amp was down! After some discussion, he and I decided to run direct in the board. My pedal board was stereo so I ran just like we do now with our PODs. Imagine the looks we got when the crowd, including some of our devoted followers who were players, walked in and saw nothing on stage but the drum kit. Of course, we blew the walls out but the sound was so big and clean it was overwhelming. Not one person complained that the tone sucked or it wasn't ballsy enough! Everyone raved about how cool it was to see just musician's doing their thing without mountains of gear behind them blasting away. Everything could be heard mix-wise. I remember thinking to myself on the way home that night, "Gee, What if someone made---------------!!". LOL!!!!

FWIW, I have not used a guitar amp onstage for at least 5 to 6 years now! I have to say I have not missed it in the least. It does take some getting used to and your bandmates will think you have lost it but the luxury of getting studio tone without lugging around arig the size of a small fridge is well worth it. Plus, you can walk anywhere on the stage and hear youself to boot.

I had always been a hardcore tube guy for more years than I would like to admit. My old guitar roadie called me up one day and said he had gotten hold of this thing called a POD 2.0 and he really didn't care for. We got together and I was immediately captivated with the possibilities of how this thing could get me tonally where I wanted to be in seconds! I do a lot of recording sessions and being able to cut back on the amount of amps to carry around was a no brainer for me. Now my amps sit in storage and I am up to the HD unit. I have not missed my tube amps one bit! There was some wrangling around to get used to the direct to the for live performance, but once I got my ears trained I never regretted my decision to go this direction. Now in my studio I use Amplitube but for live I am perfectly happy running my POD direct to the house with a little bit in the monitors for me.

It depends! For the cleaner old school sound, most any stomp compressor will suffice. Just crank the compression to taste. The modern country players run so much gain that compression is not really necessary! You could use a little rack compression after the amp to even things out a bit but at gain settings like they use it probably is not necessary.

I have had great results on occassion running stereo into the fx returns on a pair of Fender - Rivera designed Concert combos. Mainly, I run direct to the house mixer and bring the guitar up in the house monitors.

I would suggest that all of you on this forum who have never heard of or don't believe in ear fatigue, PLEASE do some research on the internet NOW! I ask you to do this as someone who spent most of his life standing in front of a Marshall Super Lead 100 cranked. Now I spend a great deal of my waking hours listening to high pitched whistling and ringing in my ears! Thankfully, it hasn't impeded me to the point of affecting my ability to play or mix. I look at it mainly as a daily irritation to be lived with. PLEASE! Don't take your hearing for granted! Do that research on ear fatigue NOW!

I have midi setups on my DAW for Amplitube and TH2. I use my now ancient HD500 all the time and it works GREAT!

Possibly a little EQ after the distortion device.

Fender and Vox amps are very top-endy amps. I have found even with the real ones a little less treble or presence is a good thing.

Ah, a pencil! How does this thing work! LOL

I agree Pianoguyy! But at least you would have a decent starting point to tweak from and not having to start over from scratch. That was my thinking anyway. I'm glad you all think it was a good idea.

I think the global eq is a huge step forward for us users. I do have one suggestion to make that could really come in handy. What if we had at least 10 or 20 memory slots for the global eq! Those of us who play many different venues on a regular basis could simply do our sound checks, get our global eq setting at optimum for that room and save it! Over a period of time we would have our list of rooms to choose from and simply call it up. This would also open the door for possibly famous producers or artists presets to be developed and sold for the global eq. Just a thought. It might be something to consider for the new products coming down the road. Have to admit, it would be a feature that makes our job a little easier and I'm always up for that.

Just an idea but I would like to see something along the lines of the Custom Shop in Amplitube where I can buy individual amps, FX, or cabs so I don't get stuck with four or five amps in the pack that will never be used!

Just curious! The statement was made that the only difference in the old 500 and the X is the processor. Would it not be possible to offer a cheap alternative to trade ins or buying the X by charging a small fee and having the processor in your old 500 upgraded to the new? I had my 500 for about 6 weeks before the X hit the market. Boy, was I miffed! The salesman could have told me to wait because the new model was coming out! Anyway, I wonder what the cost would be to upgrade if possible. It seems a better alternative than keeping the old ones around and eventually not being able to use certain updated functions. I think the ones of us who have the older 500 would be a lot happier just to know we CAN upgrade if we want. Otherwise, I guess we'll have to create the "VINTAGE" POD market so original PODs will cost collectors thousands of dollars! LOL I have a POD 2.0! Anybody in for 50 grand! Hee-Hee!

