External Cab Sim with POD HD 500

[dvuksanovich]

In an attempt to extend the life of my HD 500 (I'm tired of the endless tweaking in a futile attempt to get rid of boomy lows and broken glass highs) I've been reading up on the possibility of bypassing the cab / mic sims in the POD and using an external cab sim. From what I've gathered through online research, the preamps and effects in the POD are good. It's the cab / mic sims that are sub par.

 

For background: I use the POD live and have no intent of lugging a power amp and cab around to get around this problem. For recording I could get away with a software solution but for gigging that's not a possibility. It's also obvious that Line 6 will not be adding the ability to import third party cab / mic sims.

 

I read in another thread (http://line6.com/support/topic/8559-hd500x-and-logidy-epsi/) some folks talking about using a Logidy EPSi for cab simulation. The samples posted starting about halfway down the page with the Logidy sound fantastic... nothing like I've ever heard out of my own HD 500... tight, responsive, immediate, alive.

 

Anyone else have success with their POD HD and Logidy EPSi or with another solution... like an H&K Red Box... for live gigging? I have never heard of Logidy before and would hesitate to use an unknown brand on stage night after night. H&K is a brand I trust, though.

 

$100 for the Red Box, or $200 for the EPSi would be way easier to swallow than $1500 for a new Helix or (cough) Fractal AX8.

[DunedinDragon]

 Or....you could just adjust the low cut and high cut parameters of the global EQ for $0 and get rid of the boomy lows and broken glass highs.  That's all I had to do.

[dvuksanovich]

 Or....you could just adjust the low cut and high cut parameters of the global EQ for $0 and get rid of the boomy lows and broken glass highs.  That's all I had to do.

 

I've got my global EQ set to low cut at 80 Hz and high cut at 10k Hz. I'm not a sound engineer, so that seemed like a good conservative way to get rid of a lot of nasty stuff without cutting into the usable tone itself. How do you have yours set up?

[dvuksanovich]

@ OP

 

give a read to the first post included into the "External IRs and POD HD Cab Resonator effect discovery" doc here below in my signature

 

I did see some chatter in the post I linked to about lots of returns, but further down one guy said that he loaded a third party IR into the Logidy and then posted A/B clips of the JCM 800 model:

 

https://soundcloud.com/alphadog808/original-jcm800-patchno-epsi(without EPSi)

 

https://soundcloud.com/alphadog808/jcm800-patch-with-epsi-on(with EPSi)

 

That's a massive difference, I think, and in a good way.

 

Also interesting further down in that post from your signature about cranking the res level way down in the cab DEP. I'm always a bit nervous about making large changes to those settings for fear that it will make things even worse, but I will play with further reducing res and thump to see what happens (I've got them turned down a bit as it is in my current live patch).

 

Thanks for the tips.

[DunedinDragon]

dvuksanovich:

 

I've experimented quite a bit with my global EQ settings to find a place that keeps out the harshness/boominess.  Like you I pretty much settled on 80hz for the low cut and my high cut is set to 7.2khz.  That seems to be fairly consistent with most guidelines from audio reference books and what I see on most scopes when I examine various tones.  Your mileage may vary depending on what you're looking for in your sound.  To be honest I leave my low cut at 80hz because a few presets seen to need that kind of low end, but I very often offset that up to around 120hz using the parametric EQ for some presets to get real clarity on the low end.

[davidb7170]

Also, a big variable is the amplification and speaker you are using will color your sound greatly. I use a very good amp with a PA/monitor speaker that is full range but found out it is not flat response. Found this out with my Helix, and it applied to my 500 and 500X. The speaker has a vocal midrange peak at about 3 kHz. I compared headphones versus the speaker and found if I used the global EQ to cut the midrange set at 3 kHz by -8 dB and a Q value of 1.7, the harshness went away. Your specific speaker may have a different value that is the "magic" frequency that it peaks at. Just something else to try. I found this with my Helix, and it works well with my 500X as well.

Dave

 

Again - I mis-typed 3 kHz not 30 kHz....

Edited January 1, 2016 by davidb7170

[BlueViolince]

I use my hd500 with my electric violin.  My live rig usually includes a Power Engine 60T, but when I go DI, I go USB to MBP running Mainstage, with LePou IR host. Mainstage is $30, and LePou is free, as are many IRs you can use with it(paid IRs can be found under $10).  Along with the cab sim, I use light EQ, light compression, and that's about it.  Sounds great.

[pianoguyy]

My guitar goes into my pod. My pod runs both outs (stereo) to the mixer. 

I do not use the GEQ. 

 

If I don't like what it sounds like, I have no one to blame but myself because I designed the patches. 

 

 

Now, I will point out... 

I didn't buy my pod and immediately throw out all of my old gear. 

I continued to use all of my old gear professionally while trying to learn the pod. Then, I started to let it work its way into the performances - starting with rehearsals, and then testing at some gigs. Working the way into a complete set ---- 

It was quite awhile before I got to the point of using the pod, and only the pod. 

 

So, that is about all I have to say. Guitar==>Pod==>mixer

[joel_brown]

The Logidy Epsi is easily overdriven by the PODHD and there's nothing other than your ears letting you know.  No lights or meters to check.

 

But as other people said: Res, Thump, and EQ can make a huge difference.  I cut my lows at 160hz but I also use a 4x12 guitar cab.

[dvuksanovich]

OK... so turning off res, thump and decay in the cab DEP makes a huge, huge, huge difference. Suddenly my amp EQ settings actually do what they're supposed to do. I can set them to 50 to begin with and dial in the tone from there instead of using all possible settings to dial back the bass and treble monster. Still probably not as good as some of those sweet third party IRs, but good enough to continue using it instead of dropping a bunch of money on something new.

 

I'm surprised to find (now that I can hear what the models are actually supposed to sound like) that I prefer the sound of the Hiwatt driven with Boost Comp and Line 6 Drive to achieve an 80's hard rock tone over going with one of the high gain models, but this actually works out pretty well since turning effects on and off has no lag while changing patches does have lag.

 

Not sure how I missed the intel on the cab DEP settings over the five years or so that I've had my POD HD, since I'm always searching for ways to get better sounds out of it, but glad I finally have that worked out.

 

Thanks, all, for your comments. I think I can easily gig with my new band using my current Hiwatt patch.

[dvuksanovich]

glad you found useful the trick in regard to neutralize the cab resonator added effect..

 

if you want and have the time I suggest to try also the single input approach, especially if you have hot pickups.. it is described and explained in the first doc on the left of my signature below here

 

I was already aware of the default input setting issue. However, I do have a quick question to make sure I'm understanding the signal routing correctly:

 

With input 2 set to Variax, path A panned center in the mixer, and path B muted in the mixer, do I need to move amps and effects into the post-split path A in my signal chain, or can I leave them pre-split now that I've changed the input / path settings?

[dvuksanovich]

if you move all your chain in path A even if you change the setting of input 2 to variax or else it will not affect at all the results, because path A when separate (ie sharing nothing in pre-split position) is reached only by input 1 signal (doesn't matter what input 2 is set to), but in this case the input 1 signal is doubled at the split point, thus giving the same results you'd get if you left the chain in pre-split path and having input 2 set to "same"..

 

so, to really hear the difference due to the single input approach the chain should always start in the pre-split path

 

Gotcha. Thanks.