Line 6 Bass Pod

Dialling up a few sounds is easy. Tweaking the one is easy. Digging into what it can do is harder. That means that most people, I suspect, will be like me and never have the energy and enthusiasm to grapple with detailed tone shaping. I've used it for five or six years and there are still some things where I could never really tell what it was doing or figure out the tonal fix I wanted.

But the low rating of I'm giving here is thoroughly deserved over the ancient but fundamental complaint about the original POD and bass POD. Line 6 couldn't be bothered to put a simple jack input for a footswitch. A few pennies worth of jack socket and wire would have increased the useability HUGELY. Good heavens - I''m getting quite bothered as I write this, reliving the frustration. Few deep breaths should do it ... that's better.

Instead they made their own very expensive floorboards the only way to control anything. I didn't buy one. Seriously, with a jack input for basic switching and another for a standard, off the shelf expression pedal to assign to parameters, this would have been a world beater, and a true classic. The absence of those makes it somewhat of a toy for me.

I was so excited way back, when I bought this. The first multi functional preamp and fx box for the bass. Wow! What I'd been dreaming of for years. Initially I wasn't dissapointed. Lots of silly noises to play with, lots of things to tweak.

It didn't take too long for me to realise that almost all of the sounds were pretty naff, though. The bassman clone is good, the sub bass setting is good. The classic marshal sound is good. But then there are dozens of other gutless tones that just sounded like minor variations on a plastic rock theme.

Worth saying that this wasn't necessarily a problem. It's the same with most multifunctional boxes. If you find two or three things you can use then that's usually good enough.

But it did get to me after a while, for these reasons. I was carrying around a fragile plastic box that did a hundred things I didn't want, but didn't do simple stuff I did want. The tuner on it is really not very good (and not footswitchable) so I was carrying round a separate tuner anyway. I wasn't using the effects because you can't switch them in without the proprietary cost-you an-arm-and-a-leg floorboard. The one effect I would have left in all the time would probably have been a little reverb. But ... oh dear, it doesn't do reverb, or delay. So basically I was using it as a preamp.

It dawned on me that my sansamp bass driver sounded better, was smaller, less noisy (the POD is a bit hissy sometimes)and did everything I was using the POD for. It took me many months of gigging to realise this, which was worringly dim of me. I think I was just really keen to use it.

Let's be fair and give a few positives. The compressor is good and also simple to use. The RAT style distortion is pretty good - nice and thick. Chorus/phase/flange stuff is not my thing at all so I have no opinion. The octaver is nice enough.

On the other hand the mutron and synth bass fx are toytown, mostly because of poor tracking of your notes. And where, for god's sake, is reverb and delay? Half a dozen types of chorus but no delay. Weird, isn't it?

A fair summary would be to say - some good tones, lots of indifferent ones. A bit noisy. Some nice effects. Sadly not suitable for gigging or expressive performance because of lack of control. OK for recording but, again, can be surprisingly noisy and hissy ( and I mean the clean settings, not the fx or overdriven ones). It does some things well but there are lots of other products that do these things just as well. There is no 'killer application' for the Bass POD.

It's never broken, I've had it a long time and I've used it a lot (though hardly ever this last year or so. It's reliable.

No experience.

It was the first of it's kind, so it has it's place. But it was quickly bettered. Some nice sounds but, as I said above, no 'killer app'. I've ended up using the Sansamp bass driver for recording and live instead of the POD. The sansamp, simple though it is, beats it in every respect. It just sounds better! I've been through loads of modelling effects and now I'm back with separate, analog pedals for effects. Easier to control and no compromise - you can choose the best of everything.

If I was looking for a bass preamp, multifx now though I wouldn't reccomend the POD. Stuff like the Behringer equivalent does the same job for less.


My background: I've been playing for 25 years. Alt Rock, funk, folk, psych (different bands, different times) 1974 Ibanez Rickenbacker, Vox Standard, Hohner headless fretless Steinberger copy, Burns Flyte, Status Shark 5 string (high C, none of your flapping low B nonsense).

