Palico

Assuming you are recording, how you plan to bring drums, vox, etc... into the DAW? That can help drive which interface you want to use.

Would I choose the HD500x for just recording? Maybe. Over the FX100 for sure. The FX100 is not a bad unit for the price. It's just more targeted toward the practicing musician. It would do what you want thought. To be brutialy honest, I don't think I would necassarly choose either. You could get a USB interface pretty cheap these days and then there is a ton of different software options as far as modelling the guitar amp and effects from within your DAW of choice. You never need to play live with it, so you don't need the hardware at all, just a interface and a DAW for the recording. Now if your not really wanting to record, just be heard for jam session, want a good tone but don't care if it's "perfect" or not, then I might check out a FX100 for that just because it already has speakers and I would likely just use the USB for setting up tones.

Just based on your description the amp sounds like it's okay, the thump as realzap pointed out is normal. But if I paid full price for an amp that has obviously been worked on, then the retailed would either be getting me a new one or major discount. If it's used with that washer missing and the fact it was there at one point, then I would suspect unless a Line 6 authorized service center did the repair that Line 6 would not honor the warrenty on it. I know it's only like a year but on a new price you still pay for that warraety.

Run your live out into the effects return (labeled FX Loop Return on the ENGL). Pretty sure that shoud work fine, not sure if it's different with the USB attached or not, but pretty sure it should work fine.

Pretty sure this is a bug somewhere on this. I've experieced nearly exaclty the same thing too. Editing something in the patch and then saving it back does usually seem to work for me. But really it should be exactly the same.

Check the amp with another guitar. If the variax is putting out signal via the XLR cable then it means the 1/4 on the variax is outputing signal to the XPS-AB. That logically would seem to point to amp (or whatever your inputing to) not accepting input or not enough gain on the input.

Okay, we are usually complaining about missing this, missing that or something else on HD that doesn't suit us. I just built myself my own pedal board case. I was getting ready to attach some velcro to the my 500x and started thinging, how am I gonna attach it witout taking off the board's feet. Then I noticed the board has two strips on the metal bottom that are elevated, seemingly just for this purpose. They are the same level as the feet so it give the velco sticky strip somewhere to attach. This is one I could see overlooked easily in a design meeting, so just a quick Kudos for thinking of that one!

Almost forgot, I use a compressor plugin to tame the peaks as needed. Just set the compression to something low like 2:1 ratio and compress just enought to tame any wild spikes. With the guitar tracks I rarely need it. The guitar is faily compressed instrument already but with drums or a vocalist they are usually needs just to control the track. I *might* add compression again later if I'm planning on using it for an effect, like pumping on vocal, althought I rarely use it for much else. My guitar signal might have a compressor for sustain on the POD before it's tracked but that one is total for the specific sustain or squashed effect.

I genereally setup the POD so it sounds pretty good when I'm tracking back with whatever was already recorded. We general start with scratch track so I'll setup the guitar to sound pretty good against that. Then after I have the guitar record and all the other instruments to their final track, I try best as I can to take off the guitarist hat and put on the sound enginners hat. As for what I set and cut that depends totally on the song itself and what I want I think enhances it the most. I can say with the guitar I usually use a high pass filter to roll off the extreme bottom end and leave more room for the bass drum and bass guitar. I will use low pass filters on the Bass guitar and Bass Drum as well to make sure they are not getting into the gutiar's range too badly. But main tool here is a parameteric EQ in the DAW iteself. The reason I used the DAW version is because usually they have a bit of graph that I can work with to see a bit visually what I'm doing and I can totaly undo them if I change my mind later. I will set a low Q and max out the level. Then roll the frequency around a listen for the ones that I like and the ones I don't. Any areas of the frequency I don't like I will widen the Q and make a small (like 6db) cut. For ones I really like I will might make a small (again less than 6db) boost to. Yes generally I like to mix a -10db to -12db level for the mixdown, I use a plug-in to turn down the gain on each individual channel before the effects plugins (if they too hot). I found the other plugins work better when you do that. I will use a multi-band compressor and limiter later in the mastering process to bring the overall level up to more normal commerical level, althought I try to stay out of the loud as possibile terreritory. Just bring them up around -3 to 0. A lot of mine is truely by ear but using a lot of things I've read about mixing and master techniques. And always comparing the final result to professional (purchased CD) track that I like the mix of. The one I compare to changes as what I want. For example I really like the sound or Neil Pert (Rush) drum tracks, not just his amazing ability but the way his drums really punch in most of the their songs. So I will compare my drum sound to his to try to get something in that arena. Same thing for guitars, vocals, etc....

Well I took the plunge and decided to build one for myself. For sure not quite as good a job as a pro built but it was fun and ended up costing me around 50-60 for the materials.

As has already been stated, sounds good is subjective. However; yes it can be used with a head and cab and many have found that to be good. Partiuclarly using the 4 cable method so that you can use(or not depending on what you perfer) the heads preamp.

Not trying to be a smart-$$$ but is the XPS-AB plugged in? Drop a good battery in the variax and ditch the XPS-AB. The variax only needs that if you want the AB functionaliy and with TRS can be used to power the Variax. If you using a Variax with a battery you can use it like any gutiar. Probably a bad Peizo on the G string.

