Iii. Classic Distortion

The Classic Distortion seems at first to be inferior to the two distortions mentioned above, and maybe it is; but it's worth considering when you need a bit of something different that you can't find with the two above. Its standalone distortion tone is similar to the Tube Drive. But its filtering can be similar to the Screamer.

The trick to reigning in this pedal is to keep things relatively neutral. The bass and treble parameters can be quite extreme. From there, it's all about finding the sweet spot on the Filter control. This parameter is very tricky - turning it up seems to brighten the tone and scoop it simultaneously. I find I usually stay around 50% and often go lower with it, rather than higher.

One thing I like about this effect is that it gets pretty much 100% clean at 0% Drive. This can make it more ideal than the Screamer, which cannot get as clean, for certain scenarios where you want the Screamer filter tone, but you don't want the scratchy high-end, like a soft lead tone.

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Iv. Overdrive

This is basically a fuzzier version of the Tube Drive. The break-up is looser and a bit more raucous. I don't really have any purpose where I use this as a filter, but I do use it as a standalone distortion for a fuzz tone. I find I have to give it a little pre-EQ bass boost to get it as dark and fuzzy as I want it. I don't really have anything else to say about it.

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V. Facial Fuzz

I'm not really into fuzz tones, but I do use this occasionally, particularly for a Hendrix or Eric Johnson tone. I find the key is to mix it with some Marshall amp distortion and give it medium gain. It mostly affects the break-up and looseness of the feel to your playing, while the amp distortion provides the real distortion flavor. I don't find it does much when used solely as a filter, and it's too crazy for my tastes when used as a standalone distortion. I also perform some EQ after the distortion to trim off some of the nasty low and high-end this thing produces, otherwise I get a muddy and gritty amp tone.

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Vi. Line 6 Distortion

This is the best distortion effect for standalone, high-gain distortion. I use it to simulate 90's Randall amp tones - it has that solid-state kind of tone where it seems unnaturally responsive and crunchy with no flub. I do like to pre-EQ it to add a little more midsy crunch and djent to it.

The difficult thing is finding a good amp to pair this with. I've had good results with some of the Marshalls, but you have to give them a little pre-amp Drive or the tone is weird - it almost gets a little fuzzy like the amp is struggling to work properly. Other good options are the Fender Blackfaces or the Divided by 13. The main thing to watch out for is excessive bass and treble. It's almost best to start with mids at 100% and everything else at 0% and work towards a natural-sounding tone. You're likely only going to be able to get so far, then use EQ effects to really shape things into a natural tone.

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Vii. Line 6 Drive

This may actually be the best distortion effect in the Pod. Its Mids parameter varies the type of distortion you get, so as you go from 0%-100% you go far from farty to almost fake-sounding tight djentiness. I don't go too far off 50%, but there's so much ability to dial this in, I don't need to. Once you find your Mids spot, then use Bass and Treble to dial it completely in.

I sometimes like to run a Mid-Focus EQ before or after this distortion to trim some of the ultra high-end if I'm trying to get a super bright distortion, because it can make it too bright in the very high frequencies, which tend to make amps create a grittier tone with a more broken up attack. With more conservative settings, it's not (or less) necessary, but is something to keep in mind.

I mostly use it as a filter (0% Drive), but it seems like I get the best tone when I attenuate my signal before this effect with a Volume effect, to make sure it's not distorting or even compressing at all. It does work well as a standalone (high Drive) distortion, and I also occasionally use it to add a slight bit of distortion and run it into amp distortion to get a nastier tone with a little buzz.

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Viii. Others

I find the others sound fake or just crazy. They'd be good for a kind of out-of-control intro tone, but I don't really mess with that very much.

The Heavy Distortion is supposed to be modeled after a Boss Metal Zone; but without the adjustable mid-frequency, it is nowhere near as versatile. I find I prefer to use the Line 6 Drive (which does have the adjustable mids contour) or Line 6 Distortion (which is more dialed in where you'd kind of want it) where I would use this.

The Jumbo Fuzz is supposed to give you a Zepplin tone, but I haven't tried it yet. The Fuzz Pi is all over the place, which I haven't found a use for - maybe Nirvana? The Jet Fuzz is a phaser + distortion - I think I'd prefer to keep those separate. Same with the Octave Fuzz - I'd rather use separate effects and have more control over each.

The Buzzsaw and Color Drive seem to just add some dirt into the tone - definitely not my thing.

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F. Power Amp D.E.P.'s

The best approach to these is to treat them like you would on a real amp. You'd likely spend most of your time finding the sweet spot for the master volume. Next you'd likely tweak the bias. Sag, hum, and bias excursion would be more complicated modifications to the amp that probably won't help the tone, other than the slight variation in such parameters you'd get from using different tubes.

