Live Gigs: Amps or PodXTs direct

[AStacy2]

I'm wondering what anyone thinks about using PodXTs direct live instead of amps. We're mainly doing gigs of ~500 people and have to deal with a lot of shitty sound guys. The main problem is the guitars, they're never up enough in the mains.


So any bands, what was your experience doing this?


Any FOH sound guys...do you like PodXTs direct or prefer amps? Also, what is easier for you to get to sound good in the mains? Would a shitty sound guy have less trouble with a PodXT going direct than micing an amp?


Any pros/cons of doing this before we make the switch?


I would really appriciate the advice of an experienced FOH sound guy on this, so let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Sloan]

AMMMMPPPPSSS!!!!!!!!

Seriously. they look cooler too.

It's all about getting a good stage volume and have the sound guy "reinforce" your sound to help it spread out through the room. If you just use an unmic'ed amp, it's very directional and usually sucks in most venues.

Another solution would be to play through your amp, but split a signal to the pod to the PA and not mic your amp. Might sound weird, I haven't tried it.

 

[Metal Overload]

AMPS!!

 

[AStacy2]

As far as looking cool, they'd be sitting there on standby for that. It's just that we've sounded good about 5 times out of about 100 shows. Not very good odds. These really aren't big clubs, top 500 people like I said. Are you guys in bands or FOH guys?

 

[TheDude]

PODxt PRO. Here's why:

1. Amps are loud, so it's difficult to get the guitars in the PA because the amps are blasting all over the place.
2. Same sound every night. No hassle with mics being pushed out of the sweet spot.
3. More space on the stage for the flamethrowers.
4. The backdrop is visible.
5. The rigging is a breeze, and you can keep the whole dual guitars plus bass rig in a 6 space rack unit. XLR out straight to the stagebox.
6. The soundcheck will take less time, which means more time to drink beer.

We've been doing this for a long time, and our backs loves us for it

Edit: I'm in a band, and have done FOH.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Having heard somone run an XT pro through a crown poweramp into a 4X12 I must insist that you use and amp. I have also heard one used with a DSL100 half stack.

Both was the uber suckage.

 

[Metaltastic]

Well it all depends how the XT is dialed in, and more importantly what the output is set to (e.g. "studio direct," "stack poweramp," etc.) - I plan on getting a Carvin DCM150 power amp to put between my XT and my Bogner 2x12 for gigs where I don't wanna schlep my 54 pound XSr, cuz the XT sounded incredible set to "stack poweramp" and running through the XSr's FX return

 

[TheDude]

Bad sounding PODxt pro through a 4X12 is just bad tweaking. Nothing else.

 

[006]

I will say XT. I used my PODxt Live for over 300 shows over the course of 2 years and got nothing but compliments on my tone and the overall mix of the sound being good. The other guitarist used a 2.0 POD so his was always a little muddier, but still sounded fine. The bassist uses a BassPOD as well. It made soundcheck, setup, and break down sooooo much easier and sounded fine. The deal is...usually live sound blows anyway, unless you are lucky enough to find somebody that knows what they are doing at a venue. Few and far between in my experience though.

~e.a

 

[Flat Fifth Fury]

I agree that a well dialed in POD is not only easier to set up/transport, is more consistent and easier to work with at FOH than a regular amp. I've gone from lugging my 1/2 stacks around to plugging straight to the FOH board just as I do in the studio. It's very nice.

 

[ahjteam]

Any FOH sound guys...do you like PodXTs direct or prefer amps?

I've done FOH/monitors (from which ~60% monitors) for ~700th gigs between 15-10000 listeners (majority at clubs with 100-600 capacity + some outdoor festivals) and I have to say that neither POD or amp is bad, if they are well configured or atleast tolerateable, but shit is always shit. From conventional aspect I personally prefer PODs/SansAmps/E-drums because you will have a lot less noise on and from the stage so you can actually put some guitars to the PA and the bandmembers can actually hear something else except the guitars and drums onstage and you can keep the monitors at lower volumes which decreases the possibility for feedback by a mile. But from the visual aspect I do have to admit that you will destroy your ears anyways someday and amps and huge kits do look A LOT cooler than just a floorboard and if you can fill the whole crowd, it doesn't really matter which you use

edit:

As far as looking cool, they'd be sitting there on standby for that. It's just that we've sounded good about 5 times out of about 100 shows. Not very good odds. These really aren't big clubs, top 500 people like I said. Are you guys in bands or FOH guys?

It sounds more like that you need to A) change your livesound B) get your personal FOH guy that travels with you on all your gigs. Preferrably a guy who knows what hes doing, but he doesn't really have to be experienced, we all have to start from somewhere. For example I started the FOH stuff as a hobby in 2001 and because I wasn't that experienced, I could only do about ~50 gigs in the first 4 years and was only a roadie on 30 of them, for the bands of my friends etc, but I kept my rates low/free to get experience and after I watched X amount of gigs how a pro mixed, you can get pretty well hang of things and you when you start to do it yourself, you start to get good pretty fast (and use less mics on my case) after that, because it really aint no rocket science and extra mics are usually not nessecary. For example at the beginning from the point when the instruments are all set up, it might've taken me almost a full hour to mic up everything and do a soundcheck for a band, now it only takes 15-20 minutes. After 2004 I've been pretty much only doing live mixing (currently for 3 different clubs and 5 different bands). It doesn't pay that well (except if done daily, now doing usually only 2-4 days a week), but I prefer to do it than to flip burgers. And like most of the regular Finns I don't want to brag, but I think I've been doing pretty good as all except one band that I've started mixing regularly have stayed as my clients (and the one was a money/car seating issue). They've said that after a small time it gave them more confidence that "hey, we dodn't have to worry that we would sound bad, because that guy knows what he is doing" and just concentrate on the gig. Believe me, it helps more than you might think.

