The Watering Hole

I hooked it up, plugged in my guitar, played every factory preset, and wanted to box the thing up and send it back. Really could not see it as a contender against the RP1000, much less the 11R or Axe FX.  :-/

Then I updated it to the latest firmware and went to Customtonedotcom and dowloaded about 100 presets with names appearing relevant to the kind of tones I wanted to hear. Gimour, various Mesa, JCM, Stevie Ray, Van Halen, Mark Knopfler, etc...

Of course, weeding through user presets to find the good ones is also tiresome.  ::)

But, after a few I found one called something like "Dual JCM", basically 2 JCM800's with different cabs panned left and right. The gain was jacked way too high on the amps, I dialed it back to less than half of where each amps knobs were, and wow, great rock rhythm sound. I am really wondering how it will translate to the PA. Sounds huge through my studio monitors.

After a bit I found another one I love, one of my favorites, it uses the Dr Z amp (PHD Motorhead or something like that) and wow what a great sounding model. such articulation, clarity and punch. Not a high gain model at all, but great for ZZ Top or other blues-rock music. I almost think the price of the HD500 is worth this model.  ;D

Dug through some more (been doing this since 5:00, it's about midnight now) and found a Steve Ray Vaughn patch that, when I kicked my Tempest into single coil mode, really nails the vibe of SRV's Pride and Joy. It nails the vibe, I would not say it is dead on perfect, but I believe as close as I will find without using actual amps.

Of course there is a myriad of effects and a lot of them sound great. I am not really a huge FX junkie, but, especially if I get back into writing and recording, I could see me getting creative with a few.

I have to say that this thing really is leaps and bounds beyond anything else I have played from Line 6 (which is nearly everything they have made). I strongly disagree with those who have said that it is merely a marginal improvement tone and feel wise over the XT/X3 series. The feel of this modeller is amazingly good. I can't wait to try running the preamp models through the FX Return of my Boogie and hear how they sound.

There are plenty of cons to the unit. Just off the top of my head, I hate the small display (hey Line 6, an HD ip-Pod? -no, seriously, not really, just kidding)I have never had much faith inthese switched that Line 6 moved to beginning with the X3, I so wish they were still using the rugged, vacuum style ones like the Vetta FBV had. Not really a fan of Line 6 button/knob scheme on this either, but then again that is such a little thing.

I fear the DSP limit. I hit it once working out a patch already. The thing is, I would never use so many effects as to use it all up, but using multi amps, a hugely cool feature, is very DSP intensive. Pitch shifting is as well, so , a great harmonized patch feeding two different amps with a little delay on them might be a bit much for the HD500. Hopefully (crossing all digits in anticipation) the HD Pro might have more DSP power.

I actually love the size and layout of the thing. So much smaller than my Furman pedalboard. Hopefully it will stand up to gigging (that is if I am still gigging after August). So far, looks like a keeper. I will know more after plugging into the bands PA and testing it out.

I hate to say it, but, I think I like the tones better than the 11R so far. But, I have not really played with the high gain stuff on the HD500 yet. Tomorrow night I am staying home and devoting aother night to tweaking. I promise that unless some freakish occurance prevents it, clips will be forthcoming.  

Nice review.

My only gripe with the HD is speaker cab simulations, they just don't sound right to me, so for recording I always record with speaker sims off and then use an impulse convolution cab and it then really does sound like a real amp.

So far I've not managed to get it to sound good through the power amp section of my peavey C30, but then I only really did a quick 5 minute test so I will spend some time at it in the next few days to see if I can improve that.

But, for recording with convolution cabs, it's brilliant and the dynamics really is there in buckets....I love it.

SPA,

Yes, the Dr. Z is almost worth the price of the whole thing by itself.  But there are other good ones in there!  One key, there are TONS of patches but anybody can throw anything up there.  Look for more patches from certain name guys (Lance could chime in here... there are guys who are pro's doing patches with YouTube demos and their patches are almost always very good!).  But also, most amps seem to need some boost of some type.  Boost comp or some boost, OD or comp, in front of almost every amp makes them immediately better.  

Also, editing on the computer in HD500 Edit is the key!  Messing  with bias and sag alone will transform ALL of the amps into more what you want from them.  Plus it's SO much easier to experiment with the effects and boost/od up front stuff and find what works..

