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Wish I had Line 6 love, but I just don't


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OK, don't get me wrong here. I think Line 6 makes good products (sure, they had footswitch issues back some years ago, but who doesn't have something), I don't have a specific issue, and I'm allergic to "mojo"

 

but still...II'm going to have to use some poetic language here

I've owned line 6 and I can't tell you specifically what it is, but I just never find myself engaging with the sound. It just feels like effects on top of my sound. I never find myself playing into the effect or melting into it where you hit a sound to test it and you look up and 2 hours have gone by without you noticing.

 

I like the interfaces just fine, I like the quality of construction, the technical quality of the processing seems just fine.

 

i don't know what it is, but I just never go "oh, that's the spot right there"

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OK, don't get me wrong here. I think Line 6 makes good products (sure, they had footswitch issues back some years ago, but who doesn't have something), I don't have a specific issue, and I'm allergic to "mojo"

 

but still...II'm going to have to use some poetic language here

I've owned line 6 and I can't tell you specifically what it is, but I just never find myself engaging with the sound. It just feels like effects on top of my sound. I never find myself playing into the effect or melting into it where you hit a sound to test it and you look up and 2 hours have gone by without you noticing.

 

I like the interfaces just fine, I like the quality of construction, the technical quality of the processing seems just fine.

 

i don't know what it is, but I just never go "oh, that's the spot right there"

 

Agreed for the most part. Used to have a KB37 keyboard and interface, but never really liked the sound of the toneport or whatever it was. The effects have never felt right to me... same goes for the m13 i tried out in the store, or some of the Pod stuff I've tried in stores. Something just not right to me.

 

That being said... the DT series amps are something I think I might be able to get along with. Spent some time with those in stores and liked the variation.

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My buddy has a 100W with the 4X12 cab. Don't remember the model right off hand. I ran sound for him on several shows so I could hear it live, jammed with him many times and also recorded their first album.

 

Its hard for me to tell if it was just the presets he had loaded up or whether it was simply the amp, but the sound was very two dimensional sounding. He was into playing metal and allot of his presets all had a 300hz scoop to get those tones. I'm not a huge fan of the drives or effects. They sounded homogenized. They are OK if your thing is to dial up tones to sound exactly like an album but that's what also causes it to fail. Tones on an album are mastered to sound compressed. You do that with a live amp and the drummer buries you which is exactly what happened to him when he played live. If I hadn't been running sound and miced his amp properly, He wouldn't have been heard by the audience. Live tone need to be clearer and more dynamic. The sounds he had sounded like white noise

 

This is one problem with downloadable presets. You get some guy matching the sound on an album building a preset at maybe 85db and it sounds nothing like the amps should sound at concert levels. I would need to experiment with the amp to see if it could get more traditional tones to my liking. I did jam with him several times using my Marshall Valvestate on a 4X10 cab and a few pedals and I could bury him playing just bout anything. The difference was like night and day. Again, it may just be he has a tin ear for dialing up good presets. Many players do. They dial up bedroom tones and think those setting will sound good a high volumes and they simply don't because of the way our ears work at different dB levels.

Rooms have natural reverb so dialing up a dryer tone is important too.

 

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[Flamesuit=ON]

 

What I find really interesting is that no matter how "good" the modellers get, we always come back to the underlying fact that the goal is to sound like a tube amp of one sort or another.

 

It seems to me that Line6 (along with the other modellers) is always going to be a weak copy of a really good analog amp, because that is their apparent goal, and nearly every guitarist just wants to sound like something that was probably recorded with a high-$$$ tube amp.

 

SO - if you're going to try to copy a tube amp, why not just skip the synthetic approach and go straight to the Kemper, to get the flexibility of a lot of different sounds, but a much closer copy?

 

Alternatively, just buy a tube amp and do what we've been doing for decades - crank it up and enjoy.

 

[Flamesuit=OFF]

 

:D

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[Flamesuit=ON]

 

What I find really interesting is that no matter how "good" the modellers get, we always come back to the underlying fact that the goal is to sound like a tube amp of one sort or another.

 

It seems to me that Line6 (along with the other modellers) is always going to be a weak copy of a really good analog amp, because that is their apparent goal, and nearly every guitarist just wants to sound like something that was probably recorded with a high-$$$ tube amp.

 

SO - if you're going to try to copy a tube amp, why not just skip the synthetic approach and go straight to the Kemper, to get the flexibility of a lot of different sounds, but a much closer copy?

 

Alternatively, just buy a tube amp and do what we've been doing for decades - crank it up and enjoy.

 

[Flamesuit=OFF]

 

:D

 

Agreed... I'm more interested in hearing what digital technology can do that analog can't than I am in hearing it try to replicate sounds that already exist in the analog world. That said, it is exciting to think there may be a digital collection of every piece of gear ever made some day.

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