Electric Guitar and Amp Set Up

Friday, May 28, 2010

Electric Guitar and Amp Set Up

My guitar theory video lessons feature a Paul Reed Smith CE24 electric guitar played through a Line 6 Pod Pro. I use the Pod's left/mono XLR out in Live mode. It goes into a Mackie mixer and then I take a line out into the camera.The Pod Pro sounds much better than the regular Pod. I think it's the XLR output that makes all the difference. It's not a real amp, but an amp modeler. I agree with the purists that the tone from real amps is better, but amps are impractical in some settings. The Line 6 products are very easy to use and sound good enough to me.

A favorite trick of mine is to create a patch with the drive and channel volume all the way up, and then turn the volume on the guitar down to about 3 or 4. You can get some great blues tone this way particularly on the Line 6 BLACK PANEL amp model. If you crank up the reverb and add a little delay, it can sound like you got a cabinet cranked up in the next room.

By the way, turning the volume on the guitar down works well on my PRS because rolling off the volume doesn't also take away the high end. If your guitar sound becomes muddy when you do this, then look into installing a volume pot mod. It only costs a few dollars.