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...and a rant.
This is the coolest guitar-related setup I've ever had.
The Variax, of course, is as close as anyone can come right now to having 30+ different guitars and the room to store and display them, except you don't have the burden of insurance or worry about resale nonsense. Obviously, as has been stated before, it's not "exactly the same" as having a 57 Strat or whatever, but it's close enough.
The Workbench program:
You start the Workbench by selecting a body type (from Teles to LPs to Strats to Semi-Hollows to Gretsch and Rics and Acoustics and Danos) which sets the base tone (wood type), then move on to pickup selection and placement.
This is where you can have the most fun. While some setups didn't really work "great" for me personally (phasing options resulting in drastically reduced output, etc) it's still interesting to build a Les Paul Standard with a reverse-slanted hum in the bridge or some such without a lot of drilling and cutting and such.
Being Dr Newcenstein, of course, means my head is still full of ideas that are simply not covered by this program - like putting humbuckers on acoustics or being able to select the pickup's range; you can set each pickup's Output level to be hotter or normal or lower with a volume slider, but can't, for example, build a Distortion and JB (same pickup, different magnet) or adjust the bias (more mids, more bass, etc etc).
You can't set up any kind of coil-splitting/tapping options either, which is good and bad IMO - you can "fake it" with a real single coil and thus get a real single coil sound, but if you want the "split humbucker" tone, you don't get it with this.
It would also be nice to have my choice of pickup rather than just what they give - like EMGs and Duncans and Gibsons and other Strat/Tele models (Tex-Mex, etc).
Maybe it's just me, but I've had crappy guitars that had crappy singles that still got a decent Stratty tone. If the modeled pickup is what Strat pickups used to soud like, why did they stop? These things sound way better than even the Strats I've had - more like humbuckers than nasally singles [img]/images/graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]
Anyhoo, I'd like to get a Strat tone that I'm used to hearing out of this thing, but so far the models they've supplied can't do it, even by swapping around the volume and tone knobs and selecting different capacitors.
Bummer.
Still, it's cool to have.
The POD XT Live:
I've used rack stuff since 1992 when I got my first Digitech GSP-21 Pro. Before that, I used about a dozen pedals all in a chain that I could turn on and off and split down two separate channels using various Radio Shack adaptors. I ran that through a pair of BabyGorillas with 6" speakers, or into a stereo using either speakers or headphones.
As I upgraded and added to my rack collection, I still had headphones or computer speakers mostly, and didn't really have a "real" amp/cabinet setup till about 2000 when I got my Fender RocPro1000 head and Carvin 2x12 cabinet. I did have a Peavey TransTube 112 Bandit and it did work for the few times I played out, but it's not something I considered to be a "real" amp.
Anyhoo, I'm used to a certain type of tone - the kind you get from rack units that have been used in major recording studios for 20+ years and that you hear in store-bought music - that finished, polished, produced, processed, filtered, refined tone. A raw amp tone does not sound good through anything but a real amp cabinet. Period.
Mankind has not managed to make a $30 set of PC speakers or headphones capable of accurately reproducing the tone of a real live amp, so studio engineering is required to dress it up and make it presentable through the intended delivery system - the speakers that are found in 99% of Consumer Electonics - from car stereo systems to Walkmans to home stereo systems.
Audiophiles who spend more money on high-quality sound systems are a actually a very small group, so studio recordings are generally not engineered to suit their boutique equipment. With the advent of digital technology and disc encoding/decoding abilities, one can now burn a CD that has "old school" engineering for us regular joes AND "21st Century" engineering with Dolby 5.1/6.1 Surround Sound and all that good stuff, as well as "You Are There!" raw amp tones for those who are listening through p.a.-quality equipment.
That last rambling paragraph means that I have not spent a whole lot of time with "real" amps, because the only way to use a "real" amp is to crank it. I have not had a whole lot of time or space in my life to crank a real amp, so the expense was never warranted - it woulda made a nice end-table, but that's it.
So the idea of a footpedal or rack that promises to give me the sounds of all those real amps I could never afford, or even use if I could afford them, is always tempting. Unfortunately, the delivery is always disappointing to me in one way or another.
From the real amps I have had the chance to play through in music stores or at a gig, I do have a pretty good idea of what to expect from a real amp as far as tonal characteristics, and based on that, the XTL does sound like real amps to me. Those who have the exact same amps to compare side by side may say otherwise, but I'm hearing the "basic amp tonal characteristics" from this thing even in headphones: the rumble and the glassiness and the grain. While it may not read out on a spectrometer or even in a basement as being identical to (read: a clone of) the real deal, it's certainly not as far off as a handful of BOSS pedals into a Baby Gorilla vs a 100w Marshall JCM800 full stack.
