All my cleans sound with distortion

[Siriur]

Hello all,

 

I am new on all of this. I've been playing my electric guitar for some time. And I bought the Line 6 PODHD500 some time ago and a friend helped me out to put some basic sounds, as a metalcore sound, clean, solo, etc. I use as a amp the Line 6 Spider IV (15).

Well, my problem is that I was a long time without using my pedal, so I restarted and I don't know anything about this kind of things, but with the help of some videos I got all drivers, etc etc, and the edit program, where I have put some metalcore and djent rythms on it and sounds great, the problem is when I use acoustic or clean tones, such as piezos, acoustic, etc. It always sounds with distortion, I can't get anything clean. I have my amp with metal, but if I put it in clean it doesn't sound at all. So I don't know how to fix it, I just want a clean / acoustic sound to some intros or to play some indie.

 

Does anyone know what's happening?

 

If something is not clear for my english, sorry and feel free to ask.

 

Greetings from Spain!

[pianoguyy]

there's many reasons why it could be distorted.
But, the most common reason why cleans are distorted on the 500 is the dual input.

You should set input one to guitar and input 2 to something other than guitar or same. Variax is always a good choice but it depends on if and what you are using as a 2nd input.

[Triryche]

Are you using a clean channel on the Spider?

[BBD_123]

It's a very good idea to build tones using only headphones directly connected to the HD500X.

 

That way, you know *exactly* what it is doing.

[Siriur]

Are you using a clean channel on the Spider?

If I use the clean channel on the Spider, the distorsion sounds such as Generic metalcore (I just downloaded), sounds bad, more like an 70s old guitar...

[Siriur]

there's many reasons why it could be distorted.

But, the most common reason why cleans are distorted on the 500 is the dual input.

You should set input one to guitar and input 2 to something other than guitar or same. Variax is always a good choice but it depends on if and what you are using as a 2nd input.

This is on the edit programm, right?? Only for the clean presets or for distortion as well?

 

I download the presets from the line 6 customTone, they should be already done to sound well, shouldn't they?

[Siriur]

well just to inform, I have the amp in clean mode, and changing a couple of things on the presets, I am being able to get some better distortion sounds and the clean/acoustic sound so far. Still a lot to improve, but enough to get started I guess. Please do answer my question if you will so I can get to know better the pedal and how to work with it. Thank you so much for your help.

[pianoguyy]

I download the presets from the line 6 customTone, they should be already done to sound well, shouldn't they?

Customtone is no different than anything else.

Some people like Coke, some like Pepsi. Very few like Tab or RC.

Wikipedia has some good information, but there are also people who aren't smart enough to form a complete sentence writing information. And we can't forget, there's people who intentionally fill out bogus information.

Not every email selling peepee enlargement pills are a scam. Some are scams, some are viruses, some are vitamins that increase blood flow.

So, no, Customtone is not an automatic assumption of goodness.

[pianoguyy]

This is on the edit programm, right?? Only for the clean presets or for distortion as well?

 

It is easy to see in the editor. But it is available on the machine. And there is also a global setting that will override the settings of each patch. 

[pfsmith0]

+1 to pianoguy's comments about the input settings. Setting Input 2 to "Same" is a good way to overdrive your inputs (and generate bad overload distortion). One other point, if you have no preamp for your piezo acoustic then set the input impedance to the highest it can go (3M?). Those can sound really wonky/quacky/distorted when driving low impedances.