My bass playing heroes are Paul McCartney, Jimmy Lea (Slade), Geezer Butler, Bootsy, Chris Wolstenholme (Muse - because he wants to be a whole orchestration but also knows how to play one note), Hannu Rananten (plays bass for Finnish trad/rock band Varttina, looks like a middle aged geography teacher, plays like a monster. Saw them live and he actually scared me). is that enough? And they're all alive.

10 at what it does any fool can work it out and the manual is written by a human. Perfecting the thing could take a long time.

Disappointing. Got some really nice distortion but have had difficulty getting a really deep clean sound evn from guitars that produce this quite well linked straight to the amp. (By the way various guitars and Peavey TNT 130)
Some of the effects are useless especially sunth but also about 4 or 5 others.
I like to play heavyish punkish rock amongst other things and can see myself using this possibly solely for the distortion effects.
I would say that the amp models are probably more usable and nicely diverse than the effects models.

No problems and I have dropped it a few times. seems pretty tough

N/A

Very little experience of other effects pedals but i would have to say that this has not really lived up to my expectations of what I thought it would do tonally. I would hate to put someone like myself (been playing less than two years and low budget) off the thing though as these are nevertheless good value (even if only as learning toys) for the price they can now be got second hand.
Very reluctant to upgrade to XP or Pro or get a new one but like mine as a toy and distirtion.

it needs just 30 minutes to understand the manual.

there are many amp & cabinet models but nothing gives me satisfaction. i want to give Line6 a peice of advice. YOU SHOUD MAKE PERFECT SOUND THOUGH THERE IS ONLY ONE AMP MODEL.
compressor is very poor. i cannot control the threshold and ratio seperately.
the only thing that works perfectly is VOLUME knob.

don't buy this shit!!

finish can be wiped off by scratch.

i don't know. it works.

What style of music do you play? heavy metal, blues funky music.
Is this a good match? not at all.
How long have you been playing? 10 years
What other gear do you own? fender deluxe jazz
If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else? of course not
what do you love about it? only volume knob
What do you hate? everything
What is your favorite feature? i like the color of it
Did you compare it to other products? no
Why did you choose this one? cheap
Anything you wish it had? no
Does it help you make music, or does it get in the way? it can makes me angry
Anything else you'd like to share? never buy this shit..you better enjoy you amps

not great, you can't see what any of the parameters are before you edit so it can be hard to know exactly what's wrong with the preset you've just turned on.....and they're mainly wrong.

i expect this is remedied by controlling it via midi with something like soundiver, tho i've never tried.

the thing is, when these came out, everyone was raving about them. i bought mine in 2002 and i was slightly disappointed then and slightly disappointed now. the problem is i have never actually put a very good bass through it so it's hard to know whether it's capable of making a precision bass sound GOOD. i generally like just putting my bass through a bit of compression then a marshall, relying on the "drive" to supply any distortion so i have no need for the effects. i've often dabbled with them and found them to be useless.

although it's built out a metal shell, my friend still managed to break it by standing on the power supply input when it was plugged in. this broke the PSU input barrel but.......

.....Line 6 UK replaced the part free of charge (ofcourse, i had to solder the part myself) last week,oct 2005, after replying to my e mail 2 weeks after sending it,

which was nice

the original e mail i sent to Line 6 in america was answered in 8 hours.

It's not great, but if you can pick one up cheap, it will be a damn site better than just D.I.ing your bass into a desk or soundcard.

You'd think that after messing with this thing for over 2 years you'd get the hang of it... I never really felt like i had a handle on it. The controls are easy enough, but the way that they effect the sound is not really what is exspected.. which leads to....

Sound! I bought this unit (The bass pod pro mind you) after i saw how much my guitarist loved his guitar pod. The guitar pod seems to be able to reproduce almost any tone out there... on the other hand you have the bass pod. The sound out of this thing is in one word frustrating. I never found a sound that i really liked. Every tone that i could get to come out of this thing was plagued by a sort of wah like noise that I can only describe as an aftertaste.
The amp models are weak, they sound little like their real life counterparts and the sound is frail. I spend a lot of time trying to get a thick rich tone out of this unit and was always disappointed.
The effects are useless. I admit that they are fun to play with for awhile, but if you plug your axe in and select the synth you?ll know what I?m talking about.
On the plus side this unit is 100% silent, no added noise, no hum. The DI is fantastic. The compression offered is some of the best I?ve used. I?ve actually considered keeping this guy for the compression and DI, but in the end I believe that we will be parting ways rather soon.

