Part 3 of my video series on the HD500X now uploaded

[PeterJH]

Hi everyone,

 

 I've just finished uploading Part 3 of my series on the HD500X.

 

 I've had a lot of requests to demo clean and semi clean patches so I created some and featured them in this video. I also swopped between a single coil and humbucking guitar to show how well these same patches work for both.

 

 The video also showcases the POD in a studio recording with live drums etc.

 

I think you'll agree that it sounds like an amp that was miced.

 

 I've also now made all the patches covered in Parts 1, 2 and 3 available for download. Everything is now up to date.

 

 Enjoy the video,

 

 Cheers,

 

 Peter.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QljSknytt4&feature=youtu.be

[leesteel]

Very well done. Can't wait to try out your tones when I get home tonight.

[PeterJH]

 

Very well done. Can't wait to try out your tones when I get home tonight.

 

Thanks leesteel,

 

Hope you enjoy them.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[leesteel]

I enjoyed all 3 videos this afternoon!

[wilson69978]

Super job again Peter, I really enjoyed you're production. First rate tone and musicianship in my books.

[slockrem]

Fantastic job!!

[DarkEdge]

I find your patches dead spot on and thank you for sharing them with us all. It is "always" good to see how another artist interprets the same software that you also have.

Peace

[bjnette]

Great silky cleans, 

Great arrangement and dynamic performances too!

[edstar1960]

Fantastic once again.  Thanks spending the time and effort to create these videos and for sharing with us all.   :)

[PeterJH]

Wow!

 

Thanks so much to everyone for the kind words. It's much appreciated.

 

I know that the HD500X gets a lot of negative response in certain quarters and I'm just trying to restore some balance. I hope that the stuff I've posted basically proves that this unit is one of the best modellers out there. I hesitate to even bring in the price because even though it is far cheaper than the "other" more expensive options out there, this product is more than capable of holding it's own.

 

I haven't bought the new model packs just yet and I haven't even upgraded to the new firmware. I'm very happy with everything as it is. I do intend to upgrade and get the model packs - hopefully I can do a video on all the new options.

 

I'm also glad that you're finding the patches helpful. I'll try to keep my site updated as I create new ones.

 

Thanks once again,

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[stevevnicks]

I think your video's are brill,

 

wish I could play like you :) ... huh maybe one day (in many years to come heeh), l love the clean sounds.

 

top job fella,

 

been playing with my pod hd500 and Yamaha mixer with effects i'll up load a sample when I can play something although I would feel embarrassed to upload anything I played lol

 

im getting better albeit slowly, but not to your standard ..

[BigBob-Irwin]

Thank you Peter this was a great video and I especially enjoyed the second video you did with the parametric to get rid of the harsh tones which has helped me with quite a few patches and now I am enjoying my 500x a bit more now especially for practice and recording although I am not convinced with my dream rig when all hooked together but the parametric has helped a bit. I think in the long run I will defiantly keep the 500x but not so sure about the DT25 although it is good as a a stand alone just not with the pod.

[leesteel]

Hey Peter,

 

Went through all of your patches last night and checked them out. I had to do a little tweaking since I am using Variax 500s and you obviously use the real deal. I noticed that all your tones have a tight grip on the noise gate with both settings at 50%. I had to relax that a little to get the same effect you display in your videos. I ended up around 70% / 30% for decay and threshold. Perhaps this might be due to the difference between mag pickups and the Variax pizos. I also found myself bumping the Parametric EQ "highs" up to about 70%, just trying to match my tone with the tone you get in your videos.  Overall, you have given new life to amps I had given up on, so kudos to you sir. I am sure I will end up using some bits and pieces in my own show.

 

-Lee

[PeterJH]

@stevevnicks  It's certainly not a competition. LOL. Play to your strengths and don't try and compare. I play the way I do and there are millions of players out there that will blow me away. I'm pretty comfortable in what I do and will always admire a better player than myself. I wouldn't beat myself up about it though.

 

Glad you're enjoying the vids.

 

@Bigbob - I'm glad that you were able to get something out of the videos. I've never tried the DT25 so I wouldn't be able to comment.

 

@leesteel - I'm not surprised that you had to tweak my settings. Every guitar setup would sound different to mine. I'm really glad it put you in the ballpark though. Regarding the noise gate - I just used the default setting.

 

Getting feedback from you that you've got something useful out of them though kind of makes it worthwhile to do these videos.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[leesteel]

I am also going direct to mixer with no amp. (haha one less thing to carry and set up). This is probably why your patches translated as well as they did. Many of the ones I get from Customtone don't fare as well. Thanks again.

