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Line 6 POD GO!! - Honest Review & Thoughts after 6 Months!!
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- Published on Feb 19, 2021 veröffentlicht
- I've had the POD GO now for about 5-6 months and wanted to share my honest opinions about the unit so far. Hope you enjoy.
Follow me on Instagram: @thetonyemery 
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When I hooked up a studio monitor to it I was blown away. It pissed me off because I could have saved thousands on amps and pedals. With two monitors in stereo it is amazing. I highly recommend it to everyone. The katana line is cool but limited. This unit tripped me out.
Exactly! i already had a banging set of monitors and got the pod go and its been so inspiring for my playing (+ its an AMAZING value in my mind)
I am a studio musician that used tube amps when we did conference /church services. I was on the fence because I liked the old 500x but it was more noticeable like a thin drive and almost a hesitation on lead parts but this sounds amazing! And here I thought the M9 was gonna be my only line6 product getting one for my birthday in 2 weeks lol
If you're gigging regularly, these multi pedals are dope. Way easier to EQ at different venues and way less hassle than a pedal board plus your amp. Analog effects are cool for writing and experimenting but I decided they're not worth the hassle if you're playing live and need an easy to transport all-in-one solution. I still have a tube amp for practicing and dicking around at home but that's a different role altogether
I bought the Pod Go in September 2020 to replace my Floor Pod Plus after 10 years. I had been using the Floor Pod Plus in the studio and live sans amp, since I got tired of dragging around a half-stack or my Evil Twin. Best decision I ever made. The Pod Go does more than enough for me without getting too deep in the weeds when making presets. Is it a Triple Crown or a Marshall? Nope. Does it kick ass for 1/4 of the cost of a Kemper or a Helix? Yep. I would recommend it to anybody on the fence about choosing a rig for live or studio. If you want to spend 4 times the money and need a status symbol for your gear collection, by all means get a Fractal or Kemper or Helix. If you just want killer tone and straight-forward controls, get a Pod Go.
Thank you for the review and all the best from the Bay Area.
MK
Can't argue with that!
Im looking forward to trying the POD Go with my Marshal 1960 IRs, theyre epic in Scuffham so Im hoping theyre going to be good the POD when it arrives this week. Good vid mate.
My guess is that if you've found IR's that you love...that's half of the battle right there. The Pod Go has the same technology as the full Helix so the quality and feel is right up there. Enjoy!
I’ve had mine about a year now. Tony has the best videos that represent not only the power of the unit but precisely how good it actually sounds. I will say, the biggest difference in the sound of the unit is the IRS. Like Tony did I hooked mine into my Katana Artist return which has a waza speaker 🔈 and the option to change 9 IRS on the front panel and it sounds incredible with the green 3 IR on the Artist cabinet. Plus in a return you get some real air moving. I’ve usin FRFRs and the power amp in with pod go and it sounds great… but the right IR or Speaker will definitely make the bigger difference happy playing 👍🏻
Tony, this was great! What I loved most about this video was that you played the ambient sounds first. Which I am currently really enjoying. Plus you used the looper. Great stuff man.
Thanks Matty!
It took me a while to dial in some settings that I was really happy with. I have been a Helix user and been using it for church services for 4-5 years now, but I was really putting a beating on my Helix. I picked up the Pod Go feeling like for the money, I felt much better about the mileage I would put on it.
Last week, Line 6 came out with update 1.21. I really think they've ironed out a bunch of the 'digital artifact' and 'chirp'. The new amps and effects are great too, but I am really getting tones that brought my confidence up to using the Pod Go weekly in a live environment.
I bought it in October based on one of your videos. I will never let it go. It's fantastic. Most don't need, and will never use everything in the Helix or Kemper. It sound great through monitors. I ran it through a 2 twelve Fender Mustang amp. Sounds like a serious tube amp. Seriously, people, get this.
Pleased I could help Mike and pleased you like it!
It's incredbile how far amp modelling has come
Great review. I am going to get this. Had enough of pedals and patch cords. The sound is fantastic. This should work fine for my needs. Reverb, delay, chorus, and wah are the only FX I use. Thank you.
