Why The Line 6 POD Sounds Really Bad

on today's episode i'm going to explain and show to you how and why the line 6 pod really sucks it's one of the worst things i've ever made let's get to it [Music] in 1998 line six launches the pod and sells around 3 000 units per month and eventually they sold millions of their amps and this unit it's pretty wild i have one here here's one in the bag we don't have it he has the bag jingle maybe one day he has the bag so here's the rules here's what we're gonna do this is one of the most crapped upon things in modern guitar people swear it's horrible that it can't sound good but those cells numbers and the tech inside of it and the team that work on it that defies that logic this is an amazingly brilliant product marcus ryle the main developer the guy's a genius and this started a lot of stuff that never existed so much so that the later 4x4 units like the dl4 fm4 mm4 all these guys they came directly from this tech so people love those the crap on this so something's wrong there here's what we're gonna do i'm gonna give myself two minutes we're gonna plug up we're gonna ride a jam and pick a sound out and make it work and see if this sounds good on the fly in a hurry can i make good music with this yes or no let's go this first jam the setting is really simple i went to the black panel so that's a fender black face fender basement is one of my favorite amps so it's probably in that genre of amp and then i went to the 410 setting you can switch different cabs here 212s 10s whatever 112. i added a little bit of reverb and i have the delay with compressor setting and you can tweak that by there's all kinds of secondary controls just hold the tap control and then this becomes like delay repeat delay mix it's super versatile if you just learn it read the menu you know there's a pdf online you can download that and learn stuff let's see what it sounds like [Music] and [Music] i don't know about you but i feel like i think that i know that i'm ready to go on tour with like keith urban wallflowers whatever keith urban actually used one of these for a while i guess it's just too bad for people to really use though there's no way these sound good what we just heard is probably not even real let's move on this next one i'm gonna go to a setting that should be forbidden like it should be deleted from this because it's so sacrilegious it's called fuzz box so yeah line six sure you're gonna make a digital fuzz yeah that's not possible is it we'll see fuzz box 212 cab a little bit of reverb i'm gonna do quarter note delay like i use on everything anyway and uh let's see how this fuzzes up because there's no way digital can do fuzz tones it's absolutely impossible [Music] hey [Music] wow pretty good tone i mean i could play for dire straits with that probably jam with andy simmons i don't know but it's digital there's no way it really sounded good i'm just fooling myself you know nick that didn't sound good did it nah nah it doesn't sound because it's a it's the kidney bean it's the bean pod like this can't sound good right any addison there's no way that sounds like crap sounds horrible this thing really sucks all right let's move on now this is the final jam here to determine if this piece of trash is worth checking out you know because you tried it back in the day you hated it right because people said it sucked and then if you're a younger person you've heard of this and you're like this thing sucks give me the helix something like that i hear you but here's the thing let's try something that's really hard to do it's a multi-layered sound it's my favorite sound it's huge so i want to create a big huge ambient sound that lets the clean attack come through so chorus delay a la memory man a lot of reverb now i'm going to go to the british classic amps that's going to be a marshall style thing and i'm going to do the 412 cab and we're going to see if we can mimic some slow dive kind of vibes big shoe gauge there's no way this will ever work because you need those analog pedals you need memory men you need real lamps this is stupid why are we doing this move on just do the jam get it over with [Music] [Music] what do you think yeah it's hard to admit that it sounded good i know it hurts you doesn't it like breaks your little heart it's fine i mean two minutes for each setting here this is a really cool unit i feel like i could do a hundred jams with this it sounds good i'm running mono because i like mono some people go stereo say it even makes it sound better i don't know don't really care about that but it's pretty crazy and here's the bottom line line six did this stuff before anybody people had tried dsp but marcus rile is a genius and when this came out no one had ever taken digital and made it feel right he's incredible he invented adat come on the guy's like literally a genius so the other people involved here line six at this time they go on to do this series but the people that start walking through the door right as the pod is released you have george tripps he shuts down way huge says whatever not doing this anymore joins line six you have terry burton who created strymon and is now part of maris along with angelo both of those it's insane the people involved in this knew what they were doing and this stuff sounds really good whether you like it or not that's really the moral of this story and um i'm not heartbroken about it let me know how you feel about this in the comments if you ever played with a pod let me know if you liked it why did you get rid of the pod let's examine our hearts and just see if maybe some of this old gear that people says sucks is actually pretty good and you could still use it i don't know maybe we'll do a pocket pod episode yeah yeah look it's got a little belt clip so cute all right let's go to record time today's record time is brought to you by 2004's how to dismantle an atomic bomb by the band u2 i picked this record for a couple reasons one is it might be my favorite modern u2 record it's hard to beat unforgettable fire for me uh this one is full of line six sounds and tech so the edge big user of all this the pod pros live the delay units basically line six powered tons and tons of how these songs were written created performed live yeah when you listen to this the tones are incredible go listen to vertigo listen to my favorite track city of blinding lights um they're just all really good crumbs from your table yeah all because of you you're hearing line six on this and you probably never knew it it's really great record and i think this is a good youtube record for people who don't care for you too i know there's a lot of you out there so check this out let me know what you think in the comments below thanks so much for watching this i hope you enjoyed it i hope that you realize that you know the line 6 pod is probably not for you it's not usable it's basically trash in the comments below let me know your favorite jam or let me know the gem you hated most because that would kind of be your favorite because whatever you hate the most means you actually kind of liked it i think something like that hit like subscribe click the bell icon to get notifications of future episodes if you want to jam along with these pod jams i know you do you can play your pod with my pod down in the link below in the description over at band lab you can download all these stems go to the ghs show.com for some stuff like merch and join our patreon for the preservation of pedal history go be a member over there that's it thanks so much for watching have a good day play your pod maybe dig it out the trash yeah it's in the trash i think it's in your closet bye [Music] you

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 303,537

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, overdrive pedal, chorus pedal, distortion pedal, boss pedals, compressor pedal, univibe, delay pedal, octave fuzz, reverb pedal, reverb, eq pedal, boost pedal, behringer

Id: FXdwsktHa6k

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021