mcbeddall

If it's mainly bedroom use you could get a couple of studio monitors, your tones will be in stereo then and if you have a decent computer or laptop you only need recording software to have everything you need to record your own stuff, generally speaking the bigger the speaker the better the sound for guitar but my studio monitors are only 6 inch but sound great at low volumes and don't take up a lot of room, might be an option worth looking at.

The speaker difference can be very big though. I never owned a power engine but I did a lot of research into it when looking for a solution to amplifying my tones. For what it's worth the fender mustang amps do a decent job with modellers for a relatively small price. However whenever you're using a guitar cab or something similar the only way to get " that sound" to the pa is to mic it like a conventional guitar setup, if you have set all your tones up using a guitar cab it will likely sound horrible when you try and direct send to a desk ( for gigs or recording ) this is because a guitar speaker will naturally filter out high and low frequencies for you. This is the reason I settled on a powered pa speaker , the tones I've created sound the same whether I'm using my speaker ( stagesource lt3) or going direct to the desk or recording into a DAW. the simplicity of doing it this way is key for me, last gig i did I only needed to take my guitar and the firehawk as I ran straight to desk and just had the signal sent back to the house floor wedge, sounded great and my set up time was about 3 minutes. It's worth putting some thought into how you intend to use the firehawk in the long run

Like silverhead stated , raising the back edge of the unit off the floor really helps a lot , by increasing the angle of the unit perpendicular to the floor. Many of us have replaced the rubber feet at the rear of the firehawk with a deeper/thicker rubber foot from eBay. You can see if it would work for you by putting a couple of books under the rear end of the firehawk , even raising by just 10mm makes a big difference , I hardly ever catch the wrong pedal now

Cool

The alto speakers I've tried have been good value for money I have an lt3 and I find it to be louder and clearer than the alto but it was twice the price, you get what you pay for but if your going for a budget speaker I'd make it an alto based on what I've tried

The l2m will sound better for the acoustic sims for sure I wonder with the d25 if you'll get it loud enough to get the best out of it? Like any tube amp you need to crank it up to get the most out of it The l2 will sound good at all volumes but probably not as sweet as a cranked tube amp

Yeah had no problems with it so far, only use it as a special effect for a few seconds in a couple of songs, to be honest I've found the 3 blocks to be plenty for what I'm trying to achieve 99% of the time

Yeah you're right it's 3 fx blocks, I have a patch with 4 slots at the expense of the fx loop, think it was some kind of bug or prototype patch that escaped the line 6 lab

Your best bet is to download the app and try it out, you can set up patches without the unit itself so you can see what effects are available and what you can stack You can't stack reverbs but everything else you can , though you are limited to 4 effects blocks that are assignable. Octoverb is in there. You can't use a connector for connection as far as I know. I think it's a bargain at 349, I paid that in pounds and I am very happy with it Another consideration is how you intend to amplify your sound, you won't get the best out of it running through a guitar amp in my opinion, I carry a powered speaker around but at some gigs I don't even need that, I just plug into the desk and use the stage monitors, if you haven't considered amplification it could end up costing way more than you might have budget for. If you do get one , save yourself a ton of pain and time by creating all your patches at gig volume , most important thing I learned about modelling

Is it a particular patch or all of your patches that get the volume drop? If it's a particular patch you could upload it and I can try it out for you

The update via Bluetooth can take hours

Here is a tone I use it on , you can search it on the cloud and see how it's set up if you like Night solo 1(H)

I control pitch with the expression pedal, not sure what you're doing wrong

Alto speakers are good for the money, I tried one and it was good but not as much oomph as the stagesource, but if you raise it up a bit on a pole it's loud enough , think it was a 600w version I tried. I got a good deal on a used stagesource so settled with that

Try saving the tone to "my tones" first and then send to device On android all the saving/sending options are in the top right of the screen

I run my firehawk into an lt3 and it sounds awesome, had to adjust all my patches at gig volume though to get the best results, used to run into a fender mustang as a power amp and it sounded very different

Yeah there's a ground lift button on the firehawk pedal which I tried with no success, I didn't have any control over what was going on at the desk and lack of time to try things out was a big factor as we only had a 15 minute changeover, but I figure the problem must be my end as I had the same problem at 2 separate gigs

Thanks silverhead I'll give that a try too

OK so I just read through the instructions again and I may have used the wrong output. I should be using the "loop through output"? My guitar effects pedal is connected to the line in jack by the way. I'll try the other output at next rehearsal but I doubt I should get buzzing when using the " mix out" as I have nothing connected to any of the side panel inputs and I had all those volumes and controls at zero

Hi I'm running a variax guitar through my firehawk fx and out to a stagesource lt3. All is fine at rehearsal , happy with the sound, volume etc But at a couple of gigs recently I tried to run into the pa desk from the "mix out " xlr on the lt3 ( I figured this would sound more like what I intended than micing up the speaker. Problem is I get a fairly loud buzzing sound from the lt3 as soon as the channel is switched on, anybody know what's causing this? At the first gig the sound guy got around it eventually but I don't know what he did, I just put it down to him doing something wrong his end. At the second gig a different sound guy couldn't fix it so ended up being miced Any ideas guys?

If you save all your amplifi tones to the cloud , when youre using firehawk you should be able to search out your old tones and download them. I haven't tried it personally but not all the tones on the cloud are created on the firehawk ( firehawk ones have FH next to them) So all those other tones must have been created on amplifi stuff right? Anyway you could test it out before you buy the firehawk as both apps are free , just publish some of your amplifi tones to the cloud and then try and find them using the firehawk app

A fender guitar advertising a fender amp is a serious guitar advertising a serious amp. Variax isn't seen as a serious guitar by most guitarists out there so it would kind of detract from the validity of whatever fx unit etc they were advertising. The entry point to the line 6 world is definitely the fx units, they have deservedly built a solid reputation for quality gear. If the variax was focused on as an entry point to line 6 gear then probably 80% of guitarists would immediately turn their nose up at it. I love my variax but until I had one in my hands I'd never given one a second look , yet I loved all line 6 fx units that I've owned. I would agree that they aren't readily available to try out in stores though, at least in the uk. Maybe if people could try them out they'd become more popular and have less of a stigma

Ah good work lads , interesting

If simplicity of setting up tones is a priority it's worth giving the firehawk fx a look Be careful though as there are some variax features on the 500 not present on the firehawk It will change models and tuning per patch though

I got lucky with my set up , playing into a stagesource lt3, firehawk set halfway and speaker set halfway is perfect volume-wise for rehearsal and gigs, easy for me to remember. I do use the built in compressor to get a bit more out of the clean tones though