soerenP

Well, I don't know if 'vintage' is the correct term, either, but I think the original parts and schematics are known well enough to replicate it in a way it's pretty close. The DIY world is pretty powerful when it comes to that. Of course these builds are more of a "re-issue" than vintage original. Some of the voodoo is lost. What he meant about these pedals being vintage is that the schematics/circuit design is 70s and therefore not working well with modern equipment. However, end of the story: I put the things on my board in the rehearsal room in front of my cleanish blues deluxe and the overall noise/distortion and the additional headroom of running the Electric Mistress at 12V make the noticed effects negligible, so I kept them. So, in the end, both of us were right: He was right that in front of a real amp, it will be ok, although he didn't say it that way, and I was right that the pedals clip when hit hard in either setting, just that in an analog band setting you don't hear the clipping well enough to perceive it as unpleasant or broken. EDIT: To give you an idea of the costs of DIY builds: I payed him 70Euros in total. His builds were a bit more expensive because the Small Stone used some extraordinarily expensive parts, but the mere parts of a normal build will be 20-40Euro. (Of course you can't count the build time) So if you like soldering and building stuff, it does make sense.

Hey @silverhead, thanks and yes, I'm pretty sure that I have this bug. Usually I'm using a buffer in front because of that (no difference). However, I've been trying to replicate the distortion going into the instrument input of my Audio-Interface. Very same issue. I even hear the distortion when the Signal-LED merely flickers lightly, let alone any signs of a red clipping diode flashing. So I'm pretty sure its got nothign to do with my PodGo. I really have to hit hard into my LesPauls 498T to make it clip, even a P90 won't make it clip... Maybe the builder just didn't hit hard enough (I know he plays humbucker guitars only), but I guess he will not admit it's his devices that clip. I don't even say he did something wrong or they are broken. They are built after vintage specs, I guess.

Hi there, this is just to confirm whether or not the guy I'm dealing with is talking bullsh*t. The situation: I've bought two DIY pedals from a guy in a DIY forum, a reportedly very experienced one: A Small Stone and an Electric Mistress. I tried them out and they both have some kind of distortion going on when hitting my Les Pauls hard. I guess the the Electric Mistress might be because of the small headroom of its bucket chain. The small stone only at one end of the LFO phase. The problem is that the guy thinks he is smart, he built the pedals perfectly and I am the one with the bad setup, bad cables, low Headroom Amp, and lastly: The PodGO. A noGO for an Analog Fanatic... So in his last message, he said something about it being a toy, either not having enough headroom and/or not being compatible impedance-wise with 70s style electronics. My question: This is complete bulllollipop, isn't it? Firstly, you will not be able to clip PodGO's input without heavily boosting it, secondly, why would an impedance mismatch cause distortion (as in clipping when being hit hard) and thirdly, why would my guitar not clip in true bypass mode, when it clips when these modulation effects are turned on? If you have any experience with the mentioned pedals, I'd appreciate any ideas or shared experiences concerning their respective headrooms :) Thanks!

Update: Factory Reset and Firmware "Update" (just aimlessly and desperately updating" from 1.40 to 1.40 ;) ) didn't work at all.

I'm having similar problems, but here, the switching between Vol and Wah is still possible. I just don't see the respective change in values, when I move the pedal, even on factory presets. It's always at 100%. Any ideas? Any other than backup and factory reset? Is the optical sensor a system consisting of LED and phototransistor? Could the LED be broken? (I don't know why this seems more probable to me than a broken phototransistor, maybe because we all know broken light bulbs :D ) Would that mean 100% to the sensor?

By the way, some more findings concerning this topic: 1. The Colorsound Overdrive has got a second, modded model, the L6 Drive! I didn't expect something named L6 being based on a classic drive so I haven't checked that for a long time. It is really better than the Colordrive model. 2. Watching even more YouTube videos, channels like ThatPedalShow etc., I found out, that there are a lot of original classic tones I don't like. For example, I perceive something as unpleasantly hissing/fizzy very quickly, when there is some sort of original signal coming through a distorted sound. Which may happen in BluesBreaker type pedals e.g. and in the Centaur by design. I was very happy to see I'm not the only person to perceive it like this. The guys from the Andertons YT channel e.g. mention this behaviour in their video comparing 5 types of classic ODs and have a different taste on that matter.

