cbeatrice

Thanks for that thorough and clear response, sonicgraffiti. I totally get the difference between the two, technically, but what confused (confuses?) me is I think a lot of the factory presets use both the amp model gain as well as a distortion effect. I can't be sure of that, I'd have to look. Anyway, thanks again. I still struggle so much with getting sounds I want, and with distortion you've got the 8x2=16 amp overdrives plus, I dunno, 6 or 8 distortion effects, I have no idea where to begin to model even (what I think is) the most simple and straightforward sound.

Thanks toneman2121, that's a big help. I had no idea what the M13 was... and even though the technology is not the same as the Spider IV fx, as you said, the .pdf does clearly describe what the effects are, that is, what they are supposed to do, what they were based on, what inspired them, etc. I think Line 6 should probably put this info somewhere where a Spider IV owner might see it...

Is there any documentation out there that lists and explains what the different effects are? The user guide explains what the different amp models are (what they were inspired by, what they are trying to model), but, for example, there are about six different types of flanger in FX2 with names that are meaningless to me like "Jet Flanger" and so on (I'm going from memory, so maybe I got that wrong...).

The various amp models on the Spider IV give different distortion sounds, and you control how much distortion via the drive setting. But separate from that, FX1 gives a range of distortion effects options like "screamer" and so on, and you can control the amount of this distortion with FX1's "gain" setting. But how do these two interact? I don't mean that technically... I don't think... I mean in terms of modeling different tones do people generally use one type of distortion or the other (i.e. amp or FX1), or both together? It seems like most of the factory presets with distortion use both, but that's confusing to me (so many permutations!). If the amp models are meant to mimic various types of amps with their own distortion, why add the FX1 distortion effect on top of that?