chuskey

I misspoke. For some reason I was thinking you could assign parameters to the footswitch, but it is just the expression pedal and Variax knobs. Duh! I did know that, just had one of those moments :)

If you have the time and inclination you can read this thread where Digital Igloo goes into a lot of detail as to why this isn't in the HD500X: http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1548676&highlight=spillover To me the OP in that thread comes off as a bit whiny and mad that reality doesn't fit his needs better :) I understand where you're coming from and you may could come up with a work around on the HD. You could for example have Path A be your clean sound and Path B your solo sound. You could assign everything in each path to a foot switch so that it would toggle between path A and B. I think in this scenario it would work as you need it to. Or if you used the same amp model for clean and dirty you can change any number of parameters with one foot switch so you could essentially create 2 "scenes" with the same preset and turn on/off drives and delay's too with that footswitch. There are several amps on there that make for great clean sounds and with the drive cranked and a distortion pedal in front of it make great lead tones as well. I pretty much only use the Dr Z amp model at this point and cover all the bases I need. Maybe not the ideal solution though. I'm not aware of another mid level modeller that will do spillovers. Except the Digitech GSP1101. Even if you get into Axe FX territory I think that you have to use scenes instead of presets if you want to have spillover. Changing presets and having spillover, as mentioned above, takes a lot of DSP. It seems like companies are devoting all available power to the detail of the amp/effect modelling. I think overall this is a good thing.

I agree with what's been posted. The HD500(X) works great as a midi controller. I have used it quite a bit to control Ableton and S Gear in the studio. I have a buddy who uses one to control his Axe FX. Super flexible setup and I think the fact that it's cheaper than the Kemper remote, which is just a controller, is VERY appealing. And as you stated you have a back up rig right there ready to go :)

Great video and tones!

Did a quick looping video today using the HD500X and JTV. It was off the cuff, so there are a couple of slips in there, but still fun :) https://youtu.be/SVjNlvLXN-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS7nqwGt4-I

Sounds great! First and foremost great playing and feel. People forget sometimes that this is the most important component of great tone. Past that though you've done a great job of dialing in your patches! Nice work!

You can only have FS5-FS8 control presets. FS1-FS4 will always control on/off effects per your assignment of them. The only thing you can change is setting FS5-FS8 to also control on/off effect switches instead of presets. Giving you 8 on/off switches. This is a global setting. You can still control patch and bank changes by tapping the bank button first if you're in FS1-FS8 mode.

I don't personally feel/assume that the older tech is worse than the newer stuff that's out there, but that will be the market perception. When it comes to digital gear, be it guitar processors or smartphones, it can be all about the latest greatest. It's a tough battle to counter that mentality. I will say that I've been impressed with some of the newer stuff to come along recently. I purchased S Gear and it is really great!! What I like about it is that it is so quick to get to some really great tones going. I'm at the point now where I can get the HD500X doing what I want to in a matter of minutes, but it took me a lot of tweaking to figure out how to get it there. I've recently been playing around more with the DEP and can honestly say I'm about as happy with the tones I'm getting as I am with S Gear. Which is saying a lot. To me the HD500X presents a value in the market that nothing else comes close to. It has good tones, the routing is insanely flexible, it can be tweaked to sound great with electric, acoustic, bass, vocals, it's a great midi controller, it's an audio interface, it's pricing extremely competitively for what it does, etc. If you've spent $500 on the pedal, and maybe additional on a JTV (I have 2), then one way to look at it is that another $50-100 isn't that much more. However the way I'm kind of looking at it is to spend an additional 10-20% of the cost of the unit for the amount of new amp models being offered seems expensive. Especially when a lot of them on the metal pack are not even HD models. Having said all that, I can certainly appreciate the fact that this was on ideascale and got implemented. That is a great thing and proves that L6 is listening. Which is the point of something like ideascale. It's somewhat a democracy of ideas and in this case the majority spoke and they listened. Bravo L6.

I understand that development costs money and that programmers have to get paid. It also makes sense that part of the high price of the Axe is the inclusion of updates. On the new AX8 there's some talk that the amp selection will be limited and users can purchase add ons. This would be a way to keep the initial purchase price down and let users pay for just what they want. My thought was that "giving away" new updates could attract new users and generate more revenue from new sales. Having new features could attract customers who may be looking at some of the other offerings on the market. It's not that I expect L6 to work for free. I'm good if they don't put out another update at all. Like I said, if users are happy paying for the model packs L6 puts out then it's a win for everyone involved.

