Line6 Bass POD XT

[lukeward2004]

Hi All,

Ive recnetly acquired a nice Line6 Bass POD XT (Kidney bean version) off of Phatmonkey, after being suitably impressed by Ped's one when I last visited him.

Ok, so Tuesday night comes around and its practise time with the Natalie Band. I took the POD along with me to DI straight into the PA, but bear in mind that I hadnt had the chance to set up any patches at this point.

Needless to say, it sounded rubbish with the default patches that come with it, so I quickly packed it away and plugged into a bass amp for the night.

When I got home, I spent a good hour or two just playing around with it and my Warwick, and I had a go at setting myself up with one good "clean" patch that I can use for practising. The thing I found fantastic about it was the sheer flexibility of tones and features, it really is a versatile tool.

So, I got a patch set up that I was happy with via my headphones, and took the POD along last night to practise without having any other bass amp - either way I was forcing myself to use the POD.

Plugged everyting in, set the EQ on the PA so I had a completely flat channel, set the monitor mix up, turned on the POD, hit a note and WOW - exactly the sound I had set up via the headphones, and came through the PA loud and clear.

I had positive comments about how fat my Warwick sounded from the otherband members, and despite just going through the PA, I could feel the low end thumping me in the chest as I played.

Im now in Love with the POD and will be spending lots of time setting up patches for various sounds and basses, and I just wanted to share my pleasure with everyone!

[ped]

Good man. Wap it together with some in-ears and you will be laughing. See you on Saturday to discuss further applications for the trusty ole' bean.

I remember the first time I gigged with mine through a good PA.. it was like having my mesa 400+ in surround sound, just brill. Made me laugh becaus ethe amassed collection of backline from the other 4 bands (it was a festival) took up loads of room and sounded fine, but I came along with a 2u rack bag and it floored everything else!

[ped]

Oh Luke BTW did you get a manual with yours? If not you can borrow mine. There is some good advice regardng setting volumes relative to input gain and so on. It is important to get all yer' patches the same vol with the 'channel volume' knob and then leave the 'output' as the master (i.e start with the quietest patch and reduce the others). Otherwise you might be happily in the pocket on your Vigier passion 4 studio mode and some butter footed studio chappie knocks it over to the next patch which is bloody loud and takes your face off.

For anyone else interested, there is some good advice and reading here: [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=192530&highlight=pod+real+world+review"]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.p...al+world+review[/url]

The Pod XT family are fantastic if you spend time setting it up - you just have to have the right attitude.

[Waldo]

I've just joined the Line 6 club, got an XT Live the other week. I'm still trying to get my head round the damn thing but it looks pretty damn powerful already.

I'm quite intrigued by the crossover it has, I'm gonna play around with it and see what happens when I send the bass end to my Eden amp and then the treble end to my all valve ashdown guitar amp. Might sound sweet!

[ped]

OOh it might do, good idea! It is a really great feature to have a crossover for every effect too, chorus on just the top end for example. Brill.

[lukeward2004]

Ped mate, saturday is going to be wicked - I got the manual and carry bag etc with it, and im a member of the custom tone club so I can check out some other tones.

If we can look at the channel volumes and whatnot together that would be grand - and I would like to hijack your Jazz patch for myself aswell mate

[BOD2]

Good to hear another positive post about Line 6 products - they do seem to get slated by an awful lot of people. I think Line 6 could do more to provide usable factory default patches instead of showcasing some of the more wierd FX but most of the multi-FX boxes seem guilty of that too.

I have the Bass POD XT/XT Pro manual as a PDF file - PM me with your e-mail address if you need it.

Another interesting feature is the ability to blend the DI sound of the bass with the modelled sound. This can thicken up a sound or add a subtle depth to the sound. Very useful.

[lukeward2004]

Im good for manuals thanks - got the manual with it, 'tis rather useful...

[lukeward2004]

One slight issue with it, which I discovered last night:

Ive downloaded and installed the latest USB driver, and Line6 edit with Line6 Monkey. PC picks up the POD with no issue, and in the Line6 Edit screen it shows my current patch configs.

However, when I try to use the tonelocker to transfer tones to my POD from the PC, I get an error saying that my POD is not responding and I need to restart it. Ive done this plenty of times, as well as running the line6 Monkey to update everything, including firmware and drivers, to the latest version.

Thankfully a nice chap at Line6 Support told me I need to restart the POD in safe mode (power it on holding down the left softkey under the screen), and then do a factory reset on it with the option to NOT keep all my patches.

Obviously Ill save my awesome warwick patch before I do this, but I really hope this works....

[Cantdosleepy]

Just weighing in to say how much I like mine!

Also, I love the manual! It's really nicely written, is very enthusiastic, and has a great section on the amps they modelled, the fx they used etc. Great stuff!

[Pbassred]

I have the live version. The trick is to dump the factory settings and build your own at home. There are too many menus to go through at a gig.

I wish that they would talk to players before they designed these "toys". The Live doesn't have an XLR output!