To Pre or not to Pre, that is the question

[njc235]

I have the 'dream rig'.  I have become more and more frustrated trying to get decent usable live tones from the rig to the point where I'm thinking of chopping it in for a guitar, an amp, and a couple of FX pedals.  Glen Delaune has some wonderful sounding patches which I bought but when I changed the amps in the patches to the 'Pre' version, the sound died.  When I try to ramp up the volume, it sounds like I'm playing through an old 5w Tandy (RadioShack in the US) blown speaker underwater.  Now, if I leave the patches as they are; using the non-Pre amps models, the sound is great.  My question therefore is why should I bother with the Pre's?  Am I using the valves in my DT25 head as they were intended or am I in some what bypassing all of the goodness in the rig by using the full modelled amps?

 

For reference here is my setup;

 

JTV59p connected with VDI to 

HD500 connected with AES/EBU via L6 link to DT25 head connected with 2 x mono 6.3mm to 

2 x L6 1x12 cabs

 

Global inputs on the HD500 are set to Varian 1 and Aux 2

[jakeman19]

This is a common thing we all run into when trying to match the non pre sounds to the pre amp sounds. It takes a bit of tweaking. When changing from non pre to pre amp you always have to match the drive, bass, mid, treble, presents, volume etc. because they change to a default setting or at least they never seem to match from one to the other. This is annoying. Yes, the tube in the preamp would not be used if you don't choose pre model. The back end, power amp side, does use the tubes. I find it easiest to use the Pod HD Edit software as it makes it easier to see the change in values. There are also some deeper editing you can do like sag etc but I haven't played to much with that. What you might also consider is if you like the way the Pod sounds without preamp, you might want to look at a Full Range, Flat Responce, FRFR, amp instead of a DT. Just a thought. In the end remember if sounds good it is good. Some here just don't bother changing to the pre as what sound they are getting works for them so they don't tweak anything that much. 

 

Jd