phil_m

The headphone out mutes the speakers. So if we're talking about a live situation, it kind of seems silly to lug an amp around if you aren't actually going to be using the speakers. Might as well get a POD at that point. It would be nice if there were an option that allowed you to select whether or not the speakers remained active or not while the headphone jack was in use, but unfortunately there's not. I kind of doubt it's something that can be added with a firmware update. I imagine it's an actual relay that's controlling that behavior.

What was the repair? Did they replace the main board or something like that? In any case, it sounds like you have an old firmware installed. You'll need to update the firmware per the instructions here: http://line6.com/support/page/kb/_/effects/m5-m9-m13/m13-firmware-update-instructions-r364

Well, you probably know this, but just make sure you either have speakers connected to the head or have the "Power Soak" set to mute on that H&K head. Other than that, there isn't anything electrically from a safety perspective you'll have to worry about. With interconnecting all this equipment, though, it may be likely you could run into ground loop issues.

Well, it will work fine for most people, though. If you control with the onboard expression pedal or through a pedal attached to the Pedal 2 jack, there's no lag.

Well, were you using it in the loop before? It is a parallel loop, and, honestly, I've seen dozens of guys complain here over the years about not being able to use the M13 in the effects loops of Mesas. I suppose there are some effects on the M13 that might work OK in the loop. Particularly those that allow the mix to be 100% wet. Most of the mods, delays, and reverbs. Although with that, I'd think only the mods would be useful.

See my response above. The M13 isn't the problem here... Well, it is, kind of, I suppose. But there's nothing that can be done about it. The M13, and most other digital effects, doesn't play well with parallel effects loops.

The problem has to do with the Mesa's effects loop. It's a parallel loop, so what you're hearing is comb filtering. It happens when you try to use any digital effect in a parallel loop unless the effect has a "dry kill" feature. The M13 doesn't have this. With a parallel loop, you have to parallel signal paths. When you introduce A/D and D/A converters in that loop, a small amount of latency is introduced, so the signals are no longer aligned with each other. The signal going through the loop is lagging slightly behind the amp's dry signal. This causes phasing - the swirling and warbling. It goes away when you bypass the M13 in true bypass mode because the signal going the M13 at that point is a purely analog signal. Once you turn an effect on, though, it will happen again. There's not really an easy solution. This is why a lot of people have parallel loops modified to serial loops.

I'm unclear as to what you're wanting them to provide. There are three different amp models that are designed to work well with acoustic guitars in Amplifi - Tube Instrument Preamp, Line 6 Piezacoustic 2, and Line 6 Variax Acoustic. You could also do OK by selecting "no amp". It's a full range, full response amp, so it does work well with acoustics.

There's no additional part. It's just glued on there (and not all that well!). Mine came off awhile ago. Just use a few small dabs of superglue or other epoxy and glue it on.

Well, you definitely don't need five... I recorded some clips with one mic, and I thought it turned out fine. If you wanted to add a second mic to pick up one of the tweeters, that might be OK. For live playing, though, it's probably not necessary. The majority of the guitar tone is coming from the large speaker. If you have post effects, they come out of the smaller speakers, but even with a single mic setup, you get bleed from these speakers. Also, even thought the amp is capable of producing stereo when streaming music, you don't really need stereo for micing it for live use. If for some reason you did, you'd need three mics - one for the woofer, and two for the tweeters. It doesn't seem worth the hassle, though, from my perspective.

Just hit the switch labeled pre/post while in looper mode to put the looper back in the post position.

Well, if you did read that somewhere, it's wrong. Pre and post refers to where the looper is in the signal chain, and if you're in the signal chain view, you'll see it move when you hit the pre/post switch. Everything you said regarding the loop being recorded with or without effects is true. If you have the looper set to pre, it will record the loop dry. If you change it to post after you've recorded a loop, it will still be your dry track being looped, and it won't sound very good most likely. The pre setting is useful if you want to experiment with different effects or amp models in your tone. In a live situation, it could possible be useful if you wanted to play the same part with different effects applied to it at different time. The post setting is probably more useful, though, because it records the track with the effects and amp modeling applied, and once you stop recording that track won't change. If you want to record a clean track and play over it, the best way to do it is to keep the looper in post position throughout the whole time. You can either turn the effects off in the patch you're in, record a clean track, and then turn on effects for overdubs, or you could switch to a different patch altogether.

The mix knob acts a bit differently for every model. It depends on how the original effect that was modeled acted. One thing to note is the Digital Delay amd Analog Echo models (possibly a few others, too), the tone controls in the effect are passive. What that means is they only cut signal - they can't boost it. The default settings for these controls is actually set to 50%, so if you leave them there, you're actually cutting volume on the repeated signal by quite a bit. I like to turn them to 100% to start and then adjust them lower if I feel I need to roll of the top or bottom.

