POD HD 500 Tinkering and Observations (and some other pedal and amp stuff). I spent several hours playing through a friend’s POD HD with NO amp/speaker simulation. We ran the POD into his Fender Blues Jr. Humboldt Edition (aka Humboldt) with an HSS Strat. For comparison, we also played through various pedals of mine and my Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18 (aka HK18). Overall, the POD HD is a great “effects only” solution. Don’t read in to this… I am not saying the amp modeling in the POD is bad or unusable. We did NOT test the amp modeling. Our goal was to simplify the setup and tone building process to be as quick, easy, predictable and repeatable as possible. My solution was to start with a solid, consistent, known good platform, ala the Humboldt amp. The Best Tone Award” of the day goes to… my T1M Pearl OD/DIST pedal straight (no POD) in to the Humboldt was tonal bliss. With the right settings on the Punch and Touch it was awesome tone. It was the kind of tone that is inspirational and makes you want to play more. That is the best tone I have got with the Pearl. It’s good with the HK18, it was superb with the Humboldt. I was a bit surprised by this. The Pearl sounded MUCH better through the Humboldt than my Timmy. If you know me, you know that I sleep with the Timmy under my pillow. Just kidding, but not really :-). So, that goes to show that what works for me and my guitar, amp, whatever, may not give you the same results. The POD stole some of the tone both in volume and a bit of clarity. With nothing in the effects grid, some of the high end “jangle” of the Strat was taken away and wasn’t anything that could be EQ’d back in. I was a bit disappointed about this. We had the Master volume on the POD almost all the way up. We went in to the setup and chose the “Combo / Front” option. We checked the dip switches (ground/lift; XLR; pad/gain) and they were all set correctly. We came up with some great tones using the Delays, Reverbs and Tube Comp in the POD HD. These are all great sounding effects. Not as flexible or as many options as dedicated pedals, but definitely able to nail “core” tones. Drives (Overdrive, Screamer, Tube Drive) — were very usable when the gain was kept around 10am (definitely nothing higher than noon - after that the tone starts to get harsh). A setting around 10am to noon provides plenty of drive. I was very surprised by this. The drives in the POD/M9/M13 usually get a bad rap. If used in moderation and with a little tweaking they sound fine and were definitely usable. We ran an actual Tubescreamer TS9 through the POD’s effects loop and did an A/B with the POD’s Screamer drive effect — the differences, if any, were negligible. Having everything in the POD makes a lot more sense vs. trying to incorporate external pedals. I normally play through a Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18. I preferred the Humboldt’s tone quite a bit over the HK18. The HK18 has more features, but I thought the Humboldt was a better sounding amp. Very saddened by this. I love my H&K. I liked the Humboldt a lot more — it’s a solid amp. There are a million options out there. Running a POD HD 500, with effects only, in to a solid amp, like the Humboldt, makes a lot of sense. Some day, we may venture in to the amp modeling, but for now, this setup is a very viable and usable rig.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:31:30 +0000
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