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Hx Stomp or Pod Go?


Valgua
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Hi!

 

I am an amateur guitarist in search for a good modelling processor. After some reading, I have boiled down my options to two Line 6 products: the HX Stomp and the Pod Go. They are in the same price neighbourhood and seem really nice. What should I go for? My criteria are:

 

1) Good build quality and reliability.

2) Good tones (duh), but as far as I understand the two devices are identical from this perspective.

3) Good headphone listening quality (I want to practice when I am away from home). 

4) Good interface.

 

Thanks!

 

Filippo

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The word 'good' in all your criteria makes this difficult since it's so subjective. Both devices provide 'good' results in all your criteria, imho. But your good and my good may be different. If you can be more specific and quantitative that would help.

 

Consider their technical and differences differences - e.g. size, number of switches, number of simultaneous FX,  built-in expression pedal, ..... You don't mention any of those considerations in your criteria. Are NONE of those important to you?

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POD Go has more buttons and an Expression pedal, but has less DSP, so a couple of effects aren't included. Also, no parallel processing.

Based on your beginner status and related sketchy description of requirements, I'd go POD Go.

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Sorry, Silverhead, you're perfectly right. I'll try to be clearer. I am a complete beginner when it comes to digital modelling. I guess that I am asking this: what are the advantages of the HX Stomp vis-a vis the Pod Go? Is it just a matter of form-factor (i.e. more switches vs better portability)? I read that the HX Stomp is more flexible when it comes to organizing the effects chain, but in what real life scenarios does this added flexibility really pay off? What makes you prefer one product over the other? 

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14 minutes ago, Valgua said:

Rd2rk, thanks for the reply. What are the advantages of parallel processing? Is the DSP in the Stomp substantially bigger? 

 

IF you have enough DSP (a limitation of both units) you can run two amps in parallel, combining the sounds and essentially creating a new amp. Or, you can put a delay on one path and a reverb on the other and vary the contribution of each to the signal independently, vs reverbing a delay or delaying a reverb. There's other applications, but again, this is advanced stuff that generations of electric guitarists have done without and, honestly, as a beginner, is more than you need to worry about.

 

The difference in DSP is not major. The "flexibility" in the signal chain that you alluded to is not a big deal.

On POD Go there are dedicated blocks - Wah, Volume, Amp, Speaker, Preset EQ.

You get four user selectable blocks, but WHERE the blocks go in the chain is flexible. The Stomp allows you six blocks, but you'll most always need AT LEAST an Amp/Cab Block, so effectively, you have only one more user selectable block than on POD Go.

Supposedly, in v3.0, Stomp will have eight blocks, but since the DSP remains the same, the usefulness of the additional two blocks is questionable.

 

Another way to look at it - POD Go is like a traditional, linear pedal-board. Stomp has a couple of nice additional, but absolutely non-essential, features.

Stomp is $150 more than POD Go, and you'll need an Expression pedal, and you'll want more buttons, and that might take you into MIDI land, and all of that adds to the cost of the Stomp.

 

Future updates - Stomp will get more feature improvements, and won't (likely) be limited by DSP when it comes to new effects. It's rumored that Stomp MIGHT be getting Command Center, giving more flexibility to the buttons it doesn't have, and allowing better MIDI control of external devices.

 

If you're planning on integrating with an analog pedal-board, get Stomp, it's smaller.

 

If you just want to plug in and rock out, get POD Go.

 

This could go on, but that pretty much covers the main points.

 

I have a full sized Helix Floor and a Stomp. Had POD Go been available when I bought the stomp, I'd have bought the POD Go.

Since part of my goal was to ELIMINATE analog pedal-boards, I'll probably trade the Stomp for a POD Go.

 

YMMV.

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Add to previous:

 

My ONLY major gripe with both units is - I also have a Powercab 112+. Neither device has an AES out, which I understand, size constraints. While the Stomp has 5-pin MIDI Outs, the best you can do is create Presets in PC112+ and match them to the default Program Changes sent by Stomp. POD Go also sends PCs, but only has USB out and, since PC112+ doesn't have a built in USB Host function, you need a USB Host box (or be tethered to a laptop) to do that. AARGH! If it isn't one thing.......

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Thanks for a very informative reply! Just one more (certainly dumb) question: when you add a pedal in the unit's fx loop (for instance a distortion pedal which is not modelled) does that take up any DSP or, as I guess, just a little quantity?

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I would recommend the Pod GO just based on your inexperience with modelling. The HX Stomp is small but has more "options" than the Pod GO. If you want to just plug in, pull up an amp and some effects and play, Pod GO is for you. If you want to tweak your tone to death and spend a week deciding whether you want to have to amps or one amp and two cabinets, where you want the amp's bias set, etc. then the Stomp is for you. Again I would strongly recommend the Pod GO. It's just less user intensive and as a beginning guitarist, you want to focus more on playing and not the minutia of patch creation.

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