Logic Pro 9 Pod HD 500 vs Amp Designer

yavuz

yavuz

Logician
I have been playing guitar over 30+ years now and I consider myself open to new things. I have bought the POD xt when it came out and I now have the GIO with Amp Designer to record.

A friend of mine lent me his PodHD 500 to program some tones for him since he is not very good with computers.
Since I already had Line 6 Monkey, It looked like an easy task for me.
I have downloaded Pod HD Edit and installed fine on my MB Pro.
I launched it and tried some tones.
As far as the clean tones go, I could only play the BlackFace 'Lux.
Distortion tones are fine, the pedal emulations are also nice but, man no clean tones except the lux.

I did a comparison with AmpDesigner of course and found out that the clean tones on the AmpDesigner are excellent, musical, playable.
I play jazz yes but I also use some driven, crunchy tones at times.

Even my older PodXT sounded better than the new HD.

I now wish that GIO had dedicated rotary knobs for bas-mid etc.. like the POD.

Even now, I am seriously considering taking my GIO to gigs.

The bad thing is I had already ordered the POD HD 300, but HD 500 sounds like not usable to me and I am sure HD 300 will be the same 🙁

Even my older Pod XT sounds better than the HD 500.

I wonder how they can advertise in those videos talking about how close was the HD to the real thing.

If Logic can do it in the Amp Designer, why can't Line6 do it.
They have years of experience with the modeling thing.
I am very very disappointed!!!
 
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I sold my last POD (xt version) 2 years ago and haven't looked back. You might try the Vox Tonelab stuff as that has some great clean tones for live. I still have mine, even though it sits in the closet. A cheap thing to try with all this stuff (POD or DI) is the Radial Dragster. This plays with the impedance and can really help getting rid of the very bright edge that plugging in direct gives you. I have it set in the middle somewhere. I also use the Motu zbox, which might be similar in that it takes away a little of the high end brittleness. Each one of these things is under $50, the Dragster being the most versatile. I've been playing around a lot with amp designer lately and have found the clean tones OK and the vox tones to be not bad. The dirtier tone I want, the less satisfied I am but I'm willing to keep trying it out and tweaking it. I used the Orange amp sim on a new single that's out on itunes now but it's just one of the rhythm tracks. There are some great new tutorials at macprovideo.com in regards to amp designer that taught me a few new things about it, mostly to do with the pedal board. Still, worth renting and checking out. Out of the current crop of sims my favorite is still Amplitube 3.
 
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I also sold my Pod a few years ago. I was quite pleasantly surprised w/ Amp Designer. Some of the tones in there are among the very best sims I have heard (hardware and software combined), but as with pretty much all the plug-ins I've tried, the higher gain/modern heavy tones are often problematic. Clean/moderately driven tones are usually quite good.

Some people mentioned that using higher sampling rates helped w/ that common brittleness problem - but I haven't tested that myself. Craig Anderton posted something about that and eq'ing out problematic frequencies. See http://www.harmonycentral.com/docs/DOC-1652.
 
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I have this one. ( smaller one ). It sounds great with my Heritage Jazz Box.
However, it is nicer to play with a well programmed sym.

I'm just disappointed at Line 6 since they have been on this over 10 years now.
 
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I think you're nuts, man. 🙂

I think the HD500 is pretty close to being on par with the Axe-Fx, and the amp models are way better than the previous POD products.

Jeff
 
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jcshirke said:
I think you're nuts, man. 🙂
Click to expand...

Having lived in NY for seventeen years, I can agree with that 🙂

jcshirke said:
I think the HD500 is pretty close to being on par with the Axe-Fx, and the amp models are way better than the previous POD products.
Click to expand...

I know the sound of a Blackface Deluxe and the HD500 can only be considered as close to the sound. But, it sounds a bit harsh. Amp Designer sounds very musical for that particular sound. I am talking about clean tones ONLY here.
If you mean crunch and other distortion sounds, it is a different story.

Again, for clean sounds, AC-15 sim in Amp Designer is way more musical than the HD500. Then again, it is what I think. 🙂
 
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Hi Yavuz

I think you and I have similar issues. I am a bit of a pedant when it comes to guitar tone - also play Jazz amongst other things and have been playing for a long time. I could never get on with modlers - latency, lack of feel - just put me off altogether.

However, I have recently (reluctantly I guess) upgraded to Logic 9 - mainly for Amp Des as I get fed up micing up as well. I even find it hard to get on with a monitored sound form a miced or DI amp. So I looked at the POD HD option - but got a great steer from another forum. I am now getting great results and really enjoying playing with Amp Designer but using Impulse Responses from a company called Redwirez.

You may be familiar with this - but if not - you can download an IR file from these guys - there are a whole range of cabs and each one has IR's for various high quality mic's at different distances. You switch AD's cab and mic options to direct and load the IR file into space designer - or another lighter convolution reverb plug in.

I must say that this has been a revalation for me - I actually like the tones and can play with them just fine. I am getting great cleans from AD's VOX and Fender sims. I also love the Brown Head with this. The big, big, big difference is the IR. This has helped me to understand that it's not so much the amp model as the cab and mic sims that were causing the issue for m.

Let me know if you want some more details - or stop me if I am telling you something you already know.

All the best.

Joe
 
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