I can relate to your story completely. I grew up in the good old analog days and fondly remember trotting down to the local drugstore with a cigar box full of tubes to check on the refrigerator size tube tester! Ah, those were the days. I am a little older than you and have played professionally for over 45 years, both live and studio. The last ten to fifteen years I have operated a project studio to help songwriters develop their skills and compose my own material. The debacle I have is there are just too many choices to make when it comes to deciding which amp or FX or cab! In the "old" days, we would drag in whatever amp we had and throw up a mic, get the sound and hit record. That raw philosophy worked then! Why does it not work now? I MORE THAN OFTEN, spend more time browsing around and trying to get the PERFECT guitar rig sound for a particular song when I could have just went with the raw instinct and made some music. Don't get me wrong! I do love this technology and have been heavily brow beaten for doing so. I really do think that things would move a little quicker creatively if we had less choices of a better quality. There are some amps that are an absolute necessity but it seems we get a lot of filler amps that never get touched. I have to agree that there simply is not anything better than plugging in to a REAL tube amp with your guitar of choice! I don't think any modeling will ever capture the magic of the gas in those tubes heating up and singing. At the same time, I can't lug around hundreds of amps to do sessions or perform. I am very happy with the line 6 modelers and will continue to use these products. Although, like you, I do have to fight the tendency to just break out a mic and pull those amps out and set the time machine for 1968! LOL!

In small, mid-size clubs, and even small halls, your ear will still tend to separate the sound as a stereo image. Your ears will tell you your hearing the guitarist on the right and the one on the left as a stereo image IF the guitarists are set up that way on stage. The Beatles, for example, always set up with Paul's bass amp on the left while George was in the center and John was on the right. I'm sure that is where your ears would place them if you were in a club or small arena. By the time they got to large arenas it was all on the sound guy. Stereo panning has a lot to do with how your guitar fills the room. I have always been adamant about the venue having pro quality stereo sound. If they don't have it, we bring in our own. That being said, the hd still sounds phenomenal when ran mono. It just really depends on how ticky you are about getting the best out of your gear.

I saw where Firehawk will NOT do dual paths for two amps at the same time. That would be a deal breaker for me.

FYI, Hetfield loves the JC-120 for the clean sounds ONLY. "Nothing Else Matters" intro is a perfect example. The clean sounds on that cut and any other track that calls for cleaness is his trusty JC-120. I had a JC-120 head pushing 2 Marshall 2X12 cabs for my clean rig for years but when I went POD my amps went in to storage. I haven't used an amp on stage or in the studio for a long time now. The PODs do everything I need very nicely. What they don't fit well I go to Overloud's TH2 or Amplitube.

I agree with pfsmith. I don't think you will be to impressed with the quality of the speaker sound. The HD series also has the cd/mp3 player input so you could play along with your favorite tunes either in the headphones or speakers.

The question is how picky are you about your on stage sound? If you just want to hear it to reference playing the song a guitar amp will suffice. If you want to hear the full amp modeling effect in all it's glory you will really need some higher fidelity cabs with horns or tweeters. I have used a Crown stereo power amp pushing 2 JBL floor monitors with 12" speakers before and the sound was incredible! Like standing in the main room of a world class studio. In smaller rooms I have plugged the HD500 in to the FX returns on 2 Fender Concerts and while the top end left much to be desired the setup was killer. These days I mostly do studio work. When I do play live it is usually at places that have a house PA and sound guy. I plug straight in the snake to the board and the sound guy gives me just enough volume back thru the monitors to hear myself comfortably. Quick and easy!

There is also a "guitar in" switch on the 500. It's next to the expression pedal. There are two settings to choose from. The lower setting is best for guitars with high output pickups. This could clear it up.

If you are only using the 500 for delays, modulations, reverbs, etc., it should work very nicely in the loop but pay special attention to if the FX are mono or stereo. You won't get the full effect of some of the stereo FX. You would have to send the other output to another amp to get the full stereo sound. Try to keep all the gain FX like compression and overdrive pedals in front of the preamp. Short answer? It will work but limited.

I have a pretty big collection of amps that have ended up in storage. The HD500 straight in to the board and hooked to a stereo pair of powered monitors has been my main rig for over a year now. Before that, it was a POD 2.0 or a Boss GT10 hooked the same way. I own a studio that does TV and radio work on a regular basis. Everything I have done in the past years has been with amp modeling. For my use and in my opinion, running any modeler in to another guitar amp is kind of like micing a killer 100 watt Marshall stack thru a 15 watt combo. I have used two Fender amps running stereo hooking in to the FX returns on the amps. This bypasses the preamp section and runs me in to the power amp and speakers. It works well if you are just wanting to hear yourself but the guitar cabs cut out all the top end clarity you would get running thru a great pair of floor monitors. You will never be able to truly hear what the POD or any other modeler is completely capable of. It will allow you to hear yourself but the tone will never sound as good as being plugged in to mixer. That's what these things were designed for. On the other hand, if you disable the amps and just use the FX the HD will make a great FX pedal board. No lugging around a dozen stomp boxes that have to be patch corded and tweaked everytime you set up. It works very well at this,too.