alienux

Great idea, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

Thanks, that answers the question that there's no way to change to the way I was trying to set it up. At least I know, now.

That's what I thought, but no matter what I assign to the footswitch first, it only lights up when the drive in pre is engaged. I think duncann may have it right about the light behavior being determined by the effect block in the pre-split position.

I created a preset that had only an amp, a low res delay (post-split), and a color drive (pre-split). When I first set this up, it was only an amp and a low res delay block. I assigned FS4 to the low res display, so it would light up red with the low res delay engaged, and of course no light when I pressed FS4 and turned off the block. I set it up so that the color drive block would be engaged when I turn off the low res delay, so I then additionally assigned the color drive to FS4. Once I did that, the red light surrounding FS4 is only lit up when I have the low res delay off and the color drive on. This isn't a huge deal, but I prefer the red light to be lit when the delay is on, not when the color drive is on. No matter which one I assign first, or how much I try to change it, with both the drive and delay assigned to FS4, I can't ever get it to show the red light on except when the drive is engaged. Is this normal? Is there a way to change it to my preference? I used it when performing this past Sunday, and it was fine, I'd just prefer it the other way.

Yes, they know. A couple of us have opened tickets with Line 6 support about it. I got a response that basically said that they are aware of several issues with the website and customtone and are working through them.

I like to use feedback occasionally live, so I was actually a little concerned about being able to get controlled feedback with a POD. When I hook it up to the small PA system I have in basement using a single 2x8 Crate PA speaker, I get feedback that is identical to the feedback I get with my real amp. Of course if I use smaller speakers with the POD, it doesn't work like that. So yes, it's possible as long as you have the right equipment and are in the right proximity to it.

After opening up your patches, I agree with guilhordas. I think there's too much bass in each of those patches, and even though the EQ isn't scooped, I personally would still want more mids to help the guitar stand out more (not a lot more, but more than there is now).

Yeah, I would definitely focus on EQ at this point. A lot of guitarists love the "scooped" tone sound, which is great for playing alone, and can work well in recording if done right, but in a live mix, a scooped tone with high treble, high bass and lower mids will absolutely get lost. If you turn up the volume of a guitar with a scooped tone to compensate for getting lost in the mix, you just get a very loud, thin and weak sounding tone. The mid range is the real voice of the guitar.

Cool, glad to hear that you got it worked out. Now hopefully you can get a solution for the USB issue if that's something you want to pursue.

I was going to ask this, too. What are your EQ settings like? If you have a great patch that sounds good at home but has low mids, it will almost definitely get covered up in a band situation. The guitar needs the mids to be fairly high in order to be heard, especially with higher gain settings. This will sound nasally when you play by yourself, but is a must for a band mix.

Yeah, I actually had set the second input to "variax" for this patch after downloading it, and it's still much louder than any patches I've created. I think it was mostly due to the centering in the mixer.

Mine showed USB firmware 0.00 after the first time I upgraded it, but I was still able to connect to it with Monkey, so I pushed it out again and it showed up correctly after that. I didn't see this in any of your posts, so forgive me if I missed it, but have you tried to connect to the POD using Monkey?

It works for the HD500 model for me when I search sometimes, but it never works when I search under HD500X.

Mine does this by default whenever I hook it up to my computer with USB. I was surprised the first time I heard an email alert coming out of the speakers that were hooked up to my HD500X at the time.

Thanks, that's good to know. I was surprised at how loud this one was when I first tried it, but thankfully I didn't have headphones on at the time.

I didn't do exactly that, but like I said, I turned off every block on the patch. I then turned each one on one by one, but none of them made that much difference. That makes sense with what I found after turning off all of the blocks. I knew about the L/R being two separate stereo signals, but I had no idea that centering them would give such a big boost.

I downloaded Lincoln Brewster's official HD500 presets from here http://www.lincolnbrewster.com/podpatches/ And specifically, the one named Lincoln_Brewster_Main_2012.h5e For some reason, this preset is much much louder than any preset I create myself without messing too much with the volume settings. I've turned off every effect/amp block and checked all of the levels, including DEPs and none are really any different than any settings I use in my patches, and this patch is still much louder than any of my patches. The only difference I can see is that at the mixer he has both R and L set to Center instead of the default !00% Left and 100% Right. Changing that makes some difference, but it seems like the volume difference is more than just that. I also changed the extension to .5xe to import on my HD500X. That shouldn't make any difference, should it? Is there something else I'm missing, or does centering the Mixer block actually really make that much difference in overall volume without actually changing any volume parameters?