[PRSGuy]

Wow, excellent job. Great chops, production, etc...Line 6 should pay you to produce a few vids for them...thanks!

[Brazzy]

@stevevnicks  It's certainly not a competition. LOL. Play to your strengths and don't try and compare. I play the way I do and there are millions of players out there that will blow me away. I'm pretty comfortable in what I do and will always admire a better player than myself. I wouldn't beat myself up about it though.

 

Hey Pete. Great video and playing as usual and you have a great drummer there. Thanks for posting your tips and videos. They're much appreciated.

 

As for the the way people play I look at music as an art so when I hear other peoples music I look at it as an extension of themselves. For instance, the days I feel good I may play differently than days I don't feel so good, lol. To me even the worse music should be appreciated (at least a little, lol) since many people do not even try to be musical and obviously ones moral or amoral standing in life will depict how they see and hear things.

 

I am also going direct to mixer with no amp. (haha one less thing to carry and set up). This is probably why your patches translated as well as they did. Many of the ones I get from Customtone don't fare as well. Thanks again.

 

As for those customtones. Try not to get your hopes up, lol. It's great for being able to see how one builds a patch but as for how it sounds when you use it?.....well that's a whole nuther story although you might get lucky.

 

Going direct with any pod is where they shine. Being able to just take a guitar and the pod to gig is the way to go. So light and easy to manage.

 

RO/CO

[leesteel]

Having your own amp onstage in a small club is very self indulgent IMHO. Only you and the handful of people standing in front of you, get to hear the sound the way you intend it to be.

[PeterJH]

Thanks everyone.

 

 

Wow, excellent job. Great chops, production, etc...Line 6 should pay you to produce a few vids for them...thanks!

 

Yeah, I wish....

 

I've had a few requests for the delay settings that I used in Part 3 (especially the clean and semi clean guitars) so I saved the patches and updated the site.

They can now be downloaded.

Bear in mind that the delay was set in accordance with the tempo of the track which was 70bpm.

To get a slightly more "stereo" effect on my delays I normally set the one side to the bpm of the song and then set the other side to half notes. This tends to give a slightly "bigger" sounding delay than just setting both sides (left and right) the same. Not sure if that makes sense but if you download the patches you'll see what I mean.

 

Cheers.
 

[PeterJH]

@ leesteel I know that a lot of guitar players still like to have an amp behind them. I wouldn't call it self indulgent. It takes a bit of getting used to going direct?

[DarrellM5]

Awesome job on the video production and the information helped me tremendously.  EQ's have always dumbfounded me and your videos shed a lot of light on the subject.  I'll be practicing dialing in EQ's all weekend.

 

Thanks!!!

[PeterJH]

Thanks for the feedback, Darrell.'

 

Glad it helped.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[scott93105]

Another great vid!  Thanks, Peter.

[taylorbeats]

Peter,

 

Thank you for your efforts, I've been playing for 35 years, never really considered myself an artist, but after listening to your playing I've finally realized, find the tone that works best and just let it all come out.  Your playing is superb, your thoughts on tone are eye opening.  I actually learned how to use a parametric eq for the first time.

 

Mike

[leesteel]

@ leesteel I know that a lot of guitar players still like to have an amp behind them. I wouldn't call it self indulgent. It takes a bit of getting used to going direct?

 

I didn't mean that in a derogatory way toward anyone. It took me 40 years to realize that most of the volume complaints were coming from either my guitar amp or another guitar player's amp. Changing over to running my guitar direct to the pa was a milestone and took a lot of getting used to on my part. I have had Marshall stacks, Ampeg V4 stacks, Fender, Roland, Music Man, pretty much "you name it". Now I have a good monitor.

[PeterJH]

@scott Thanks for the comment.

 

@Mike - Thanks for your kind comments. I'm really glad that these videos are proving to be a big help in getting better tone. I try to keep my playing as simple as possible.

 

@leesteel - I didn't think you were being derogatory in any way. I agree with you to a certain extent. The whole idea of playing direct is solely dependent on the pa that you're playing through. We do a lot of shows in many venues around the country and in neighbouring countries. Sometimes the pa is superb sometimes not.

 

A lot of the newer smaller pa's sound great when it's one or two instruments playing through them but when the whole band is playing at the same time, instruments get lost.