 

[AStacy2]

Wow, thanks for all the feedback guys. Like I said we'll be doing direct to the board guys not plugging the Pods into cabs.


TheDude:

Other than the rackmounts, what's the advantage of PodXT Pro for live sound?


Ahjteam:

Impressive resume. What do you mean by change the live sound? Wouldn't I be changing the live sound by using Pod's instead of amps or am I just not understanding you? Like I said we'll have amps as stageprops anyways so we'll still look "cool". Also, hiring a FOH guy isn't an option.


If I don't hear a horror story, I'm leaning towards the band being 2 PodXT Live's straight into the board and one Bass PodXT live straight into the board. Really, I was concerned about how a sound guy would react to this (would he be like what the fuck, I've never done that before) and if it would make it easier for (a dumb sound guy) them.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

[Metal Overload]

if you are playing in a pub with bad acoustics, poor PA. no monitors, arrogant FOH Guys or no foh guys at all. i´ll say is better to use an amp.
Of course the convenience of a pod is HUGE, but! if you will carry stageprops, is better to carry at least one head an a real cab as backup, because POD aren´t usable 100% of the time.

I don´t do a lot of gigging, but for 2 gigs of 10, the conditions are good, 6, only PA for vocals, poor equipment and stuff, and other two of Ten are Massive gig, or opening a big band. how ever i use a sansamp for direct use if there´s no amp

 

[ahjteam]

What do you mean by change the live sound?

Changing to PODs is quite radical change, I mean tweaking your dials. A lot and for a long time. Because resetting your settings might be the coolest thing you will ever do, as you might find a lot new sounds. For example Peavey 5150/6505 is a good head, because you can get a good tone out of it quite easily, but as you can see, you can get a ton of different tones out of it with just minor tweaking. The tone you get by quickly dialing it in might not be the best one you can get out of it, if you would tweak it a bit more. I know guitarplayers who have played for roughly 20 years and still havent found their "ultimate tone", while some have found it.

For example I have this really recent case (where ex-Nightwish road guitar technician is currently helping out to solve the problem) where we have two guitars with problematic rhythm distortion sound combination. Other one sounds really nice (Marshall EL84 to Rocktron Voodoo Valve) but other one (Mesa Triaxis to TC M-One to Mesa 2:50) sounds like a beehive, which usually means that you have too much distortion in the treble area (the best sounding distortion usually comes from the mids IMHO ). To remove the bees, you need to remove some of the high end off it without killing the tone, which might require a lot more tweaking than you might think. You might need to remove some drive and treble by 0.5-2, boost the bottom end and middle, or it might ruin the tone completely.

...and the bad conditions have made me come to the conclusion that I usually never leave for a gig without my case with $2000 worth of microphones The case doesn't weight that much (~6kg) and the handle is quite comfortable, so you can even carry it for a mile by foot if nessecary. The places usually always have atleast 2-3 SM58's, so I don't carry them around, but I have 5x SM57 for instruments, 2 x Röde NT5 for overheads, 1 x SansAmp for bass, 3 x Sennheiser e604 for toms, 1 x Sennheiser e901 for kick (total win!) and a spare Behringer DI for keys, sucks ass.

 

[AStacy2]

Well, the amps in use are terrible, trust me, you've never heard them on any records that sounded good hehe. Pods seemed like the cheapest option and I figured would be easier for a shitty sound guy to control, what do you think about that?

 

[HeadCrusher]

POD if conditions allow it.

 

[Kazrog]

My band has gone the route of PODs and found it to be infinitely better than using amps.

 

[Fragle]

i don't know about running a pod direct live, but i've seen a few shows where one band only had a pod xt pro rack and just ran it through the power section of whatever backline amp was available, and like 95% of the times they sounded pretty good, sometimes even outstanding (kataklysm live on the no mercy tour 2006...xt pro through marshall tsl powersection = just like the record).

i guess i was playing more opening act gigs i'd consider going down that route, too, but as it is, my band usually plays headlining shows, and therefore it's our amps and cabs that the backline is made of

while i said that i haven't tried running direct myself, i think i'd be hesistant to do so...it's just a good feeling to have your own half/full stack on stage, gives you at least *some* control over the way things are sounding. when running direct, chances are the soundguy sucks hard and you'll end up not hearing yourself, nor will the crowd.

 

[HeadCrusher]

i guess i was playing more opening act gigs i'd consider going down that route, too, but as it is, my band usually plays headlining shows, and therefore it's our amps and cabs that the backline is made of

What's your band?

 

[Fragle]

www.myspace.com/backslashmetal

but the fact that we're mostly playing headlining shows is in no way related to any popularity whatsoever...it's just that our singer is married to a promoter