Can I please ask for a favour from POD HD500X owners?

[itsslash]

http://line6.com/customtone/tone/1763687/

If you currently own a Line 6 POD HD500X, would you mind running the preset in the link above and post a screenshot of what the setup (and settings) look like?

 

I would greatly appreciate it.

[silverhead]

You can do better than that yourself. The HD500X Edit program runs in offline mode - you don't need the device. Download the edit program and the customtone file and load it into the editor for full viewing privileges!

[itsslash]

You can do better than that yourself. The HD500X Edit program runs in offline mode - you don't need the device. Download the edit program and the customtone file and load it into the editor for full viewing privileges!

 

Thanks, but unfortunately, I don't own a Line 6 product yet and therefore cannot download the preset itself.

 

If you could take a screenshot, I would greatly appreciate it.

[thorneven]

Not be unhelpful, but I don't believe you need to own a Line6 product in order to download the software.  Have you tried?

[itsslash]

Thanks a lot, hurghanico.

 

Can anyone please post a demo of this preset?

[Smashcraaft]

Thanks a lot, hurghanico.

 

Can anyone please post a demo of this preset?

With your guitar-setup? Nope!

[joel_brown]

If you don't own a Line6 product why do you want to see and hear and preset for it ?  You can hear plenty of tones from YouTube videos about Line6 products ?

[itsslash]

If you don't own a Line6 product why do you want to see and hear and preset for it ?  You can hear plenty of tones from YouTube videos about Line6 products ?

 

I'm on the verge of purchasing a POD HD500X, and this preset will be the decider for me as I've spent a lot of time trying to replicate that tone.

 

Would appreciate it.

[silverhead]

I strongly urge you not to base your purchasing decision on what this preset might sound like in a demo produced by someone else with their own equipment. There are MANY factors in that recorded demo that are guaranteed to make that demo sound different from what you will hear playing the same preset with your own equipment.

 

The person recording the demo will use a guitar that's different from yours, perhaps with different gauge and unknown age of strings. Their playing skill will greatly affect the tone, as will yours. They will be monitoring (listening to) the sound using a different output device, whether that be an amp, FRFR speakers, or headphones, and will adjust the EQ to suit. Your monitoring equipment will produce a different sound. And the list goes on.

 

It may not seem like these differences could be very great, but they are. You will be doing yourself a great dissservice by making your buying decision on this. I can guarantee you that it will sound different in the demo than it will using your equipment.

[cruisinon2]

Thanks a lot, hurghanico.

 

Can anyone please post a demo of this preset?

I'm on the verge of purchasing a POD HD500X, and this preset will be the decider for me as I've spent a lot of time trying to replicate that tone.

If you make the decision this way, you're almost guaranteed to end up disappointed...going about it like this is futile.

 

Here's the problem with other people's tones: whatever it sounds like to them, with their gear, is NOT what you're gonna hear with your guitar, pickups, and chosen monitoring method (amp/cab, headphones, FRFR speakers, etc). Someone might post the most magical tone you've ever heard, and when you load up that identical patch, it'll sound like a belt-sander. The ONLY way to work with modelers (any of them...don't care who's making it) is to do it yourself, with your rig, in your listening environment. The biggest part of your tone is the speaker(s) that you're pumping it through.

 

And if/when you do get the unit, don't expect to be cranking out awesomeness in the first 15 minutes. Expect to spend days, or even a couple of weeks tinkering until you find it out what works for you. It also pays to NOT get stuck on the idea that you have to use a particular amp model, just because the tone you're after came from that same "real" amp....you could easily find that some other model gives you the tone you're looking for, whether it says "Marshall" on it, or not.

[silverhead]

I'm on the verge of purchasing a POD HD500X, and this preset will be the decider for me as I've spent a lot of time trying to replicate that tone.

 

Would appreciate it.

For comparison purposes, here's a thread that contains several demos of songs using presets built for an HD500. While the specific song you are requesting is not among them you will get the idea.

 

http://line6.com/support/topic/25150-pod-hd500-sharing-patches/

 

You may or may not think that these demos sound anything like the original but I assure you that the person who created the demo thinks they do. And I can also guarantee you that what you hear when listening through your playback system is not what they heard when making their demo.