However, once again, the Mad Scientist in me wants more from this sort of thing:
I want to be able to put anything anywhere in a chain at any time. I want to be able to put a BOSS SD-1 set for a simple boost with a hair of breakup and split the output from that into an MXR Distortion+ and a BOSS DS-1 or MetalZone at the same time and then run a flanger on one side and a chorus on the other and recombine into a digital delay and then back out to separate left and right channels of a mixer or two separate amps, but without 12 different pedals on the floor.
I've always wanted that - that's why I wanted a rack.
For over 13 years I've been disappointed with never being able to find exactly what I was looking for - total customization. I even thought about finding someone to modify a GSP-21 housing and stuff it full of the boards from the pedals I used to have (and then some!) with a programmable interface and a full-character LCD screen and MIDI-controllable patch selection via footpedal.
But noooooooooooo, I'm the only guy in the world that thinks that idea has any merit.
So I'm always stuck with what "other people" think of the "ultimate setup", which is always an amp, one external preamp-type pedal (usually a distortion/boost for solos), one coloring pedal (chorus/flange/panner), and a switchable volume/wah pedal, with the ability to choose between several dozen (or not even a dozen in some cases) user-programmable patches.
Don't get me wrong, I like the XT Live. It's a floor-mounted rack unit that does a better impersonation of a real amp than anything else I've had. However, it doesn't satisfy the mad scientist in me.
Yes, I know I can program 30 different patches that have one thing different and "simulate" the total control I've always dreamed of, except for one very important fact: I've done the 30 different patches that only have one thing different in each of them, but that's not what I want.
I want phaser on the left and chorus on the right out of ONE BOX, not 2.
I want two different preamp settings and two different EQs for left and right to sound like two guitarists playing rhythm at the same time.
I want two different preamp settings and two different EQs for left and right and a harmonizer on one side that sounds like two different guitarists playing a harmonized solo, not one playing through a harmonizer.
Maybe one day before I die I'll find it, but I haven't found it yet.
And I'll keep looking.
This is the coolest guitar-related setup I've ever had.
The Variax, of course, is as close as anyone can come right now to having 30+ different guitars and the room to store and display them, except you don't have the burden of insurance or worry about resale nonsense. Obviously, as has been stated before, it's not "exactly the same" as having a 57 Strat or whatever, but it's close enough.
The Workbench program:
You start the Workbench by selecting a body type (from Teles to LPs to Strats to Semi-Hollows to Gretsch and Rics and Acoustics and Danos) which sets the base tone (wood type), then move on to pickup selection and placement.
This is where you can have the most fun. While some setups didn't really work "great" for me personally (phasing options resulting in drastically reduced output, etc) it's still interesting to build a Les Paul Standard with a reverse-slanted hum in the bridge or some such without a lot of drilling and cutting and such.
Being Dr Newcenstein, of course, means my head is still full of ideas that are simply not covered by this program - like putting humbuckers on acoustics or being able to select the pickup's range; you can set each pickup's Output level to be hotter or normal or lower with a volume slider, but can't, for example, build a Distortion and JB (same pickup, different magnet) or adjust the bias (more mids, more bass, etc etc).
You can't set up any kind of coil-splitting/tapping options either, which is good and bad IMO - you can "fake it" with a real single coil and thus get a real single coil sound, but if you want the "split humbucker" tone, you don't get it with this.
It would also be nice to have my choice of pickup rather than just what they give - like EMGs and Duncans and Gibsons and other Strat/Tele models (Tex-Mex, etc).
Maybe it's just me, but I've had crappy guitars that had crappy singles that still got a decent Stratty tone. If the modeled pickup is what Strat pickups used to soud like, why did they stop? These things sound way better than even the Strats I've had - more like humbuckers than nasally singles [img]/images/graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]
Anyhoo, I'd like to get a Strat tone that I'm used to hearing out of this thing, but so far the models they've supplied can't do it, even by swapping around the volume and tone knobs and selecting different capacitors.
Bummer.
Still, it's cool to have.
The POD XT Live:
I've used rack stuff since 1992 when I got my first Digitech GSP-21 Pro. Before that, I used about a dozen pedals all in a chain that I could turn on and off and split down two separate channels using various Radio Shack adaptors. I ran that through a pair of BabyGorillas with 6" speakers, or into a stereo using either speakers or headphones.