This makes sense. If users want this and are willing to pay for it by all means L6 should do it. I'll be curious to hear some clips once people start using the new models. Thankfully I'm perfectly content with the tones I'm getting right now, so that should be enough to keep me from GAS'ing for model packs I don't need :)

I was wondering what others' opinion on L6's new pricing for model packs are. I feel like for what you're getting they're a bit overpriced. Before I get to my thoughts on that let me get some of the usual BS out of the way in an attempt to keep the thread on track and not get it derailed. Although I'm sure it will.... Line 6 doesn't "owe" us anything I don't think that I/we "deserve" any new amps/features Line 6 doesn't "have" to come out with any new amps/features I'm happy with the unit exactly how I bought it and if they never come out with any new updates I'm still perfectly happy and it works as advertised. I think that covers all of the usual objections when someone brings up a "criticism". So MAYBE we can avoid the "if you don't like it just don't buy it" comments.. Moving on. Over the course of the HD500 life span that have added several new features and some new amp models, always free of charge to the end user. I think that the features they've added have been great and I think it's one of the best units on the market when you factor in cost, versatility, and tone. Having said that we're looking at a unit that is over 4 years old, which is old for technology. Doesn't mean it doesn't sound good, but you've god Axe Fx coming out with new firmware all the time, Kemper just launched new firmware, and you have the Amplifire that just launched (at basically the same price point). Out of all those units I still think the HD500X is the best fit for my needs and is an incredible value for the money. But where I differ with the current development path is the pricing on the new model packs. Take the vintage pack. You get basically 4 amps (AC30 has 2 variations), 2 cabs, and acoustic model, and whatever Pete Anderson custom is. This is for $50. To me this seems pretty steep. On the high gain you're really only getting 2 new HD models and the rest are old Pod Farm algorithms. The "remastered" JCM800 to me just seems like an admition that the first one wasn't spot on. So why have to pay for a correction? Like it or not the HD500 is not the new kid on the block and I would think it would be worth adding a few new features to the firmware as incentive to get new users interested and keep the current user base on board. If you go fully loaded on the new model packs you're looking at $99 which puts you at Amplifire price range. Again I know they're not the same product, but Amplifire is brand new, has lots of hype around it, and by all accounts uses very high quality components. As well as promises of upcoming updates and amp models at no charge to the end user. I guess my point is that the HD series is aging and while it's VERY capable it is still old by tech standards. Instead of making new and existing users pay a premium for new models that are made with older and arguably less cutting edge modeling methods/technology, that same effort could be applied to attract new customers and strengthen the current user base if it was a free update. I bet even Axe Fx would catch flack for selling a handful amp models in a pack for $50. I realize that something is worth what people will pay for it and maybe these model packs will sell like hot cakes and people will love them. I almost feel like maybe this is the influence of Yamaha looking to get some new revenue out of the HD line. Line 6 hasn't charged for model packs since the XT days, and after the acquisition it's starts doing that again. After offering several free updates over the last few years? Just seems like there could be an influence making that happen. Or maybe it was something on ideascale that got voted up. Who knows. Just my .02. This may make perfect business sense for L6. I likely won't buy the model packs, and really don't see much there of interest for my personal taste, just thought it was an interesting development.

Another way to think about praise & worship music is that it's a genre. Typically a mid tempo type of music that, guitar wise, has a lot of influence from U2. Meaning lots of delays and quite often a similar tone to what you'd hear the Edge using. This is why lots of P&W players use Vox style amps and have extensive pedal boards. Also it is for a church service so it's a little different than a club gig. As others have mentioned stage volume is typically much lower. The last couple of churches I've played at used Aviom in ear monitoring systems and there were no amps on stage. Once you get used to this it's quite nice. You can make your own monitor mix and it's not like you're going to be ablt to crank a 100 watt amp in this setting anyway :) I do miss the days of standing on stage in front of a cranked Marshall half stack, but truth be told I think the sound from the audience prospective is better when the sound guy can control the mix and doesn't have 100db of guitar coming off the stage. The OP question is really similar to someone asking if the HD500/Variax combo would work well for a rock gig, or a blues gig. Overall it's the same thing I was doing when I played in clubs, but my ears aren't ringing afterwards and I'm home before 4 am :) Personally I'm not crazy about how the term "praise & worship" has come to identify a genre of music. It really should be describing an act, but it is what it is.

