IV. 4 Cable Method

This is the most versatile setup for the Pod. You can run effects before or after your pre-amp, and you use either your amp's pre-amp or one of the Pod's amp models. Which pre-amp you are running is completely patch-dependent. You can even toggle it inside a single patch using a single footswitch on the Pod.

You send your signal to the actual amp via the FX Loop effect on the Pod. You set up your patches with the Pod's FX Loop on and amp model off to use your real amp's pre-amp, or vice versa to the use the Pod's amp modeling. Place the FX Loop right in front or behind the amp/cab model in the Pod's signal chain to keep things simple, and only turn on one or the other. Effects before the FX Loop/amp model on the Pod will run before your pre-amp. Effects after are post-pre-amp.

For a more detailed guide, see this and this by Jim Reynolds, an especially helpful Pod HD community member. Both BROKEN LINK

Guitar > [external effects >] Pod guitar in

Pod effects loop out > Amp guitar in

Amp effects loop out > Pod effects loop return

Pod unbalanced out > [external effects >] Amp effects loop return (power amp in)

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E. I Tried This and It Doesn't Sound Good

The above settings should work well for most gear. But perhaps your gear is different, or perhaps you simply have different tastes about what is harsh or sounds good. As long as you're not running the output of a real power amp into the Pod or other effect (high watt power amp output should only be run into speakers or a dummy load) or sending a line level (mostly anything not coming from an actual instrument) signal into the Pod's instrument level Guitar In input, you probably won't break anything by experimenting.

My friend used to run his Boss multi-FX processor into his Fender amp, and he got the best tone by using the speaker simulation in the Boss unit, even though he was running into real guitar speakers. When he told me his settings, I thought, "That's not right" and tried to tweak his gear how I thought it should be set up. I could never get a better tone than what he already dialed in using the "wrong" settings. Whatever gets you the best tone and doesn't break your gear is how you should run it, no matter how many people say that your settings are "wrong".

If the tone is too harsh and you're using "no cab", you want to switch output modes to non-"Studio/Direct" and try some of the cab models. They can help reduce highs.

If that still doesn't sound good to you, try switching to "Studio/Direct" and messing with different cabs and mics. There may be a particular combination that sounds great with your gear. See the cab and mic selection section for general pointers about what to expect for frequency response.

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F. Dual Output

Many have asked if they could run a "dual output mode" - IE, have one set of outputs send a signal without cab/mic simulation to a guitar amp and cab and send another signal with cab/mic simulation to the PA. There's no built-in feature to do this, but you can do it with some trickery.

Since the cab/mic simulation is contained within the amp block, you have to use dual amps, which eats up lots of DSP unfortunately. Anyway, make sure you are in Studio/Direct output mode. Set one amp up with the cab/mic sim you want. Set the other one up with "no cab".

There are two ways to route the output. Both involve some trade-offs.

The simplest is to use the FX Loop effect block. Place the FX Loop at the end of either one of the channel paths, right before the mixer. At the mixer, mute the channel with the FX Loop to guarantee no signal is passing through. For the other channel, set the pan to full center - this allows both sides of the stereo spectrum for that channel to pass through to the analog outputs on the unit.

The upside for this method is that you get two stereo outputs (FX loop send is a stereo output). Also, if you don't want to use multiple/special cables to extract the stereo output, you can just use a single 1/4" unbalanced cable for each signal to get mono output. The downside is that you need to place the FX Loop before the mixer, so you have to apply any post-amp effects twice - once in each channel, which can run into DSP limit errors.

The other method is to use the mixer to pan each signal full left and right and not bother using the FX Loop. Then the two sides have different processing.

The upside is you can use (some) effects after the mixer, avoiding DSP limit errors. The downside is that they have to be true stereo effects, or the two signals will be mixed to mono. Also, you have to make sure you use 1/4" output cables in both the left and right outputs. If you just plug into 1/4" left or 1/4" right but don't insert a dummy cable into the other output, the unit will sum the stereo signal into a mono output. But you don't need to run the other cable to anything - just make sure it's plugged in. This isn't the case for the XLR outputs, though, which never sum to mono.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some stereo effects affect one side of the signal differently than the other. For example, the analog chorus and many of the delays. Thus, your PA tone would differ from your amp tone.

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