billlorentzen

I might add that the legendary jazz pianist, Chick Corea was known early in his career for his use of pentatonic scales - and that dude can play anything. He also is a practicing maniac, like virtually all great players.

I wonder if IRs of a nice acoustic could be used with my Ovation's under-saddle pickup to sound closer to a real guitar?

Since you need to move fast on increasing your speed, I might recommend really working on your penatonic scales. They are very versatile and can be pretty quickly built up to significant speed, and will make do for some flash if not overused.

I've been using regular Dunlop 1mm blacks for maybe 30 years, and they ain't failed me yet. I tried the new grippier ones, but they wear out too fast and are a little softer, so, although I dig the grip, I went back to my old standby. If you have to play in the cold, I do recommend the grippy ones - they won't fall out of your fingers as easily. BTW, I use reverse grip (pick angled up towards the neck, instead of down) a la George Benson, so my experience is prolly a little different from most. When it comes to speed, there's nothing like practice (and coffee!) But keep in mind that speed without taste is lame. Make sure no matter how fast you play, you can still sing your lines as you play them. That will keep you in the melodic world instead of being robotic. BTW, you sound like a very melodic player, and that communicates so much better than a bunch of high speed wanking IMHO. Still,a pro must have speed cops as part of their skill set. For building up speed and flexibility, there's nothing like practicing scales and scale patterns up and down in every position (CBABAGAGF, CBAGBAGF, CABGAF, etc. etc.) and arpeggios. These patterns will develop all the many different picking combinations that will come up in creating a great solo or playing intricate melodies. And don't forget chromatic and diminished. They add flavor, like olives in your salad! And practice your lines both slow and fast. And the old datum that you need to be able to play 20% faster in practice to be able to play at tempo on a gig. You guys prolly already know all this lollipop, but I just had 2 espressos, so my thumbs can type a mile a minute on my ipad. Now, for some practicing...

Wolbai, these are very useful settings! I've never been a Marshall guy, but your settings really work for me. I've probably always been too conservative, starting in the middle positions, and not digging what I heard. Also, I'm pleased with the default 421 mic, which generally sounds like crap on anything but toms but definitely works for the Plexi - even better than the usual off axis 57 for a Marshall cab. Thanks!

Works just fine for me. Maybe takes a little getting used to, as far as whether to take the attack or decay signal. Some tuners are quicker at grabbing the pitch than others. Anyway I've used them all from Conn to Peterson to cheapo pedal tuners and they all work fine for me. Guitar is not a very accurate instrument pitch wise anyway - every fret is different., and the pitch changes with decay, so I don't sweat it as long as the guitar sounds good.

Studio monitors are not designed for a mic level input. That's no fault of the pod. As to clipping, do any pedals, amps or even rack fx (other than some compressors) have output meters? As an earlier poster said use the 1/4 outs. I wouldn't worry about it not being balanced unless you're recording, and then you could run into a mic pre anyway.

The vol pedal or EQ won't work for me, as I'm maxed out on processing and using the pedal already, but putting it before the amp might do it. I'll check that out. Why didn't I think of that?

I have a beef with the Analog Chorus, that it adds a 3-4 dB boost, which messes up my carefully set volume levels. I've tried to get a nice, similar sound out of the trichorus, but it just sounds wonky to me. Anyone got some nice settings for it? I wish they would have modeled the tc analog chorus! That is the best sounding chorus pedal ever.

It's tough to recommend an amp without knowing your taste and what guitar you use, but you can't go wrong with the deluxe or /13. The Slo clean is nice but not much low mids. As to tweaking at home I've learned a few things. First of all you have to tweak at a loud enough volume to hear tone properly (Fletcher Munson curve effect). Next, tweak it in the context of a song; play a recording of a type of song that you would play at church and play along to see how it fits in the mix. Of course your stage mix won't really sound as clean as a record, but at least you will know that your sound will be exactly how you want it. Lastly, after getting a tone you like, rest your ears for a while and check it again. The high mids may seem exaggerated with fresh ears.