 

I also do sound for our band and it's always the same story. You get a great drum sound, a great bass sound which meshes well with the drums. You then get your guitar tone and it's also good. Now the whole band start playing together and because the pa is suffering with a lack of headroom, the kick gets lost and the guitar disappears. It now becomes a question of compromise.

 

If you have an amp on stage you can "blend" a bit of the amp coming from the stage with the pa. If your bass player has a nice Ampeg rig or something equivalent, then he can also turn up a bit on stage and take the load off the pa. If you can get the overall blend of sound coming off the stage balanced with what's coming through the pa it'll still sound good.

 

If you're playing direct and relying on the pa alone to produce your guitar tone without an amp on stage you pretty screwed. No one will hear you. This is a lot more common than people realise. Unfortunately small pa's sound small. End of story.

 

Fortunately we have a massive pa rig which doesn't suffer from this problem but I can tell you that I've heard so many bands with this problem. It gets even worse when everybody starts to turn up because their buddies in the audience tells them that they can't hear their instruments. 

 

I'm not saying that you have this problem but I think you get what I'm trying to say.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[scias23]

Thanks for making another video! I'm just wondering, how do you build your swell patches? 

 

It would be great if you make another video for swells..

 

@scott Thanks for the comment.

 

@Mike - Thanks for your kind comments. I'm really glad that these videos are proving to be a big help in getting better tone. I try to keep my playing as simple as possible.

 

@leesteel - I didn't think you were being derogatory in any way. I agree with you to a certain extent. The whole idea of playing direct is solely dependent on the pa that you're playing through. We do a lot of shows in many venues around the country and in neighbouring countries. Sometimes the pa is superb sometimes not.

 

A lot of the newer smaller pa's sound great when it's one or two instruments playing through them but when the whole band is playing at the same time, instruments get lost.

 

I also do sound for our band and it's always the same story. You get a great drum sound, a great bass sound which meshes well with the drums. You then get your guitar tone and it's also good. Now the whole band start playing together and because the pa is suffering with a lack of headroom, the kick gets lost and the guitar disappears. It now becomes a question of compromise.

 

If you have an amp on stage you can "blend" a bit of the amp coming from the stage with the pa. If your bass player has a nice Ampeg rig or something equivalent, then he can also turn up a bit on stage and take the load off the pa. If you can get the overall blend of sound coming off the stage balanced with what's coming through the pa it'll still sound good.

 

If you're playing direct and relying on the pa alone to produce your guitar tone without an amp on stage you pretty screwed. No one will hear you. This is a lot more common than people realise. Unfortunately small pa's sound small. End of story.

 

Fortunately we have a massive pa rig which doesn't suffer from this problem but I can tell you that I've heard so many bands with this problem. It gets even worse when everybody starts to turn up because their buddies in the audience tells them that they can't hear their instruments. 

 

I'm not saying that you have this problem but I think you get what I'm trying to say.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

 

[PeterJH]

 

 

Thanks for making another video! I'm just wondering, how do you build your swell patches? 

 

It would be great if you make another video for swells..

 

It's my pleasure scias,

 

Hmmm... swells. I've never thought about that. Do you mean "auto swells" or swells that you would do manually with the volume pedal?

 

I'll give that a try. I'm hoping to feature the new models in my next video - It all depends on whether I manage to get the updates in time.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[scias23]

In my opinion, auto swells and manual swells via onboard pedal are just the same.. So yeah. haha

 

My concern with those patches are, the sound is weak (disappears in the mix). So sometimes the volume of the swell patch is increased to compensate. However, it also causes clipping on the patch if the guitarist accidentally hit the strings very hard.

 

It would be nice also if you do some demos of Park, SLO, and plexi variac crunch tones. And some high gain tones.

 

Anyway, thanks for the videos!

 

 

It's my pleasure scias,

 

Hmmm... swells. I've never thought about that. Do you mean "auto swells" or swells that you would do manually with the volume pedal?

 

I'll give that a try. I'm hoping to feature the new models in my next video - It all depends on whether I manage to get the updates in time.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter.

[Meiannatee]

Thanks Peter for the effort in making the videos!! Really helpful.

 

Hmm and since scias mentioned swells, I was thinking if it is possible to do warm pads/cello/strings-like sounds on the Pod (like the EHX stuff). I've been experimenting, but only managed to get a synth lead tone.

 

Really enjoyed your playing, and will be looking forward to any new video!

 

by the way, where can I find your patches? Thanks!

 

Edit: Nevermind, found the patches on your website, thanks! Was searching in Customtone and couldn't find them.