If you just need to have 2 specific levels of drive to switch between, I think the easiest thing to do would be to just create 2 identical presets, and then dial in the different amount of drive for each preset. That way you are really switching between two different patches, but it would audibly just amount to hearing an increase/decrease in drive based on which preset you stomp on.

There's a list of dimensions for the various POD models here: http://line6.com/support/page/kb/_/pod/pod-hd/pod-hd-weights-and-dimensions-r206 That page has the info for the HD products, and also contains a link to another page with a multi-tabbed spreadsheet with some of the older ones, including the X3 Live. It looks like there is about .29" difference in depth, but not much difference besides that.

Without knowing more, it's hard to say why you aren't hearing your leads well, but a few questions: 1. How is your guitar EQ set up in relation to low/mid/treble levels? 2. What other instruments are you competing with when playing live? I'm new to the POD myself, but if you're just transitioning from playing at home to playing with a band, it's very likely that you need to change some basic things about your tone to work in a mix, and these things would be true regardless of your equipment. One of the biggest common mistakes is to use a scooped tone with a live band. A guitar's main tonal output is in the mid range, and a guitar rig that is set up with low mids, but higher treble and bass, will not cut through a mix. Adding more volume to a scooped tone like that will only make a very loud but extremely thin sounding lead. Guitars compete with keyboards and sometimes vocals, and really need the mid range of their tone to be prominent to be able to stand out and be heard. If your mids are low, bring them up. If your bass and treble are high, lower them. Low range output for a guitar competes with bass, and high range competes with other parts of the mix, but the mid range is where the guitar sings and makes it's mark. Dialing in your EQ this way will sound nasally to you at first, so you may want to make different patches for playing at home versus playing with a band. Other things you can do are to add some compression before the amp in your signal chain, and have a preset for lead work that uses a booster and/or has a little more volume at the preset level.

Thanks to both of you. That clears things up. It's just a little bit different way of doing things than the Peavey modeling stuff does it, and realizing that helps a lot. The Vypyr was the same way when I first got it (best learned a little at a time), but it seems pretty simple now that I see all of the options and settings the POD has to offer. I mean that in a good way for the POD :P

So I've had my POD HD500X for about 8 days now, and the one thing I'm still a little fuzzy on is distortion (pun intended) that is built into an amp model. I've read the Quick Start guide, and I'm starting to work through the Advanced guide, but my problem is probably due to the fact that I need to unlearn a little of what I'm used to. My previous experience is with a Crate G120-C 2x12 combo and with a Peavey Vypyr VIP 2 (I still have and use both). With the Crate, there are two guitar inputs, and there is a "channel" button that affects both of those. The button switches from clean to distortion, and each channel has gain control, but obviously much less on the clean channel. With the Vypyr VIP, there is an amp selector knob that rotates to each of the 12 modeled amps. You rotate the knob to select the amp model you want to use, then press the knob to switch between the clean, medium gain, and high gain channels. My way of approaching things, because of those 2 amps, is to load an amp, then select the clean or dirty channel, then tweak pre-gain/drive, EQ, etc. from there. If I understand the POD correctly, it's a little different. From what I can tell so far, with the POD HDs, each amp channel is a different model.....is that correct? What I see when I load a model in the 500X is typically just a drive control for gain/distortion, but no way to switch that model between clean and gain channels. If I want a clean channel, I find an amp model that is modeling a clean amp or clean amp channel. Is this correct? I'm sure I'm off in my understanding, or just missing something simple.

I'd guess that the second one is the POD.

I'm not familiar with the DG-20's. Are those active or passive? Are those the Gilmour pickups? EDIT: Never mind, I just saw your earlier post where you said the batteries were fully charged. I missed that when I read through it earlier. Does the friend you mentioned have an amp? If not, you could always take your guitar to a guitar store and tell them you'd like to check out some amps with your guitar and they'd probably let you plug in. The locally owned stores around here are always OK with stuff like that.

When is the last time you plugged your guitar into a real amp? Just wondering how it sounds that way. When you said you were getting the sound you want through headphones (unless I misunderstood), I assumed your guitar output was ok.