Hi @grdGo33, first of all, thanks for staying in the discussion. I really appreciate that. Yes, that's true. I'm beginning to realize, that quite a few of my expectations were not realistic. But I think, concerning my categorization, there have been some misunderstandings. Many, if not all drives and amps can sound very cool, depending on the style of playing and the settings. When judging something as "brittle" in my last message, I was mainly referring to the cleaning up of decaying notes, which is something that simply doesn't exist in most demos on YouTube, but which is important to me, because, if I dial in a sound, as many styles of playing as possible should sound natural and the behaviour of many ODs does not sound natural to MY ears. On the other hand: I've got no idea how the real pedal would behave in that situation! I just don't know this behaviour from MY analog gear, that's all. If the real things behave like this, of course, I need to live with it. AND: Of course I also need to live with it, if the models are simply not made for the settings I choose. But this is something I want(ed) to find out: What can I expect? What can I do better? And - considering the PodGo has had at least one HUGE bug (input impedance) - is my device OK or is something else wrong? Even if I can accept that the Colordrive (digital model or analog example) is not made for the way I used it, I still think the behaviour (if not the sound, then the looks of the waveform) is so odd, I just still can't believe everything behaves as designed... The dialog with you people already has answered a huge portion of these questions. Thanks so much! In the meantime, I have become quite happy with my device, dialed in great tones, even with the Colordrive. I'd still be happy with any input concerning e.g. the behaviour of the real analog gear or electronical explanations of the oddities I witness, because I like digging deep, but the big question marks have disappeared and I can finally focus on making music and creating great tones! (By the way, I even started breadboarding my own circuits to learn the analog basics from scratch ;) )

Good to hear you can reproduce that behaviour! Yep, I'd like to hear it like this, too. Maybe some guy in an analog guitar pedal forum is open for an eperiment ;) I did some less scientific run through the models and put the ODs in three gross categories: "Obviously" brittle, Noticeably brittly (If you WANT to hear it), and not noticeable/fine (it doesn't mean the other ones are not usable, but you need to choose the right purpose) Obviously brittle: Colordrive (worst), Valve Driver, Compulsive Drive, Deez One (both), Ratatouille, KWB, Obsidian 7000 (in competition to the Colordrive), Tube Driver, "Overdrive", BitCrusher (Ha-ha ;) ) Noticeable: Heir Apparent, Scream 808, Alpaca, Vermin, Deranged Master (Still fun to play models, I don't want to complain!) Fine: Dhyana, Minotaur, Stupor, Horizon, KillerZ, Teemah! All the fuzzes I tried worked surprisingly well on that matter! The overtones, just didn't stop at all ;) But still, the decay sounded natural to me. Hmm. That's interesting. I can't confirm that. Can you provide an audio file?

Yes, sure, but I'm used to see it more smoothly than in my former examples. I do not own analog devices that behave like this. (I play T-Rex pedals and an Ibanez FatCat in front of a Blues deluxe in my live rig) I don't care too much about real accuracy as such. I just think the model behaves odd in my understanding and somewhat hard to handle, which I would perfectly accept if the original was like that, too. If it doesn't, I would like to find out if something is wrong with either my unit, my expectations, my way of dialing in, etc. As I said, I don't! THis was just for ("scientific") demonstration purposes. The effect is still very noticeable in front of a clean amp+cab. Having listened to lots of comparisons between modelers and real miked amps, I wouldn't claim to hear "digital artifacts" any more. There are a lot of analog "artifacts" as well, but they are perfectly enough to think that something I dialed in sounds bad :D I just think that it's much harder to get a good sound out of Helix or PodGo than out ofthe real legendary gear, because in my experience, you take a good amp, then a good pedal maybe and you cannot do so much wrong! (You can get better or worse results, yes, and you can mess up getting it on tape, but the amp sound itself will never be really bad, at least not with the equipment I played with.) Let me take a last approach to show you about my colorsound experiences and what sounds disturbing to me. -Be it digital or not - This time amped! I reamped the same signal with different drive settings of a US Double Nrm. (Which I love simply with a 100%Drive and a 100% drive kinky boost in front) The more driven results have a nice, creamy attack, but in front of the clean amp, there is this crackly distortion characteristic of the colordrive, which I want to find out about if this is what I have to live with and hide or if something else is wrong... So again my request to see if you can replicate it (I included a patch with the snapshots 1: hot, 2: less hot 3 clean amp, audio order is: 1: clean, 2: HOT, 3: less hot. And don't misunderstand me: 2+3 sound fine to me!): ColorSound_CleanAmp.mp3 ColorSound_HotAmp.mp3 ColorSound_LessHotAmp.mp3 ColorDrivve.pgp