Well, you probably know this, but by putting pedals in front of the HD500, you lose the ability to use the VDI connection between the Variax and the HD500. But what you're proposing is doable. I guess it just seems like you have a lot of redundancy there where the M13 and HD500 along with all those effects. The effects on the HD500 are the same as the M13, so it seems that you could maybe get rid of the M13 unless you're doing some very effects-heavy tones.

Yes, I am. They're both before the amp block. The first is the Digital Delay mode with a time setting of an 1/8th note, and the second is the Analog w/ Mod with a dotted 1/8th note time setting.

If you're using the HD500X for effects only into the front of an amp, Studio Direct is the output mode you want. As far as the RAT model sounding bad, that's not entirely surprising to me, especially with the drive at 50%. Try lowering the drive and turning up the output.

Yeah, like archtopeddy said, I think you can get away with one mic. The only reason you would need three is if you wanted to capture a stereo field, but in most cases that's not really necessary for guitar tracks. If you wanted to try to get some more of the upper end, you could probably mic the woofer on it's own and one of the tweeters. I'd probably use a dynamic mic like the SM57 or Sennheiser E609 for the woofer and then a condenser for the tweeter. You have to be careful of phasing issues when doing this, though.

I'll look into publishing these. Like I said I was trying to match these with the recording of the songs (the tone with the Twin is just me making stuff up), and in order publish tones, you have to have them associated with an artist and a song. The clip I labeled "Spanky Deluxe" is Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You". This tone is actually pretty close to the factory preset in slot A. I just turned the reverb on, turned the drive back a little on the amp block, and messed with the tone stack settings a bit. The "Boogie" tone riff is STP's "Interstate Love Song" (although I'm pretty sure I messed the tempo up!). It was me playing riffs I that roughly corresponded to the tones I made.

It sounds like it's probably a hardware issue. You have two options - return it for an exchange or open up a support ticket. I'd probably go the exchange route.

Hello all, I took a little bit of time tonight to record a few clips with my Amplifi 150. These are all done with a single mic - a Sennheiser E609. I was interested to see how it would work out. Some of the high end sparkle is lost, for sure, but that's not necessarily what you want in miced amp sound, especially live. After doing this little experiment, I'm pretty certain that people could make a single mic setup work in a gig situation if they needed. Also, regarding the volume, the 150 has the ability to get pretty freaking loud. Certainly louder than I would need for a gig. I'm not saying it will work for every band out there, but if it's not loud enough for you, you may need to get your ears checked. :) I didn't really try to do any real tone matching with these clips. I just dialed in sounds I liked. One thing I'm impressed with in the Amplifi is the quality of the delays. I was never in love with the delays in the XT and X3 series. They were OK if you just used them in a static way. But they never did self-oscillation in a natural way. They just got all glitchy. They weren't like the DL4 (and M13 and HD500) in that way. The delays on the Amplifi have been improved from the X3. The other thing I love is that the Amplifi allows multiple instances of the same effect. That's very helpful. I always like having cascading delays for doing Edge-like tones. Anyway, just thought I'd share. Boogie.mp3 Pretty Bad.mp3 Spanky Deluxe.mp3 Swirly Twin.mp3

The thing is though, MP3's sound much better in my car than when I was dubbing CDs onto tapes. It's also much more convenient, like an order of magnitude more convenient, to plug my iPod into my car stereo's aux in and have access to my entire music collection than it is to bring CDs with me on a trip. And, really, the car and work are probably where I listen to music most often nowadays. And, personally, I actually think much of the cheaper audio stuff available now sounds pretty darn good for what it is. $200 now buys you a lot more now in the way of sound quality than $200 15 or 20 years ago.

It depends on what you're listening to it through. Through my studio monitors or a decent hifi (is that even a thing anymore?) system - sure. In my car or through earbuds - not so much. I just don't think most people care about it that much anymore. I actually don't even have a true stereo system in my house anymore. Well, I do, but it's sitting in a storage room. It just took up too much space. Personally, I don't think PONO is going to take off, but I could be wrong. I just don't see the demand.

Are you saying that you want to be able to choose the power amp topology in the models as well? That actually would be pretty cool. That would make it so you could build hybrid amp models within the POD itself. I don't know if something that's feasible or not. I like the idea, though.

I think the only way you can see is in the Amplifi app. While you're connected to the amp via Bluetooth, go to the settings menu in the app, and you'll see a heading that says "Updates" with "Amp Flash" underneath that. Hit that, and it should tell you that an update is available.

Well, if you have a POD connected via L6 Link going straight from the 1/4" out won't sound right because the POD won't be in Studio Direct mode. It will be in one of the Front modes. I guess I don't completely see what you're upset about. I do agree that block diagrams would be useful. But the location of the master volume doesn't change the fact that in full volume mode, the signal going to the XLR out is tapped off of the output transformer, so it does benefit from the power amp being pushed.