Palico

I beleive that Variac Plexi will be the old X3 model not a HD one.

FYI, I found the anwser to this, just in case anyone is curious. The 12 06 is a date code in YY MM. So these I removed were manufactored in June 2012.

Yea, I've been reading those threads. I ordered a matched pair of EL84EH last night along with a EH 12AX7. I'm not crazy about Chinese tubes and it seems the 12ax7 does not matter as much.

Okay, I've been getting some noise when my DT25 combo is just starting up. It sounds like a cable is shorting on something odd like that BUT it goes way after the amp has been running a while. I've been noticing some odd sounding stuff from time to time as well. So original tubes, probably time replace them. Plus when i removed them to inspect them one of them does look discolored on the glass in one spot. Question one? Does that sound as if it could be tube problem? Question two? I order the EHX EL84 as that's what's in the currently. I notice on EH tubes they a have numbers along the very bottom after the tube type after the branding. What to those mean? e.g. on the ones I removed "EL84EH" "Electro-Harmonix" "Made in Russia" "1206" What does the "1206" mean?

Here is what the DT brings to the table in connection with the POD HD500(x). The power section of the DT is configurable. So I can set to say a Class A, Penatode etc.... or any other combo I like. The original amps the POD models has those settings coded to it. So when I change from Class A to amp that would have originally been a Class A/B on the POD with the L6 link, the DT changes it settings to fit. PLUS you can modifiy them on your patch to be whatever. Other amps don't have that intergration. Now can you get a great tone of POD HD500(x) using the 4cm or if you don't care about the other amps pre-amp, just going into the amps effects return. Yes sure you can. But what ever that amps power setup is, that what it's going to be. That might not be bad thing, if you really like the amp's tone and sound. The POD 4cm with an normal combo amp, is good where you: 1. Really like the Combo amp as it is, it just works for you. And 2. where you want to use the PODs effects and maybe ocassionaly one of it's amp models for something special. If you NEVER want to use the POD modeled amps, I would think a M13 would fit you better, but I'm not real familar with them to know how good the effects them are. I assume they are on-par with the POD in the effects only area.

MeAmBobbo is a genius! I implemented the hard gate instead of noise gate and ditched the volume pedal in favor of amp channel volume assigment. I could not do it rehersal level so I had to adjust a bedroom volume. So I get to rehersal tonight expecting a cluster since I had set using bedroom levels but I didn't really change the EQ. Other the some wild volume swings I had to readjust the pedal setting for, my high gain patches came to life! Solved all the lack of sustain but was still quite. I still gotta dial the hard gate settings on some stuff, had a bit of studdering when shut the gate down but nothing I kills me.

That can happen with either one if the cable is not sheilded properly, your smaller cables are picking up interferance, likely from you monitor or any other equipment. XLR as musical1212 pointed out low impediance cable and 1/4 is high impediance. The only real differnece between them occurs on the longer runs. But XLR does tend to be sheilded better than cheaper instrument cables. Also "speaker" cable is often not sheilded but appears to the same as instrument cable which is.

:) Thanks guys. Some great ideas. I had not looked at MeAmBobbo guide in quite a while. I really should know to start there! LOL.

The effects loop on the DC10 is a parallel effects loop but it does appear to have a mix control of the return wet amount. Look up the the four cable method this along with setting the FX mix to 100% should do what you want althought I'm not entirely sure with a parallel loop if it will work. The basic of it Cable 1: Variax to HD500. (likely a VDI connection if using a JTV) Cable 2: Effects send on POD to to Amp guitar input. Cable 3: Amp Send to POD return. Cable 4: POD ouptut to Effects return. Turn the amp models in the POD to none. Put in the Effects loop on the POD. Effects in front of the loop will be infront of your guitar's preamp. Effects after the POD effects loop will be in the amps effects loop. Make SURE the Mesa FX mix is set to 100%, otherwise it will not work. You can also play around with using one swtich to turn off the effects loop and turn on amp model and have the best of both worlds. Using the Mesa's preamp when you want, or the PODs when you want. There are some great vids out there just lookup 4 cable method and I'm sure you will find some.

