billlorentzen

Wait a minute I forgot I gotta have the Dr Z too! That baby is sweet for blues.

You can place one of the pedal comps before the amp or the LA2A after. They sound different. The pedals are more obvious to me. I build my sounds like a recording engineer, because that's my experience, so I would stick a studio effect after the amp, like in the studio.

Prolly the divided by 13 and the Soldano, unless it's jazz or fusion then I'd use the 13 and the Gibson.

I have EMG SA single coils on my main gigging guitar and I do use the pad because I initially set up all my patches with it, but I agree with Nico that whichever way works is the best way.

Thanks, guys. I guess if I want accurate control, it's the Mission pedal.

I bought one of the Line6 expression pedals, and I'm trying to get it to have a better gradation from low to high (or left to right). My built-in pedal works fine, and I know how to calibrate it. The root problem is the pedal is a ridiculous POS. The pot inside actually passes 100% and then goes up again at the end of its rotation. Additionally the mechanical design sucks and the action of the pedal is jerky - totally not pro gear. It was cheap though! Does anyone know of a calibration method for the auxiliary pedal in the HD itself?

The trick for me is finding the right amps, and tweaking them. Unfortunately the stock patches suck, so you will need to get into each amp to discover its full capabilities. My favorites are the Deluxe, the divided by 13, Dr Z and the soldano. I really don't have problems getting a fat sound when I want to.

I have a reactor, which helped with earlier modelers, but now use full range powered PA cabs (Yamaha) and prefer them. The Atomic is a tad brighter than the PA cabs, and does add some little dirt. I have the 2x12 reactor and it is big and heavy.

I have a solution for you. Virtually all my patches use the exp pedal to go from a rhythm sound to a lead sound. Forward is the lead sound. I do this because I'm a singer and don't like to look down all the time while I'm singing - riding the pedal doesn't require looking. Another useful aspect is that you can kick in a lead line instantly while you are comping. Also you can get nice in between tones. When you hit the pedal foot switch you are already forward, on the lead sound, and the wah kicks in. Setting up the patches is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. If you are using the same amp for both patches, you can either change the amp and fx settings with the pedal control, or if you want to use a dist pedal for only the lead tone, then you have to create dual paths before the amp, with one path holding the dist ped. If you want two different amps, then put each amp on a separate path and pan between them. Oddly, the fact that the wah only works with the pedal in the forward position forced me to get a separate exp pedal so I can have wah on my clean sounds too. Even with two pedals you can still do what you want, just don't use the extra pedal on the particular patch.

I sure hope Yamaha takes over building variax guitars.

I rarely use EQs in my setups, mainly because with the patches I create I don't have the headroom or free slots on an original 500 for them. I tend to accomplish my fine tuning of a cab with mic choice, the recording engineer's preferred tonal tool.

This may have been covered already, but you have a lot of tools for gain adjustment. Try a compressor before the amp, set to low output and then make up the gain after the amp with the mixer or the LA2A comp. Amp distortion is a result of input gain, so if you lower the input enough you won't get distortion.

Based on what you are trying to do, I wouldn't run it through the Pod. I would run the ipad through a keyboard type vol pedal (not a guitar pedal) and to the board. This would allow you to do the fades. However, the proper way to do it would be to fix the levels and fades on all the backing tracks so you don't have to do the workarounds. Then you can concentrate on playing and just let the tracks play.

When playing through a house PA, just make sure you leave yourself enough gain headroom for when the band cranks up. I've been using my HD instead of an amp for a few years, gigging very regularly and I'm completely comfortable with using monitors, but they gotta be loud enough or you're screwed. I generally bring my own powered PA cab when I'm playing through a smaller system where I dont trust the monitoring. There is no problem with uncomfortable high end with the HD, any more than with an amp.

You can also use your expression pedal for adjusting every other parameter. I use mine to go from my rhythm tone to lead tone, changing usually more than a dozen parameters.

I'm using the line 6 pedal, and it works, but it is pretty flimsy.

I sing a lot and hate looking down to hit switches, so I use the pedal to change from rhythm patch to lead. I have a lot of different patches, some clean to loud clean, but on most I want to add more dirt, so I typically make two channels, one with a dist pedal and one without. I use the pedal to pan back and forth between them. You have to move the amp after the mixer, and you have to have a mono fx before the pedal (noise gate or compressor works). I usually also adjust the amp and fx, to get the ideal sound for rhythm and lead. All these parameters can be assigned to the pedal. The only thing that's dicey is adjusting the delay time - you get some weird pitch shifts as you rock the pedal. Sometimes I use two separate amps, but usually not - if I had a 500 X I might do that more often. One of the pluses with this tech ique is you can get some nice medium sounds in the middle position of the pedal too. Be advised it will take you a little longer to set up these patches, but I'm a working musician so it's worth the effort to me.

I'm not using a JTV, but I like the sound of the Vox amps for jazz.

I really like my Yamaha DSX 10 speakers. They also make an 8" and a 12" model. I also use them for a PA for my small band gigs and use their 12" sub too. If I'm playing with a full band I use them for my guitar, and I am 100% satisfied with their performance, size, reliability, power, etc. they have settings for use as floor monitors, and other nifty EQ options to boost or cut lows.

I have an Atomic Reactor, a tube 2x12 power amp only combo designed for modelers, and while it does impart some tubeyness, I prefer solid state powered monitors. It helped on the original Pod, but the HD doesn't need it.

Great, that was so easy to handle I'm embarrassed that I didn't see that myself!

If you're using the amp sims, going into a regular guitar amp is a bad idea - trust me, you will struggle to get good sounds. I would get some powered pa speakers. I use yamaha DSX 10s and they sound perfect. A little more than 800 for the pair, but you could buy one and then if you want two, save up.

One of my problems with the chorus pedal is that it also gives about a 4db boost. That may be part of why the high notes sound too loud. You could try the Trichorus. Dial it back and you may get a decent sound. I wish they had modeled the TCElectronic analog chorus - the green one. That thing blows away the boss chorus.

If you have one, how do you find it compared to the onboard pedal? The one I just bought is not smooth - worst action of any pedal I've used, by far. Any fixes?

I've got a 30 year old Cry Baby, but I prefer the modeled pedals.