 

And remember that this experiment ignores perhaps the biggest factors - the guitar being used and the playing skill.

[pianoguyy]

If the patch in question doesn't sound like you think it should sound - change it. 

 

The HD500X is not like one of those cheap little modeling amps with 10 pre-programmed choices where you either like it or you don't because you are stuck with just those 10 choices. TheHD500X is a fully functional amp modeling system. 

Modeling amp vs amp modeling - there is a difference. 

[itsslash]

Can anyone please just tell me if this preset sounds anything like the original recording?

 

I appreciate that fingers, guitars, speakers and pick attack all come into play on the overall tone, but the vast majority comes from the amps and effects. Period. If you sat someone down to play on Eddie Van Halen's rig in 1984 and they could actually play Panama note-for-note with the timing down perfectly, they would sound like the recording. I'm not sure how anyone would attempt to dispute this. Is it really your fingers that are going to apply the phaser effect for that signature sound? I don't think so.

 

I just want to find a way to get close to this incredible sound.

[pianoguyy]

Yes. It is a brilliant piece of sound replication. Andy Summers pooped his pants at how much I sounded like him. 

[cruisinon2]

I just want to find a way to get close to this incredible sound.

We get it...but going about it this way is utterly futile for all the reasons already stated above.

 

As we've all tried to explain, what this patch will sound like to me, with my gear, in my studio or rehearsal space, is nearly guaranteed to be drastically diffrent from what it will sound like to you, with your gear...so repeatedly asking "Yeah, but does it sound the same as this clip?" is useless, and will get you nowhere. It's like looking at a photo of a dozen roses, and asking me if they'll smell the same as the ones you bought last month. Can't be done...

 

Modelers are not amps. They behave differently, and require considerably more tweaking than just plugging into an amp and cabinet. And, one's chosen method of monitoring the sound has an ENORMOUS impact on the final product. You can either accept this, or not...your choice. But either way, it makes your EVH "same rig" analogy misguided and irrelevant.

 

It's not that no one wants to help you, but you're searching for a shortcut that doesn't exist.

[silverhead]

Is the POD HD500X capable of producing the incredible sound of the tone you are trying to replicate? Absolutely.

 

Will you be able to decide that based on a recorded demo by someone else of this specific preset? Absolutely not.

 

Take the example of other songs in the link I posted earlier. You must be familiar with at least some of these songs. Do they sound the same as the original to you? If so, you can be confident that a demo of the elusive tone you are seeking would probably sound good to you (although it will sound different on your equipment). If not, that doesn't mean that the HD500X is incapable of producing a similar-sounding tone, it just means that you're using different equipment to play back the tone than it was recorded with.

[joel_brown]

Here's a simplified analogy:  If everything sounded the same on different equipment then nobody would ever need a Bass and Treble knob on their stereo system.

 

Now take this about 1000 levels up from there trying to obtain a particular guitar tone and you'll see it takes time to build and adjust the settings to YOUR equipment.  You can't just grab something and it works great unless everyone played the same guitar through the same amp and speakers with the same pickups.  Even then your playing style will have an effect on tone.

[cruisinon2]

although partly shareable, some of the views above are too drastic and daunting as replies to a newcomer, clearly IMHO..

 

Sugar-coating the truth doesn't do anybody any favors either. We could all just say : "The POD is awesome and can give you any tone you want"...which, by the way, I would argue is largely a true statement...but that's not what he's harping on. The OP wants an objective verdict on ONE PARTICULAR PATCH, origin unknown. And based on a "thumbs up" from folks he's never met, he's gonna go spend $500, load up this patch and expect to sound like Andy Summers because we all told him he would.

 

Sorry, but I won't do that...because when it ends up sounding like an ice-pick with his gear, he'll march back in here, tell us we're deaf and/or crazy, and that the POD is garbage. It won't help him like, or learn to use the gear.

[itsslash]

Modelers are not amps. They behave differently, and require considerably more tweaking than just plugging into an amp and cabinet. And, one's chosen method of monitoring the sound has an ENORMOUS impact on the final product. You can either accept this, or not...your choice. But either way, it makes your EVH "same rig" analogy misguided and irrelevant.