Last night I was doing some practice on some speed stuff. I noted how I was picking up some minor string noise. Figured, well likely the compressing setting high causing this. Checked the patch, no compressor on it. ummm. Started playing around with it a bit and turn the nosie gate off, problem solved. Well sort of, I had the noise gate on for a reason. Awful hum when not playing. So I checked it. I had the Threshhold about 47% which was just enough to kill the hum when not playing. The Decay set to 0%. So I spund the decay all the way to 100% and it seemed like the problem mostly when away. When I used to be all analog I never used a gate, just clicked off the high gain channel when not playing and up until recently I didn't use a many high gain tones so I didn't need one. The only thing I want the gate to be able to do get rid of the hum when I"m not playing, when playing it's not a problem. So for those that use high gain amps or pedals, what do you do about the hum or how do you use the noise gate setting?

Yep, I ask my singer most days, why don't we have gig tonight! LOL..... Stage can be addicting. One month out for giging sometimes is not bad. Around here some places are booked out until summer. Recently just took a July date because that was the first opening they had. Thankfully for us we had some others lined up. The saving factor is there are a couple of places that run open mic/Jams were we can go and play at least two or three songs.

To me that is the sound a clean amp pushed really hard.... Where as the a Twin never really gets any real grit on it's own, just get louder. But to each his own I guess. Never really thought about the headroom becuase I like the lower headroom, but I could for sure see it for those that like the higher headroom amps.

Triryche, beat me to the post button!. lol

For that rig you don't need a speaker cable, an instrument cable is fine, if not perfered since it's shielded. The power amp to Speaker is where you need speaker cable but the power amp and speaker are in the same box on the Alto. Input 1: guitar Input2: Same have no effect on the outputs. But they do have any effect on o yoru sound. By have the "Same" you have doubled you input signal, which can quickly overdrive the modelled amp. If you using dual amp models you would need input 2 set to "same" but if you setting to one amp, most people find setting input 2 to a source you are not using to sound better.

I would agreee with you on that. Personally I like that bit of grit in my clean tones but that is something to consider if your want a totally clean tones, 25 watts is not much headroom.

The main thing is the HD500 doesn't sum stereo effects on the XLR outputs. It does on the 1/4 ones. So if you have 1/4" cable use that to connect to the Alto on the input 1 and you are good to go. A 1/4" can cuase some impediance etc... over a long run but if you below 30 ft cable then honestly I would use that over the XLR. But sounds like you only got one XLR, then,just connect it to input 1, adjust gain to taste, and don't use any Stereo effects on the POD and you are fine.

I just looked up the Alto TS112a. It appears to have 2 inputs. So one for each XLR would work. The Alto appears to have the double use Jacks so you could use a 1/4 to 1/4 cable and then because the POD will sum those to mono just use one. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/alto-ts112a-12-active-2-way-speaker Take a look at the 4th picture. Does you Alto look like that or is it a older model? If you are really stuck with one XLR input, then if you don't use any Stereo effects on POD you could use just the Left output and then adjust gain as needed on the Alto.

Yep I got the right setup for me then. For recording I love my HD500x just by itself. It's got a worderful sound and access to a lot of amps and effects I can spend the time to tweak to my desire. Live I'm using my HD500x with a DT25. Becuase it's just a more live experice and has that "roar" of real tubes which to me still adds a warm and vibe I still can not get with a Modeller alone. Althought I could get it done with just L2 or L3 but to my ears it's just not the same. Close and usable but not quite same. One thing Line 6 I don't see doing yet thought modelling many modern setups. Most of the effects and amps are your old school "vintage" type stuff. That makes sense as those are the sought after sounds and hard to come by the real deal without tons of cash. Line 6 has made some inroads with that with JTV89/89f. But the inroads are the analog side of that. To my knowledge there is no EMG 81/85 model yet or others. While there is the some in the High Gain areas Angel Fireball etc... on the amp models there isn't a lot yet. To take the analog out the different companies are going to need to look into the modern side as well as the vintage side. Will the modeller ever completely replace tube amps? I dunno. They are getting better and better. But I don't think it's in the foreseable future. I think they have pentraited the live local scenese pretty well. They offer so much flexablity and bang for the buck. But on the Pro level how many do you see using a modeller live? I know on permier gutiars rig rundowns you will see a lot of Axe-Fx units but they are being used mostly for backups, if the tube rig fails. Once your at that level you have "your" tone and sound. You don't need quite the flexablity because you know which effects and amps you need to accomplish that tone. So the flexablity angle falls off a lot. Althought I'm willing to bet it's modeller on a lot of the modern recordings though.

