Emulation v circuitry

Howdy all,

Maybe I should have called this 'chips v tubes'.

In my search for affordable, light, good sounding emando amplification I have begun to focus on emulation.

BluGuitar Amp1, Helix, Kemper, Boss Katana, etc all offer what seems like a silver bullet for us emando players. Emulations aren't necessarily affected by the relatively weaker electrical output of the emando v. electric guitar.

So I decided to dip my toe in the waters. I bought myself a used Line 6 POD 2.0. It arrived yesterday and I spent a few hours experimenting with amp settings, cab settings, and effects.

I plugged my JBovier EMC-5 into the units and used the phones out put to go into the tape input on the stereo in the living room. I needed to be a bit careful not to blow the stereo speakers on some of the high gain emulations.

I settled on a few favorites and spent the most time going between a 'small tweed' running a '1x8"' cab and a 'British Blues' running a '4x10"' cab. In the latter setting I added the 'chorus 1' effect.

Ahhh. That was nice. On the latter setting I kept the drive low and the EQ fairly flat. You would be surprised how non-bright an emando can be.

I know I've said I don't like chorus. But I think that was the Boss pedal I didn't like. This chorus was subtle and lush and going stereo in a stereo! I spent a couple more hours last night playing slow waltzes! :)

I hope I can duplicate that sound on stage now. If I can it'll be worth putting up with a rubbish form factor in a silly color. ;)

So far my only beef is a couple of noisy pots and a lack of an XLR output port.

Daniel

The Pod is great tool. I released a CD on which the guitar player (serious professional touring jazz player) used a Pod direct into the board for all tracks. Sweet tone for clean jazz, and good distortion for a fat overdrive tone.

No one carries real pianos to gigs, or Hammond B3 organs, and the Ampeg SVT bass amp is obsolete, replaced with powerful and lightweight Class D amps and neodynium-magnet speakers. Leave the tubes behind, lower your carbon footprint and spare your back.

I’ve been looking at the Iridium pedal by Strymon (it features in the February edition of Guitarist magazine). I’d been thinking of replacing my aging ‘72 Fender Vibrochamp with something more modern. The Iridium is stated to be an amp and cabinet simulator with added “room reverb” intended to replace an amp in a stutudio environment. My thinking is that it will plug directly into my acoustic amp meaning that I can use it for both acoustic and electric instruments.

My only concern about the Iridium is that, if it realy is intended for studio use, why doesn’t it have XLR outputs and why isn’t it phantom powerable?

Has anyone come across it?

Update:
Ran mono through the PA last night in rehearsal. The amps I chose for the living room don't really blend well with my guitar player and bassist. But the Fender-y ones worked well.

...And chorus through a mono output is rubbish.

;)
Daniel

Suffered through the longest line check (not even a real soundcheck) in human history Wednesday night. 75 minutes mostly standing on stage waiting for several different people to sort out why there was no signal coming from my 2 DI's, why the monitors would work but not the mains, why the mains would work but not the monitors, what happened to channel 11, etc. (Hint, if you're using phantom powered DI's turn on phantom power.) Indeed we spent longer on stage for the line check than of the gig.

BUT... the POD 2.0 performed perfectly. It handled my pedals and sounded reasonably like a generic black topped Fender. A friend took a few videos and posted them to my FB page, if you're curious.

Long Black Veil and C'est Noyé into Wayfaring Stranger

Daniel