I recently picked up the HD500X and decided to download some patches to kind of use to figure out my own patches. All of the patches I downloaded were metal patches and when I actually hook the HD500X into my amp the patches sound very very sharp, they can't be played without a headache. I recreated the patches myself on the HD500X and the sound is not sharp at all. I don't understand why the downloaded ones sound so bad. If this helps I'm using a Marshall Mg100HDFX with an LTD EC1000.