Line 6 POD HD500 coming my way!

[silar]

I finally bit the bullet and bought the HD500 . I've been looking over reviews of the Zoom G5, Digitech RP1000, Boss GT100, and the Line 6 POD HD500, and I think the HD500 will fit my playing style more (Hard Rock/Heavy Metal). I know there are going to be some that say the GT100 is better, but from what I've read on the reviews and heard/seen on the videos, the HD500 sounds more organic and real as far as amp sims go. I should get it sometime 1st to mid next week...

Some of the other reasons I went with the HD500 is the 'CustomTone' online area, the HD500 edit software, plug a mic in and you have a vocoder/talkbox, 2 blend-able stereo amps simultaneously, upgradable with firmware (which line 6 has always been good about), re-amping capable, fully customizable assignable buttons to turn effects on and off within each preset, etc...

It's been years and years since I bought a multi-effects pedal. I think the last one was a Zoom 505. I've been just running strait to my amp and using the clean/dirty channels only. This should be fun!

Anyone else using one?

[YetAnotherOne]

I had one for a while earlier this year that I bought intending to replace my Vetta & ZenTera. Great unit, really nice sounds and seemed quite usable. Given the length of time since you've upgraded I'd imagine you'll be blown away. I thought it was terriffic but then the AxeFX bug bit and off the HD 500 went.

[JCB RR1]

Great FX unit, and for the price I think it's a real winner.

[silar]

I had one for a while earlier this year that I bought intending to replace my Vetta & ZenTera. Great unit, really nice sounds and seemed quite usable. Given the length of time since you've upgraded I'd imagine you'll be blown away. I thought it was terriffic but then the AxeFX bug bit and off the HD 500 went.

I've used the GT-8 and GT-10, but from what I've read and heard, they sound too sterile. Too clean. I was going to go with the Zoom G9.2tt, but they stopped making it and I really wanted to buy a new processor that's still in production. I'm glad I waited. As I read more of the features and reviews, I get more and more excited!

[AdRock]

I'm interested to hear what you think about the unit. I'm still using a 2nd gen Rocktron Chameleon, that I still love, but I've thought about really looking into the HD500.

[silar]

Well, I got the HD500 Wednesday and so far I am really impressed. I've not had a lot of time with it yet (the weekend is coming up... play time!!), but so far this sucker is pretty amazing. It's crazy what you can do with it. I really like the fact that you can place any effect or amp in any order, and run dual amps with separate effects for each amp chain if you want. Something I didn't realize until I got it, this thing has 8 setlists with 16 banks of 4 patches per setlist. That's 512 preset locations!

I'm weird when I buy something like this. I tend to spend a month or two (or more) researching the crap out of it before I purchase it, so I know what I'm getting.

Some of the shortcomings with the HD500.. not that I've had any issue with them, but I thought I would mention...

• Headphone output: Line 6 HD500 headphone output impedance is rated 150-500 ohms. Most consumer headphones are sub 100 ohms, usually between 30-60. Not a big deal since I run the headphone output into a Behringer HA4700 headphone amp. If you use lower impedance headphones, it may be more distorted in sound when monitoring with them..
• XLR Outs: The stereo XLR outputs are not line level, they are mic level, so in order to use them properly, you would need to run them into a mic preamp or mixer to raise the gain to get them at an acceptable level. I was going to run these to my active studio monitors directly, but the signal is just not strong enough to get a good sound. Something I did notice was that you can run the XLR outs and 1/4" line outs simultaneously!
• DPS Limitation: Line 6 gives you the flexibility to do anything with the signal chain (literally), but with a limit on DSP. In other words, once you've added a bunch of effects, you could run into getting a DSP limit error if you try to go too crazy. I've not had any issue with this yet, but I could see if I was setting up a dual amp configuration with 2 chains, wanting to add some freaky effects, and then more, it could happen..
• PRESETS: Whatever you do... DO NOT BASE WHETHER YOU BUY THIS UNIT ON THE PRESETS THAT COME WITH IT!!!!! All the presets are horrible (at least most all of them). You would think they would have some really good ones to show off the amp modeling capabilities, but no.. To get a better feel of how this unit was meant to perform, download one of the good presets from Custom Tone, or start from scratch and make your own...
• Tweaking: If you want something to buy, take out of the box, and hit the stage immediately, this is not for you. If you don't like tweaking, this is definitely not for you. I myself love the fact that you can literally adjust anything you can imagine.

Here are the things that I love about this unit....

• You can run multiple outs simultaneously.. Headphone, XLR outs, Line outs, etc..
• The 'Deep Edit Parameters' or DEP for short.. This thing is so tweakable it's scary. You can adjust everything you can think of, from Amp Bias, Bias excursion, hum, class, to cabinet resonance, low cut, thump, decay, etc. I am a tweak freak and love sitting for hours playing. This thing is a tweaker's playground!
• HD500 Edit software. This thing is great!
• You want blues... You got it!
• You want country... You got it!
• You want classic rock... You got it!
• You want 80's hair metal... You got it!
• You want modern djent metal... You got it!
• You want grunge... You got it!
• In other words.. This thing will do any genre, any sound you can think of. I love it!

Here is how I have everything connected right now, and it works for me...