The PodGo is worth it for people who can't afford the Helix floor or Helix LT, and for me, that makes it perfect. It's amazing. I use a few outboard delays and I use the four cable method, and the sounds of my amp's real tube preamp, and the combination of the modelled amps and cabs, and effects in the PodGo are amazing. Three things:
1. If you expect the presets to sound good on your random amp or FRFR without tweaking, you need to adjust your HEAD then adjust your presets, bypass every block and tune each block to sound good to YOU.
2. You need to keep searching to find the useable sounds.
3. It takes TIME to get good at the Helix or PodGo or any modeller. New person considering buying a PodGO. BUY IT and Give yourself TIME.
4. It didn't stop sucking at some firmware revision. If you think that, you need to go back and get the old firmware again and A/B. The change was in your skills, abilities, and knowledge, and finally you clicked, and it works as intended.
I can afford LT but it's way too big for use at home. You want to play a bit on the living room, it's very heavy to change place !
Very useful info - especially given your access to all the other gear. Much appreciated - tasteful playing too!!
Excellent review. Been looking at a lot of reviews and now I’m sold. Going to order mine soon!
I ended up doing the same things you did. Bought a helix but wasn’t impressed. Sold that and bought a kemper which I still have and now own a podgo. The thing is amazing for the price!
Great video Tony. The Pod Go is a nice pedal. I wish it had maybe 2 more blocks. Other than that I really love it.
@Tony Emery Thanks Tony!
@Paul Donovan I don't think it's that exact preset, but there's one on my Customtone page that's very similar. Anything with 'Ambient' in.
One more thing...is that ambient preset you are using in the beginning available on your customtone page?
I really enjoyed your video. I have had my PodGo for about a year. I play it almost every week at our church. I have downloaded some presets from Worship Tutorials and Glenn DeLaune that sound pretty nice. I am going to look into yours as well. God bless you and all you love.
Great video and review...and nice guitars and playing too! I've had my PodGo for a few months now too, and am generally very happy for the purposes I bought if for, which are to record direct in to my interface without having to mic up an amp, to practice on headphones and to do small restaurant gigs plugging straight in to a small PA without having to carry my guitar amp with me.
But when it comes to connecting it to the front of my guitar amp I haven't been that happy, as even when bypassing the amp and cab modelling or using the Amp Out jack (which I have configured to tap out just before the amp and cab blocks) the sound is not good at all, it really muffles the actual tone of my amp. I use a Roland JC40 for it's amazing clean tone, but when using the PodGo supposedly as a pedal board, with out the PodGo's amp and cab modelling, it really doesn't sound good... which has put me off using it for stage gigs when I need to use my amp...
Have you experienced the same thing? Am I missing something obvious or maybe doing something wrong?
Anyway, thanks again, really enjoyed your video :)
@Tony Emery Sorry completely missed your reply, never received a notification! Yes I guess putting it straight in to the front of the amp isn't a good idea! I have tried the 4 cable method and also using the effects loop of my amp and wasn't that impressed... but I'm not sure I had the right cables, will have to try that again to confirm! Thanks for your reply!
@Chris De Juan Music - When you say you've put the Pod Go straight into the front of your amp...that worries me straight off the bat. Have you tried it in the effects loop of your amp (providing you have one)...? Or have you tried it in a 4 cable method configuration? Anytime you put a digital effects device in the front end of your amp, you're going to getting colourization from the preamp section of your amp which is not desirable at all. This is why it'll most likely sound 'muffled'.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Very helpful. Excellent sound🤘🏽
Thanks for helping me make my decision! I've been racking my brain looking for something like an Ax8 without taking out a second mortgage LOL
Great review! Really like the clean sounds as well.
Great video, quite liked that the playing was kept to a minimum and the focus was on the actual unit.
Great sounds and playing dude! Billy Duffy would love this gear, probably has it but won't tell anyone
I was worried that it couldn’t do ambient sounds but you obviously proved me wrong, real nice demo there.
