chuberto Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 So, my HD500, Dt25 and 2x12 cab has been spending a little time at home instead of living at the rehearsal studio. Since this, I've inevitably restarted the cycle of : grab guitar turn on amp, wonder why the new harsh, trebly patch sounded any good yesterday adjust it to suit believe I've invented sonic nirvana adjust all my patches to suit It's a wonder that I ever play anything at all with all the tweaking I need to do. So anyway, last week was the same. I've been relying on a Treadplate amp as my core rhythm tone but recently I've been wondering why; I came from a proper Marshall and so many of my favourite guitarists use a Marshall and I'm using a Mesa.... I changed to the JCM800 Preamp but with Topology IV and thought that the it sounded so amazing that I would soon be awash with heavenly women vying for my affection. Alas, the very next day it sounded gastly. A few nights later, as I perused Youtube listening to clips of amazing sounding Marshalls (including the one I used to own) and a thought struck me. Sell the Line 6 stuff and buy a Marshall! Yes! What was I waiting for? Oh, yes. The size, weight and return to tap dancing to swap between effects laden tones. So yesterday I took another option. My amp lives upstairs in the spare room, where I don't have a hifi. Except I do have a FRFR monitor cab that I've used for acoustic tones from my Variax. Plug in the laptop to it and revisit all those videos on my internet history (no, not those ones!) And here we have it. Line 6's HD500 & Dt25's version of a JCM800 compared to a real Marshall JCM800, 2550 Silver Jubilee, 6100 30th Anniversary and AFD100. I'd chosen well recorded videos, no crappy webcam mics but nothing with any noticeable post production. First of all, there was an remarkable similarity between my tone and all those from the internet. Definitely a Marshally character. Each video had a slightly different tone but one that I was able to approximate with little more than a twist of a couple of knobs. The first video made my tone sound too trebly, the last was the opposite. I guess it shows how much our ears fatigue and how tones in isolation may not be exactly what we're looking for. I did learn exactly what goes on between the two presence controls when using dual amp patches (I run dual path patches, never both on at once but to simulate a 2 channel amp) which had previously been some voodoo mystery... I even managed to get some playing in today without tweaking much at all! Nothing ground breaking in this post but I felt the need to share my experience. I think there's something very counter productive about being able to scroll through multiple amps on the POD, because straight away you're going to change the settings anyway. So how can you compare two amps until you dial them in? I once watched a speaker comparison video by Rivera Amps and it was the same. I might prefer one with those bass/mid/tre/gain settings but what about when you've changed them? Still, my rig sounds great and is a doddle to use live. Happy days! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjnette Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 One advantage of the preset banks is you can save a patch to suit the playback monitoring in its own bank. I'd recommend keeping your already worked out rehearsal space patch and just save the patch to another bank and rework it for at home set ups. Glad you are getting satisfactory tones and sounds like you got a good set of ears for tone matching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billlorentzen Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 I totally agree that you have to spend time dialing in an amp before you can judge how effective it is for your needs. With so many amps to choose from, finding your winners in the HD is challenging. In future, I t might be useful for Line 6 to offer well tweaked workhorse examples of each amp in clean, medium and lead settings, instead of the rather useless patches they include with it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innovine Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 When dialing in tones, you shouldn't listen to the same thing for more than a few minutes.. your ears will start to compensate and even out your perceptions the frequency space. Switch to a well mastered track or some reference material and listen for a minute, and then back to your preset. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palico Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 When dialing in tones, you shouldn't listen to the same thing for more than a few minutes.. your ears will start to compensate and even out your perceptions the frequency space. Switch to a well mastered track or some reference material and listen for a minute, and then back to your preset. That some great advice! Don't really know why I've never thought of comparing mastered tracks with patches. I did it all the time when I was mixing down our demo. Great psost! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amsdenj Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 I think we sometimes suffer from too many choices. I try to settle on just five patches, Acoustic (no amp yet, waiting for 2.6), Clean (Twin), Blues (Bassman or Deluxe), Crunch (AC30) and Metal (Marshall). I do find myself continually tweeking even just these four - usually to make them warmer. Its nice to hear other people have the same issues with constantly changing patches. I do suspect it has more to do with ear fatigue than something that's actually wrong with the patch. I also find that playing in context rather than by myself seems to make the patches sound better. Maybe that's part of the problem - its just not possible to set a patch by yourself, in your living room, at low volume, and expect it to translate to a full band live setting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianoguyy Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 In future, I t might be useful for Line 6 to offer well tweaked workhorse examples of each amp in clean, medium and lead settings, instead of the rather useless patches they include with it. But if they didn't put those 'useless' tones in the machine... How would one know some of the things the machine is capable of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brazzy Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 When dialing in tones, you shouldn't listen to the same thing for more than a few minutes.. your ears will start to compensate and even out your perceptions the frequency space. Switch to a well mastered track or some reference material and listen for a minute, and then back to your preset. Right on "I". The ears can play tricks as well as the eyes.:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palico Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Maybe that's part of the problem - its just not possible to set a patch by yourself, in your living room, at low volume, and expect it to translate to a full band live setting. +1 on that too. What works all by yourself with no context doesn't work when you have Bass, Drums, Vocals and even other guitarist in the mix too. And as I recently found out, even when you set your patches at your normal gig levels, but then you get into a larger room so you end up pushing it further, they call fall apart again. Based on advice, I"m really thinking of adding a pedal EQ to my setup just to be able to make on the fly adjustments as needed. In the old days with just a couple of pedals and an amp you just made the adjustments on the pedals and amps as needed. But with the POD if I make a change on the patch of the fly but I change to different patch then I gotta do it all over again. The Global EQ will help with that thought, I'm going external because it's quicker to adjust and I want the visual on the setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillBee Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Oh man do I know this, really more so for perceived volume levels of semi cleans vs. full distortion. I can crank it up in the basement to test levels but until the full band is wailing away I can't hear where in the mix the tones will sit (and at what volume) and its a PITA to try and EQ on the fly. My hopes are like Palico's in that the Global EQ should help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuberto Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 When dialing in tones, you shouldn't listen to the same thing for more than a few minutes.. your ears will start to compensate and even out your perceptions the frequency space. Switch to a well mastered track or some reference material and listen for a minute, and then back to your preset. For my uses, this is really isn't the right way. I'm using my POD into a DT amp, for live use so I'm not trying to produce recorded tones;I need real life guitar amp noise which fits with acoustic drums, bass, guitar and vocals. Therefore my comparison is better with straight amp tones, no post production or mastering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innovine Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Well, the point is the same. If you listen to just the dt for a while you will loose some objectivity in your judgements of how much bass and treble you want. Your ear automatically recalibrates things which is why your patches sound crap the next day. For instance, if you have a very bright tone, your ear will start to automatically dampen high frequencies, to better hear mids and lows. After a while you might even notice this, and so yoU dial in even more treble to compensate. The day after, you wonder how you thought that ice pick tone was dialled in. Listening to anything else at all (even other patches) every few minutes can help avoid this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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