@z3albw1rr, @codamedia https://youtu.be/wT_w9pL9_w4 Listen closely to the comparisons. Sometimes the real amp got more hair than the Helix! Thanks for the explanation @codamedia. I would dare to say I got it even using pre-amp only, but I'll investigate further! I definitely tend to dial low master values in my patches.

Addendum: I got some quite nice sounds out of the colordrive, using a really hot edge of breakup "US Double Nrm" (+Kinky Boost). Maybe I need to accept the Colordrive is something that needs to be evened out afterwards in the signal chain. The less hot the amp is, the more brittle the Colorsound becomes.

Hi @grdGo33, thanks so much for discussing this with me. My first example is indeed the "Colordrive solo", which was supposed to mean that it didn't use an amp/cab, sorry to not make this clear. I am absolutely aware that this a recipe for a bad sound. What I wanted to show is that the distortion behaviour is odd and thus wanted to keep the system simple, and make sure the distortion comes from the colorsound, not any amp or other part in the system. I am glad you think it's "exceptionally bad", because I think so, too. I just don't know where I could be clipping anything where it's not supposed to. My DI signals sound ok, don't they? Yes, DI and guitar sound the same. Another weird thing I found. Have a look at the waveform: You can see clearly that the audible distortion stops where you see the *upper* part of the waveform being suddenly "shaved" (blue waveform). This is not happening at all in the DI source and I cant imagine why an overdrive pedal would work like this (Though I learn a lot about audio processing phenomena things these days). This is pretty much like some sort of gating effect, isn't it, rather than an overdrive which I suppose should be more like compressing. I'll play around with it some more, but I can't imagine I did any gross mistakes. Any levels in the DAW seem to be fine/far from 0dBfs and since I have done quite some low/C++ level audio processing and ^have been in the computer audio world since the 90s, I consider myself not too noobish. (Though I know you never stop learning. I agree something gross might be wrong, it's just kind of not obvious) 3rd clip does if I wasn't too drunk to notice I had accidently switched it off ;) I did some experiments like that. The crackling got less and stopped earlier, but since the crackling is the "wanted distortion" (which sounds bad without cab, but ok in front of an amp+cab) and only the sudden stop is the real problem, it doesn't help too me much. May I ask you try building a decaying edge of breakup tone with the Colordrive on your device? I am so eager to know if one actually can get a proper decay out of it. I tried a "shine on you crazy diamonds" patch from the Customtone library, which sounds ok, but only hides the problem with amp distortion, reverb, delay and modulation... (If that's the way to go on the PodGo it's fine, I just would like to know...) Thanks for your time and thoughts!

Hey @z3albw1rr, first of all thank you so much for your thoughts and suggestions. Both are really appreciated and I eventually agree with all or at least most of it. I would just like to share some of my experiences during last days research on the topic: 1. There are better and worse models or, now I'd rather say easier and more difficult ones. 2. A lot of the artifacts we hear even exist in the analog world! This was VERY astonishing, but many "compare HELIX vs real amp" videos showed me that a real amp is not perfect and, using a digital model, we willingly select the "digitality" as a culprit. Listen to this one: https://youtu.be/wT_w9pL9_w4 As someone mentioned in the comments: YOu (or rather "he and me") would quite often choose the "real one" as the "more artificial one". Also Rhett Shulls Helix Stomp vs real plexi. The real "clean" plexi produces crackles! 3. Your ears play tricks on you. I installed the free ToneX plugin an immediately thought "so much better than my PodGO". I switched back to my best PodGo preset, than back to the ToneX and immediately revoked my opinion. I think they are both excellent, just need some work. THis all doesn't mean, there is nothing wrong with some of the models. I guess a real world Colorsound Overdrive reacts differently to decaying signals, but the tendency for the distortion to break away suddenly might be there, too. So sad, no CS Overdrive demos actually demonstrate it, but only keep on playing as many notes as possible ;) I'll keep you updated on my thoughts and experiences in this thread. Cheers!