Nice review, I am absolutely with you! 👍🤘
Excellent perspective thanks. Love the sounds I am hearing on the net, but I’m worried that, as a beginner to pedals, I won’t have enough effects blocks to learn, explore, mix and match, try different chains, etc. Does that make sense. Any advice?
@Tony Emery Got it yeah. Thanks.
I haven't tried it. But it's pretty simple. You would come out of the effects send into *insert pedal(s) here* then come out of pedals back into effect return. Then in the software place the effects loop block wherever you wish.
@Tony Emery If i may ask another one, how simple is it to add an external (physical) effect into the signal chain, via the fx loop (I presume) in case I feel the need for more effects at some point. And how many effects can one add through this method. Is it simple to do, and easy to manage levels, tones etc.
@Tony Emery Thanks yeah. Fair point.
Well I would maybe suggest if you're a beginniner then the Pod Go is a great choice because the last thing you want as a beginner is to be overwhelmed with too many choices. The Pod Go keeps things simple while also sounding amazing.
man. people love this thing. Can't find a bad review on it.
Because for what it's meant for and the price it's at...it's awesome!
Yes I just got one of these. Love it. You did a great job.
Great video. The best review I've seen on line for this modeller.
Great....just what I needed....thank you for sharing your experiences.
Hi great video I have two questions 1. Can I run my stereo reverb/delay pedals with it anywhere in block chain and still get stereo signal ? 2. When running external pedals, does it occupy of 4 empty blocks in signal chain ?
Headrush Mx5 9 blocks
Have you tried looking at the HX Stomp? It has more DSP than the Pod Go. The Pod Go will get you there to a point but your gonna run out of DSP quick with complex reverb and delays. Sounds to me that's what you're after so I would personally look for something with more DSP.
@Tony Emery thank you so much for reply. So would you say 1. Pod go will be good investment for ambient music with its inbuilt delay / reverbs ? If not I can always invest more in a Strymon delay pedal or TC hall of fame or a TS9 overdrive pedal etc and even then it still cheaper and lesser form factor from an Helix ? Thank you again as no youtuber answers so promptly
All external pedals have to go into the FX loop in the Pod Go which has it's own block within the Pod Go signal chain so no, you won't use any of the 4 blocks up. You can't run it anywhere to achieve stereo...I believe you have to run it after the amp/cab blocks to get that. Anything put before those blocks will be summed to mono.
Nice video, thanks man. I have had my Pod Go for a few days and am still on the fence. The stock presets are awful, I have no idea why they would even include them. Creating presets is not intuitive in the least, and many of the presets I have downloaded have lots of fizzy static which renders them unusable. Messing with the amp's master volume helps some, but never fixes it entirely. I've used Line 6 stuff before, and other modellers through the years, this one is by far the worst sounding out of the box. I have already done a factory reset and upgrade, it still sounds like crap. But, maybe a few more days/weeks/months are needed to tweak it.
Do you play out of an amp, FRFR speaker, or headphones?
Stock presets on pod go are some of the best I've heard from a modeller, some are good right out of the box and some need tweaking. Some are shit too, true but they're just factory presets and creating your own ones is what this thing was made for.
My previous amp was a powered kemper profiler at 3x the money and honestly the final results were in the same league with pod go tones, but you had to adjust just about a million parameters to make it sound good.
Che k out the custom tones download something close to what ur looking for and build from there that’s kinda what I do it very helpful, there’s people who really know the unit and build great tones it’s lotsa fun to hear what people are doing happy hunting, rock on , and cheers 🍻
@Tony Emery Yes and yes, great questions.
**EDIT** I downloaded the AC-30 P&W Temp, put a looper in front, and kept the loop going as I played with the components. I was able to remove all the staticky fizziness by lowering the master volume and raising the bias.
@Sublyme Have you tried different cables and a different guitar?
Thanks man, I just tried some of your presets and they're pretty nice. I get a little bit of the static on the twin preset, but not the heavier ones. Please know that all of my presets are using amp models, not preamps, with built in cabs.