 

 

I'm sorry, but that its a load of nonsense. Let me just reach out to Eddie Van Halen now to ask him what method of monitoring he used. I'm sure that once I have a definitive answer to that, I can just use a Gibson Les Paul with the neck pickup plugged into a standalone Fender Deluxe Amp (without effects) to get the Panama tone.

[itsslash]

Okay, I'll try another approach. Does the POD HD500X preset sound closer to the original recording than the one below?

 

https://soundcloud.com/stef_herbuel/message-in-the-bottleaxe-fx-ii

[cruisinon2]

Okay, I'll try another approach. Does the POD HD500X preset sound closer to the original recording than the one below?

 

https://soundcloud.com/stef_herbuel/message-in-the-bottleaxe-fx-ii

You can try any approach you like. You can refuse to believe established, and easily verifiable facts if it pleases you. But you will never get the answers you seek this way. Buy the thing and set up a patch, any tone you're heart desires. Listen to it through a guitar cabinet, an FRFR speaker, and headphones. You'll have 3 very distinct tones. Then tell me that the way sound is monitored makes no difference.

 

Or you can just continue to be belligerent and dismissive of those who are trying to help you. No skin off my arse either way. Good luck to you.

[itsslash]

You can try any approach you like. You can refuse to believe established, and easily verifiable facts if it pleases you. But you will never get the answers you seek this way. Buy the thing and set up a patch, any tone you're heart desires. Listen to it through a guitar cabinet, an FRFR speaker, and headphones. You'll have 3 distinct sounds. Then tell me that the way sound is monitored makes no difference.

 

Or you can just continue to be belligerent and dismissive of those who are trying to help you. No skin off my arse either way. Good luck to you.

 

Three distinct sounds you say? Well perhaps I'll be happy with all three. That is the point. I just want to know if the preset gets relatively close to the original sound, and hence I asked for a demonstration of it. I said nothing about my expectation being to sound exactly like Andy Summers.

 

No one if forcing you to help out, but the tone propaganda you're spewing out does not appropriately factor in the impact of it on the whole scheme of things, and it leads to frustration because it sounds like you're trying to making excuses in advance on my behalf. Again, most of the tone is in your rig (amps and effects), and I'm not sure how anyone could dispute this.

[cruisinon2]

Again, most of the tone is in your rig (amps and effects), and I'm not sure how anyone could dispute this.

No one disputed that. Not once. In fact, that's precisely what myself, and several others have said since the beginning. How wonderful that we're all in agreement now.

 

The patch itself is just one of a long list of variables that vary from one player to the next. What it sounds like to me is not what it will sound like to you, as we likely don't have the same exact gear. Whether or not you wish to believe that is entirely up to you. Now if you'll excuse me, it's getting late. I'm expected at the Ministry of Tone Propoganda by 9am. So many people to mislead, so little time...

[itsslash]

No one disputed that. Not once. In fact, that's precisely what myself, and several others have said since the beginning. How wonderful that we're all in agreement now.

 

The patch itself is just one of a long list of variables that vary from one player to the next. What it sounds like to me is not what it will sound like to you, as we likely don't have the same exact gear. Whether or not you wish to believe that is entirely up to you. Now if you'll excuse me, it's getting late. I'm expected at the Ministry of Tone Propoganda by 9am. So many people to mislead, so little time...

 

I'm so glad we're now in agreement, so can you remind me why you still haven't posted a clip? One would assume you can't even play the song.

[edstar1960]

Everybody above has already explained the situation and why someone else producing a sound demo with their equipment but with the same HD500 patch isn't going to prove anything to you except that the person in question can use the patch and can create a sound demo. What it sounds like will be subjective and will depend on how you listen to it. You may think it sounds nothing like it but I may thing it's a very close match.  Either way, it doesn't prove what it will sound like when you play that patch through your HD500 with your rig and your guitar - it may sound like the clip and it may sound different again.

 

I did wonder whether anyone has already done an HD500 demo of MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE - so I googled it and found this:

 

https://soundcloud.com/tapatw/cover-message-in-a-bottle

 

Have a listen and see what you think.   There may well be other HD500 demos out there for the same song that may be better or worse.

