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Here are two of my patches. None will clip as such because I've controlled this with the mixer settings. If you look at Tom Sawyer which I would class a good patch and compare it to the Big Money, Big money needs the mixer at -5 to stop maxing out. Hopefully these files work okay. I'm pretty sure the problem lies with the compressor and /or distortion and chorus outputs. Thanks, Tom Sawyer.txt The Big Money$.txt

Hi, I know there are loads if posts about balancing volumes between patches etc and trust me I have taken on board all the advice. On the whole I think I manage this pretty well in a 18 song set. One thing that is bugging me though is that I've got some 80's rush songs which use loads of chorus and compression. On these patches I end up having to turn overall volume down at the mixer by -8 to avoid clipping. I monitor all my patch levels using the meter on my pa. By turning the mixer down so much I feel that the patch loses much of its power and volume when I'm playing with my band. I think it may be something to do with gain staging through the compressors, distortion and chorus. Can anyone shed any light onto this please? A typical problem patch would be as follows: Studio direct mode, input 1 variax, input 2 guitar Noise gate, red comp, tube drive, analog chorus, hi way 100 with 412 greenback and 87 cond mic, mixer panned centre, dimension, digital delay, cave reverb. The amp settings are as follows, drive 47, volume 50, master 80 I have the master knob on pod just below full, pad switch on and I use the Xlr left and right outputs to a pa. Any advice on how to tame the signal but increase the patch power and volume would be great. Thanks

Thanks for the advice. I've now got it up and running. It seems adding the noise gate at the end fixed it! Seems strange that even when I connected to GarageBand using USB out that it wouldn't be stereo and still need the noise gate. All I need to work on now is balancing volumes. Sounds really full when the acoustic is in but really weak and empty when it's out. It's all about getting the right balance though. Thanks to everyone for your help.ðŸ‘

Jandrio, Yep no problem - even if I can see how you set it up, I can then make those changes on my actual patch. Thanks,

Great advice guys, I'm rehearsing to night so I'll try all your suggestions then. I am looking to sum the overall sound and just need to be able to turn up and down the level of the acoustic. What you both say makes sense I just wasn't aware of what effects are mono summing, what ones are stereo and what outputs sum etc. Thanks very much for the patch jandrio, I'll try it out. I'm in a rush tribute band and the song I'm trying to create the sound for is the camera eye. This has electric and acoustic for the verse parts only. If anyone's interested here is a link to some of the songs we play. All my sounds are with jtv69 to pod hd500 straight to the desk and I use in ear monitors to hear myself. http://youtu.be/6TCPrs683Jo

Meant to add, I just use the left xlr output direct to a PA system.

Okay I have variax mags on input 1, variax acoustic on input 2. The top line is boost comp into tube drive into analog chorus input to soldano 100 clean then mixer. Bottom line for variax acoustic is volume pedal, pre-amp and eq to mixer. Post mixer cave reverb. Mixer both channels 0 per cent.

Hi, Sorry to barge in on this forum but I have a similair issue. Basically I have a patch set up with the mags of my 69 going to an amp and a few fx blocks and on channel B I've got the variax acoustic model going with no amp but into a few eq's and pre-amps.. All I want to do is blend in the acoustic sound using the expression pedal at certain parts of the song. The electric sound will remain in at all times. I thought I would just put a volume pedal in front of the acoustic line and by setting the max min I thought I would be able to turn up and down the volume of the acoustic. This doesn't seem to work though as the all that happens is the electric volume comes in and out and the acoustic stays the same! I've tried panning each channel hard left and right but that just made matter worse and was miles off what I wanted to do. Any ideas? The thought crossed my mind that maybe it was just a bad patch and that I should start again with a blank patch.

Just checked back on my post. The topic seems to have drifted somewhat from my original question but good stuff all the same. I had only used my battery once before but when I tried it the led's on the guitar showed blank. When I plugged it in to charge it was blinking straight away which made me think it was almost fully charged. Anyway I charged it for about 11 hours and when I put it back in the guitar it was showing four led's. I'll keep it in until its drained and then start fro scratch but I reckon maybe my charger just blinks all the time! No biggie I suppose, as long as it works. Thanks for the responses

Hi, when charging the variax battery, using the separate charger, what is the sequence of the red light? Does blinking red mean charging and does it go green or constant red when fully charged? I've charged the battery for about 3 hours and it has been blinking red the whole time. When I put the battery in my variax though I got nothing when I hit the battery test light. I had a 1/4 inch jack and vdi lead in. Have I just not let it charge long enough?

