Line 6 POD HD Thread

[RickyCigs]

Hi I am using Pod hd 500 since last xmas and I have spent a LOT of time trying to get a good hi-gain sound with my ibanez rg470, I tried changing everything from impedance settings, to second imput (auto,guitar,aux,variax...) , to every possibile setting... I also changed my guitar strings with different gauges and nothing helped (now I'm back with eb regular slinkys).. I wasn't happy until yesterday I made my big discovery.

I have found that if your sound is muddy with every high gain amplifier or it is very hard to listen to it without losing your ears (very boomy lows and harshy highs) i have the solution for you:
maybe I have very bassy/muddy pickups (they are ibanez stock INF1 and INF2) but the final solution i have found (thanks also to meambobbo's guides and patches!) is:
1) set input 1 to guitar and input 2 to variax
2) set impedance to auto
3) do not use pad switcher, leave it on normal, it kills your dynamics
4) (and most important) PUT A MID FOCUS EQ and cut almost all the lows!!
If you want to get a modern mesa/bogner sound, use

Either posting the patch or sound clips would have saved you a lot of typing lol

That being said, your pickups are a big part of the problem. I've never been happy with any ibanez pickup. The attack always seems to be piss-poor and having a decent pickup set makes dialing in a tight sound just so much easier.

Also, with your gain at anywhere over 50% your losing a ton of tightness and only adding muddiness. In my opinion from 51-100 on the gain knob is the place where kids that just bought their first amp live. Might as well turn your bass and treble to 10 and your mids to 0 lol

 

[meambobbo]

I have recently found I clip a mid focus eq easily as the first piece of my chain which was adding too much grit to my lead tones on my pick attack. I found I need to put a volume effect in front with volume on 40%. Then I set the mid focus gain to 75%.

For some patches clipping the eq was actually causing the brightness that got my distortion tone where I wanted. I found a light touch of Drive using a Screamer was a better fit but be wary of having it inject too much screamer tone into the sound. Light drive and use more treble than tone

 

[PodHdBean]

ill make some clips with these for you meambobbo!

here are some samples of the latest tweaks I've made:

Petrucci Mark II Lead:
http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneDemo/patches/SH_DT-Mk2L_0823.h5e

Petrucci Mark IV Rhythm
http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneDemo/patches/SH_DT-Mk4R_0823.h5e

Periphery Rhythm:
http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneDemo/patches/MM_PeriphR_0822.h5e

Vai Ultra Zone/Story of Light Lead:
http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneDemo/patches/SH_Vai-UZ_0823.h5e

 

[Paolosev91]

Either posting the patch or sound clips would have saved you a lot of typing lol

That being said, your pickups are a big part of the problem. I've never been happy with any ibanez pickup. The attack always seems to be piss-poor and having a decent pickup set makes dialing in a tight sound just so much easier.

Also, with your gain at anywhere over 50% your losing a ton of tightness and only adding muddiness. In my opinion from 51-100 on the gain knob is the place where kids that just bought their first amp live. Might as well turn your bass and treble to 10 and your mids to 0 lol

You are right, my pickups are muddy, but the attack isn't bad at all! Maybe it's just too strong, and it's the reason why I play with half my tone knob and also I can't boost my signal too much before the amp (the only way to use amp gain under 50). Maybe changing pickups I would get a smoother attack so that I can boost the signal and then turn down the amp gain.
Does gain at 50 mean gain at "10" on a real amp? I should have read somewhere. Like line6 gave us room for extra-gain

 

[RedSkull]

You gotta try this tone, its pretty much one of the best tone you can get naturally out of the POD HD . Thanks a lot to A11outwar for his settings




and now how it sounds with EZdrummer Metal Machine

Metal Machine death metal by Redskull on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

 

[meambobbo]

Want to sound like Petrucci?