Yep you got it. The EQ on the channels etc... should be set flat. Adjust the input trim as needed but likely it will really low, the POD can output a very strong signal. In fact if you get too much input and overdrive the channel preamp, you can turn down the Master on the POD to control that a bit. Another option not meantion would be to use your 1/4 live outs to go into a stereo channel on the mixer as well. But the 1/4 live outs won't drive as long of cable as the XLRs outs.

hmmm I never tried this, I use seperate patch. But I wonder if you set a volume pedal at the end of the chain with the setting you describe. Don't set it to expression pedal. Then use a button to turn off the volume pedal, that should take it out of the chain, e.g. 100% volume for the boost.

If you setup this way and your PA system is running stereo then pan the channel appropriately. The left out, panned on the console hard left, the right out, on the console panned hard right. For some the stereo effects it will sound better. If your PA is running mono then just use the left out to a single channel. You might lose some volume on the output of the POD but that gain can be made up on the console preamp if needed, just make sure you keep it at or below 0db so you don't start clipping.

After. Altough if you can find it either should work. Following a rather long video on the topic, althought for a PA and he is attempting to flatting a PA sound, but the concept is the same. He is using a 31 band to accomplish the same thing. http://youtu.be/DGgaEVMBmno?list=UUVUNmx8TvewLgEr-XsdUrZQ

Looks like you already have what you need here, but just some other thoughts that maybe can assist. 1. Feedback is caused by a key frequency that looping in the sound system, guitar amp in this scenerio. If you can find the frequency with graphic EQ with narrow Q setting or better a parametric where you can narrow it down you can lower just the one frequency. Finding the freq is the hard part. If you parametric EQ you can set the Q pretty narrow and set the level to a full cut and roll the freq knob around until it the feedback disappers. Then bring up that same frequency back to 0 level, feedback should come back. Now lower just enough for the feedback to go away. 2. Try pointing the speaker away from the guitar some. Idea to move the direct sound away from the pickup so to avoid the feedback. This rarely works but worth a shot. 3. Got a noise gate on the patch. Set the gate to close quicker, nasty side effect is this kills your sustain though. 4. Can you try a different guitar and still get the same sound? Might be the pickups, espcially if the pickups became microphonic, e.g. are malfunctioning in some way. I see that model of guitar should have wax potted pickups but for the benfit of anyone that reads this later, non wax potted picks just feedback like crazy on high gain settings.

I'm not the best expert on this but I'll do my best here. The balanced to unbalanced doesn't mean much in your application, bascialy means don't use longer cables, since the POD is unbalanced if using the Aux In. If you need the longer cable stick with the Mic In as all mic cables are balanced. You have single mic (or Bass guitar) into a single and single preamp. That means you have mono signal. The "balanced" means it would carry and extra ground wire thereby elemiating any noise picked up by a longer cable run (think like 50 cable or longer). So this would be my initial setup on it. Bass -> POD Gutiar input. Add any "pre" effects pedals you wanted in front of the FXLoop block. POD FX Send -> Project Pre 73 Input (For bass guitar I would try to use the Line input, for mics the Mic input). Adjust so that the Led on the front are reading around 0db output (doesn't need to be exact). Project Pre 73 Output -> POD FX Return Left (Mono). Add any FX you normally put in a amps "effects loop" after the FXLoop Block. POD output -> Power Amp input. Power Amp -> Speakers. And make sure turn off the Amp block in the POD (set to "No Amp"), the Project Pre 73 is providing "Amp" in the scenerio. Althought you could configured to turn a Amp model on and take out the FXBlock with one switch on the POD have the ability to use either as you preamp.

Personally I would lean towards the Atomic just for the tube alone, but I'm a tube guy. Yea, I had a Atomic 2x12 which sounded good but was a heavy weight for sure.

Logically the Mic Preamp output should go into the Aux In since it should be line level already, however; it would be perfectly fine to take into the Mic In on the POD as long as you don't overdrive the signal. I would really wonder where you losing singal level? What's the LED on the front when you have he knobs open? +10? If so you should have very strong signal already. Most likely the loss is on the usb side into the DAW. If so there is boost setting inside the driver, which logically should be better. But like I said at then end for the day, if it sounds good it is, so if the mic in is working for you and you like the sound then use it. As for using the Pre amp for guitar/bass it would replace the modelled preamp on the POD. Look up th e 4 cable method. With a seperate preamp not sure exactly how that would look but it would be something similar.

I had a Atomic. I really liked it. T The tubes do add certian vibe. Never had a power engine so can not comment on it. My Atomic did eventually die on me. The power supply crapped out. Since it was a old unit I did not attempt to repair it. Went with a DT25 combo to replace it and have not looked back.

On the Tarcase, is the POD tilted any? I'm thinking about building something similar to the Tarcase myself. Doesn't look like it woudl be too hard to build.

I play the DT25 combo and yet to find a stage this wasn't loud enough for, even outside. I've did the FRFR thing and while it is better for the acoustic tones, the DT blows away the FRFR system (IMO) on the modelled tones. Once you hook the PODs to some real tubes the sound takes a bit warm fuller sound IMO. I'm with you buddy, gotta have some tubes in the mix.

On one more thing, if you hooked to stereo system it works best if you pan one hard left and the other hard right. It gives the sound bit of seperation.

I've either double layered manually by recording the part twice playing back with it, which to me sound the best. The second way I've done it was using the a DAW like BillBee was talking about. Copy the track and apply a bit of delay on just one side. Now if you asking about doing that live, you will need to use a dual mode and apply a slight delay to just one side again just like BillBee suggested.