LINE 6 POD 2.0 [30/97] Level headed

GETTING SET UP: SCENARIO ONE – IN THE STUDIO

3 • 7

channel inputs. Make sure the POD A.I.R. switch is set to DIRECT.

You should be all ready to play your guitar and hear it POD-processed, and lay

down a track on your recorder. Then you can play back the track and switch amps,

effects, whatever – welcome to the digital software revolution! And for an even

more revolutionary experience, be sure to check out the MIDI Mania section

below, plus the Deep Editing & MIDI Control chapter to learn how to

automate it all. By the way: don’t monitor the pre-POD and post-POD guitar

signals at the same time, as you’ll get comb ﬁltering that will mess up your sound.

(Scary, huh?)

Level Headed

When setting levels in any of the above scenarios, watch carefully for the CLIP

indicator to light on your POD (it’s just under the Up and Down buttons).

This lets you know you’re clipping the POD input and so you need to turn down

the signal you’re feeding it. You should also be sure you don’t send too little level to

POD. As with any audio device, this will result in poor performance.

Radiation Alert

You’re also likely to ﬁnd, especially if you are using a guitar with single coil

pickups, that it is quite easy to pick up some serious noise from any computer

monitor you might have in your studio. CRT displays are, after all, just special

purpose ray guns that shoot photons at you all day long. Your guitar pickups

receive and amplify the electro-magnetic ﬁelds that your display radiates, and you

hear this in your audio signal as buzz and hum. Moving farther from the CRT, and

turning your guitar so it does not directly face the computer’s display, will

minimize this problem. But if you ﬁnd yourself in a tight studio setup, needing to

lay down some quick tracks, and being pestered by CRT-induced buzz, you may

ﬁnd it helpful to do as we have sometimes done: set up your track to record and

start your pre-roll; reach up and ﬂick your computer monitor’s power switch off;

record your guitar part; stop your recording, ﬂick the monitor back on, and check

out the buzz-free playback.