joel_brown

The Amplifii is the previous generation tones not the HD tones. It sounds good and is much easier to work with but it's not going to sound as good as the PODHD. The Amplifii will have lots of available tones/patches that you can just drop in and play. The PODHD will require more tweaking, configuring, and understanding to get a tone/patch, but will sound better in the end. Summary: Amplifii - easy to use and sounds good. PODHD - harder to use but sounds better. Think of the Amplifii as something you'd jam around with in your house and the PODHD as more of a professional level gigging or recording system. Not that Amplifii can't be used for gigging or recording but the PODHD is the latest greatest tone/sound from Line6.

Hoodcreeper sounds like you had a bad experience but the Line6 PODHD products do sound very nice. No question it takes time and some understanding to get them sounding the way you want but as Dino334 said, it can be very close to an AXE or Kemper at a much lower price.

DI you give very good answers and seem to understand customer communication. I understand NDAs, development, and business models. I'm a retired computer engineer. Been there, done that, got a closet full of T-Shirts. What ruffles me is answers like this - "WRONG. these things take time.. and the ideas are debated, and many are implemented... not looking to debate this... as this is FACT.... and whether you believe me or not... time will tell". Very poorly worded and very defensive. I've been on both ends before. Drink that cup of coffee first, relax, and write the post as nicely as possible.

Oh an NDA and you can't say anything, hmmmm. How about this... stop saying stuff you can't back up. I'm a very satisfied Line6 customer but I don't want to hear about how great something is going to be but you can't tell me what it is.

Sounds like a 3rd grade argument. They're doing most of it. No they're not. Yes they are. No they're not. Yes they are. No they're not. Either put the facts up or shut up. Show a list of ideas implemented versus ideas submitted.

No change in latency. We're talking a difference of nanoseconds, which is well below anything humanly detectable.

Doesn't have to be a ground loop. EM generated by a computer or monitor could also cause noise. I think the big thing was determining the computer is causing the problem. Hopefully plugging the computer into another outlet will fix it, or run a longer cable to connect your POD farther away from the computer and see if it's any better. I'm no electrician but I think a proper ground is just a steel rod 6 or 8 feet into the ground.

I can usually find PODs on sale for < $400 or even < $250 used. Last I looked Kemper was $2k and AXE was $3k. If I already have a PODHD and I want it to sound better than I can just add another.

Just a thought but it would be nice if there was a way to chain together multiple PODHDs without having to go through DA/AD conversions like through the FX loop. It would be nice if we could actually chain two together and run dual amps (one on each) plus whatever effects we want. Line6 could sell more product by allowing people a scalable solution. You want it to sound better, just buy more of them.

There is a green light on the power supply. When the POD repoots, does the green light fade out ? If it does then you could have a bad power supply.

Guitar Center has HD500x on sale for $360 brand new.

You need the PODHD Desktop (aka Bean). They're discontinued but they can still be found occasionally on eBay. I have a brand new one in the box that's never been registered. It's my backup unit that's never been used. Not sure if I want to let it go yet but I'm sure you can find others.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Line-6-POD-HD500X-Guitar-Multi-Effects-Processor-109312173-i3193464.gc Holy crap...

Are you using a shielded instrument cable to plug your guitar into the PODHD ? If you are then try a different one.

The PODHD also several different output types such as Combo-Front or Studio Direct and a few others. Try different settings for this too. It can make a huge difference.

Don't be afraid to try Studio Out to your FX Return either. There's so many things that adjust your tone in the PODHD, you will eventually get what you want. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out which settings to use.

I personally prefer tubes in my power amps but a lot of people have got great tones from solid state amps using the PODHD. I think it really comes down to tweaking the PODHD for what you're playing it through. That's kind'a the Pro and Con about it. It has the flexibility to be used in a LOT of different situations but that means it has a LOT of different tweaks available with it too.

That's not always true. I have a software product that I've been selling for several years. One day, just for the hell of it, I doubled the price. People had been telling me that it was underpriced anyway. Sales jumped up quite a bit for about 6 months, then went back to normal. Maybe I need to raise the price again. Damn it, now if Line6 raises the price it'll be my fault.

Changing Input Z to something lower than Auto or 1m helps darken and thicken the tone. I personally use 32k. Also make sure Input1 is set to Guitar and Input2 is set to Variax or something other than Guitar.

Yes it can sound good. Seems like people who use real guitar cabs typically reduce the low frequencies in their patch. Usually adjusting the Low Cut parameter under Cab Parameters to around 150 or so. Not saying you need to do this but if it sounds boomy or muddy you may want to try it.