This is the exact same monitor I've been using with mine for a little over a year now. I've got no complaints and the price was definitely right!

This is cheaper than a JTV: http://digitech.com/en/products/the-drop I've been curious whether or not a new firmware version of the HD could handle polyphonic pitch shifting that is becoming popular in more and more effects pedals these days. I don't know if it has the horsepower to do it or not. We'll see...

Just found a potential solution. If I leave HD Edit open, turn on/off effects in 1A, switch 1B, then go back to 1A is pulls the last state back from HD Edit. So whatever was left on or off is still there. I'm going to keep messing around with it, but seems like it could be an acceptable work around.

I've started using my HD500X as a midi controller in Ableton Live. I'm currently using it to control different parameters across several HD patches. For example patch 1A controls electric guitar settings (S Gear), patch 1B controls loopers in Ableton, patch 1C controls acoustic guitar settings, etc On patch 1A I put effects in the effects slots of the HD to give me visual feedback for what switches are turned on/off. This way if I turn delay on for example the corresponding footswitch lights up so I know it's on. This works out great, until I have to change patches to control something else and then come back to patch 1A. It restores which effects are on/off based on the saved state so my visual feedback is out the window. I don't think that there is a way around this but I thought I'd ask to see if anyone has any ideas. The two solutions I can think of are: 1. Have the HD500 return to the last state of a patch used instead of the saved state (from what I can tell it just doesn't do this) 2. Have the HD receive data from Ableton to coordinate when the lights on the footswitches should be on based on midi note on/off (pretty sure that's impossible). I'm stumped on how to accomplish this, or if it's even possible. If any one has any ideas I'm all ears! Thanks

This is very doable. Just set input 1 guitar and input 2 to mic. As long as you don't put any mono effects before the paths split they will be separate paths. With this input setup anything in Path A will be your guitar effects and path B will only effect the mic signal.

I use both HD500X and Ableton, so I'll try to help if I can. If you are not using the HD as an audio interface and simply running it into the Fireface the signal will be treated by as any outside signal would be. Meaning it's just straight audio coming into the interface. The phasing you heard COULD happen if you are monitoring the direct signal from the HD into your interface AND the signal routed into Ableton and then out of your interface. The ms of latency that are added would cause this phasing. I'm going to kind of go through the steps I would go through, so forgive me if I'm stating obvious things you've already done. In Ableton you'd select your audio interface (fireface) as your audio device. Select the relevant channel input from your audio interface, say input 1, on the track in your Ableton project that you want your guitar signal to go through. Physically plug the output of the HD into the corresponding input (input 1 in this case) on your Fireface. When you record enable that track in Ableton you should hear your signal coming out of the speakers. I have never used a Fireface, but one thing to look out for is to make sure that the direct signal from your HD (input 1) isn't being directly monitored. So if you turn off the record enable for your guitar track in Ableton you won't hear anything come out of the speakers/headphones. If you still hear your guitar signal when the record enable is turned off then you are getting direct monitoring from the Fireface. Turning off direct monitoring means all your guitar signal goes through Ableton and none directly feeds out to the speakers/headphones. If you don't want/need your signal to be monitored through Ableton you can turn off monitoring for your guitar track and turn on direct monitoring via the Fireface for your guitar (input 1). This way you will hear the signal go straight through the Fireface (no latency), but it will still be recorded in Ableton. I have recently been playing around with using the HD500X as an audio interface/midi controller only for Ableton with good results. I'm using a mix of VST plug ins for the guitar tones and some of Ableton's effects for some more "far out" tones. It's a really fun setup and once I adjusted buffer sizes I'm able to get very good results. One thing to mention if you do this type of setup you will need to either mute the hardware monitoring on the HD (available in the control panel settings), or not monitor your guitar in Ableton. You run into the same phasing issues talked about above. The only add on I've needed is a MIDI to USB adapter since the HD doesn't do Midi over USB. Which isn't a huge deal, but a bummer because I was so close to only needing 1 USB cable to do everything :) Feel free to ask any more questions you may have and I'll try to help out best I can. I would also suggest taking a look over at the forums on the Ableton website. It's very active and I'm sure it can be of assistance as well. Good luck!

