LINE6: Pocket POD Express

[subversion]

LINE6: Pocket POD Express
List: $180

By now, LINE6 is the proverbial name in digital guitar signal processing which is a love/hate affair to tone mongers. With its complex interpretation of the guitar signals, sounding good & congruent to an amp voicing are made affordable & relatively simple to operate. The recent release of the Pocket POD Express (PPE) has brought that simplicity closer to many of us who avoid all things digital like the plague.

Build/ features
The PPE is molded in the like of its bean-outlined siblings; there are no detractions here. The dimensions replicate the Pocket POD’s less its depth; the PPE sports a flat top & is a good 2.1cm thinner than its aforementioned sibling.

There are only 4 dials operating this device, a palette for your distortion, modulation, reverberation & volume needs. The solitary button here controls your tuner function & is a tap measurer for all time-based modules. Over at the top, the PPE offers access to your guitar, amp, headphones & any MP3 devices should you wish to jam along your favourite tunes while you’re at it. The PPE also offers an adaptor access but this would seriously question your involvement with the device; are you getting along with its portability or relegating it to your pedal board (which isn’t a wise thing to do considering there are no switches to step on)? With the PPE loaded with AAA batteries (you need 4, please) it’s lighter than your Nokia N95 mobile phone.

As it is, LINE6 offers the average user a no-frills affair & immediate access to its POD technology- thumbs up to simplicity.

Rating: 90%

Tone/ in use
There’s no ON button here, the PPE comes to life once you insert your cable into the GUITAR IN access. Once this happens, the right LED blinks to indicate the speed of your delay/ modulation effects in use. It is recommended you set the volume to half-way & adjust accordingly in tandem with your amp as well as other effects in use.

The PPE’s clean voicing is a very acceptable affair for chorus induced chord works as well as those nice jazzy runs (sweet neck pickup tones heard here). Coming into TWANG territory, there is a touch sensitive drive on offer, very mild & nothing excessive in preference of your favourite single coils, of course. The CRUNCH mode has more drive on board but it’s still lacking if you are an all-out rocker & that’s where the ROCK module offers some serious drive/gain at your disposal. Finally, the METAL channel has s typical scooped preset EQ for us heavy metal dweebs. Although the drive voicings here are on par with the Pocket POD, they aren’t editable, meaning, you accept what you hear or get on with something else. They are also not as rich because these are indeed preset modules. The following are the amp emulation patches assigned to the clean/ driven voicings of the PPE:

*Clean: Fender Twin Reverb
*Twang: Fender Deluxe Reverb
*Crunch: VOX AC30 Top Boost
*Rock: Marshall JCM 800
*Metal: MESA/ Boogie Dual Rec

Ditto the modulation & reverberation features; the PPE’s version of things are there for the taking. Very little is offered in terms of editing albeit some variance in intensity or strength. Do not look forward to a refined reverb response (both SPRING & HALL) if you plug the PPE into a puny, practice amp. The delay feature here, since it’s an integrated offering, would not sap your PPE’s battery life.

Test equipment:
• Amp: Blackheart Killer Ant/ SX GA-1065
• Guitars: Ibanez RG321/ Gibson LP Std/ Fender ST72

Rating: 75%

Conclusion
Do you possess a boutique guitar & look forward to enjoy the benefits from the PPE? Chances are, the guy playing a $300 guitar would sound like you through the PPE; the implication is rather clear- the PPE isn’t a platform to showcase immaculate guitar chemistry, it’s a device for the practicing dweeb, beginner or otherwise. Suffice to say, the PPE manifests good fundamental tones to work with, nothing excessive or repulsive for that matter & the simplicity of the features would attract rather than repel the average player. Price-wise, the PPE is in danger of being booted out by other multi-FX units which offer more features for the money but not many are as acceptable, tone-wise.

Final rating: 80%

Product availability: City Music ( PPE on sale: $125 till 31 Dec 2008 )

Likes:
• Simple to use
• Not battery draining
• Good overall tones on offer
• Portable

Dislikes:
• Limited editing
• Could have been better priced… (considering the competition)

Worthy rivals:
• Zoom G1
• Korg AX3G
• Digitech RP50

 

[subversion]

Post review: Adding pedal to the PPE

if you've tried the PPE & like the fundamentals it has to offer, would it be frugal to add, say a drive pedal as a tone enhancement?

with reference to the pic above, i've added an Ibanez TS7 to the PPE to kick the drive/ distortion into higher saturation/ intensity. the PPE works well in conjunction with another mild drive pedal but please be wary of the heightened background hiss as a result of this application. this is why, the PPE would have done better with an integrated noise reduction module, which is included in the Pocket POD.

 

[shioks76]

Just got the pocket pod express for practise as well.

Won't redo the review but have some stuff to add:

This is great if u like the compactness of the pocket pod. but don't want to go through its complex menu system and just want to plug and play. But for those looking for a silent practise device at night through earphones, u might want to look elsewhere as it generally sounds thin for clean. Also through earphones, anything with distortion sounds very muffled. However it did sound a little better through better quality headphones.

I did try this with my pc speakers as well. Creative T20. Same results, even with the treble turned max, it still sounds muffled. So it sounds really bad in general?

Not quite, this little device started to shine once i connected it to the aux in of my spider jam. The cleans started to sound gd while the overdrives and distortions began to impress. Looks like the whole thing was voiced to sound gd loud thorough big speakers or a large p.a.

So for my purpose, i'm a little disappointed in the product. But It taught me a lot regarding modellers and tweaking sound. Also explains why lots of people are disappointed with pods when used live, after spending countless hours tweaking their device at home.

 

[subversion]

it's really an oversight to believe one's practice set up being aptly suitable for performance venues. devices like the POD units cater to both bedroom settings as well as live applications, one just needs to be prepared for both & have lots of patience in doing so. this is why my Pocket PODs are strictly practice tools, i believe in a more fulfilling guitar+amp, no frills set up.

 

[wyldeboon]

i got it too a few weeks bck... pretty straight forward. and i personally like the chorus function!!!

 

[subversion]

i only use the minimum chorus setting (next to none actually), to me it's quite overpowering in use with a driven setting.

 

[dylan]

Good and Fair Review

That is a pretty good and fair review of the Pocket Pod Express. I used the Pocket Pod once for 6 months before I moved (diagonally up) to the Korg PX5D, which has features that the Pocket Pod lacked, though the Pocket Pod is really a very 'pocket and port -able' device.

What you have posted should be pretty useful for those of us considering a pocket device to be used either at home or whilst traveling.