Tips For An Hd500 Newbie?

[SiCantwell]

Hi all,

Well, I just got my new Pod HD500. Registered it, installed the software, played around with a few of the factory presets and realized there's no way I can take this to band practice tonight!

I'll probably spend the weekend programming patches and learning my way around it. I have an old Korg AX-300G multieffect pedal, so at least I know how to add effects and edit parameters.

I play a Fender American Strat and two Gibson Les Paul Studios, one with custom pickups, usually into a Fender Blues Junior or into a 100-watt Twin amp if I need insane volume.

I play blues and rock, mostly crunch with chorus or phase, wah and delays. I'm not a shredder (not fast enough anyway!) and I'm not into making weird whooping noises.

 

Question: What 3 tips would you give someone just starting out with an HD500?

[toneman2121]

first, i think is, patches set up at home are probably not going to sound the same at live levels. second is the guidelines for setting up your pod; connectivity, how to set your output mode (studio direct, combo front, pre or full amp mode etc) are just guide lines and that's all. experiment is the advice i can give. nothing is right or wrong when getting your tone. keep pushing buttons and turning knobs. and come back here for problems or advice. somebody knows what your looking for ;)

[Zombieslayer5P]

First thing I would suggest is to find your prefered method of amplifying your HD500 (and the correct output config for it).  After that, you should set your tones while your amp is at performance volume and you are in front of your amp so that you are shaping your tone towards sounding good from the audiences perspective.  This is important when dialing in your live tones due to equal loudness curves (fletcher-munson and all that jazz).  Hopefully, by doing this, you'll find yourself some tones that please you and your audience.  And that's my $0.02.

[schmokes]

1)  L and R on the mixer block panned to middle.

2)  Experiment with the output mode and use what sounds best to you.  Don't just pick combo/front because you are going into a combo, play around.

3)  Have fun.

[SiCantwell]

These are great suggestions, thanks!

[jstock]

All the above....

 

Keep it simple its too easy to get carried away creating too many patches and then getting overwelled trying to fix them all.

 

Stick to perhaps 2 or 3 amps to start with which you think might produce the sounds you want. Once your happy with a basic set of sounds Clean, Crunch, Heavy, Metal you can then move on.

 

Just because there is 20+ amps does not mean you have to use them all - but of course there is no wrong or right way.

 

Currently in my live rig I use 1 amp model to cover all bases - works for me but some would call that a waste....

 

Finally the POD is not a quick fix it takes many hours of tweaking and experimentation to get to where you want.

[GTLazer]

1. By the time I bought my HD500, I had already spent some time on the old forums, so the first thing I did was read the manual then make sure I had the global setup stuff sorted. For me, that also included setting the master volume and the levels on my monitors so everything played nice together.

 

2. Then I made a setlist of all of the amps on default settings and played through all of them to see what I initially liked the sound of. I found maybe 5 or 6 that I figured were worth a bit more of my time; a nice clean, a couple of crunchy ones and a couple of bangers.

 

3. Once you've got a sound you're happy with, I would recommend trying all the choruses, wahs, phasers, delays, etc, and pick your favourite from each. It's easy to get carried away with all the options, but if you had a traditional pedalboard you wouldn't have 5 wahs, 4 phasers, or whatever, you'd just have one good one of each. It's useful to know what all the others do, should you want to do something a bit different, but my personal view is that if you change too much, your sound stops sounding like your sound, if you see what I mean.

 

That's my 2p.

[joemama78]

1. Ignore the presets. Start from the ground up. Give all of the amps a preview and find one or two that are a good place to start. Perhaps start with something close to what you already own. Then do the same with pedals. Find a "home base" to help you get comfortable with the change from your physical rig to the POD.

 

2. Download patches from the Line6 custom tone section. There are a lot of cool patches uploaded here. You might find some effects you would have overlooked otherwise. You can also learn from others' mistakes.

 

3. Keep tweaking. Back up your patches on your computer, then improve, swap, simplify. Figure out if you need one patch that can do everything or separate patches for every sound.

[Chrisnich]

1. Read the manuals!  

2. Read and check out the forums lots of good info on here to make you pod sound its best in any situation.

3. Keep an eye on setting ur inputs (guitar/variax),(guitar,same), ect. 

4. Enjoy!!

[SiCantwell]

I spent the day learning about the unit and working up a few patches to start with. These suggestions helped me a great deal, thanks. You guys rock!

[neal105]

im a total new bee using pod hd500 . . .i know a lil about this n that ...but i orderd this from a online shop n thy didnt send me a power supply...since im residing in bangladesh im unable to find the exact 9v 2.5 milli amp power supply..im using 9v 2 milli amp...question is am i getting anything less...it seems to work fine...thrs 3milli power supply availabe bt i dared to connect thr for high voltage...pls suggest me..i cnt find 2.5 s 

[neal105]

wow ... kool ...yeah its DC power ...thanks alot man ..

[mcolquitt]

Don't forget to Have fun; if you do that then you shouldn't get frustrated!

