Alan Ratcliffe wrote
Averatu wrote
the one guy says it sounds like there is a blanket on his amp
Hmmm... sounds like the usual case of someone who hasn't bothered to read even the quick start manual and is plugging into an amp with speaker sims engaged. As I said earlier, the amp sims are the same as the other HDs and they are good.
Lifted of harmony central::
On to the negative. The HD300 is just as difficult as any other POD when it comes to getting high gain tones that actually sound good IMO. The Marshall and Bogner (high gain) models are awful. They sound nothing like the real thing...both have flabby, dead sounding low-end and fizzy upper mid distortion that doesn't go away. The Mesa and Engl (metal) models are slightly better but it takes a lot of tweaking to get anything half-way decent. The Engl through the mesa cab sounds ok for lead stuff depending on which mic you use. But for some reason any model played through the Engl cab sounds like someone threw a blanket over the speakers. The Mesa model has drawbacks too because anything on the lower strings sounds like complete mush.
After literally hours of messing around with different options I was finally able to get a pretty good sound by using the Plexi 45 model through the Mesa cab with a 409 dynamic mic...master jacked, gain about 3:00 and with a tube screamer in front; gain also about 3:00. On recordings this actually comes out sounding warm and organic without sacrificing articulation and clarity. Only issue is that even with this much gain it's still not what I'd ideally like for a lead tone. Fortunately I have a gain booster built into my guitar that helps push it a bit more for a bit more juice.
I think with the settings I have now I can get some decent recordings but I am a bit disappointed in how hard it was to get good sounding distortion out of this.
Not for me. I will return the unit to Guitar Center. I screwed with it for 3 weeks, and find it to not be to my liking. If you played the XT Live, and the X3 Live, you won't find much difference in tone here. To some that may not be a bad thing, to others, it's a big disappointment after all of the hype. The only slight difference that I can tell is that the models break up more when you pick harder, and less when you back off, but I don't recall that being an issue from the previous models.