Great, thanks. One final final question please..... I noticed that on some of my patches when I hit the tuner I don't get any signal going to the pod. The tuner is just blank, any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks everyone, I've got it. I suppose I had a few things going on. When using the variax and a model pod is set to variax, when using the variax without model I need to set pod to variax mags and meanwhile I can leave my strat or gretsch plugged into the guitar in jack for some songs where the pod is set to guitar.......excellent! One last question if I may, when the variax is connected to the pod is this also supplying power to the variax I.e not draining the battery and therefore you could pay all night without worrying about the battery? Thanks for your help.

Sorry if these are obvious questions. I have owned a POD HD500 for about 6 months and am fairly conversant with it. I just got a JTV69 a few days and am still sussing it out. Here's my questions: 1. In a gig scenario I would like to play my variax for some songs and one of my normal guitars for other songs. To speed up changeover is it OK to leave the normal guitar plugged into the guitar in and leave the variax plugged into the VDI port? Each preset will be set up to tell the POD whether to expect a guitar or the variax but just wondered if its ok to have both plugged in all th etime? 2. I have only set up a few of my patches in the set list to use Variax. On some songs I want to use the variax but in normal guitar mode as I like the natural sound of the JTV69 for some of the songs. However when I change to a patch set for "guitar" the variax model knob lights up and uses whatever current model is selected. If I go from a variax patch to a guitar patch how do I stop the variax fuction from still being on and revert to normal guitar? Do I always have to hit the knob manually to unselect variax functionality? Thanks,

After re-installing 1.70, I then upgraded to 1.90 and I'm back fully functional! The guitar was a bit low on power the first time so yeah the green light is defo telling us something went wrong with the installation. Be nice if they told us that in the advanced manual though............oh wait a minute......there isn't one!!

I've just had the same thing! Only got my variax yesterday and when I upgraded to 1.90 it went green. I think maybe I wiped the original models and only added the update. Maybe green is telling us that the variax is empty. When I tried playing it was as if it was stick on one pickup no matter what one I selected. I'm now reinstalling 1.70 like you did and seeing if that works. I'm now a bit wary of how to install the 1.9 upgrade though,

Here's another one!

Sorry, actually he does use H&k as well as Mesa and Lerxst!

Thanks dude. I have to say though that on the current tour Alex Lifeson does humpf loads of amps, he no longer uses cabs but uses about 4 heads. He doesn't use Hughes &Kettner anymore. He uses Mesa boogie and custom made Lerxst amps which are really Marshalls, a ton of effects and uses Apple Logic to get even more sounds. That's why as a tribute band I need to use loads of different amps in the hd500. If you look on google you'll find his tech taking you through all the gear on t he latest tour.

There is some really great advice here and there's no doubt that the less patches and individuals amps you use the better. However as a few people have said, this isn't always possible. I play in a Rush tribute band and through the decades Alex lifeson has complete gear overhauls using an a array of different amps and guitars. It isn't possible to simulate these sounds using just one or even two amps.

Hi leftzilla. Do you reckon the best way to equalise volume is the amp volume control? I wasn't sure whether this would change the tone of the amp and maybe the mixer would be better?

Thanks for the advice. I have set up my sounds with the desk totally flat. The pa at the gig venue is much better so I'm hoping my sound will better at the gig......maybe! My plan was not to use an amp and get on ear monitors. At the moment I just use the floor monitors from the rehearsal pa but its not great. Cheers

There are a lot of great replies on this topic. It's got me slightly worried though! I,ve been rehearsing for months with my new band in the studio and have tweaked all my sounds to sound pretty good through the pa. We will shortly be playing our first gig in a 500 capacity venue. Will my sound be awful through a different pa? I use loads of different amps on my patches so I would need to tweak every sound! My plan was to use in ear monitors but I guess there is still the risk that foh sounds bad. If I used a dt25, surely I could d.i out from the amp to the pa instead of micing? Or is that just the same sound as going straight from the pod?