[StephenSLR]

Read this:

 

http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneGuide/

 

s

[toneman2121]

if something requires a certain amount of current and doesn't get it' it could run hot

 

im a total new bee using pod hd500 . . .i know a lil about this n that ...but i orderd this from a online shop n thy didnt send me a power supply...since im residing in bangladesh im unable to find the exact 9v 2.5 milli amp power supply..im using 9v 2 milli amp...question is am i getting anything less...it seems to work fine...thrs 3milli power supply availabe bt i dared to connect thr for high voltage...pls suggest me..i cnt find 2.5 s 

[Rewolf48]

if something requires a certain amount of current and doesn't get it' it could run hot

 

 

The HD500 power supply is designed to power both the HD500 and a JTV via the VDI connection.  If you are not running a JTV with power from the HD500 then the lower rated supply is probably going to be fine.  

 

It is very easy to tell if it isn't because the most obvious sign that the power supply cannot provide the necessary current is that after a little time it makes a "pop" sound the equipment shuts down and there might be that nasty overheated electronics smell in the air.  

 

At this point it all depends on the power supply design as to whether it has overload protection on not - if it has then it just needs to be switched off and allowed to cool down before it can be used again (but not for this purpose because it will only trip out again), if it hasn't then put it in your local electrical recycling bin and look a bit harder for one with a higher rating.

 

 

This will be the power supply not the HD500 - the worst that can happen to the HD500 is that you under power it while doing a firmware upgrade and have to do a factory reset before trying to do a firmware upgrade again.  It should be safe with an overrated power supply in terms of current (e.g 9V 4A) as the HD500 will only draw the current it needs, and it will probably work for a small over voltage such as 12V... but the latter does have a serious risk that if it fails the components that go bang are on the HD500 main circuit board at which point it will be junk.

[joel_brown]

Be very patient and take your time.  I almost threw my PODHD away twice and went back to my previous equipment.  I've never been so frustrated in my life.  Then the lightbulb went off and my tones started sounding the way I wanted them.  It was all worth it but it doesn't come easy or quick.

 

Imagine if someone gave you 100 effects pedals and 25 amps and said "Here, hook it up anyway you want and here's some cabs and mics too".  You'd go friggin' nuts for a month.  That's what the PODHD is like.

[bolintrucks]

Pick an amp model that you can relate to, begin tweaking it and shaping sounds, once you have a clean sound you understand, get a mid-gain sound you understand, once you have those two get a high gain sound you understand. THEN....start playing with the output modes and how things sound straight to PA, headphones, combo, etc. IMHO, if your reverse that approach you could get lost for a time. FUN!!!

[mrzwo]

Use the looper to adjust your tones, best tip I've ever had ;0)

[withrowsp]

Be very patient and take your time.  I almost threw my PODHD away twice and went back to my previous equipment.  I've never been so frustrated in my life.  Then the lightbulb went off and my tones started sounding the way I wanted them.  It was all worth it but it doesn't come easy or quick.

 

Imagine if someone gave you 100 effects pedals and 25 amps and said "Here, hook it up anyway you want and here's some cabs and mics too".  You'd go friggin' nuts for a month.  That's what the PODHD is like.

 

I loved this analogy! Good post.

[jasonk931]

Stick with it...I worked the POD HD500 for a year, and at times was mega frustrated. I recently went over to the Fender Mustang, and enjoyed it, but quickly found myself back to the POD. Features, tonal quality when tweaked right, etc..is just better with Line 6.

 

P.S. How did you start a new topic and Post? I just came back here and the forum is totally different. Advice?

[meambobbo]

http://foobazaar.com/podhd/toneGuide/

 

see my tone guide!

[SiCantwell]

Meambobbo, I've been spending days going over your excellent guide. There's a lot to take in, but I have really liked the sections on ordering effects and organizing setlists.

There sure is a lot of studying that goes with being an HD500 owner! Been reading the manuals and the Tone Guide, and one day I spent a couple of hours learning about the Fletcher Munson curve. It's a lot more involved than hooking up a board full of Boss and E-H stompboxes!

[meambobbo]

definitely a lot to take in - i'm still learning some tricks myself!

[bjnette]

All good advices,

I particularly like;

 

Be very patient and take your time.  I almost threw my PODHD away twice and went back to my previous equipment.  I've never been so frustrated in my life.  Then the lightbulb went off and my tones started sounding the way I wanted them.  It was all worth it but it doesn't come easy or quick.

 

Imagine if someone gave you 100 effects pedals and 25 amps and said "Here, hook it up anyway you want and here's some cabs and mics too".  You'd go friggin' nuts for a month.  That's what the PODHD is like.

 

 This is so the case, LOLOL

As your already underway I second the simple approach, trying out the Amps first, monitoring thru your rig.

It is more pleasing to tweak from scratch.

It can certainly suck up some trial and error time but the more you do it, the easy it is to just create your texture with the palette provided.

Once you got your preferred Amps and FX a time will come to try out the others to see what you can squeeze out of them.

When you save patches name the instrument your using. Some guys make patches for different monitoring scenarios 

I make patches by the instrument  I made it with. I got a few different guitars and basses.

One last thing, some FX sound better with different guitars.

I discovered some to die for using my Musician bass that sounds lollipope thru my strat.