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Showing results for tags 'pros and cons'.
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Dear Line 6.. I dont know if this is the appropriate place to place this feedback but I also wanted to share it withother new users of the HD500X who may have shared my experiences. First of all I am a positive person, so everything I say here is with "good intent" I feel that Line6 is a leader in the modeling technology field, I also liked the networking and communication they had with their customers so "that is why" I pulled the trigger and purchased a HD500X 3 days ago. About me: I a pro musician (electric Guitarist) who plays over 200 shows a season. I have been playing for 46 years, I am somewhat well versed with digital gear (at least not a novice) and up till this point have used rack gear, Marshall JMP1 tube preamps , marshall 20/20 stereo power amps and Digitech rack FX's.. I was very very happy with my sound and always got loads of complements from fans and peers who loved my guitar sound. Due to the constant traveling my gear was getting banged up on the road so I wanted a new lighter weight compact "good sounding" setup so I decided to pull the trigger and by an all in one modeling processor. I was going to buy an AXE FX until I surprisingly discovered that everyone who sold or used and AXFX had a very irritating chip on their shoulder and this turned me off to that whole Fractal Audio Genre...later for that ... The line 6 stuff seems more user friendly and the retail people involved were friendly and helpful so I took the plunge and bought one.... I want to give the Line 6 guys some feedback on hows it going so far so you can use this information in your future R+D and product and software designs... Also anyone else (fellow Line 6 user who may also have similar views) is welcome to post on this thread as well... Okay lets start... Adapter::::The first thing that the customer touches when they first try out their new bought product is the "power plug" in this case (adapter) Okay the design used is Terrible, To have the weight of the adaptor hanging over the plug prongs is an invitation to disaster. It can become dislodged easily if accidentally bumped into on a crowded stage interrupting a live performance then you have to wait to reboot the unit etc.... solution: Use an adapter that has three segment 1) a good solid end plug that will fit snuggly into a socket and stay put... 2) a long sturdy wire cable that leads from that end plug to the actual adapter 3) and second long wire that lives the adaptor. This is the "pro way" to do it so that it will survive tours and gigs etc... I found the present adapter and adapter system to be "kinda cheap" and unworthy of such a high end guitar processor. On/off switch :::: ?????? please help me to understand why there is no on off switch on the HD500X? I once was a marketing promotions manger for a huge national distributor in Europe who sold Harman international products. Including DOD rack gear and the DOD rack units had no on/off switches and the customers were complaining so the retailers were retrofitting then with clicking on /off switches to the power cables of the units. Once at namm I asked the Harmon directors "why are their no on/off switches on the DOD rack gear?" and they said "cost reduction"... well I told them that this mindset would eventually kill the brands prestige and in the end thats what happened. I mean how much could a chinese on/off switch be? 10 cents? Please help me to understand why there is no on/off swith on a 500 dollar flagship processor? Ease of use and Programmability:: Okay I am not here to criticize as ı said before I have good intent here to help out by giving you feedback that is usable in designing your new upgrades and products... so I wont go into detail about how difficult the unit is to program... "even with the editor"... I will just give you suggestion about how to make it better... suggestions: * You need and "escape" or "undo" button... you can design that into the hardware of the next generation of products but for now put one on the soft ware screen "where we can see it and don't have to dig for it". * The logic used in the software design is compartmental. Which shouldn't be a problem, but there is no linear path of intuitive logic that takes a novice user from point A to Point B. For example here are my suggestion. Have "a starting point software button that says Blank patch" .. a clean slate to begin and add things... give the user an option to start from absolute zero, or to pick an template algorithm and add on from there. There is a lot more I would want to suggest but I dont want to seem like I am ranting.. because I am not.. I am a Line 6 owner and Line 6 user now... but I will admit that after owning the unit for 3 days I was ready to give it back to the dealer and go with another processor... but then I plugged it into my computer and played the son of plexi patch along with a jam track and really loved the tube like response of the HD software...So I decided to keep the unit and go all the way with it.... Then I used the Monkey software to update the unit and saw the new amp bundles and gruntingly paid the extra 99 bucks for the whole combined bundle... so I sit here looking at all these new amps (no presets included in that 100 dollar bundle which kind of let me down... wished you would have put some presets with the new amps... so I went online and bought the new patches bundle from Glenn DeLaune that uses the new amps in the latest Line 6 update... So all in all I have been just spending money and more money, looking at the absence of the on/off switch, the difficulty of the maze like software and the really flimsy power adapters and saying to myself "I should let these guys know what I think, just like I let Harman international know what I thought about the short coming of their stuff at the time" .. Well the moral of the story is that Harman was huge company that had the signal processing market pretty much sewn up until they started "cutting costs here and there and everywhere" and along the way people got dissapointed ... and along came the new companies that delivered innovation and better performance and these new companies took over the field... one of those new companies is Line 6... :) So I would suggest that you heed the warnings and suggestion of this pro musician who just purchased your unit and was very disappointed with the lack of certain important features like a high quality adapter and an on/off switch and found your software to be "not user friendly enough and at times pretty frustrating"... The only thing that saved this unit from going back to the store this morning was the sound and feel of the son of plexi patch .... Oh ....one final suggestion you should have some "professional working man musicians" make up some "gigging banks" for the guy who wants to buy your unit and do a gig the same night... as it stands now this unit seems more catered to the bedroom guitarist which is okay buy you should make it easier for the working dude to just get up and go to a show "without having to shell out an extra 100 bucks for a software update"... So I respectfully offer these suggestions to you dear friends at Line 6... I hope you listen to them and are still around many years from now and don't make the same cost cutting mistakes that caused so many big companies to lose their brand prestige and sales momentum. warmest regards Awesome John Professional Musician, Guitar Designer ( owner of Grand Master Guitars) Former Promotional Director for Marshall, Harman, Fender, St Louis Music, and 67 other international brands in the regional distribution of the Euro/Turkish Market.
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