Highroller54 Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 Hello, I recently purchased a 500x and I'm having an issue getting more that an extremely brash and harsh/very bright tone from it. I have tried the following: 1. 4 cable method - too much hum 2. Directly into the return of the amp, harsh and very little control over volume levels 3. Direct into the front of the amp on the clean channel, sounds better, but with the amps treble and mids nearly off still too bright and tinny. Things I have tried, utilities setup, changed different inputs from combo amp, to combo stack and so on. The studio direct setting running directly into the front of the amp seems to sound the best, but still sound way to bright and cheesy. Even most of the factory presets sound wierd and have no tone, like playing a guitar made from metal, buzzy, fuzzy and metallic sounding, no good at all. Can someone help me what am I doing wrong? Equipment Les Paul with 57 classic neck, 57 classic plus bridge Marshall DSL40C Guitar into guitar in on 500x Left mono out to amp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radatats Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 Sounds like you have the makings of a nice rig there. First thing I would do is reflash the POD to factory using Monkey and not saving the presets. Back them up on the computer first. Next do a global settings reset and recalibrate the exp pedal. Look through the Knowledge Base for detailed instructions. Set the switch by the exp pedal to Amp, not Line. Next try your POD with just guitar and headphones. Set output to Studio Direct. Setup a patch with just a Blackface amp with stock settings. Set up one with the pre and another with the full amp. How does it sound? Tweak it if you need to but don't add anything else yet. If it sounds good here, it should still sound good through your amp. Connect Left 1/4 out to FX return. FX loop turned on? Set amp master half way, POD master off, guitar volume midway. Slowly increase POD master as you play and see what it sounds like. Does it match the headphones? Is it even close? Try both the full amp patch and the pre patch, both with identical settings. Try these things and get back to us and we can go from there. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gckelloch Posted December 22, 2013 Share Posted December 22, 2013 It sounds like a good plan, radatats. A couple of things in your second paragraph are a little unclear. You should probably over-clarify some of the things in the last half just for good measure. It doesn't hurt to overstate in some ways. Also, when connecting the HD500X 1/4" outs to a guitar amp FX return, which is essentially a lo-Z line level in, I think you want to set the 1/4" out switch next to the exp pedal to line, not amp. The amp option is for sending to the Hi-Z guitar input on a guitar amp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highroller54 Posted December 22, 2013 Author Share Posted December 22, 2013 Sounds like you have the makings of a nice rig there. First thing I would do is reflash the POD to factory using Monkey and not saving the presets. Back them up on the computer first. Next do a global settings reset and recalibrate the exp pedal. Look through the Knowledge Base for detailed instructions. Set the switch by the exp pedal to Amp, not Line. Next try your POD with just guitar and headphones. Set output to Studio Direct. Setup a patch with just a Blackface amp with stock settings. Set up one with the pre and another with the full amp. How does it sound? Tweak it if you need to but don't add anything else yet. If it sounds good here, it should still sound good through your amp. Connect Left 1/4 out to FX return. FX loop turned on? Set amp master half way, POD master off, guitar volume midway. Slowly increase POD master as you play and see what it sounds like. Does it match the headphones? Is it even close? Try both the full amp patch and the pre patch, both with identical settings. Try these things and get back to us and we can go from there. :) Tried your suggestions, but backwards, nothing seemed to work. Resetting the system back to Factory settings and starting over is what did the trick. I now how a good sound started and am building on that. I think when I originally did the firmware upgrade something didn't load correctly and re-installing the firmware fixed it. Thank you for your help, greatly appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radatats Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 that's great! have fun with it, I am sure you will love it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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