Never had a problem, kept it in a SKB roto-rack since day one.

No need as of yet, though I am frustrated that Line6 took the tone library down from their website with no explaination.

This unit is like many like it. Do you really think that you can spend $600 and replace thousands of dollars worth of gear. There is a reason that they still sell bass amps and effects separately. Bottom line is that you get what you paid for.

Easy enough to use.

This thing should be called the Bass POS. So far all of the line 6 products just don't cut it and everbody's who's bought one is afraid to admit they've actually been burned on it. Anybody who has a semi-trained ear can spot this garbage in a mix from a mile away. for all you guys who think this is great sounding unit I've got some beach front property on Mars I can sell ya. The bandwidth and dynamic response from this unit is nothing short of a joke. God help ya if you've got decent active electronics on your bass, this thing farts and chokes like there's no tomorrow and the resulting disrtion sounds like an AM radio. Hey if you're one of the suckers out there who thinks Mackie mixers have nice pres on 'em and the Native Instruments B4 sounds like a Hammond this is for you!

I wouldn't use it at a gig at all, a well placed fart in a microphone would do a better job.

Look, if you buy cheap you're gonna get cheap and all the hype in the world ain't gonna change that fact. Do yourself a favor, try comparing this box with the amps it's supposedly modeling head to head; use really good mic pres (Like a Great River NV for example) through an actual mixing console that isn't a toy (Mackie & Behringer need not apply) and the shabbiness of this product is undeniable.

The Contorls are intuitive, if you can't see them you just press the 'cans and eq' button and it lets you use the dials' second function, theres tones fo upgrades on the web for it, which you upload with the supplied software

The amp models are all overdriveable so don't be put off by only 3 actual distortion effects. All the amp models have authentic eq settings, and those which do have sweepable mid's, have be given the full treatment. A very good compressor keeps the tone whilst a usefyl fx low cut filter lets you keep low end harmonics and definition. Suprisingly different cabs make almost as much difference as different amps, and you have a wide selection, ampeg svt 810 to a 4*15 marshall (or something insane). Some times the on/off switching noise gate doesn't work to full effect on some amp models. Although only one dial control effect including phaser and flanger and chorous it works very well, and the full settings are midi accessible with assigned channels. It handles low b's very well (fender us deluxe 5-string p-bass player!)

It is in a sturdy aluminium case, and although designed with recording in mind it can with stand gigging easily, you can get a mic stand bracket which is very useful, along with the footswitchs, for gigging!

non need to use

An outstanding piece of equipment, even if you own a top notch tube amp it models it is awesome for headphones practise (sounds like a gig). It really beefs up your sound, adds depth and colour, I don't think i could live without mine anymore!

After understanding, whow it works, it is easy to use.

MusicMan and Yamaha, both 5 string. Via POD direct into PA- Mixer.
Is is not noisy
The effects are of no use. They sound weak. But I was more interestet in the basic Amp- and cabinet- sounds.
You can get a lot of overdrive- distortion- und fuzz- sounds, but nearly no warm-but-clean-pressureful-fat Funk Sound. Everything sounds flat, weak and poor. Sorry to say.

The first 2 PODs didn't start working at all. The third one made no problem for about 1 year. Then I gave it awy via ebay and I still got a quite good price for it.

My dealer twice gave me a new POD within the first week. Line6 had nothing to do with this support.

Maybe it is of use for some other music styles.
For my Funk, Rock and Pop Music it was very disappointing. I dindn't succeed in getting a warm&clean&fat sound withing one year of trying. With a much cheaper Zoom 708 II, I got "my" sound withing some days of experimenting.

