help with podxt pro guitar sound?

[slashvanyoung]

Yeah, thousands of $$ worth of pirated software won't necessarily make your recordings better... the contrary, you're doing more harm if you're not knowing what you're doing... and you obviously don't. No offense man... just sticking to the truth.

 

[Neuromancer]

dude, there are absolutely no mids on your tone, i dont know how did you manage to achieve that one ok, here are my tips for you to richen your tone, expecially when using POD XT patches;

1- dont use any CAB simulations from your POD
2- just load up your favourite amp from POD and disable the CAB; you will get a raw, tiny sizzling amp tone, dont worry you're gonna fix that
3- while using amps from your POD, or writing your own tones, always keep the BASS knob of your amp as low as possible, have a considerable MID level and don't push up HIGHs too high either.
4- use a CUBASE or SONAR kind of a DAW instead of FL stuff
5- record your guitar with this raw amp tone loaded from your POD
6- always double track your rhythm guitars hard panned to left and right. you can even quad track them, depends on what you want to achieve...do not copy a single played track to another track, play them twice. if you insist playing them once for all, move one of the tracks a few ms apart from the other track. but that's not a good idea...track them twice at least
7- insert an impulse file reading vst like keFIR or voxengo boogex to your guitar tracks, load up your favourite CAB impulses which you can find a lot here on these forums
8- experiment with the settings of keFIR to achieve the tone which suits you best.
9- always try to achieve the bass of your overall sound with a bass guitar, not with your rhythm guitars.
10- try to color your guitar sound with parametric EQs, but don't overEQ your tracks, especially when it comes to HIGHs, you can get a muddy and disturbing sound very easily.
11- it may seem sounding nice when you EQ your guitars lowering the MIDs but don't be fooled with that. always have a considerable amount of MIDs on your tones.
12- when mastering with ozone or some other vsts, always be very gentle playing with the EQs, use very little amounts...

i think you may have a decent tone with your guitars if you pay more attention to my tips...
have fun tracking

 

[Tokyurot]

Try to get as good tone as you possibly can out of your Pod alone without any vst-plugins, after that you can pimp it to your taste with EQ and use other IR's instead of Pod's cabinets if you like.

You can find thousands of presets from http://line6.com/customtone to begin with. I would also never recommend putting Ozone or L3 on a guitarchain. Less is best, good luck finding the tone you want

 

[Metaltastic]

I just skimmed over the responses, but you guys realize that more than likely all that awful treble is from the harmonic exciter in Ozone he has? Treble and presence at 100% on podxt models isn't necessarily that weird; those things don't behave AT ALL like a real amp IME, and I owned a Podxt for like 4 years!

 

[Sweetnothing]

I just skimmed over the responses, but you guys realize that more than likely all that awful treble is from the harmonic exciter in Ozone he has? Treble and presence at 100% on podxt models isn't necessarily that weird; those things don't behave AT ALL like a real amp IME, and I owned a Podxt for like 4 years!

Comment 19 to last one said that same thing

 

[Metaltastic]

Comment 19 to last one said that same thing

Well, only in the most general sense of "don't use mastering plugs on guitar tracks," I didn't see any specific mention of the exciter as the likely culprit

 

[Sweetnothing]

Well, only in the most general sense of "don't use mastering plugs on guitar tracks," I didn't see any specific mention of the exciter as the likely culprit

Ummm that includes Ozone I think? doesn't matter, the thing is he should disable all those plugins when just building a base tone

 

[veronicafalls]

okay, I'll trash the ozone 4 and all other mastering plugins from the master track lol. Other than that software, I use a delay software. Is there anyone that understands the pod enough to help me get started? Because I suck at this stuff. Or at least point me to an article that would explain this stuff, because I am googling but it sometimes doesn't help me get the sound I want.

 

[DanLights]

amp man, go to the source. the AMP

or amp sim in your case, but you get the point. if the source doesn't sound good all by itself, no ozone or delay or whatever will make it sound good

 

[veronicafalls]

amp man, go to the source. the AMP

or amp sim in your case, but you get the point. if the source doesn't sound good all by itself, no ozone or delay or whatever will make it sound good

lol, I barely understand how to get a good sound in my amp, I've been trying for a few months now.

 

[DanLights]

lol, I barely understand how to get a good sound in my amp, I've been trying for a few months now.

yeah it's never easy at first unless you get really lucky and nail it by pure randomness lol. just keep trying, keeping in mind what you want and need in a good guitar tone. more low end heaviness? bump up some bass. more destruction? hit that gain up, etc. and unless you're a swedish death metal band on a Hm-2 normally no knob at 100% will do you very good (it's all subjective of course), although I have no experience with PODs, I will when I get one soon

 

[Erkan]

Hmm strange that I didn't react on the fact that you had stuff like Ozone and crap for your guitar tone but as has been said already, get rid of that kind of stuff.

I have no clue how PODs behave really but if you're having that much trouble with it, you could try just going in the box like many do here on the forum? LePou, Nick and AcmeBarGig have great stuff you could use and it's pretty hard to get a useless tone out of those things, given the fact that you're using Ryan's famous impulses haha The tone you would get from those plugins would probably be quite useful from the get go, as opposed to what you seem to be getting now from your POD :O

 

[Sean in Silence]

Hey man, I'm using the Diamond Plate model too. One thing for other people to bear in mind, a POD is not a real Recto, so settings that might sound totally awful on a real recto can sometimes work on a POD.