POD HD500 DT MkII tone by meambobbo on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

That's all Pod - no external IR's or external processing

 

[RickyCigs]

You gotta try this tone, its pretty much one of the best tone you can get naturally out of the POD HD . Thanks a lot to A11outwar for his settings




and now how it sounds with EZdrummer Metal Machine

Metal Machine death metal by Redskull on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

i actually tried this one a few weeks ago and didnt like it at all. it seemed way too harsh to my ears. some of the tones that he didnt share i thought sounded a lot better.


one thing that bugs me is people that post youtube demos of the hd series on a webcam mic. its too easy to just plug it in and record direct on any program to try and demo a tone like that!

 

[RedSkull]

i actually tried this one a few weeks ago and didnt like it at all. it seemed way too harsh to my ears. some of the tones that he didnt share i thought sounded a lot better.

Maybe, I can confirm however that this patch came alive on Seymour Duncan Blackouts while it was ok at best on my previous stock Dean pickups (if ever that could be a factor)

 

[RickyCigs]

You are right, my pickups are muddy, but the attack isn't bad at all! Maybe it's just too strong, and it's the reason why I play with half my tone knob and also I can't boost my signal too much before the amp (the only way to use amp gain under 50). Maybe changing pickups I would get a smoother attack so that I can boost the signal and then turn down the amp gain.
Does gain at 50 mean gain at "10" on a real amp? I should have read somewhere. Like line6 gave us room for extra-gain

gain at 50 isnt like gain at 10 on a real amp. basically what im saying is try not to live in the extreme of any settings. you shouldnt need a TON of eq or to cut all the lows altogether to get a good tone. all the settings work together, so a very high setting in one place makes the settings of something else different/touchier.

although, i am kind of a minimalist when it comes to tone. i try to get a good tone out of as little as possible. made things easier when i was jamming/gigging with two bands at a time. not to mention that half of them were retarded and couldnt even grasp the concept of which cable went where on an fx loop.....


all that being said, when the hell are we getting the soldano models for the hd500/pro???!!!!?!?!? this waiting is annoying as hell!!

 

[RedSkull]

Want to sound like Petrucci?

POD HD500 DT MkII tone by meambobbo on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

That's all Pod - no external IR's or external processing

pretty cool I'm taking it for future use as a lead basis to work with

 

[RickyCigs]

Maybe, I can confirm however that this patch came alive on Seymour Duncan Blackouts while it was ok at best on my previous stock Dean pickups (if ever that could be a factor)

I tried it with my ibanez rg927qm with a crunch lab and my rga8 with d-activators and it seemed the same way for both. I'm looking at blackouts for my next guitar build for the ease of wiring, so I'll have to compare then I guess.

 

[Kal]

I'm thinking about purchasing the Pod HD Pro but have very little knowledge on how anything works so it would help me a great deal if someone could answer my questions.

1. Would the Pod HD Pro work on its own straight out of the box plugged directly into a computer running Logic Pro via USB? If not, what would I require to set up the Pod HD Pro so I can record?

2. I am currently using the UX2 interface with Pod Farm. Does the HD Pro work as an interface?

3. In general, what do I need and how on earth do I set it up for recording in Logic Pro?

Thanks

 

[FireInside]

I'll just leave this hear for ya:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/gear-equipment/133583-line-6-pod-hd-thread.html

120+ pages of info.

 

[meambobbo]

I got decent tones from my rga8 w stock pups by cutting all the bass like that. Patches sounded like crap on my other guitars. I put blackouts in it and I found to get a good sound I needed to cut more bass than usual but it was way less extreme than the stock pups. Not sure if the guitar or the pups make it so dark. Planning to swap the blackouts for d activators

 

[TaylorMacPhail]

I'm thinking about purchasing the Pod HD Pro but have very little knowledge on how anything works so it would help me a great deal if someone could answer my questions.

1. Would the Pod HD Pro work on its own straight out of the box plugged directly into a computer running Logic Pro via USB? If not, what would I require to set up the Pod HD Pro so I can record?

