Faithful overdriven valve amp sound with Line6 Bass Pod XT Live and above

[Fraktal]

Hello fellow Line6 pals, I thought I should share a sound that I discovered 3 months ago and every day that passes I love it even more.

I came by this sound while doing a bit of my typically obsessive research that I always fancy with all kind of technological gadgets such as computers, processors, plugins, multiFX... you name it.
Since the Line6 Pod Xt Live is such a complex unit, giving you zillions of options, I used my standard approach to multiFX: I turn everything off, then I turn on one thing at a time with flat EQ, neutral tweaks, etc. This way I get a better perception of what a particular element of the signal chain does to my tone without being fooled by another effect/emulation/whatever plus I remove a lot of sh*t from the signal path that I might not really need to use and prevent degradation of my tone. You know, most of the time, less is more, heh.
Then I found this particular amp model called doppelganger that had a decent sound out of the box but a much beter tone with my typical "start with everything flat and move on from there" approach.

It is funny that the distortion you get from overdriving this amp model is generated out of the low frequencies but perceived mostly in the mid frequencies while leaving the high frequencies pretty much clean, though heavily compressed. There is no typical harshness associated to most overdrive/distortion sounds, neither lowend loss.

Unless you use too much gain, the dynamics of your playing will alter the overdrive instead of the overall volume creating very musical, ear-pleasing harmonic overtones in the mid fequency range, to the point where you can easily hear dramatic character changes depending on how hard you pluck, the time you hold a note, etc. It adds a lot of sustain, also, but I guess this was obviously expected.

Enough chitchat, knob twisting time:

Create a new patch, select the doppelganger amp model, set the amp EQ to "neutral" (all knobs at 12 o'clock), deactivate EVERYTHING else in the signal path, such as speaker, mic/room, AIR, stomps, etc. Then adjust the amp model gain to your taste and finally tweak the "bassy overdriven" character using the bass eq knob in the amp with VERY subtle changes (a 5% addition/substraction could have dramatic effect on it). If you find there is too much zing due to new strings you can easily reduce it with the high eq knob, this sound tends to boost the zing effect a big deal. You may also need to enable the parametric EQ to clean a bit of the lowmid range (150-300hz, YMMV) to get rid of some muddiness in case your rig tends to boost those frequencies. Dont panic, your speaker isnt farting and your amp isnt gonna blow up, its just this sound

It is crucial to set the right amount of gain and low knobs, they are EXTREMELY sensitive in this particular model. In my experience, the sweet spot is found when you pluck hard and get a clearly distorted sound, then you pluck softly and get an almost completely clean sound. Yes, this sound is THAT temperamental. I would gladly post here my .l6 effect patch file, but having in mind what I said before about the gain and low knobs, that would be next to useless cos there are also huge output voltage differences between different basses, not to mention plucking techniques, etc. Additionally, there is not much tweaking needed, just "finetweaking", since we are using only an amp model here so I prefer to explain the procedure rather than giving out a file that wont work for you.

Im using it with an Ibanez SR 505 and a Markbass 2x10" combo (everything flat) and getting a surprisingly old school sound. Playing with my band I feel guilty for having such a versatile and advanced FX processor while discarding all my old effect patches in favor of this one, LOL. It is really working THAT good for me. Incredibly, it works in all styles we play: Swing, blues, funk and rock.

If you didnt drop asleeep already and take the time to try to reproduce this sound with your rig, I would love to listen to your experience. Mine has been 3 Months of tone nirvana and non-stop fun, surely must be worth a shot! I hope you enjoy it.

Feedback welcomed!