Plug that thing into your computer and you will LOVE it.  

So they finally added a harmonizer?  What kind of options are available for it?  How well does it sound?

Well, for my second post on this new (to me) forum, I'll jump into this thread since I'm picking up my HD500 today. (Yay)

I originally bought the HD300 (which is getting exchanged for the HD500) so I've had a little time to mess with the new HD technology. Everything that has been said here is pretty spot on. I'm really digging the responsiveness of the new modelling.

One of the things that I've noticed is that the characteristics of the guitar that you use seem to be a lot more evident than in previous PODs. I have two humbucker-equipped guitars that I use. An '01 Les Paul Standard and an Ibanez Iceman PS10-2. Although both axes share a few of the same build characteristics (mahogany body, maple top, rosewood fingerboards), they sound quite different from each other. When using them with the XT, I found the change in tone to be marginal. Not the case with the HD.

I really wanted to chime in with a word of caution thuogh. Anyone who is considering picking up any of the HD PODs should steer clear of the HD300. I knew going in that the 300 only had three FX banks. It wasn't a huge deal because I don't use a ton of effects to begin with. It's the way that they implemented those three FX banks that were the deal breaker for me, and the reason why I'm exchanging it today.

The FX banks are setup with dedicated FX in each. For instance: FX1 contains your distortions, ODs, Comps, EQs. If I wanted to create a clean patch with a Compressor and a little bit of EQ, I'm screwed because both of those effects are in the FX1 bank. You can't use 2 of them from the same bank at the same time. Why should I have to add extra pedals to a rig that is supposed to have them all self contained? That was a major let down with the HD300.

The kicker is that they don't really cover that little bit of information in their promo materials. Sure, the HD300 is touted as the "entry level POD" in the HD series but not mentioning the FX assigns is quite the omission. It wasn't until I downloaded the manual and started messing with it before it came to light. So, with all that said, if you're getting into the HD series, stay away from the 300 (and probably the 400 as well, although I'm not entirely sure about the specs on that). The FX layouts are way too limiting.

Looking forward to hearing some direct recorded, fairly dry, higher gain tones (both raw and in a full mix).

Welcome home Spaivxx, Klif and congrats on the new gear.  :)

Klif, spot on about how much more clearly the differences in guitars come through.  Twice I have sat down and after a few minutes said "why do all of my patches sound like crap tonight?"  Other than because I was playing them, I realized I had done those patches several nights before, and had them sounding REALLY good.... but with a different guitar.  

It quickly becomes real easy to see why some people love a patch and some say it's only ok.  They really sound different (like a real amp) which you switch guitars.  The more time I have, the more I'm going to start doing an extra initial or two on each patch name, that denotes what guitar I was using it with when I created it.  That way if I have a killer patch for one PRS, and switch to a strat and have to change it some but now have another really good one, I don't lose it as soon as I go back to the PRS.  I'll save both and know which goes with which guitar.  

Thanks Kabala!

@ DTR: That's a good tip about using an initial for the guitar the patch was created with. Since I'm starting from scratch, I'm going to implement that right away.

I never posted clips the other day cause I took the HD500 to the band room to test it through the PA. Definitely needs some serious tweaking if I really want to use it live. I played a year or so regularly with the RP1000 live, and some nights I loved it, others I just did not get on with it at all.

Here is a clip of the RP1000 direct on a decent night : http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10017833

I actually like the tone of the unit there, and have been wondering if maybe I should send the Pod back and just get another one of these used on the cheap (often pop up on CL for ~$250.)

I don't really NEED most of what the HD500 offers, but of course it is cool to have tons of options.

I may try and set up a bank of patches for next weeks shows and test out the Pod live.

I agree with Jon though, cab modelling in the HD, as well as every modeller I have ever had, is the weakest link. It is just VERY difficult to recreate all the wonderful things real speakers do to an overdriven guitar tone. I struggled a lot with the canb modelling in the Digitech unit too, almost all of the cabs were completely useless in a live environment. As a matter of fact, in the above clip, I was not using any cab modelling at all, just the Digitech "Speaker Compensation" and some EQ cutting the lows and highs to simulate the attenuation of a cab.