After lugging amps and gear for many years ive ended up with neuralgia. Purist tone is a young mans game and for players with roadies. I have had various pod products over the years and they have never been taken on the road as they were never suitable for more than home use. Then out of necessity I took the decision to go digital. 3 yrs ago I decided to go all out and bought the Variax JTV 69/HD500x/2 x Stagesource L3t. The reason there are negative experiences out of the box is that line 6 modelling is crafting. And crafting at very finite resolutions. Its digital at the end of the day. It has taken me 2 years to understand the dos and don'ts with live modelling. You dont need the variax to get your best tones but to me the rig is only being used to its full potential and convenience with it.(with so many amps,effects and cabinets at your disposal why not have 25 guitars too).
Remember that cabinet emulation should never be used thru a cabinet of any kind. And in terms of the variax acoustic models they sound really bad thru cabinets in comparison to FRFRs. The ubit is handling ALL of the emulation. You need a powerful FRFR speaker system to match an amps volume but it is there to perfectly reproduce the output you HD and add nothing. When the POD HD is linked to the D25 the pod will detect the D25 and switch of cab emulation on your patch. It knows that you are using the D25 for the natural cabinet sound.
When you are building your tones renember you are building them in a virtal sound space. You are creating a massive tone in a virtual environment as you are replicating tones on amps that are driven at high volume to get those tones. You are doing it at home with a pair of headphones at significantly lower volumes.(you shouldnt be buiding your gigging tones through nothing else but headphones or the amp you intend to play through at the volume ranges you will be playing at. It really is that clinical)
A big pointer out the box to be observed is your amp channel volumes A/B. When you have a marshall on stage, your signature tones will be when you are really throttling that amp. Halway along your effects chain you will notice what look like pickups. These are your amp channel settings. Out the box on the patches these are conservative. Dont know why. These to to be up at around 10. Then cut back on your master out to 75% (3 oclock). This is so that wont be clipping your input of your mixing desk/powered speakers. Now you have the amps cranked to their sweet spot in the virtual environment.
These basics took me 2 yrs to suss out. I had watched all of the videos on you tube and heard the tones but I couldnt replicate them as I was still thinking analog. Once I understood it I can make any tone on any guitar of significance from the past 80 yrs and you would have to be an anally retentive purist audiophile nightmare type to differentiate them. Honestly your audience does not care. Only musos do and they arent your audience.
I cant rate this set up enough and with the release of a better generation of Variax (I use nothing else now. When set up to your taste by a knowlegable person its a fanstastic guitar. Unless you want true caninet response you HAVE to go thru an FRFR. The stagesources are designed exactly for your emulated tones. And I would need another post to rave about those.
I havent looked back and my back hasnt looked back either if you know what I mean.
If you are considering a variax for this set up and you buying it to utilize the acoustics/banjos/resonators/sitars you have to use an FRFR the difference is night and day. I see a lot of posts playing down the acoustic guitars but these are being badly reviewed as they are using factory settings thru an amp. Take it from me, stagesource is best for these guitar models and sound absolutely fantastic. Any artifacts are on the tail offs and again, no one in your audience notices, especially with the rest of the band in the mix.
HD500x. Love it, love it, love it and if you are willing to spend time making your tones from scratch following the tips above you will get any tone you want. Its called the dreamrig for a reason. You have to check your expectations a little go right back to a strong basic tone with the A/B channels of your patch between 10 and 12 and your master volume at 75%. Your basic tone has to be strong and clear with only minor tweaks on the amp model eq. No big phat bass settings. Just minor tweaks. If you want to eq your tone you can add an eq pedal in the chain. You want your amp model as close to flat response as poss just like your speakers.
And remember....everytime you add a pedal to the chain you are altering the original tone S n R thesame way as in the analog realm. Any pedal circuit will do a job but at a cost to your signal strength or introduce noise. Less is more.
Hope this helps with anyone considering digital. Remember that variax guitars are made by Yamaha now and are under £500 and they arent a necessity for the dream rig if you are happy to use your own guitars. Helix is out now so the pod hd is maybe a bit dated but you can still buy them at half the price of a Helix.
Peace
