barks62

I just did this last week, and I created a patch with "Vintage Pre" as my only effect. No amp or anything. I used "AUX" as my input, but it would work with the mic input too. Anyway, that seemed to be a clean signal to me.

When I got mine, I bought a Yamaha powered PA speaker for my band to use as a stage monitor. I'm seriously considering ditching the Marshall going direct into the PA, and if I can't get my stage volume right I'll just use that Yamaha PA as my personal monitor. I'm telling you, the POD through a good PA speaker sounds amazing.

I bought the POD to use as an effects processor with my Marshall DSL combo. It works wonderfully. I use the 4 cable method and I set up my patches to put certain effects in front of the amp and others in the amp's FX loop, which is awesome. That was one of the major selling points of the POD for me. However... with that being said, if I had it to do over again, I would have skipped the Marshall and just ran the POD direct into my FRFR monitor like cclement said. I could never imagine living without my Marshall, but the amp models in the POD are amazing. Yes, the POD requires a lot of time and attention at first to learn your way around, but once you get it where you want it, the sound can't be beat. You'll need to invest time and attention to getting it set up correctly whether you're using the 4CM and a tube amp, or using the amp models into a PA or FRFR monitor. There are so many options, you'll have to expect a learning curve. But it's worth it. I can't tell you how it'll sound with a specific amp, but it can do what you want, and do it very well.

To be clear, I don't think you can use footswitches to change amp settings, you would have to set the expression pedal for that. But you could have a footswitch turn on an EQ with the settings that you want for your distorted tone, giving you the volume boost and the mids boost. So you could have "chorus off, distortion pedal on, EQ pedal on, delay pedal on" all happen with one footswitch. Me, I use the SLO Crunch as my main amp model, then I kick on the Line 6 Drive when I want to go into distortion mode. I don't bother with different amps or even different amp states (clean, crunch, distortion) in the same patch. It's all very clean and easy to use on stage.

The POD can definitely do this. In fact, when I bought my POD a couple of months ago, I was convinced that I would be using it in preset mode only. But once I got the thing, the footswitches and expression pedal are so useful that I haven't needed to switch presets during any songs. Some songs with crazy FX (Like a Stone with the Pitch Glide is one example) will have their own preset, but within that preset I use the four switches at the top to turn FX on and off. Like you, when I go from clean to distortion I turn off my chorus and turn on the distortion box. You can also use the pedal to change many parameters incrementally, but I haven't needed this yet. I think that would be useful if you want one amp for clean and another for distortion... you can set them up in different paths and use the pedal to fade between them (while also fading out the chorus and fading in the delay, for example). I haven't needed this because I use the same amp for clean, then kick on the Line 6 Drive for distortion, but it's there if you want it and many people use it.

Before I bought my POD HD500x, I was using my mixer as my recording interface, and that mixer could power my condenser mics. After I bought the POD and installed the USB drivers, I started getting errors while I was recording, and it would cause my computer to reboot (and cause me to lose everything since my last save... which sucks!). I was afraid that having the drivers for two different interfaces might be causing problems, so I removed the drivers for the mixer and I've been recording with the POD only. That has worked fine so far, since I can run a dynamic mic through the POD, but tonight I want to use the condenser mic again, and I'm not sure about the best way to accomplish this. I thought about setting up the mixer to power the mic, but taking the XLR out of the mixer into the mic input of the POD, then using the "Vintage Pre" setup that I use for all the other non-guitar instruments to get the signal into the PC. But I'm worried that I'll lose some clarity doing it that way. I don't want to use that mixer as the interface anymore just in case that driver was conflicting with the POD driver and causing my reboots. I could also use the 1/4" out from the mixer into the POD, but I don't know that I'd be gaining anything there. So my question is, what is the best way to get a clean signal through the POD and into the PC? The mixer isn't powered, btw. It's a low level signal and our PA speakers supply the watts for the final sound.

I would also offer up some of my children if Line 6 could make that "Amp Workbench" happen!

How common is it to use the 18db boost when recording? With my problem, it would have just been masking the real problem, which was my effects were set up incorrectly. If you have things set up the right way, would you still need the 18db boost?

Wow, thanks for posting this. I was having this same problem last night. Not just the low volume, but whenever I tried to adjust the amp model's volume, I would get some instant and severe clipping. Well, I think the problem was the distortion pedal I had in the chain before the amp. In my quest for more volume, I turned up the "output" of the Line 6 Distortion. That didn't give me much volume, so (without turning the output down), I went in and adjusted the volume of the amp model. BAM, instant clipping. I had no idea why it was clipping and decided to walk away for a while, and reading this thread made me realize what had happened. Anyway, thanks for the post and the responses.

Hi all, I'm new to the Pod world (or, at least I will be in a few weeks), and I can't wait to dig into the Pod and see what it can do. Right now I have a Marshall combo amp, and in a couple of weeks I'm buying a Pod HD500x to use as an effects board with the 4 cable method. The bonus with the Pod is that I can use it for recording, and if my Marshall ever craps out on gig night, I can have the Pod set up to be a full backup rig going right into the PA. With all that , the pod was a no brainer. But none of that has anything to do with my question, lol. My question is about recording. Since I have a tube amp and will be running the Pod both before the amp and in the effects loop, I'm wondering if I can use a similar setup for recording. Basically, I'm wondering if I can go Guitar->Pod->Marshall->FX loop send->Pod, then from there, add a Cab sim and go direct into my computer or interface for recording. Would that hurt my amp if there is no return from the FX loop? Would it be possible to get a decent sound that way?