Master

This controls the amount of power amp compression/distortion, similar to the master volume knob on a real amplifier. This setting affects how much the other DEP settings affect the tone - they are colors of power amp compression/distortion. Setting this to lower settings (even all the way to 0%) approximates the tone of the pre-amp only models. This is helpful to dial in a sweet spot between the default "pre" and "full" amp models. It is also useful to dial out unwanted power amp distortion on cleaner models.

For the high-gain models, the default 50% sounds about where I like it. I may tweak a little this way or that way to make the tone a little edgier or smoother, but I generally don't go far. The Treadplate becomes rather harsh at higher settings, while the Fireball and Uber tend to compress and get a little more life in the midrange, at the expense of high-end richness and smoothness. I like to turn up the power section to around 65% on the J-800 usually, which offers a more aggressive distortion than its preamp.

Sag

Controls the amount of power amp sag, which is a dip in voltage over a sustained load. I find it mainly causes a slower attack and a chunkier bottom end. See this wikipedia entry. Lower settings offer more of a dynamic attack and tighter feel, but can change the tone.

In general I leave this alone until I've made almost all my other tweaks. I'll use it to add more/less attack to the tone. I usually stay within 40-60%. Lower settings can make the tone a bit edgier bit thinner. If I want to thicken the tone up, I usually add Decay in the Cab DEP's to do so. But sometimes, I like to turn up both Sag and Decay to get it extra thick.

Some distortion effects introduce their own kind of sag to the tone, so you actually want to reduce the Sag DEP to compensate. Too much sag or thickness to a tone can make it sound artificial - like a solid state pedal that claims to give you teh brootz tonez. But not enough Sag and your palm mutes will sound more like an overdriven clean-channel crunch tone than a thick djent tone.

Hum

This controls the AC ripple plate voltage, which affects how the power tubes behave. For some amp models, this control has little effect; for others, it can be dramatic. It's hard to describe, and it varies from amp to amp. Also, the changes in tone are not completely linear. IE - if you find it to sound warm at 50% and cold at 25%, it's not necessarily going to sound really cold at 0% or really hot at 100%. Be warned: this control can cause weird things to happen to your tone when you move it off 50%. For instance, I liked the tone when I turned it up from 50 to 70% on the Uber model but noticed it introduced a faint, kind of digital-sounding ghost signal doubling my guitar parts. I almost always leave this control at 50%.

The big exception is the Uber model. I find a touch more Hum (55-60%) changes the distortion to thicken it up a little and make the overall tone a bit darker, which I really like. I also find setting it around 75% gives me a more evil tone, which I use to approximate a 5150. I have not had such luck manipulating this control on other amp models.

If you do choose to boost this, pay attention to your Master DEP setting. You will have to balance the two or you'll end up with a tone that hums and swirls and sounds like an out-of-tune radio. You can tell you've got too far when this control noticeably increases the amount of humming when you're not playing (provided you don't have a noise gate that is muting it).

Bias

Determines the bias of the power tubes. Lower settings resemble class AB operation where you have more headroom and where you do get clipping, it is more natural sounding. Higher settings resemble class A operation, which is often said to sound warmer (more mids/presence) but can get grittier-sounding clipping.

I recommend playing with this control from 0 to 100% for your patches. It can cause subtle frequency response changes to the tone that you can't get using EQ. It seems to improve the signal-to-noise ratio for certain frequencies. It can also change your distortion tone. While I generally end up around 50%, I'm usually slightly one way or the other. In some cases, I'll have this at 100% while others at 25%.

For some of the more vintage amp models that exhibit crossover distortion, turning this up can reduce or eliminate the crossover distortion; however, it will have a significant impact on tone. I prefer to reduce the Master DEP and boost Bias X.

Bias X

Controls bias excursion or how far the bias can deviate from its setting under different loads. I find this has the most effect on cleaner tones where the attack of the signal can be a spike exponentially larger than the sustained note - I've found higher settings clean up attack without sacrificing tone, acting like a compressor/limiter. Also useful to "lock-in" a bias setting by turning it down when you're getting power amp distortion. Or you can get some "bloom" to notes by turning it up.

Bias excursion seems to operate in phases. When a load is first applied (ie, when playing a note), the voltage overloads the tube, and the tube biases away from its normal setting. It then hits a point where it begins to recover and return to its natural bias. I assume this is why I feel like boosting this parameter can add "bloom" to a sustained note.

I most often leave this alone, or turn it up to get the vowel-y bloom effect I just mentioned. Just be careful. While at first it can generate some compression and a slight change in the distortion character, which as this transitions over time gets the "bloom" effect, going too far can make the entire tone change, in a way I feel is bad. Certain frequencies are not reproduced well, and the tone seems more noisy and dull. I find I like 65-70% and that's with a power section not being pushed very hard. The most I'll ever do is 80%, and that's when I've got the Master DEP set low, like 20%. Beyond that is the tone graveyard.

