I moved my main pedalboard to clean that particular spot of the room (I do suppose my board is getting a little big if there's a substantial amount of floor that doesn't see the light of day). It happened to be in front of my practice rig consisting of my Line 6 gear: the PODX3 and the Spider III.
"Hey, since everything's together, how would it sound if I hooked it all up?"
Yeap. Pedalboard into PODX3 into Spider III. I set the POD like a rack, with the amp/speaker sim on minimal EQ, modulation and delay on post.
I'll be honest: it wasn't impressive. Maybe my signal chain was too long and caused signal degradation, or the digital tone of the PODX3 and the lack of tubes in the Spider III really don't blend well with analog pedals. After some (rather dissatisfying) tweaking, I gathered that the best tone was to turn the amp sim completely off, flatten the EQ on the amp, and rely on the pedalboard as the main preamp and EQ.
Maybe I could improve the tone by:
- Using better cables (I'm notorious for using cheapo, lao-pok cables), and having a clean buffer in the front of the chain to push the signal through all that mess. Some of friends insist on Lava and Monster cables, which can cost nearly as much as the pedalboard when used liberally.
- In the digital domain, ditch the Line 6 PODX3, which you have to admit is rather inexpensive compared to what the pros use, and go with a rack setup of the Axe FX by Fractal Audio (two of my favorite musicians, Dave Wallimann and Pete Thorn, use this setup almost exclusively). The modern digital has come a long way in a rather short space of time
I'll stick to my analog pedalboard, with my PODX3 as a backup and the "studio rack" for additional effects. You've got to admit, despite all the flak Line 6 receives for its inferior digital amp sim, when you apply its modulation and delay effects in the mix, no one can tell it's Line 6.
2 comments:
hey, i am planning on running my pedal board through the spider 3 on the clean channel with no modulation on the amp just the eq tweaked. then use the record out on the amp to plug in direct and use the amp as a monitor you can say, how would that work? thanks a lot!
Hi there :) Do you mean plug in direct to your interface to record from the direct out of the amp? It will definitely work--some of my videos use the direct out of the Spider III as the base guitar tone.
However, when you direct out of the amp, the speaker output is also killed. I haven't searched enough to determine if there's a mod to bypass that, otherwise, it'll be the perfect solution to direct-to-console/PA while using the amp as a monitor!
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