2. I am currently using the UX2 interface with Pod Farm. Does the HD Pro work as an interface?

3. In general, what do I need and how on earth do I set it up for recording in Logic Pro?

Thanks

The HD Pro IS a "soundcard" so you would just make a new track in Logic, just as audio, then make sure you select the POD in the In/Out devices, I can't get too specific because I don't own Logic though (so yeah, you can ditch the X2 ). I have Windows and I would always have issues with my program (Cubase 5) not detecting the POD correctly so I just went into my playback/recording devices in windows and disabled them, so it frees it up from Windows and lets Cubase get priority.

As far as the POD itself goes, just make sure you set your output to "Studio/Direct" (hold down the View button, it'll say I/O options and scroll over with the D-pad to output).

Before you do any of this though man, I'd highly suggest downloading Line 6 Monkey (and registering your product). Line 6 Monkey is a program where you can see what updates need to be downloaded for your pod, it's pretty slick.

 

[Shask]

Interesting interview-piece from Dino of Fear Factory if you are looking for the modern FF tone!


News







My favorite feature of the POD HD Pro is that you can run two heads at once. I usually have two heads, the Cali Tread, or I have the ANGLE F-Ball [editor’s note: Cali Tread is based on* 2001 Mesa/Boogie® Dual Rectifier® Solo; ANGLE F-Ball 100 is based on* ENGL Fireball 100]. I usually have those EQ’d slightly differently. The F-Ball has a little bit more low-end so it pumps more air.



I do all my processing within the POD HD—I run it through a compressor, then a gate—not hard gate, but just a little bit of a noise gate. Then I got a Screamer cranked, and that gives it some of that midrange tone that I need [editor’s note: Screamer is based on* Ibanez® Tube Screamer®].
Then I run it through another gate, and then I usually run it through a studio EQ, so I can get more of the curve that I need, and then usually another EQ—all in the POD. That’s it. I mix it like 25 percent left and 25 percent right. I just crank it and it sounds amazing. I use the 412 Tread V-30 cab on both with the Shure 57 off-axis microphone model in the POD [editor’s note: 412 Tread V-30 is based on* a Mesa/Boogie® cabinet, 4x12 inch Celestion® Vintage 30 speakers]. It sounds amazing.



You can go to any YouTube Fear Factory video from 2012 and see and hear what I'm talking about. My sound man loves it because it's so easy. He's basically just turning it up. Maybe he adds a couple of things, nothing really major. Usually the monitor guys just tell me, "Make it flat." And that's it. 99 percent of the time, I don't do any tweaking on the POD live.

 

[ArrowHead]

(so yeah, you can ditch the X2 ).

Careful - if that UX2 is acting as a dongle for Pod Farm it will NOT work with Pod HD.

It's been a while (many years) since I used Pod Farm or a Line 6 interface, so it might not work that way anymore.

 

[PodHdBean]

i hope we get this update by the end of September.Line 6 sure knows how to stall =/

 

[MikeH]

Having some fun with the presets in the Best of HD section.

Destinee by Mike Herman on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

 

[Kal]

The HD Pro IS a "soundcard" so you would just make a new track in Logic, just as audio, then make sure you select the POD in the In/Out devices, I can't get too specific because I don't own Logic though (so yeah, you can ditch the X2 ). I have Windows and I would always have issues with my program (Cubase 5) not detecting the POD correctly so I just went into my playback/recording devices in windows and disabled them, so it frees it up from Windows and lets Cubase get priority.

As far as the POD itself goes, just make sure you set your output to "Studio/Direct" (hold down the View button, it'll say I/O options and scroll over with the D-pad to output).

Before you do any of this though man, I'd highly suggest downloading Line 6 Monkey (and registering your product). Line 6 Monkey is a program where you can see what updates need to be downloaded for your pod, it's pretty slick.

Thanks for the info So would the Pod HD Pro work just plugged into the computer by USB without any power amp, interface or anything I am unaware of. Does it need a power source or anything?