DT25 would be plenty enough for small venues. I use a DT25 combo any small and even used it at some outside venues with not problem. It really is much louder than I would expect. Althought the Combo wieghts in @ 50lb. It ain't a light weight. Should you consider Amplifi? I dunno depends on what you want and like out of an Amp. For home practice Amplifi unit is probably pretty nice, that is what it was targeted for. Plus it has likely way more models build into it than the DT alone does. However; you add a HD500(x) with it and you have more than the Amplifi does and HD models too, The the Amplifi is the X3 models. So which fits you better? Depends on what you want. Both could likely fit you needs. The DT is going to sound better, but the Amplifi could likely works and might be better in the home practice area. Plus there is pretty big differences in the prices of each.

If you asking when will the update be released? The answer from line 6 has been somewhere in March. They have not said an exact date yet.

+1 The above! It took me quite a while to get that "scenes" concept when I went digital year back. Knowning how the old Analog pedals work and some best placement gives you big advantage in the digital realm. But even if DSP is not huge problem (depends on how complex you like it as if you will hit that wall or not) the idea of using one pedal stomp to change several things can be ground breaking. Kind of like having a multi-channel amp but having a presetup effects loop for each of those channels with effects already set. My life with a digital setup got so much easier once I started using that concept instead of tap dancing the pedals.

+1. I agree with Mynameismatt. Running mono can fit a small bar sometimes. But there are plenty of times when it make sense to run Stereo, particually if you have effects on the vocals (stereo flat out just sounds better on some of them) and if you have guitars amps that can be heard in the audience on one side of the stage but not the other. Not talking about running completely hard left and hard right here, just leveling the left to right sound field. You can use the pan control on the board to create a more level sound and kill that proximity effect as well. On local bands the main reason I have seen that most use mono is because they can double the power of the amps by running them in bridge mono mode. Most people seem to think blowing the ear drums of the audience is par for the course, please I'm not implying this is anyone here just something I've observered way to often in small venues. On huge stage pro stage, you will probably not be able to tell if the sound system is stereo or mono. That's what those guys specialize in, they are good at it and know when to use one or the other and how and where to place and angle the speakers. Hard line statements like "A good sound guy always runs mono" are rarely correct. A good sound guy runs what fits the venue and the band. KISS is a band I would suspect to run a PA more mono. There music is straight up rock. The guitars growl and don't use much effects. And of course they are likely playing a huge stage where the sound coming out of the Amp itself is only likely to be heard on first couple of rows. But then take someone like U2 where the Edge has all these reverbs and ping-pong delays. I would suspect they will run a more Stereo. Maybe not hard right and left but enough so you can tell the repeats moving around. Althought the Vocal mic itself is likely panned staright up any Reverb, Chorus, Delay, etc... is likely coming over a Stereo channel on the board so the wet effected signal is a stereo. If you have the system setup mono then it sums that which works but not quite as well. To the original post, if you running not using any Stereo effects then the left XLR out to channel either panned straight up or if the system is setup mono is probably gonna sound pretty good althought you might have to make up a bit of gain on the board. If I was going direct with Stereo effects then I would either run both XLR to a Stereo channel on the board or to two channels with one panned hard left and the other hard right. Otherwise why use Stereo effects if you not going to get the full usage out of them.

The EMG 81 & 85 is stable of metal music. I would agree some modern variants in the Variax would be nice. . Not sure if you could put in EMG in it but you could put high output mags in it so you have a modern type of tone on the normal pickups. Of course doesn't that 89 already have high output pickup? But dont' see why you couldn't swap those to something else.

I would suggest you you tube some of the demos of the DT25. It's a great amp but so are most JCM900's I've heard. The main advatage of the DT would be it's more flexable. But do you need that flexability? No one can really answer if it's the right amp for you but you. But I can say the 25 is loud enough for most veneues. Anywhere inside and most outdoor events. If you are playing a huge stage it might not be enough but by that time if you are using a 100 watt head you are mic' them too.

I really think the difference (and it's minor but enough to throw me off sometimes) is the output level I'm feeding to the delay and verb effect. Yea I'm think I'm going to adjust all my patches to use the channel volume as what you describe is pretty close to the way I like to use it.