 

I don't believe it was made using the custom tone patch you have highlighted above BUT it was certainly created using an HD500 - so you should be able to tell whether or not it is good enough for your purposes.  So it should at least demonstrate what the HD500 is capable of.  And remember any TONE can be tweaked to suit your specific rig and tastes so you may well be able to get a better rendition of the MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE tone once you get your hands on an HD500 and tweak it.  The only way you can know for sure is to try one yourself.  Get one online with a 30 days return option and give it a go - if you don't like it - then you can always send it back.

 

Good luck!

[cruisinon2]

I'm so glad we're now in agreement, so can you remind me why you still haven't posted a clip? One would assume you can't even play the song.

Do you find that insulting people is an effective way to get them to do your bidding? No one else seems to be rushing to provide you with of clip of this exact patch either...I suppose everyone's ability should be called into question.

[cruisinon2]

for those who may want to demo the "X" HD patch linked by the OP..

I can see the line forming already...wonder if L6 pays for enough bandwidth to handle that much traffic. Well if the site crashes, we'll know why. ;)

[joel_brown]

Guitar players can be a testy bunch...lol 

 

But we do try and help each other in between the insults and accusations :-)

[JTSC777]

I have played this tune with various guitars/ modelers/ bands HD500/GT10/GP10/POD2.0 etc...and have never had a problem copping Andys chorused out clean / delay telecaster tone.The HD500 will do anything in capable hands.If you are a Police cover band guy or just a Police nut a damn good telecaster is going to get you there a lot quicker than an HD500/ GT100/Digitech etc...will.They can all do it.I have been playing covers with these modeling things since the first Digitechs RP-1 came out .What a POS that was lol!

[itsslash]

As far as I'm concerned, this tone is unreplicable. Even Andy himself couldn't get his live rig to sound like the original recording. I found his live sound to be cleaner, more jazz-like than the original, which instead had an unexplainable kick and punch despite little to no gain.

 

I have to accept that I will never get this tone, and I don't feel like life is worth living anymore.

 

[pianoguyy]

I don't feel like life is worth living anymore.

Quite frankly, if you are that concerned over it, you would actually be doing the world a favor by not living anymore. 

[pianoguyy]

But the "Andy can't get his live rig" scenario is exactly what we have told you from the beginning - recorded tone vs actual tone. You aren't trying to sound like Andy sounds. You are trying to sound like the record sounded after it has been recorded, re-recorded, multi-tracked, mixed, processed, and re-processed, and then played on your home stereo. That's a YUGE difference.

[BillBee]

Talking reality again............... hanging out with Cruisin are you?

[itsslash]

But the "Andy can't get his live rig" scenario is exactly what we have told you from the beginning - recorded tone vs actual tone. You aren't trying to sound like Andy sounds. You are trying to sound like the record sounded after it has been recorded, re-recorded, multi-tracked, mixed, processed, and re-processed, and then played on your home stereo. That's a YUGE difference.

 

Yes, but even the "recorded" tone needs to have some explanation behind it. Overdubbing and harmonizing the guitars won't do it alone. Do you want to try explaining what he did on that recording?

[joel_brown]

The PODHD will be very close.  Close enough that nobody will know the difference.  You need to get over being so anal about the exact tone.  It's not happening.  I used to date a girl years ago and she told me she was very anal.  I now know there are two meanings to that word.

[BillBee]

www.soundonsound.com in their Classic Tracks articles covered Every Breath You take and I suggest you google it up and read it. Its a good glimpse into the Police and what was done to capture that track at that time. Sometimes even in the studio the planets align briefly and it tough for them to recreate things later.

[thorneven]

I listened to the guitar-only sample above. I would think it would be relatively easy to emulate that guitar sound.  I'd use the bridge pickup, a bit of drive, compression, reverb and a light analog chorus effect during the verses.

[itsslash]

This tone cannot be replicated, and I firmly state that because I've never seen it done. I don't think I'll ever be happy again.

[pianoguyy]

Don't let the door hit you in your lollipop.

[itsslash]

So is anyone going to post a clip?