Definitely fuss with it - and it is fussy without a meter or LEDs showing amount of gain reduction (Line6 ought to get that together on their next line of products). There are a lots of different compression sounds, though subtle. FYI, in the studio there's a trick of using 2 or 3 compressors in line with very gentle curves to tame peaks without it being obvious. Some compressors themselves actually have two compression circuits in line. As an engineer, I look at amp f/x usage from my studio experience, which both informs me as to how things will sound, and equally importantly, how,they actually work, for best results. Before I got into modeling preamps, I hadn't used any pedals other than volume and wah for probably 20 years. I used all studio rack gear and Mesa boogie heads or preamps in the rack. Frankly, the only distortion pedal I ever owned was the MXR Distortion+, which I hated (but I got good money for it as a vintage pedal on eBay!) and I was a real snob about amp dist vs pedal. With the HD I use the screamer quite a bit, in fact almost always when I want a ballsy sound, BUT, you can get the same kind of tight distortion using compressors and cranked amps. So try everything, but a little logical thought and some studio tricks can save some time in what you try.

I wouldn't pay to play for any amount of money - wait that doesn't make sense...

I would go with compressor for clean comping first, wah/envelope, dist, amp, compressor for sustain on lead lines, modulations, delay than verb. If you want a vol pedal after, put it before the delay and verb, so they can die naturally. If vol pedal before amp, usually put them after compressor, before dist pedal.

I've read that there are vids on how to clean switches, but I've been unable to find one. Mine are holding up so far, with some pretty steady gigging, but once in a while I get some odd behavior, so I'm curious about maintaining it. Anyone know?

Check out the Zoom B3. My son is a monster bassist, and he loves his.

Take a listen to the divided by 13 for Robben's sound - that's what I use with a super strat with EMG pickups. It's got a lot of sag as well as brightness. Add a screamer for his rockier stuff. I don't see a lot of love for the /13 around here, but it's my absolute favorite with my strat (not so much with my semi hollow).

I play for a living, and for various types of gigs and with different guitars, I have A LOT of hours invested in my patches. Knobulating is part of the creative fun and professional responsibility of being a musician. Acoustic players have their own things - like buying million dollar violins!

You may not have to tweak too much. Hopefully just a little EQ, at least to get an idea what they can do.

The whole site is jacked. You can't enter the data about patches either. The code is way messed up. I wonder if they know?

One other thing: keep in mind that the patches I put up are all for a super strat with EMG SA active single coil pups. I have the input switch set to higher gain. They are also tailored to a particular pup position, as I mentioned in my original post. These patches may/may not need to be tweaked with your guitar, depending on type of pups and input level (active/passive). I have completely different patches for my semi hollow Ibanez AS 120.

I believe the patches I put up are all single amp patches. You will note I put the amp after the mixer and use the left/right routing to add a dist pedal on the lead side (forward position on pedal) and maybe a compressor on the clean side. With a 2 amp patch, you can leave the amps in front of the mixer, but with a single amp, you need to use the mixer to sum the 2 channels to get into the amp. If I had a 500X, I would do more patches with two different amps, but I run out of DSP. I generally want a couple compressors, delay, modulation and reverb, plus distortion, and I go over by one or two pedals. Hell I might throw EQs in too if I had the headroom. Or multiple mod options. My ideal pop patch would be the Deluxe for clean and /13 for lead. For rock (dirt rhythm and dist lead) I could go all /13. I just had an interesting idea: with 2 pedals and a 500X I could have an option on one of the amps to rock between a cleaner or dirtier sound, discretely of the amp mix, and control it with pedal 2. As it is I can sort of accomplish this with in-between positions of the foot pedal, but it's not completely effective.

Thanks Radatats!

Using the mixer, and panning the mic one side and your instrument the other might work for separate sends. I've never tried it so I'm just spitballing.

I use one, just for some of my patches that aren't configured to use the exp pedal. Mine is an Ernie Ball, but any pedal for guitar will work. Just run straight from your guitar into it and from there into your Pod guitar input. Another option, which I'm probably going to switch to is to use a line level pedal after the Pod. This would be better for me because when I'm playing with a live band, they tend to get louder as you go along, and it's a drag to keep bending over adjusting the vol knob, or worse doing it with your foot!

Last time I looked, they were on the second to last page.