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G. Dual Amps

The Pod HD allows dual amps; however, I tend to avoid this, other than for dual cab purposes, which this section isn't referring to. I just don't like the way it sounds, especially for high gain. However, there are a couple ways to make it sound good, which I'll cover below. Additionally, it will eat up your DSP usage, putting strong limits on the amount and type of effects that you can use.

I first started experimenting with dual amps on the Pod X3. I figured if I like two different amps, mixing them together would sound great. Wrong! It felt like the amps were fighting each other, creating a noisy mush. To get them to clean up, I would have to pan one left and one right. This is one way to get a good sound from dual amps, but the problem is that you have to run this tone in stereo. If you want to record, you can't double track by panning one track hard right and the other hard left, which is what I like to do. You may think you can just record one stereo track with the two different amps already panned in the Pod, and this will sound just as good as if you recorded each amp as a mono track and panned them in your recording unit; but from my experience, it always sounds better to actually record two mono tracks.

The main way I could dial in a dual amp tone the way I liked was to basically crossfade their frequency responses. So I'd cut certain frequencies to the point where you couldn't hear them at all on amp A, then boost those frequencies so that they were the only ones you'd hear on B. In other words I'd mix the bottom end of one amp with the high end of another amp. Or I'd cut the mids out of one amp and dial in only mids on the other. I don't see this so much as mixing two amp tones as much as creating a single amp tone with parts of two different amps. IE - FrankenAmp.

Another way is to use different gain levels on the amps. So one amp would have close to or full saturation, while the other would be medium or low gain, providing just a touch of crunch. This can get you that distorted yet clean/crunchy tone.

In any case, I don't use dual amp tones, because I feel there is no significant tonal improvement, they take longer to dial in, and they limit the amount of effects you can run.

There is one exception to this rule, which is if your second amp is actually "amp disabled". This uses no DSP whatsoever. And it'll give you a clean tone, which you can use to reinforce your distorted tone. You want to pan both mixer channels to center and set the clean tone so it is just barely audible. You want it to really just add a little attack because a heavily distorted tone can lose some attack. Most of the time, I don't use this setup; however, because it is difficult to get right and I don't find it really delivers a much better tone. It's easier to screw up than get right. If you do use this approach, try adding some compression and EQ to the channel with no amp; so you don't get too much attack or bright clean tone.

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H. "Full" vs. "Pre"

You'll notice there are two versions of every amp on the Pod HD, one with the amp name, and one with the amp name plus "pre". The "pre" amps only model the pre-amp section of that amp. They were designed to be used in combination with the Line6 DT-50 line of amps, which have switchable power sections/modes. Of course, most of us don't have DT-50's.

People on the forums have argued a lot about which versions you "should" use for any particular setup. For instance, I've often seen posts saying that if you are running the Pod to a real amp, you should use the "pre" version, because otherwise you're getting the power amp emulation plus power amp distortion from your real amp. Likewise, if you run "direct", you "should" use the "full" model, otherwise you're not getting any power amp in the sound. They argue that you want one power amp coloration, not zero or two.

This is logical, yet I disagree nonetheless. The power amp emulation has a rather profound effect on the way the Pod's amp models sound, even if you turn down the "Master Volume" DEP or set the bias colder. Your real amp is unlikely to replicate how that amp model's power section sounds on the Pod. You might not be cranking your amp to the point where it's getting power amp distortion, even at gig levels - many power sections are designed to have lots of headroom and remain transparent. And even if your amp's power section does get pushed into overdrive, it may still sound good with the "full" model on the Pod. Just because you're running two power amp colorations doesn't mean it will necessarily sound worse.

On the other hand, there is a certain crispness in the "pre" models that seems to be lost in the "full" models, even with the Master DEP at 0%. Even if the frequency response is not ideal, it can be tweaked to where you want it with amp EQ or EQ effects.

Thus, in general I prefer to use the "full" models for "direct" tones, while I'm about 50/50 on which to use for "live" uses - it depends on the patch.

Keep in mind that if you have a power amp that easily distorts, it is more likely to sound better with the "pre"s than the "full"s. I encourage you to experiment to determine what suits you best. On the other hand, some tones rely on power amp distortion. If your power amp isn't providing the same breakup, you will have to use the "full" model or won't be able to achieve the desired tone, even if you crank your real amp.

Finally, if your real power amp does distort at volume levels you will be playing at, take note to make patches that distort it in a desirable way. As noted earlier, the EQ of the tone you send to your amp will greatly affect the way it breaks up. If you use too much bass, the power amp distortion may make the tone muddier than you like. Your gear is limiting you. You'll have to brighten up your patches to compensate or get new gear or play at lower volumes.

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Date: 2016-01-03; view: 803