Going To The Dark Side

[Skarekrough]

A week or so ago I realized something....the callouses on my fingers were almost completely gone. I guess with the new baby in the house and working past when he goes to sleep I just haven't been playing...well...at all.

So, I decided to get a POD XT and start practicing at night through headphones.

Picked it up on Saturday and have fiddled with it some on and off. THere's alot of "interesting" sounds in the unit...and some that are entirely worthless. The Mac support is nice and within 5 minutes of plugging in the USB cable I had the interface up on my PowerBook and was altering patches to make them actually usable.

I can see this as being alot of fun. I kinda combines the geekiness of computing with guitar....two things I'm down for almost all the time.

Next step is running it into the PowerBook and setting up some iTunes playlists to practice to.

None of my amps are going anywhere....but I can definetley see how a device like this would be a great tool for portability in a pinch!

 

[seafoamer]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

u coulda save some $$ by just stickin' earplugs into ur baby.

 

[Davey]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

u coulda save some $$ by just stickin' earplugs into ur baby.

:lmao:



i agree. for silent stuff, fooling around or demo recording (hell, even a full blown recording) the pod stuff is great. i still wish i had my guitar port

 

[yeti]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

You've touched on something I've always wondered about. Why do products like this always come with 90% of the presets sounding unbelievably bad? These are the guys who develop the technology, and yet they can't hear how awful (or just plain off) their settings sound? It's like they have a team of chimps doing the presets.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

I bought a POD a few years ago and have hardly ever used it... got the 2.0 with the long board controller... Nice unit... used it for a few demo recordings and as a amp backup for gigs incase something went really wrong with my amps... I have used my POD for late night jamming a lot when i had first bought it as i'm a swift worker my free time is after 1am most of the time... after a while i was left with this huge hole inside because i missed my amps and i really started to hate headphones.....

I have my eye on some new multifx modelers including the newer PODxt and the VOX SE floorboard.... I plan to get a Keyboard amp so i can buy more of these FX things and run them into the keyboard amp for home practices... Thinking of selling off a few unwanted things and down sizing again.... MultiFX units would be a great way to clear some of my practice space up.

 

[DeadSkinSlayer3]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

One thing I suggest is some nice headphones with the XT, and the model packs!

My XT sounds equally awesome with my Sennheiser HD280's, that I normally use for mixing/tracking, and with my PX-100's, that are more for normal listening. They both crush my old Sony MDR's.

 

[Skarekrough]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

One thing I suggest is some nice headphones with the XT, and the model packs!

My XT sounds equally awesome with my Sennheiser HD280's, that I normally use for mixing/tracking, and with my PX-100's, that are more for normal listening. They both crush my old Sony MDR's.

I've been using cheap-o Walkman headphones and I was wondering about that. Might be an investment down the road a bit; I'm still stinging from the price entry from buying it new.

Model packs will probably happen after that. I'd like to feel like I can get the unit to do what I want it to without needing the USB connection first. As much as I love tweaking and torking through the PowerBook I know that it's a skill I should put the time into learning.

I found THAT out the hard way before a gig once!

Another thing I noticed was that while some of the patches sounded like garbage, some were VERY dependent on the specific guitar. While this may seem logical the effect was MUCH more than I thought it would actually be and was VERY dramatic between axes like my 73' Strat, my Tele and a Les Paul clone.

 

[aleclee]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

Check out http://www.customtone.com/

Line 6 Edit beats the shizzle out of navigating the POD's menus and gives you the ability to access the L6 patch library. There's a lot of good stuff (and plenty of crap) available there.

 

[DeadSkinSlayer3]

Re: Going To The Dark Side

I've been using cheap-o Walkman headphones and I was wondering about that. Might be an investment down the road a bit; I'm still stinging from the price entry from buying it new.

Model packs will probably happen after that. I'd like to feel like I can get the unit to do what I want it to without needing the USB connection first. As much as I love tweaking and torking through the PowerBook I know that it's a skill I should put the time into learning.

I found THAT out the hard way before a gig once!

Another thing I noticed was that while some of the patches sounded like garbage, some were VERY dependent on the specific guitar. While this may seem logical the effect was MUCH more than I thought it would actually be and was VERY dramatic between axes like my 73' Strat, my Tele and a Les Paul clone.

I just got the PX-100's in today, and after close evaluation... these headphones KICK ASS, and only cost 45 bucks. I prefer them with my POD to my HD280's, and when listening to music, the only difference between the two is the isolation and the stereo spread. It's wider with the 280's, but we're comparing closed and open headphones here.

It's honestly not that hard to tweak once you get down to it. I haven't used the manual once.

I actually like how responsive it is to axes... my Behringer used to make EMG's and a 59 sound the same.