Line 6 Pocket Pod Express

[newey]

These were on sale at MF for $49.95, so I grabbed one- in the same order where I got the Grand Prize for the 2010 Year-End Trivia Contest (Hint, Hint . . . ).

My thought was its portability, I figured it wouldn't be great but would be OK for travel use with my 9V amp, or as a headphone amp. And, it will work just fine for that, at that price- no big investment if it breaks, gets stolen, etc. And my little 9V Orange MicroCrush could use the help . . .

But, after receiving this unit and playing with it awhile, I'm distinctly underwhelmed.

First, while I knew the unit was plastic, it isn't even a quality plastic. It looks cheap and feels cheap (and is, of course, actually cheap, so no surprises). I'm not sure the battery door will last more than a few battery swaps. On the plus side, the unit does work as advertised. While it's a stripped-down version of the bigger Pods, it has the basics all aboard. No presets, all analog controls.

The pots are less than wonderful both functionally and ergonomically. On the ergo side, they're sort of flush-mounted, so you sort of spin them with a fingertip. It's hard to get a fine increment of movement, and it's too easy to turn past where you want to be.

Functionally, each pot controls several functions over its travel. Thus, one knob gives a chorus effect over 1/3 of its rotation, a tremolo effect over another third, and flange on the last 1/3. This makes it tough to fine-tune, there isn't enough room for variation of each one. And the transitions between the effects are choppy and irritating.

The "amp models" knob really just gives increasing gain, it's hard to discern what, in fact, it's supposed to be modeling.

The flange is the best effect, the trem is decent; the reverb/delay stuff is unconvincing.

I did get some nice sustain by adding a dose of flange to the "metal amp" model setting. It gets a bit noisy in the upper gain reaches, however.

I can't really recommend this unit, it'll be okay for what I want to use it for, but not for much beyond that.

[ashcatlt]

Since you didn't offer details, I have to ask. What did you use to actually hear this test of yours? Did you give it a fair shake with a decent pair of headphones or a reasonably flat and clean amp/speaker combo? It is an amp simulator, after all. It's meant to impart the character and coloration of some amplifier and some speaker. If you plug it into something which already has a whole lot of character and coloration, it becomes nothing more than a fancy fuzz box.

I'm not trying to defend the Line6 products, though I am not unhappy with the Pod Farm software I recently acquired. I'm still a little biased toward my V-Amps, but it does what I need it to do - offers a fairly wide palette of usable amp, cabinet, and microphone models.

I have to say I'm not surprised with your disappointment with the effects on these things. I'm afraid it's always an after thought and always poorly implemented. Even in my more full-featured modelers, most of the effects - especially the modulation effects - fall far short. Aside from the general crappiness of some of these algorithms, and the very limited controls, I always have the problem that these effects are almost invariably post-amp. It's like in the 80s when they'd record the guitar amp and then stick a rack-mounted flanger on that track at mix time. Just sounds lame and dated and artificial to me. These things belong before the amp - preferably in a stompbox - so they can get all dirtied up and filtered down with the rest of the signal! Or maybe that's just me...

[newey]

All of my impressions of this were formed playing through my Fender SS amp, set to clean settings, no reverb added. I haven't tried it through headphones yet. It's a valid point, perhaps I should reserve judgment until I can do so.

I also need to get a decent set of 'phones, too. I wouldn't use the ones I have to judge much of anything . . .

And you're right about the effects sounding as if they were layered on after the amp, I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but that's a good description.

[sumgai]

From my experience, I can relate this much.....

Ever since the first Gibson Fuzztone, all, and I mean that literally, all distortion boxes have been an attempt to emulate an amp with blown speakers. As in various anecdotes about so-and-so having allegedly used a pencil or a razor blade or something to purposely introduce some manner of other-than-normal speaker performance, i.e. That Tone.

Let's extrapolate that to various boteek fuzzbox makers claiming that they can give you the "exact same" tone as a given amp. Perhaps a Mesa Boogie, perhaps a Marshall stack, or what have you. Are you starting to get an idea here? That's right, we've (or more correctly, the manufacturers) have now put the cart before the horse - the signal chain goes:

guitar -> "fake amp" -> real amp

wherein the fake amp is supposed to give you your tone, and the real amp is supposed to sit there like a limp biscuit.

It can get hairy, remembering how things are supposed to work. It doesn't make sense to us players, putting the tone-producing-amp/speakers before the reverb, chorus, wah, etc., but that's how the makers see it. I tend to think that they're just carrying on the tradition that ash alludes to above, that of adding effects in the mix-down, well after all recording has taken place. Hell even Roland/Boss does it to this day - ever looked at the setup inside a VG-99 or a GT-10? Tha's right, it's amp first, then all the goodies afterwards. Sheesh.

I gotta say, at least in Roland's case, you can re-arrange the signal chain the way you want it. In my VG-88, I immediately put the amp at the far end, where it belongs. Makes things easier to remember, and easier to control. Not to mention that everything now sounds pretty realistic.... well, it does to me, anyways.

But as usual, that's my addle-pated memory of how things are, and how they came to be. It goes without saying that said memories may be playing me false here.

IOW, FWIW.....





sumgai

[Yew]

The problem with al line6 |products is called the Vox VT series, similar functionality, better tone, more versitility