As I upgraded and added to my rack collection, I still had headphones or computer speakers mostly, and didn't really have a "real" amp/cabinet setup till about 2000 when I got my Fender RocPro1000 head and Carvin 2x12 cabinet. I did have a Peavey TransTube 112 Bandit and it did work for the few times I played out, but it's not something I considered to be a "real" amp.
Anyhoo, I'm used to a certain type of tone - the kind you get from rack units that have been used in major recording studios for 20+ years and that you hear in store-bought music - that finished, polished, produced, processed, filtered, refined tone. A raw amp tone does not sound good through anything but a real amp cabinet. Period.
Mankind has not managed to make a $30 set of PC speakers or headphones capable of accurately reproducing the tone of a real live amp, so studio engineering is required to dress it up and make it presentable through the intended delivery system - the speakers that are found in 99% of Consumer Electonics - from car stereo systems to Walkmans to home stereo systems.
Audiophiles who spend more money on high-quality sound systems are a actually a very small group, so studio recordings are generally not engineered to suit their boutique equipment. With the advent of digital technology and disc encoding/decoding abilities, one can now burn a CD that has "old school" engineering for us regular joes AND "21st Century" engineering with Dolby 5.1/6.1 Surround Sound and all that good stuff, as well as "You Are There!" raw amp tones for those who are listening through p.a.-quality equipment.
That last rambling paragraph means that I have not spent a whole lot of time with "real" amps, because the only way to use a "real" amp is to crank it. I have not had a whole lot of time or space in my life to crank a real amp, so the expense was never warranted - it woulda made a nice end-table, but that's it.
So the idea of a footpedal or rack that promises to give me the sounds of all those real amps I could never afford, or even use if I could afford them, is always tempting. Unfortunately, the delivery is always disappointing to me in one way or another.
From the real amps I have had the chance to play through in music stores or at a gig, I do have a pretty good idea of what to expect from a real amp as far as tonal characteristics, and based on that, the XTL does sound like real amps to me. Those who have the exact same amps to compare side by side may say otherwise, but I'm hearing the "basic amp tonal characteristics" from this thing even in headphones: the rumble and the glassiness and the grain. While it may not read out on a spectrometer or even in a basement as being identical to (read: a clone of) the real deal, it's certainly not as far off as a handful of BOSS pedals into a Baby Gorilla vs a 100w Marshall JCM800 full stack.
However, once again, the Mad Scientist in me wants more from this sort of thing:
I want to be able to put anything anywhere in a chain at any time. I want to be able to put a BOSS SD-1 set for a simple boost with a hair of breakup and split the output from that into an MXR Distortion+ and a BOSS DS-1 or MetalZone at the same time and then run a flanger on one side and a chorus on the other and recombine into a digital delay and then back out to separate left and right channels of a mixer or two separate amps, but without 12 different pedals on the floor.
I've always wanted that - that's why I wanted a rack.
For over 13 years I've been disappointed with never being able to find exactly what I was looking for - total customization. I even thought about finding someone to modify a GSP-21 housing and stuff it full of the boards from the pedals I used to have (and then some!) with a programmable interface and a full-character LCD screen and MIDI-controllable patch selection via footpedal.
But noooooooooooo, I'm the only guy in the world that thinks that idea has any merit.
So I'm always stuck with what "other people" think of the "ultimate setup", which is always an amp, one external preamp-type pedal (usually a distortion/boost for solos), one coloring pedal (chorus/flange/panner), and a switchable volume/wah pedal, with the ability to choose between several dozen (or not even a dozen in some cases) user-programmable patches.
Don't get me wrong, I like the XT Live. It's a floor-mounted rack unit that does a better impersonation of a real amp than anything else I've had. However, it doesn't satisfy the mad scientist in me.
Yes, I know I can program 30 different patches that have one thing different and "simulate" the total control I've always dreamed of, except for one very important fact: I've done the 30 different patches that only have one thing different in each of them, but that's not what I want.
I want phaser on the left and chorus on the right out of ONE BOX, not 2.
I want two different preamp settings and two different EQs for left and right to sound like two guitarists playing rhythm at the same time.
I want two different preamp settings and two different EQs for left and right and a harmonizer on one side that sounds like two different guitarists playing a harmonized solo, not one playing through a harmonizer.
Maybe one day before I die I'll find it, but I haven't found it yet.
And I'll keep looking.
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