LIVE SETUPS: POD TAKES OVER
4 • 8
POD TAKES OVER
The foregoing discussion all assumes you’re using POD to drive a power amplifier
and speaker cabinets. The original, kidney bean shaped POD, is often used in front
of another guitar amplifier as a tone-shaping front end for that amp. You can do
that with your POD Pro, too, if you like, as we are about to describe:
Generally, you want to make your connections to POD’s 1/4 inch outputs, and
switch the Live/Studio switch to the Live position. This disables the part of the
digital signal processing which is simulating a speaker, moving air, and microphone
– which you probably don’t want, because you’ve got a real physical speaker right
there in the guitar amp which is doing its part to shape the tone of your POD. (Of
course, we have sometimes found that small open-back combos sound better with
the switch in the Studio position; you may want to experiment with both for your
set up). DON’T connect headphones to POD, as they will override the Live/
Studio switch and turn the extra processing on so things sound right in the
headphones (and wrong on the amp). Connect a standard guitar cable from the
POD left output (POD’s mono output) to the input of the guitar amplifier (or plug
in both Left and Right if you have a stereo setup). If the amplifier has an effect
send/return, you should also experiment with plugging into the return instead of
to the amp input. The return generally comes after the amp’s own input gain stage,
so you should get a cleaner sound this way. Also, the return generally will be
happier with POD’s line level output, which should mean less hiss and unwanted
noise for you.
Cabinet Tuning Mode
As we already mentioned a couple of pages back, your POD can be tuned for
optimal performance with a variety of systems when in Live Mode. By default, your
POD expects be plugged in before aa closed-backed cabinet. If you want to plug
into something else, you’ll want to change the Cabinet Tuning Mode. To do this,
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