cruisinon2

I'll pass just on the name alone...though I'm sure they'll sell zillions of "Thumps" to the electronica/push-button DJ crowd... Now where'd I put my giant mouse head? ;)

ALWAYS set the volume of your clean tones first. Get them as as loud as you can without clipping, then level your dirty patches relative to the clean ones. If you try to do it the other way, you will NEVER have enough headroom for the clean tones to keep up...distortion will forever be perceived as louder. Hence the uselessness of a dB meter.

There is no "problem". Though it has been at least 11 minutes since we've had a new thread addressing the grand and glorious mystery of volume...so here we go! But if I live to be 1000, I'll never understand why this ever a discussion. You don't need toys to level patch volumes. You need ears. Relative volumes between patches are PERCEIVED, for reasons that have been disussed ad nauseam (two very enthusiastic 👠for our friends Fletcher and Munson). Two patches might yield identical numbers from your friendly neighborhood dB meter, yet one may still SEEM louder than the other... clean vs. dirty tones being the most obvious example (HINT: distorted tones will always SEEM louder). This is about PERCEPTION, not physical absolutes. It's what you HEAR that matters. Therefore, the number the meter spits out is...wait for it...UTTERLY USELESS. 1. Listen. 2. Adjust accordingly. 3. Throw dB meter in trash... or convert it into an attractive cactus planter, your choice. 4. Play guitar. Lather, rinse, repeat....

Everybody is saying the same thing...its just become a semantics and nifty analogy festival. ;)

Of course not...I often have fantasies about using the Porsche as a controller for my BMW...oh, the possibilities! Silly and redundant, but possibilities nonetheless. ;)

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think where were differ is the definition of what "working harder" means as far as the amp is concerned... I get the water analogy, and I understand that you can use a cabinet with a higher impedance rating than the amp without damaging anything... as I said, I did exactly that for many years. However, practically speaking, if one were to take an amp with 8 ohm outputs and plug it into an 8 ohm cab, followed by a 16 ohm cab, you'll find it necessary to crank it up more with the higher impedance cabinet to achieve the same volume that you had when everything matched. So just for giggles, if I have to turn the amp up to "7" with a 16 ohm load in order to achieve the same volume that I previously had at "5" with an 8 ohm load, then it would seem to me that the amp is working harder to drive the higher impedance cabinet, no?

Huh? Providing more resistance than the amp is expecting results in a loss of power and volume. The amp has to do more work to achieve a given volume, not less...because it's now effectively pushing up-hill. You probably won't damage anything, however...I ran an 8 ohm power amp into a 16 ohm 4x12 for years without issue, there's just not as much headroom as you'd have from that same amp running into a cab with matched impedance.

There's not much room for opinion here... this is as close to objective fact as anything that ever gets discussed around here. If you have signal clipping issues, it ain't the guitar's fault. An instrument level signal is barely sufficient to drive a pair of ear buds by itself.

Indeed... it's like buying the old Duster that's been rotting in Gramps' driveway for $300, then putting $2K worth of rims and tires on it. ;) I'll pass...

Yes it is. Look around enough, and you'll find botched examples of absolutely EVERYTHING under the sun, from oil changes to neurosurgery...in fact, one generally doesn't have to look very hard at all, they're everywhere. But declaring that there are only 4 people in the entire country capable of pulling this off, merely because you've seen the fallout from those who couldn't, is patently ridiculous. The existence of incompetent nitwits is not "proof" that those with sufficient knowledge and skill are nowhere to be found.

Stand by to be told that there are only 4 human beings in the known universe who are capable of accomplishing such an engineering marvel...that has long been the their "official" position. Personally, I think that's nonsense, provided that the one doing the building really knows their craft....but regardless, they're not gonna sell you the Variax guts. You're only option is to buy one and cannibalize it.

99.97% of other people's patches will get you nowhere, and for God's sake don't pay anybody for them... You will find out very quickly that the list of variables that affect your tone is of biblical length, much of it attributed to whatever amp/speakers you're playing through... but everything from the guitar to the room you're sitting in will affect what you hear. And since you have no idea under what conditions someone else's patch was created, what guitar was used, was he monitoring through an amp, headphones, studio monitors, etc...and most importantly at what volume was it dialed in...the odds of anything you find on Customtone sounding even remotely like it's description is nearly zero. You might be able to learn a few tips about how others go about creating their patches, but just because Earl from Des Moines thinks that he's nailed the tone from Sonic Temple doesn't mean it won't sound like Dueling Banjos when you load it up on your rig. The learning curve tends to be a bit long with the POD, but the sounds are in there. You will have to spend a fair amount of time finding them, however. Customtone may seem like a shortcut, but it really isn't. Mostly, it's a waste of time. If you can get that patch to play, you'll see what I mean. Check the input settings...Input 1 should be set to guitar, and Input 2 to mic or aux, anything but guitar, as this doubles the input signal hitting the amp model and tends to make everything messy.

I have that same pair of JBL's you mentioned. They're quite good, they have pretty good bass response given their size, and you can crank them up a bit if you want to. You won't be rattling windows in the next county, but that's not what you buy studio monitors for anyway.

It'll work, and you might end up quite happy with your sound...but as already stated, if you're looking for an "FRFR solution", this ain't it.

An infinitely better choice...

They come strung with 10's... But it's really a matter of personal preference, and provided that the guitar is set up properly, it doesn't matter what's on there. If you're used to 9's, then a set of 11's will feel like you're playing with the suspension cables from the Golden Gate Bridge...As for brand? Advertising drivel notwithstanding, with the exception of coated strings like Elixirs which genuinely feel different to the touch, I seriously doubt most payers could tell one brand from another if you put a gun to their head...

It's great that you finally hit on a solution... but all that means is that this is what works for you, your personal preferences, the guitar(s) you're using, and above all else, whatever speakers you're using to monitor the sound. Presenting it as a universal means of achieving tonal nirvana is overstating things. Nothing is universal with modeling...somebody else might try your formula and loathe the result. It's why Customtone is such a crap-shoot, and useless more often than not. This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with how you're setting things up...only that what works for you can just as easily be an unlistenable mess for the next guy. It would be delightful if any one group of settings was sonically identical from one player to the next, but it never works that way...too many variables.

Lol. And while were at it, let's all hope the day never comes when L6 starts taking their cues from Boss...;)

"Unreasonable" might be a bit unfair...he's probably just deaf. ;)

Nobody can answer that for you...you're the only one hearing A vs. B. Every guitar sounds different. If your Gretsch has humbuckers, that's much of the difference right there, as they'll pretty much always have higher output and a "fatter" sound than single coils. But there are no magic Strat settings...gain, EQ, various FX, and overall patch volume can all be manipulated 1000 ways to get a sound you're after. But you'll never get a single coil to sound like a humbucker. A Strat is a Strat...

There is no gypsy guitar model in the JTV firmware.

Now of course I could be wrong, but I don't think the developers had "winning a beauty contest" as their primary goal.

Ah forget that...dance over a pile of chicken bones and goats blood like I do. Tonal nirvana...

Actually, I have it on the best of authority that this little known optical trem function is actually an Easter egg put there by L6 developers...sure, you're all laughing now, but that guy wins a lifetime supply of Spam, and a nice set of imported French toenail clippers...;)

lol... best thread ever. "Optitremgate" 😂