phil_m

It actually is possible that the HD500 could damage headphones that have really low impedances. Line 6 recommends headphones with an impedance of 150-600 ohms. Most inexpensive headphones are well below this. That being said, it seems somewhat odd that all your headphones would be damaged only on the left side.

Do you have something you could plug into the HD500's MP3 in jack? That would be one way to test if the HD500's headphone jack is the culprit.

So, maybe a dumb question, but are you sure it's not the headphones?

Is this in all of your presets? My first thought is that you could have a tone that set up as dual tone and/or the mixer block is panned hard right. And this wouldn't necessarily show up in a recording because when you record, your DAW would record the track as a mono track panned to the center.

Depending on how you have the pan controls set in the mixer block, there can be a level difference between using one of the 1/4" outputs and using them both. When using one, the signals are summed. If you use them both the left and right sides are separated. It seems like Line 6 has some sort of pan rule assigned to the 1/4" outputs, so when you have the mixer block controls panned hard left and right to separate tones, there may be a level difference if you go between using just one of them or both of them.

Thanks for the samples. I hear what you're talking about. The difference in volume is pretty pronounced - more than I notice with mine. I wonder if it could be possible that your neck pickup got wired out of phase? It sure sounds like that could be the case. I'd say it's worth opening up a support ticket:

I second this. I'd much rather run a heavy duty extension cord across the stage rather a tiny DC cable. You want something that can withstand getting walked on, tripped over, or whatever. Also, if the cable does get pulled, I think you have less chance of the HD500's power jack getting damaged if you keep the switching power supply near the the HD500.

So are you saying you have an actual amp model selected in the tone, but just have it turned off? If that's the case, there's a parameter in the amp block called "bypass volume". You may have this set to zero. Another potential issue. You mention the pan effect. If you are using this, and you have the tone hard panned to the wrong side, you may not be getting a signal coming from POD's effect send. Remember the POD's effects loop is stereo, so if you are only using it as a mono loop (which is what you'd be doing), you need to make sure you have something coming out of the left side.

With the bypass switch set to on, the amp's effect loop it on (it's somewhat confusing labeling if you ask me). So you'll want to leave that on. But we are getting somewhere. So where do you have the effect loop block in your signal chain in your tone?

I use that position all the time with the mags on my JTV69, and to me it sounds like what I'd expect. Do you have the ability to record a quick sample of what you're hearing?

No, the Pocket POD doesn't have that capability. If you want to record audio from it to the computer, you have to plug it into whatever soundcard you're using. The USB port on the Pocket POD is there solely for organizing and editing presets.

No, there's no way to do that. You can copy the preset you're using to as many different locations you want and edit everything else, though. But there's no way to have effects stay active when you're changing presets.

Make sure the bypass switch for the amp's effects loop is switched to "on".

What kind of amp is it? It sounds like it may have an effects loop that needs to be turned on. If you aren't hearing the effects in the post position, to me it sounds like the amp's effects loop isn't on.

Hmmm.... This is a tough one. I agree with you that the answer you received from phone support doesn't seem acceptable. I will see if I can get someone to help you out a bit more. I have seen similar issues like this where people have gotten a device repaired with a new board, and the new board isn't recognized in Monkey. It seems to me that it goes beyond something like a bad cable or USB port if the guy on the phone can't even find the serial number manually.

If you bought the HD500 on Craigslist, the warranty is already a moot point. Registering it doesn't really get you anything beyond that at that point. You can still install the updates, use HD500 Edit, record with it, use Monkey, etc. In other words, there's not really anything registering the HD500 gets you with a secondhand one.

Technically, the HD500 is a preamp - it takes an instrument or mic level signal as an input and sends (or at least can) a line level to the output. So, no you should be OK, at least from a signal level perspective.

You know, I hadn't really thought about the whole out of phase thing before, but you're correct. The pickups aren't out of phase. They're wired in parallel, but the windings on the middle pickup are reversed, so that is why there is hum cancellation. True out of phase pickups sound very, very thin. I don't believe the JTV-69 magnetics are wired any differently than a typical Strat. I play Strats most of the time, and to me position 2 on the JTV magnetics sounds like I'd expect. What kind of pickups does your Aerodyne Strat have in it?

Well, it is out of phase... The magnetic pickups on the JTV-69 are wired essentially like a Strat. Position 1 is the neck, 2 is neck/middle out of phase with each other, 3 is middle, 4 is middle/bridge (phase doesn't really matter with the humbucker in the bridge), and 5 is the bridge. But on a Strat, positions 2 and 4 are often referred to as the "quack" positions. They're known for that tight, thin sound. I actually don't find a whole a lot of difference between the modeled Strat in position 2 and the magnetics. Playing clean, this tends to be one of my favorite sounds, actually.

The Mission Engineering pedal is using a metal enclosure very similar to a Dunlop Crybaby. The EX-1 is a plastic pedal. So it comes down to a difference in construction quality. To be fair, though, I've had two EX-1 pedals since 2000 or 2001 now, and they're still working fine for me.

The file extensions don't determine compatibility with the device. Both the 2.0 and XT/X3 devices use the .l6t file extension. That doesn't mean their presets are all interchangeable, though. http://line6.com/support/docs/DOC-2403

Does the volume increase higher than when you have the volume pedal at maximum, or are you just saying the volume increases because you have to move the pedal to toe position to hit the toe switch? If it the second thing, there's not really much you can do about it without getting an additional expression pedal or using an standalone volume pedal.

Well, the one thing you could do in a tone where you have both wah and volume is to make it so the toe switch toggle both the wah and volume. You'd just have it set up so that when one is one the other is off. When you hit the toe switch to turn the wah effect on, the volume pedal will be off, and you will essentially be at full volume. So in that sense, the onboard pedal wouldn't be working too differently than if you weren't using a second pedal. You'd have to also make sure that both the sweep of the volume and wah effects are controlled by EXP1. Actually, now that I think about it more, I probably spoke too quickly in saying you absolutely can't do what you want to do above. Between using the toe switch to toggle different effects on and off, you can have EXP1 and EXP2 assigned to control different things depending on what effects are on at the time.

The toe switch still works if you have an external expression attached, but it doesn't switch between EXP1 and EXP2. You can still use it to turn the wah (or whatever effects you want) on and off. The way to think about it is that there are two expression controllers - EXP1 and EXP2. If you're just using the onboard pedal, you toggle between which one the pedal is controlling by pressing the toe switch. Once you connect a second pedal, the onboard pedal controls EXP1 and the external pedal controls EXP2. So to answer your question directly, no, you couldn't do what you have outlined here. EDIT: Actually, I am probably a bit wrong in saying you can't do what you want to here. See my comment below.

Does the Blues Jr hum or exhibit any signs of weirdness without the POD connected? If not, I'd say it's probably not the tubes. It sounds as if you have some sort of ground loop occurring if you're able to get the hum to go away with the hum eliminator. And if it works, I'd say go with it. Ground loops can happen even if you have everything hooked up correctly. If you plug everything into the same power strip, that's one way to help minimize the risk, but it doesn't completely eliminate it.