hippietim
Axe-Master
Mine came Friday and I got a chance to fire it up a little that night.
My very first impression is that Line 6 has set an all-time new low for truly rotten presets out of the gate. The very first preset you get when you power it on is this seriously washed in effects patch that absolutely should not be the first patch on power up. I flipped through most of the patches in the default list and the vast majority of them are a mess with effects and cheesy sounds - I was very surprised. Along the way there were a few good ones but geez anyone that just plugs the thing in and flips through the default presets is not going to be very impressed - and this was the "Best of HD500" list - aroo? They have some other lists to choose from that are much more sensible but still too many effects and bizarre crap. Anyone that is skeptical of modelers to begin with will assume it's the same old POD stuff if they only flip through the default presets. I really don't get it.
So I just set about dialing in my own patches. This was much more gratifying. The HD500 is a noticeable improvement over the past POD products. The effects alone are obvious. The amp tones didn't have as much of that "thing" that you heard in past PODs. Definitely much more responsive to touch and volume control. The user interface is so much better than the X3 (which was really bad). I found it to be very simple to edit and navigate around creating patches. It was nice to be able to have more explicit control of the signal chain than the older PODs.
In short, I was able to dial in some usable tones in a reasonable amount of time. This is not the holy grail of modelers by any stretch and it certainly is not "revolutionary" when compared to what is already on the market but it's a very good piece of gear for a very reasonable price. Anyone willing to give it a shot should not have a hard time using it to make good sounding music.
My very first impression is that Line 6 has set an all-time new low for truly rotten presets out of the gate. The very first preset you get when you power it on is this seriously washed in effects patch that absolutely should not be the first patch on power up. I flipped through most of the patches in the default list and the vast majority of them are a mess with effects and cheesy sounds - I was very surprised. Along the way there were a few good ones but geez anyone that just plugs the thing in and flips through the default presets is not going to be very impressed - and this was the "Best of HD500" list - aroo? They have some other lists to choose from that are much more sensible but still too many effects and bizarre crap. Anyone that is skeptical of modelers to begin with will assume it's the same old POD stuff if they only flip through the default presets. I really don't get it.
So I just set about dialing in my own patches. This was much more gratifying. The HD500 is a noticeable improvement over the past POD products. The effects alone are obvious. The amp tones didn't have as much of that "thing" that you heard in past PODs. Definitely much more responsive to touch and volume control. The user interface is so much better than the X3 (which was really bad). I found it to be very simple to edit and navigate around creating patches. It was nice to be able to have more explicit control of the signal chain than the older PODs.
In short, I was able to dial in some usable tones in a reasonable amount of time. This is not the holy grail of modelers by any stretch and it certainly is not "revolutionary" when compared to what is already on the market but it's a very good piece of gear for a very reasonable price. Anyone willing to give it a shot should not have a hard time using it to make good sounding music.