As has been said, turn down the gain A LOT. Depending on your pickups and their output, experiment between 60 and 70 per cent gain. I've found you don't need more than 75 per cent on PODs for any rhythm stuff.
Do you have the Boost+EQ stomp (this comes with the X3, but with the XT I think you can only access it if you buy an effects expansion pack thing)?
If you don't, start using that instead of the Screamer, because it offers more tone shaping options.
If can't afford it right now, keep using the Screamer, but set the drive to zero (yes, I do mean zero), level between 50 and 80 depending on your pickups output level and tone between 40 and 60, but try 50 at first. That will have the effect of the Screamer working as a proper boost to enhance your tone, rather than adding unnecessary and disgusting sounding overdrive.

DO NOT use the condenser microphone simulation for rhythm guitar, period. It works good for leads......for rhythms, it's just a no no unfortunately Use the 57 On Axis simulation and it will sound a lot better. Perhaps use less room tone too.
As for the actual preamp settings (Diamond Plate settings), use this as a starting point:
65 per cent gain
65 per cent bass
85-100 per cent mids (I'm not kidding, this sounds horrible on a real Recto, but PODs are naturally thin and need that extra mids and it actually works on PODs, believe it or not)
80 per cent treble
80 per cent presence

For the 4 band semi parametric EQ, don't cut 200 hz.
In fact, boost around 300 Hz and 750 Hz slightly, cut around 6Khz and boost 2.5-3Khz.

Hope this helps as a starting point.

I beg to differ on a few points in this statement
Here is a clip of one of my band's songs
I'm using the diamond plate model WITH the condenser mic on the 4x12 treadplate cab
and my mids were at 20 I believe or somewhere around there
but they were pretty low

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/767557/Ostrich Master 2.mp3

 

[Pxz]

The condenser model sounds good, i feel it sounds more like a 57 than the 57 model itself hahah. I always use the condenser and off axis 57 models for riffs, 57 on axis for leads or the dinamic too.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

the last clip that was posted was much better, listening right off the bat from the original post it sounded like blankets were put over teh seakers, but listening back there are still bright and scooped. I would say taht the tone needs more sizzle however the guitar tone is way to scratchy to begin with, to fix that the tone knob on your screamer needs to be turned down until that scratchiness goes away, then maybe eq in some 6-10k area about 2 or 3 db just to give some sizzle.

If bringing the tone knob down doesn't give you more mids, go ahead and eq a 0.5Q hump at about 1.2k and bring it up until you have a nice warm tone. And stop using a delay, just double track the guitars, its doing some werd effects, sound a bit hollow and almost like its cancelling some of your mids in a strange way.

 

[veronicafalls]

here's a new upload. Any suggestions, it sounds kinda like somethings missing still. but idk.

settings:

ms diamond plate- drive 50% bass 55% mid 10%, treble 80%, prescence 100%
tube screamer - drive 0%, gain 100%, tone 65%

EQ -
100hz -12.8 db
200hz - 3.9 db
1.2kHz - 0.6 db
6.0kHz - 3.0db


http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7951322

 

[Harry Hughes]

dude, there are absolutely no mids on your tone, i dont know how did you manage to achieve that one ok, here are my tips for you to richen your tone, expecially when using POD XT patches;

1- dont use any CAB simulations from your POD

While I agree with many of your points, I don't agree with the impulse thing.
Yes. People go about saying it's objectively better or something, but honestly when I tried impulses it was no better or worse than the POD cab sims for me personally, it was just different *shrugs*
I'm not saying don't try it and don't experiment with it, but I don't think they necessarily work for everyone.

 

[Harry Hughes]

here's a new upload. Any suggestions, it sounds kinda like somethings missing still. but idk.

settings:

ms diamond plate- drive 50% bass 55% mid 10%, treble 80%, prescence 100%
tube screamer - drive 0%, gain 100%, tone 65%

EQ -
100hz -12.8 db
200hz - 3.9 db
1.2kHz - 0.6 db
6.0kHz - 3.0db


http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7951322

Sounds WAYYYYYYYYY better than your first clip dude.
But I'd say decrease the treble by about 10 per cent and increase the mids dramatically (as much as 70 per cent or more), it will open up the sound more and give it more punch.
Another problem is, you're just trying to make this tone sound good on it's own........don't do that.
Put it into a mix with drums and bass guitar.
You'll see boosting 100 Hz is actually no good at all once you put it into a mix.
I strongly suggest replace 100 Hz with around 350-400 Hz with a boost around 5 decibels, another boost around 650-800 Hz of around 3-6 decibels (this all depends on your pickups too of course as to what exact value you use, hence why I'm giving general frequency regions).
1.2 KHz should be fine actually, but experiment with boosting 1.5 KHz and higher for a little more pick attack.
Replace 6.0 KHz with 5.5 KHz I reckon and instead of boosting, actually cut that frequency very slightly (maybe less than 1 decibel of cut) and that will help smooth out the high end a little, which should be good since your presence is set to full anyway.
Once you get this shit happening in the mix, get back to us again soon and we can make further judgement.

 

[Sean in Silence]

cut 3 db at 800hz with a bandwidth of .5
cut 6 db at 4khz with a bandwidth of .5
cut 4db at 4khz in gearbox/pod farm/whatever line 6 thing you're using for simulation
lowpass at 12khz
highpass at 60hz
turn up your mids a little bit
turn down your presence a little bit
done.
don't turn the treble up too high on your pod. (as in don't put it at 100%)
and like Petrovsk said
Don't try and create your guitar tone all by itself.
make it with everything else playing.
It's sounding MUUUUCCCHHH better now though.

 

[veronicafalls]

lol, I'm such a n00b at this recording thing. The only thing I can get well at is the drums because I usually use a drum engine, vox I'm okay at, I just mostly use pod farm for that for right now till I run into something else. And bass hasn't usually been a problem for me since I don't need that much of dynamics in bass guitar right now since I'm basically just trying to fill low end.