I saw this posted on TGP alluding to Sweetwater buying up the remaining stock of JTV's. Kind of seems like a disco of current models if true. Hopefully leading up to something new around the corner rather than a move away from the technology. Of course this is just from a forum post, so who knows what the truth is. I love my JTV59 and JTV69. I think a part of me would be nervous if they did come out with "new models". I've managed to keep GAS at bay since picking up the JTV69 a year ago. I doubt I could keep it back if new JTV's came out :) Really makes me curious.... "Geez, for a total of $650? That's awesome. If I wasn't jonesing for another guitar that runs for $699 I'd be all over that. About 5 months ago Sweetwater bought out the remaining stock of JTVs (non-USA-made, obviously) from Line6 (according to them). Other places still have stock on hand too. From day 1, I wanted a Goldtop JTV-59. Of course they weren't ever available till the JTV-59p, which I was drooling over. Once I realized that essentially there would be no more, and the only remaining NEW JTV-59Ps were already with the dealers, and that what they had was what they had, I knew I had to move on one. MF, Music123 and some others were all selling goldtop JTV-59ps on eBay only (go to their site and they showed they had zero stock), and the price was $1500. Sweetwater was blowing them out at $999. They had only 1 left advertised on their site. It was a "demo"/blem/open box for $899. I got more pics from them of the "blemishes" (I really can't see them IRL w/o a magnifying glass - no joke). Lets see... Last one left on the planet unless I wanted used, or to pay FULL price with no pics, etc. and $899. I did not happen to have $900 saved up and I was re-financing my house, but when I found out about Sweetwater's 3 monthly installments same as cash, I knew that I had enough to swing that no problem, and there wouldn't be any "store credit card required" that would screw my credit. So I snagged one at that price and it's a great guitar. Great playing and sounding in it's own right, and the Variax just makes it all that much better."

Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about that too, and will probably switch out the strings soon. I kind of ruled that out because I had just changed them about 2 weeks ago, but hearing your experience makes me wonder.....

I spent a little bit of time with this and from what I can tell I mainly ran into this problem when using the "neutral body" option. I had been using that for my Strat sounds because it knocked off some of the high end and sounded fuller to my ears than the Strat model. I just hadn't caught that before about how the bottom strings just didn't have the same pop to them. Easy solution is I'll just go back to the Strat model and tweak it a little bit :)

Thanks. I plan to do some troubleshooting when I get home this evening. Hopefully it will be something that's a relatively easy fix :) I'll post my results.

I was playing along with some tracks at gig level last night and noticed an issue I hadn't picked up on before where the bottom 3 strings sounded flat/dull compared to the top 3 strings. The top strings had great clarity and bite to them. Since the bottom 3 strings are wound obviously I'm wondering if that may have something to do with it. This is on a JTV 69. I was using the Strat model with the natural body chosen. When I flipped over to the mags the bottom strings sounds good. It was very noticeable when I went from mags to modelling. I was connected via 1/4" cable. I noticed this right at the end of the session and spent no time troubleshooting. So I haven't tried other models/positions on the modeling side, comparing it to my JTV59, tweaking in workbench, connecting via VDI cable, trying other brands of strings (currently using slinky's .10), etc. I'm going to play around with it this evening I just wanted to see if anyone else had experienced the same thing. I can remember years ago using the Roland VG88 and GK pickup and having similar issues with the wound strings not having great clarity. I'm just surprised I hand't noticed this before now if it has been a long standing issue. Not going to be a deal breaker because I love playing this guitar and the versatility, just wanted to get some feedback from other users. Thanks!

Thanks man!! :) Sorry I haven't replied. Work has gotten busy and I haven't even had time to pick up a guitar in a couple of weeks ;) I did a lot of experimenting with settings on the tone control resistance setting and actually saving specific positions on the tone knob. After going around and around with that I pretty much got back to a "stock" configuration. Tone knob wide open and tone control resistance on 250k. I think that's what the default strat setting is, but I could be off on that. Again I don't think the regular strat body sounded bad by any stretch. It was just much brighter to my ears than the other guitar models collectively. When I eq'd a patch on the HD500(X) to work with it the other positions/guitars tended to be a little on the dark side tone wise. On the HD500X I'm using the Dr. Z model. Only one amp. It's funny because that's the first amp model I was drawn to way back when I got my first HD500 and after HOURS of tweaking and trying different amps and dual signal paths I ended up pretty much back where I started :) Here's the patch I was using in the video http://line6.com/customtone/tone/547220/