The programmable preset system is a bit cumbersome, and tonight's preset won't work in tomorrow's room. The manual mode is easy to use and entirely adequate.

Great results with a variety of basses - Fender Jazz, Danelectro DC Bass, Warwick Corvette, Hofner Club bass, Modulus Quantum 5...

Effects are not useful to me. Amp models are. I have owned a number of the classic amps modeled here, and while no model is perfect, they are generally close in sound and character to the originals.

The compressor, based on the immortal Teletronix LA-2A, is worth the price of admission. Absolutely terrific bass compression.

Run the input volume all the way up and the output volume well up for a strong output and good signal/noise ratio.

Used it 4 years, 250 nights a year without incident and without backup. (If the Pod blows up, just plug your bass into your amp and proceed like you did before you bought the Pod.) Unit recently developed a loud, clipping buzz when turned on. This was repaired by performing a "hard reset" - clears all memory and resets unit to factory settings - to do this, simply press "up" and "down" buttons while turning power on. You lose all custom stored presets when you do this, but as mentioned above, I don't find the presets useful.

I've e-mailed Line 6 several times and never gotten a response. The goobers at Guitar Center know nothing about the Pod or anything else they sell, so that's a dry hole. I went to Line 6's factory authorized repair station in Dallas, "Audio Electronics", when the buzz developed in my Pod. They quoted up to $80 just to look at the Pod, and for that price they would get around to looking at it in 2 to 3 weeks. Or, for an extra $50 they would look at it the next day. Ooooohhkaaaayy... we just put it back in its box and walked out of there. Came home, got on the Line 6 website and eventually found the tip about the "hard reset", and that fixed the box. I can't help it if I'm lucky...

Blues, R&B, jazz, a corporate showband with covers of everything under the sun, diverse session work, a broad range of sounds and styles. The Pod will accomodate.

33 years professional exp., Carvin PB-500, 4 x 10, 2 x 10, 1 x 15, 1 x 18 - I mix and match for the room. Korg D1600 HD recorder in nice project studio. Pod is as useful recording as it is live. On paid sessions, engineers and producers love me for a fast happening sound.

If the Pod dies, I will replace it. I am bothered by the number of folks who claim the Sansamp Bass Driver DI sounds even better. I will eventually get one to see if it's true. But the Pod is happening as far as I'm concerned.

The controls on the BassPOD are easy to use, but can be a bear to figure out if you don't read the manual. The manual is great, albeit, I think it is too brief for the guy that wants to get into it. The SoundDiver tone editing software allows the user greater tone control but is a little confusing at first.

The sound was amazing. If you are trying to find a particular tone of your favorite bass god I suggest you give it up and try to find the tone you like with your bass. Many people that buy the POD think they can sound just like so-and-so, they forget that much of the tone comes from the bass itself. The POD is a great tool for giving a bassist with one rig the versatility of having several bass rigs. The POD has some of the best distortion and drive that I have ever heard, and by using the SoundDiver software can be fine-tuned. I suggest using the software so that the noisegate can be tuned for the effect desired. The Chorus effect is deep and rich for bass. Some of the effects like tron-up and tron-down I really don't care for. The bass synth is hard to control and I'm not thrilled with it. Over-all, however, the tone control the Bass POD provides is second to none in the for the budget user. The Bass POD has solved all my bass recording woe's; the direct in option allows me to record two tracks simultaneously so that I can have greater tone control in the mix, one track with amp modeling and the other direct from the bass with the option of sending the FX to the direct line in.

The construction of the POD is built better than any stomp box I've ever owned, I'd take it anywhere.

With a product this well built I doubt if I'll ever have to complain to the company about anything.

I play heavy rock, jazz, blues. No matter the style the POD has a setting to complement any style I play. I particularly enjoy the gritty overdrive I get for heavier stuff that I used to just saturate with loud low tones. I can now use more treble in my tones because the grit can take over where the bottom end left off. My bass is custom made and is wired for ultra low end, the POD has opened up a new frequency for my bass that I didn't have much control over before, the mid to high ranges. I thought about rating it a nine but because of the cost verses what you get I give it a 10.