superbrown

As a follow-up question, if you do run the POD directly into a Spider with its modeling disabled, can you get any benefit from using the cabinet emulators, or are they pretty useless in that scenario? (I realize they're intended for a flat response amp.)

It seems like, if you're going to get the equivalent to all these stomp boxes, you might as well get an HD500X so you can mix and match and route them the way you like (if the price isn't prohibitive for you). I've got one of Brian May's guitars, which, due to its pickups, will probably require an EQ on every flow. If I understand this right, that would tie up FX1 on the HD300 and HD400, making the use of anything else in the FX1 effects inventory impossible.

John, thank you for the suggestion. That should prove very helpful. I had read a bit about the HD500 online and assumed the 300 and 400 were kind of the same idea. But I see they're not. The picture TheRealZap posted gives me a good impression of what we're talking about.

That sounds like the paradigm used in the Spider amp I have. Is slap-back echo and reverb at the same time is a no-go?

Do the features of the software differ in such a way that they affect what you can do in sculpting your tone? Are there things I wouldn't be able to accomplish with, say, the HD300 (beyond the DSP processor's capacity limitation)? (Perhaps you've already answered that.)

Do each of the POD HD units have its own version of the editing software? If so, should that be a consideration when deciding which unit to buy?

I play guitar at home as a hohby. I have an old Spider III 30 watt amp and am looking at options for upgrading my sound. Would there be any drawbacks (such as fidelity) to feeding the output of a POD HD into the line input (CD/MP3) in the front of my Spider, which I assume is designed to be uncolored, which is what I'd want? Has anyone tried this? Any thoughts?