Hey @davebode, thanks for the suggestions. I don't think this is a feasible solution for me: Actually I'm a PodGo owner (it's still supposed to use the same models, so landed here), and that for two reasons: 1. Simplicity, 2. Budget. I COULD afford another device like the ToneX pedal, but it's supposed to be an exercise home solution, nothing more professional or complicated. Still, I would like to find out about this distortion issue. I still cannot accept this. I mean, in your example it's clear what you mean, but still quite subtle so some people don't hear it. If you listen to any files I uploaded concerning the Colordrive model, I guess nobody can NOT hear it. It sounds more like an insult to anyone with ears or a bad joke than a state of the art model (I know the Colordrive is legacy, but it's not from the 90ies). I will start believing that there's nothing to do about it, when people tell me that they can reproduce it on their devices, but noone else would reply to my comments :( ;) Hmm. I can't really agree (unless you tell me you've got inside knowledge about how line6 builds their models). Taking the Colordrive examples, it pretty much sounds like there is a sharp knee in the characteristic curve, with a very unsubtle transition from linear to non-linear. I don't think they chop of high frequencies, (which are not "noise" in my opinion, but overtones generated by the distortion). The model rather suddenly stops generating them. My interpretation from what I know about how distortion works. (I'm no modeling pro but still a media engineer, after all.)

Hi folks, so, in the past few weeks I've been searching through the forum for other users with similar issues and I found some threads, but still I'm not satisfied with the outcome. It is both too strange and annoying to not try to fix it. Some Helix user on the forum even went for another device of another manufacturer. I'm gonna explain the problem: As many other users, I am (extremely) dissatisfied with (many) tones at the edge of breakup. Some amps/OD pedals are worse than others and some are pretty usable, but I think in some way the problem exists in all of them. To me, said overdriven sounds sound quite brittle and fizzy, and decaying notes have artifacts that all of a sudden disappear instead of slowly fading away as you would expect from analog gear. Worst model I found in that context was definitely the Colordrive. I checked many different problem sources: The input impedance hardware bug: Solved by using a buffered pedal in front Firmware downgrade: Some people said they had experienced brittle tones appearing after upgrading to 1.40. But downgrading via Line6 Updater didn't change anything. Sounds stayed EXACTLY the same. Several "pro" settings on the amp (ripple, sag): nothing, wouldn't explain/solve pedal issues anyway I posted some contributions to existing threads, trying to get some opinions and exchange, with limited success: https://line6.com/support/topic/65860-input-distortion/ https://line6.com/support/topic/62618-input-level-question/ https://line6.com/support/topic/65711-distortion-characteristic-of-decaying-notes-is-chattering/#comment-458867 And last but not least, I did some research reamping different settings. I think the following example audio files are the most interesting ones. I'll provide a DI signal, a Colordrive SOLO (amp/cab/EQ disabled) and a HiWatt solo sample. Listening to the colordrive sample, you will notice the fizziness drop away really quickly, (I'm not expecting the bare pedal to sound great, but this sudden falling apart is just not what I expect from a hi quality analog overdrive. ) The HiWatt amp manages distortion much better, but if you listen closely, you will even find some fizzyness there, which also drops away at some point. ow, what is almost shocking about those samples, is that the point of time when the sudden disappearing of the fizzyness happens is pretty much the same in both examples (at 2s) ! Even if they do not have anything in common, gearwise. Do you people have similar problems? Do I have to live with it? Go to competitors? Any other ideas? Legend to the audio files: 1. Colordrive solo, 2. DI, 3. HiWatt+Cab colordrive_solo.mp3 di.mp3 hiwatt_solo.mp3