I am playing through headphones as well as a Tech 21 PE via the mono out.
The fizzy sound I am trying to describe is a static on the note's sustain and decay, not the initial attack, and happens more with chords than single notes. It's not really noticeable on high gain presets, because, well, high gain. But on cleaner presets it can be very noticeable. The presets with the most noticeable static are the P&W Temp files from Line 6 Custom Tone.
Hey this is a great review and I recently got one but have a question that no one can answer. There's a slight delay when you stomp between presets and the change is not 'smooth'. Do you know how this can be corrected? Thanks
You should use snapshots rather than switching between presets, then there's no gap and you get spillover of delay and reverb etc between snapshot settings.
@Tony Emery thanks appreciate it
Sadly not. It's just down to processing power or lack thereof at this point in time. Quite a few processors have this lag. I've just gotten use to it and I find it's manageable in a live situation.
Amazing video like always Tony. Do you buy your ir's or are there good ir's available for free?
You have to sign up for them, but Google line 6 allure IR pack. They're completely free and have several different speaker types and I love the celestion v30 one included in that pack.
Thanks Aman! For the Pod Go I've only bought one pack which I'm really happy with so far. There are free ones out there. Check out some of the websites some do deals like if you maybe sign up to their newsletter, they'll send you the occasional free IR. Or they might have a 'free' section on their website.
Has anyone figured out how to get a dry DI out signal out of the amp output jack while the main outs are processed?
The tone in your patches sound amazing. Which specific IR’s are you using so that I can purchase the same pack ? I know you mentioned Ownhammer, but which pack would you suggest?
I like the 80’s metal stuff. .
Your playing is awesome as well.
Thanks
I'm using the Heavy Hitters pack, but Ownhammer do great IR's so you can't go wrong
Are drum machine/rhythm loopers included in the pedal ?
Some folks in the forum just said that Helix are not the same sounding as it first being released in the 2015, so I am quite sure that your opinion and experience about Helix are genuine
I have watched some youtuber videos that having interview with Line 6 Helix Chief Product Design Architect , Eric Klein, that their team are improving their modeling quality each firmware updates over times, that may also explain your personal experience against the Helix
I own Helix in 2018 and quite satisfied with how it sounds at that time, absolutely there are some learning curves to it, and now I can make it sounds better than when the first time I own it
Btw I really enjoyed hearing your personal experience and opinion about The Go that have the same modeling algorithm with The Helix improving over time and what a nice sounding guitar sounds you dialed in there
Keep the great work Tony
There's a difference between the Helix and PG.
It's the input impedance.
Pod Go and all the Fractal AXE products have it on 1M, where as the Helix has it on auto, which is lower than 1M
Yeah. Between 2017 and now, they have DEFO improved the firmware a LOT. It's always been very good and the effects have always been great, but the FEEL of the units has come on immensely! That was the first thing I noticed when I first fired up my POD GO.
hey man great review! just wondering what gig bag youre using cuz i was finding one that i could put my pod go into! thanks and keep up the great work!
Thanks dude. My bag is the Gator G-PG-Acouelect Pro-Go Ultimate.
Does it have a loop sampler?
How long is it?
Loved the tone and look of your tele-do you have any vids show casing that spec?
Yes there's an unboxing/demo of it just look through my vids and you'll find it.
What I really like in your videos is this real honesty. I can feel that, no doubt. You're a decent lad! Thx for your work mate. May I now which part of the UK you are from?
Ahhh thanks mate I really appreciate that. Yeah I try to be as honest as I can. I have no reason not to be as I'm not sponsored or anything like that. Although I wish I was 😂 I'm from the North East of England.
It sounds organic in a good way.
Hi great video ! Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Could you please post a link for the specific Gator guitar case you were showing ? I’ve been looking for something like that for a very long time..
Sorry for the late reply. The Gigbag I use is the Gator ProGo Deluxe series.
One of the best reviews that i saw...
Good Tony, the Line6 Pod GO seems to be a fine deal...
