Hi, everyone,
Hoping for some help here. I have recently purchased a POD UX2 for home recording, replacing an older pair of PODs for bass and guitar. I am slowly getting my tones dialed in where I want them, but am having trouble with one thing in particular. I have a great bass tone with some distortion on it to get a grindy, almost Mötorhead kind of sound from my 5-string, and that's what I want to use for most of my bass tracks. However, I also need to get a good, "clean" bass tone as well with no fuzz or distortion for quieter parts.
My problem is, no matter what amp model I choose and no matter what cab, settings, or effects I use or don't use, I'm just not getting a completely clean tone. If I play at normal velocity, either pick or fingers, the output sounds "clipped", like a harsh, buzzsaw sound overlaying the smooth bass tone. I'm checking the line in levels before the effects, the output levels, and the ultimate output level in my DAW (which is GarageBand for the time being), but I see that I'm nowhere near clipping anywhere; I've got at least 6-15 dB of headroom, depending on where I'm measuring it.
I can lower the "drive" setting on any of the amps and dial it mostly out (mostly, it's still there if you really dig in), but then the output is so low as to be almost inaudible. I'd like to know if this is just a matter of finding the right amp and cab combo, if there's something I need to be doing on the instrument end, or if this is just an artifact of how the amps were modeled, and there's just clipping somewhere in the chain I can't get rid of.
I've tried this with four different basses -- a Rogue P-Bass with passive pickups, a Kramer Baretta with dual-rail passives, an Epiphone Thunderbird with stock passives, and an Ibanez SRC6 with passive EMG-HZs and an active EMG-based preamp. Regardless of settings, bass, or anything else, whenever I get anywhere near a volume that is comparable to any of my other tones for guitar or distorted bass, I get that buzzing, clipping noise again, but again, I'm not seeing anything near clipping input levels anywhere in the chain.
Is this something up with my UX2, or am I just not understanding how the models work correctly?
Thank you,
Rob