• 1/4" Stereo Line Outs: Going to my Line 6 Flextone IIIXL amp stereo returns. This amp has custom celestian speakers made exclusively for Line 6 that have a pretty flat response... excellent for modeling.
• USB: Going to PC computer for direct recording. Also has a ASIO driver to work with recording software (I use Reaper).
• Headphone Out: Going to Behringer HA4700 headphone amp. Allows me to connect up my headphones and/or Alesis Active monitors.
• MIDI In and Out: Connects to my Flextone IIIXL amp. Allows me to use Line 6 edit to adjust parameters on the amp itself.

I'm pretty happy with the unit so far. I'll have more time this weekend to make some custom presets and play around with it more.

It's Christmas for me!!! YAY!

[Hellbat]

I'm not a huge fan of Line 6's amp modelling. I do feel it's among the best in the 'consumer' modelling category though and I haven't tried the HD stuff yet. Their effects modelling is bang on though, especially their delay and modulations.

[BenoA]

Thanks for the very good review

[silar]

I'm not a huge fan of Line 6's amp modelling. I do feel it's among the best in the 'consumer' modelling category though and I haven't tried the HD stuff yet. Their effects modelling is bang on though, especially their delay and modulations.

The HD stuff is completely redesigned. For someone like me, it's perfect. I am pretty particular on amp sounds and so far, I'm impressed!

[silar]

I got some more time last night to play around with the HD500. I've been doing my recordings on a EMU0404 card that I've had for about 10 years. Still works great, but I never really got good guitar sounds through it. For vocals I've got a Behringer mixer with phantom power and pre-amps that I run through the EMU0404. Vocals always sounded a bit thin through it, so a while back, I bought one of the ART Tube-MP pre-amp for it which works incredibly well. I decided to remove the card completely and use the HD500 as my recording interface. Even for the vocals. The EMU0404 was just 1 stereo channel left and right in and out (no mic input), so pretty similar as far as inputs go. The HD500 also has a mic input with no phantom power, but since I'm using the Tube-MP, that's not an issue.

I recorded a few guitar tracks with it last night, using the built in effects, amps, and cabs (in Studio/Direct mode), and all I have to say is... WOW! such a huge difference in sound quality from the way I was recording before. The sounds are like night and day from what I was use to dealing with. Before, I would have to tweak the crap out of the track with EQ, compression, etc to get it to sound right, even before any post processing/mastering. Now, I just record and go. I was using various amp modelers such as AcmeBarGig's Shred and Headcase, Guitar Rig, etc, along with different cab IR's. Now I think I can just record my guitars direct through the HD500 and go using the ASIO driver that Line 6 has for the HD500.

Zero Latency (at least to my ears), and zero CPU usage. With all the VST plugs I was using before to try to get my sound right, it would eat the CPU up, even though I have a pretty robust recording PC with dual quad Intel Zeon processors with 16 gigs memory and Raid system. The only issue I see using it this way is that I'm recording the processed signal instead of a dry track, so if I need to adjust the amp/effects later, I'd have to re-record the track. I may try the Re-amping thing with the HD500 to get the dry signal recorded, but so far, it's working out pretty well.

And just in case I get the.. 'didn't happen.. no pics', I edited to add a pic!

[Hellbat]

See if their ASIO driver also outputs dry out for recording. Hopefully simultaneously. If not you could go through a Radial DI or something before the pod to get the dry out signal, but you'd need to run that through an external interface.

[BenoA]

See if their ASIO driver also outputs dry out for recording. Hopefully simultaneously. If not you could go through a Radial DI or something before the pod to get the dry out signal, but you'd need to run that through an external interface.

Curious to know too.

[RobRR]

Im pretty sure you can record dry and processed signal at the same time, Ive done it before with my UX2 so I would assume it would be the same. Im not home at the moment, but if you select the output 3-4 as your recording input, I believe thats the dry signal. So two seperate tracks, track 1 w/ inputs 1-2 would be processed and track 2 w/ inputs 3-4 would be dry.

[silar]

Im pretty sure you can record dry and processed signal at the same time, Ive done it before with my UX2 so I would assume it would be the same. Im not home at the moment, but if you select the output 3-4 as your recording input, I believe thats the dry signal. So two seperate tracks, track 1 w/ inputs 1-2 would be processed and track 2 w/ inputs 3-4 would be dry.

Right now, on the HD500, you only have 1 stereo input/1 stereo output through USB. There is a way to record processed and unprocessed using the dual amp feature and pan processed to one side, and unprocessed to the other on the stereo channel. There are a lot of people a little bit upset about this since their earlier processors could do it. From what I hear, Line 6 can change this with a firmware upgrade, so it may happen in the near future.

[chrisolson]

I had the HD400 for about 28 days (return policy), and it was good. Better than anything L6 put forward to date in terms of "realism". The problem is that the models they included (prior to the upgrades) really didn't fall into the world of amps I'd normally use. I'm a modded Marshall/Soldano/Friedman/JMP-1/MK IV kinda guy. Not really a Plexi/Recto/super-high-gainer Über/Diezel kinda guy.

Great all-in-one'er though. I'm using an Axe 2 and just picked up a Pod X3 Pro for "back-up", since, after all, they're just computers anyway!