Don't you think it's time for you now, to get a FM3...?
I know you have already a AX8, but it should be very interisting.
Cheers from germany!
I've been thinking about it. But I'm really tempted by the Quad Cortex. We'll see what happens 😉
if you ever go to sell your presets, let me know :D im interested in that high gain 80s sounding lead tone and that shimmer clean!
I have some on my Customtone page maybe check it out and see if there's anything there you like. 'thetonyemery'
which clean shimmer effect is that? i cant find it, i LOVE it!
That Music Man guitar is sweet, which model is it? :)
Awesome tones!
Did you played with Boss GT-1000?
Cheers from Portugal 🍺🤘🇵🇹
Thanks. I have not played through the Boss GT-1000 but from what I've seen and heard from it it's an awesome unit. Back in the day I had a Boss GT-8 which I loved! 😂👍
ok.. im almost 50 yrs old. Bought a few months ago .. Best purchase in yrs.. can play most any music i grew up on, and works great at my church through the PA.
Great to hear! 👍
Genial 👍 Tony saludos!!!
I bought a Helix, spent hours getting a good sound but nothing that inspires me ,it just doesn’t sound ‘ Electric ‘ I find it hard to get natural feedback , the compressor’s just don’t sound like my pedals and maybe it’s just the way I tweak , tho the recent update has given me even more to play with but I like just plugging from the helix into the front of the amp ,have tried into the effects loop it helps but still not what I hear in my head. Maybe Pod go would be the answer .....
Have you tried using the helix with a pair of headphones that way you get the true sound of the pedal itself?
@Tony Emery yeah I tried the no cab sim , a little better, bought a Blackstar club 50 and it sounds better, but the journey still doesn’t inspire. The quest continues,thanks for the advice tho 😀😀
If you don't like the Helix, then you won't like the Pod Go. OK I'm assuming you're playing your Helix through an amp? Did you turn off your cab sims? The general concensus is to never go through the front end of your amp with a modeller. Then your amps preamp is going to further colour the tone which is generally undesirable.
Any thoughts on connection to a P. A SYSYTEM?? Do away with the valve amp.
typical 1 man band in a corner of a pub scenario???
Of course dude just connect it to your mixer it sounds killer through the PA.
Liked for the accent straight away. The review was nice too :-)
What accent is it?
The only thing I think you're wrong on is your analogy about buying a car with 50 hp expecting to go 300mph... the PODGO is promoted as having 10 effect slots... but what they don't tell you up front is that you cannot replace the EQ with something else. It has to either be an EQ or not. You cannot replace the volume pedal without a hack. You cannot replace the wah (without a hack). So it is advertising bait and switch.
hello, i bought the pod go for a few days,but i still can`t link to my computer(i am useing windows 10) by usb,not only the sound,even interface still can`t use,do you know why?this is big trouble
You have probably tried this already, but try a different USB cable, and try a different Windows 10 computer as well, if you can, to narrow it down.
Are your Windows 10 updates all upto date?
Yes,i try every drivers and firmware,but still not work,windows said the driver have bugs but I don't know what this is
Have you downloaded the drivers from the Line 6 website?
Did you use IRS in any of the presets u used ?
@Tony Emery Im new to the scene. Probably going to get a Pod Go seeing as I don't need a profiler and just want record worthy audio from a modeler. That being said where do you find the good quality IRs? is there a huge difference between paid and free?
Yes I use third party IRs for pretty much everything at this point.
Hi, just found this channel. Is that a Danish Pete Purple Tele?
I don't think Danish Pete has a signature Tele? Anyway, this is a 52' Tele in Purple Metallic. Danish Pete's is also Purple Metallic but mine is a different hue than Pete's 🙂
Hi, can you share your presets?
The presets I share I put on my Customtone page. 'thetonyemery'
Can I plug in my headphones and phone to play along to music?
Yes there is a headphone Jack and you can plug in your phone for music as well
Oi Tony legal👍
lead tones sound way to fizzy for me
Nice one mate ,, r u in London?