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Tired of the side effects


357mag
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It seems every pedal or effect you add has as undesirable side effect. With some pedals the sound becomes tighter. What if I don't want the sound to become tighter? I don't want it sounding like a boa constrictor around a cat. I want it bigger and more open. Nope, can't have that.

 

Then there is the Q Filter. This effect is excellent for adding punch and balls to your guitar. But guess what? It imparts a nasal neh neh neh sound. Is there any way to get rid of it?

 

And the Marshall JCM-800 preamp sounds way better than the regular amp version. Gong.

 

I'm getting fed up.

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A q filter makes the signal nasal. Thats not a side effect, thats what it does.. if a pedal doesnt make your sound big and open then stop using that pedal. Stop complaining. Next you'll be whining that turning up the distortion makes it more distorted.

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There's no question that the PODHD takes a lot of time and patience to tweak everything just right.  I got frustrated several times and almost gave up - I feel your pain.  But I kept think about how flexible the routing was and all the effects and amp models it had.  Not to mention things like Input Z and setting Input 2 to something else.  In the end I got what I wanted and then some.

 

Keep digging, it's in there somewhere...

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Then there is the Q Filter. This effect is excellent for adding punch and balls to your guitar. But guess what? It imparts a nasal neh neh neh sound. Is there any way to get rid of it?

 

Have you tried using the Mid-Focus EQ instead? It seems like it would do something very close to what you want the Q Filter to do.

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I understand what it is. It is true you can remove the shrill.

 

In digital recording each change you make from the recorded track degrades the fidelity ever so slightly.

The least FX you add the less degradation. As you build more plugins and EQ changes the more perceptible it gets.

 

On the HDs, there is a sound and it is perceptible the more FX you add.

 

Now you can also tire of the sound of a 57 placed off axis on the amp you have.

 

Sometimes the heads of the 57 resonates and it gives an unwanted honk or shrill.

 

If your lucky you have another amp or a better mic and pre amp to use.

 

Similar with the HDs best think of it  as a whole recording arsenal,

whether you use only a pre model of change the mic and axis etc really goes to improve your tone.

Or simple EQ to remove the pick honk and shrill

 

It takes experienced ears to hear what you don't like, that  you can minimize to bring the tone more ideal to your liking.

That is your technical side.

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Try using the Mid EQ after the mixer block with HP 5%, HP Q 50%, LP 65%, LP Q 50%, gain to 0.

By removing that extreme low and high frequencies you will notice a much better tone for the guitar. I think the "full range" concept is often misunderstood in the guitar world. Those extreme sides of the spectrum do not help at all to make a guitar sound good. 

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True, there is a high pass filter in the amp block to take care of the bass end. Roll off 100hrz or so. 

 

I too have trouble with the EQs they are the one plug that a frequency analyzer plugin is handy for.

I seem to remember someone made a chart of all the EQs but as I use Sonar X3 I just load up Curve EQ and can see what the EQ is doing.

 

Hearing is more important and using the looper pre helps you zone in on the frequencies.

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True, there is a high pass filter in the amp block to take care of the bass end. Roll off 100hrz or so. 

 

I too have trouble with the EQs they are the one plug that a frequency analyzer plugin is handy for.

I seem to remember someone made a chart of all the EQs but as I use Sonar X3 I just load up Curve EQ and can see what the EQ is doing.

 

Hearing is more important and using the looper pre helps you zone in on the frequencies.

 

This is what I want to see. How can I somehow integrate a visual analyzer to my POD's EQ or whatever so let's say I play a chord on my Strat, and I want to see a visual representation of what frequencies the majority of the sound is in? How do I do that? That would help a lot.

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Okay I think I'm going in the right direction. I downloaded a demo VST plug-in Voxengo Spectrum Analyzer and recorded myself playing a bit into Reaper. I loaded the VST on the track and upon playback I could see where most of my guitar's frequencies and energy were.

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If you want to watch the pods eq in action, don't use the guitar, send white or pink noise through the pod iostead. You'll see the frequency response change more easily. This will let you see where the cutoff actually is, the slope of the filter, etc

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If you want to watch the pods eq in action, don't use the guitar, send white or pink noise through the pod iostead. You'll see the frequency response change more easily. This will let you see where the cutoff actually is, the slope of the filter, etc

 

Yeah but the Pod doesn't have a graph or spectrum analyzer so how can you see anything?

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I believe he's saying to keep using the VST to see the output, but change the input from guitar to white/pink noise. That way you can more readily see the shape of the EQ since it's being excited by ALL the frequencies at once. Not just the few produced by the guitar.

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  • 3 months later...

If you want to watch the pods eq in action, don't use the guitar, send white or pink noise through the pod iostead. You'll see the frequency response change more easily. This will let you see where the cutoff actually is, the slope of the filter, etc

 

I believe he's saying to keep using the VST to see the output, but change the input from guitar to white/pink noise. That way you can more readily see the shape of the EQ since it's being excited by ALL the frequencies at once. Not just the few produced by the guitar.

 

Hey guys. I am a noob. How can I send white or pink noise in the Pod to see how the pedals react in a spectrum analyzer? Thanks in advance.

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It seems every pedal or effect you add has as undesirable side effect. With some pedals the sound becomes tighter. What if I don't want the sound to become tighter? I don't want it sounding like a boa constrictor around a cat. I want it bigger and more open. Nope, can't have that.

 

Then there is the Q Filter. This effect is excellent for adding punch and balls to your guitar. But guess what? It imparts a nasal neh neh neh sound. Is there any way to get rid of it?

 

And the Marshall JCM-800 preamp sounds way better than the regular amp version. Gong.

 

I'm getting fed up.

Having owned many amps and pedals old and new I have to say that in my experience adding pedals to a tube amp does the exact same thing I dont care what pedal it is true bypass/buffered etc....it changes the tone .If you don't

like it dont use any pedals and play straight into the amp.You can get away with that if you can find a really good older Fender Deluxe/JCM800 etc... amp.The most open sounding pedal I have is a BK Butler Tube Driver.It never leaves my house because Mr. Butler wants $375 dollars to build me another one. Everything is a compromise. I attended a friends bands rehearsal recently and the lead player had the latest Axe-Fx with great amp models and he had a bunch of virtual Fractal pedals running in front of the amp models and it sounded like total crap lol! Like a nest of squished wasps.My point is he does not know how to use it yet but he is a good player and a smart guy.He will figure it out and you will too!

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In my days of using old pedals I found that many pedals had an effect on tone also. Since I have only owned and used a handful of the pedals that are modeled, I expect to not know how most of the pedals in the POD will effect the tone when placed in front of or after different amps.

 

-Max

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