I read this on Wikipedia while trying to learn more about pickup resistance/impedance. I thought others might find this interesting. Magnetic pickups[edit] A magnetic pickup consists of a permanent magnet with a core of material such as alnico or ceramic, wrapped with a coil of several thousand turns of fine enameled copper wire. The pickup is most often mounted on the body of the instrument, but can be attached to the bridge, neck or pickguard, as on many electro-acoustic archtop jazz guitars and string basses. The permanent magnet creates a magnetic field; the motion of the vibrating steel strings disturbs the field, and the changing magnetic flux induces a voltage in the coil. This signal is then carried to amplification or recording equipment via a cable. There may also be an internal preamplifier stage between the pickup and cable. Output[edit]The output voltage of magnetic pickups varies between 100 mV rms to over 1 V rms for some of the higher output types.[citation needed] A hard strum on all 6 guitar strings can produce a larger output voltage swing, typically peak voltages of +/- 5 volts for single coil pickups and +/- 10 volt peaks on dual coil pickups.[citation needed] Some high-output pickups achieve this by employing very strong magnets, thus creating more flux and thereby more output. This can be detrimental to the final sound because the magnet's pull on the strings can cause problems with intonation as well as damp the strings and reduce sustain. Other high-output pickups have more turns of wire to increase the voltage generated by the string's movement. However, this also increases the pickup's output resistance/impedance, which can affect high frequencies if the pickup is not isolated by a buffer amplifier or a DI unit. Pickup sound[edit] Single coil pickups, Fender Stratocaster (1963) The turns of wire in proximity to each other have an equivalent self-capacitance that, when added to any cable capacitance present, resonates with the inductance of the winding. This resonance can accentuate certain frequencies, giving the pickup a characteristic tonal quality. The more turns of wire in the winding, the higher the output voltage but the lower this resonance frequency. The inductive source impedance inherent in this type of transducer makes it less linear than other forms of pickups,[citation needed] such as piezo-electric or optical. The tonal quality produced by this nonlinearity is, however, subject to taste, and some guitarists and luthiers consider it aesthetically superior to a more linear transducer.[citation needed] The external load usually consists of resistance (the volume and tone potentiometer in the guitar, and any resistance to ground at the amplifier input) and capacitance between the hot lead and shield in the guitar cable. The electric cable also has a capacitance, which can be a significant portion of the overall system capacitance. This arrangement of passive components forms a resistively-damped second-order low-pass filter. Pickups are usually designed to feed a high input impedance, typically a megohm or more, and a low impedance load reduces the high-frequency response of the pickup because of the filtering effect of the inductance. Humbuckers[edit]Main article: Humbucker PRS's Dragon humbucker Single coil pickups act like a directional antenna and are prone to pick up mains hum (nuisance electromagnetic interference generated by electrical power cables, power transformers, and fluorescent light ballasts in the area) along with the musical signal. Mains hum consists of a fundamental signal at a nominal 50 or 60 Hz, depending on local alternating current frequency, and usually some harmonic content. The changing magnetic flux caused by the mains current links with the windings of the pickup, inducing a voltage by transformer action. The pickups also are sensitive to the electromagnetic field from nearby cathode ray tubes in video monitors or televisions. To overcome this effect, the humbucking pickup was invented by Joseph Raymond "Ray" Butts, but Seth Lover of Gibson was also working on one himself. Ray Butts initially developed one on his own and later worked with Gretsch.[1] Who developed it first is a matter of some debate, but Ray Butts was awarded the first patent (U.S. Patent 2,892,371) and Seth Lover came next (U.S. Patent 2,896,491). Ultimately, both men developed essentially the same concept, but Ray Butts was never recognized as the one who produced it first. A humbucking pickup, shown in the image on the right, is composed of two coils. Each coil is wound reverse to one another. However, the six magnetic poles are opposite in polarity in each winding. Since ambient hum from power-supply transformers, radio frequencies, or electrical devices reaches the coils as common-mode noise, it induces an electrical current of equal magnitude in each coil. Because the windings are reversed in each pickup coil, the electro-magnetic interference sine wave signals in each pickup are equal and in antiphase, resulting in them canceling each other. However, the signal from the guitar string is doubled, due to the phase reversal caused by the out of phase magnets. The magnets being out of phase in conjunction with the coil windings being out of phase put the guitar string signal from each pickup in phase with one another. Therefore, the voltage of the signal is approximately doubled, if the two coils are connected in series. When wired in series, as is most common, the overall inductance of the pickup is increased, which lowers its resonance frequency and attenuates the higher frequencies, giving a less trebly tone (i.e., "fatter") than either of the two component single-coil pickups would give alone. Because the two coils are wired in series, the resulting signal that is output by the pickup is larger in amplitude, thus more able to overdrive the early stages of the amplifier. An alternative wiring places the coils in buck parallel. The equal common-mode mains hum interference cancels, while the string variation signal sums. This method has a more neutral effect on resonant frequency: mutual capacitance is doubled (which if inductance were constant would lower the resonant frequency), and inductance is halved (which would raise the resonant frequency without the capacitance change). The net is no change in resonant frequency. This pickup wiring is rare,[2] as guitarists have come to expect that humbucking 'has a sound', and is not neutral. On fine jazz guitars, the parallel wiring produces significantly cleaner sound,[2] as the lowered source impedance drives capacitive cable with lower high frequency attenuation. A side-by-side humbucking pickup senses a wider section of the string (has a wider aperture) than a single-coil pickup. This affects tone.[3] By picking up a larger portion of the vibrating string more lower harmonics are present in the signal produced by the pickup in relation to high harmonics, resulting in a "fatter" tone. Humbucking pickups in the narrow form factor of a single coil, designed to replace single-coil pickups, have the narrower aperture resembling that of a single coil pickup. Some models of these single-coil-replacement humbuckers produce more authentic resemblances to classic single coil tones than full-size humbucking pickups of a similar inductance, which shows that the amount of high-frequency rolloff due to coil inductance is not the only factor in that sound.

Yeah a big problem releasing that cause then people would have a good idea how to develop for their new stuff that isn't out yet. The interface and API probably won't change much, if any, for the next version and Line6 may develop a phone app for that. Sometimes I liked it better when all I did was plug the guitar into the amp. If you wanted to sound better you practiced more.

For me, it didn't change anything except reduce feedback. But I only had to lower them a very small amount to fix my feedback issue.

One the biggest things that helped me is lowering the guitar pickups slightly. At least for me, a very small adjustment made a big difference without sacrificing tone or sustain.

Some things I did that helped me in this situation is: 1) Tone control on the guitar itself. Turn it down instead of wide open. It's surprising how different every guitar is with tone caps. 2) Changed capacitors on the tone pot in the guitar. 3) Lower guitar pickups slightly. 4) Lower input Z to 32k. 5) Input 2 set to something other than Guitar or Same - need this for everything. You'll get there. Just keep tweakin'...