POD X3 Live Patches: Tracking Guitars for “Stumpy Ron”

I’m currently working on recording final tracks for a song titled The Ballad of Stumpy Ron. The overall sound and feel of the song draw heavily on Black Sabbath but fall somewhere between there and Wolfmother. My new POD X3 heavily influenced my approach for tracking this song. I decided to try recording two guitar tracks, but each track would actually be two tracks using the awesome dual tone capabilities of the X3. The POD X3 has eight outputs over its digital USB connection. Outs 3-4 are Tone 1 L-R, while outs 5-6 are Tone 2 L-R. I set my DAW up to record out 3 on one track and out 5 on another track. I tend to record guitars in mono almost exclusively. Back in the days of miking amps I usually used a single mic for the guitar. Unless you are going for special effects or have a phenomenal sounding room, this is typically plenty. For my two guitar parts I wanted a more subdued tone for the guitar playing all the lower register parts and a more modern, hot rodded tone with plenty of teeth for the guitar playing all the higher, fancier parts, though most of the time, the two guitars would be in unison. Each guitar would play through two different amps which makes a total of four guitar tracks, recorded in pairs. My only restriction on the tones were that they complement each other and need not sound stellar on their own. Here are user presets for the tones I used:

POD X3 Live Patch 1: Milder metal tone

Here are the manual settings for my POD X3 Live

• Output Mode: Match Studio/Direct, Tone 1 & Tone 2 panned however sounds good to you

• Tone 1 Amp: Line 6 Modern Hi Gain (Soldano X88R), Room 30%, Cab 4×12 Celestion V30, Mic 57 on axis
• Tone 1 Tone Controls: Bass 100%, Mid 81%, Treble 0%, Pres 0%, Drive 50%, Vol 95%
• Tone 1 Gate: Thresh -40dB, Decay 0%

• Tone 2 Amp: 2001 Diamond Plate (Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier), Room 60%, Cab 4×12 Treadplate, Mic 421 Dynamic
• Tone 2 Tone Controls: Bass 59%, Mid 64%, Treble 98%, Pres 71%, Drive 69%, Vol 65%
• Tone 2 Gate: Thresh -40dB, Decay 0%

Two things are obvious just from looking at these settings. First, the drives are set at about 5 and 7 which are not all that high. Too much gain can really work against you in a mix. Strive you find your heaviness through the way instruments work together and you’ll retain a lot more clarity and definition in the music. Second, the noise gate is set with a fairly high threshold of -40dB. Being a metal song, I really wanted those stops in Stumpy Ron to pop right out. And by “pop right out” I mean “be completely silent” ;) Another subtle aspect of these tones is complete lack of reverb. Reverb sounds great in your bedroom and garage, and often on stage, but I find it better to do my guitar tracking sans reverb. This gives me a lot more options for defining the virtual mix space during the actual mix as well as allows me to use higher quality reverb plugins than what is built in to the X3. Let’s get on with the next tone…

POD X3 Live Patch 2: Grittier metal tone

Here are the manual settings for my POD X3 Live

• Output Mode: Match Studio/Direct, Tone 1 & Tone 2 panned however sounds good to you

• Tone 1 Amp: 2002 Angel P-Ball (Engl Powerball), Room 50%, Cab 4×12 Treadplate, Mic 57 on axis
• Tone 1 Tone Controls: Bass 65%, Mid 35%, Treble 100%, Pres 83%, Drive 49%, Vol 67%
• Tone 1 Gate: Thresh -40dB, Decay 0%

• Tone 2 Amp: Citrus D-30 (Orange AD30TC), Room 20%, Cab 4×12 Green 20’s, Mic 57 on axis
• Tone 2 Tone Controls: Bass 64%, Mid 61%, Treble 67%, Pres 16%, Drive 100%, Vol 89%
• Tone 2 Gate: Thresh -40dB, Decay 0%
• Tone 2 Stomp: Distortion Screamer, Drive 50%, Gain 50%, Tone 50%

This tone is designed to have a lot of grit and teeth to it. Remember, we are going for Sabbath meets Wolfmother, not Metallica. The Powerball has loads of gain to spare so it is a fairly high gain contribution to this sound even though drive is set just under half. At this setting it is still more saturated than a dimed Recto! The Orange amp gives the tone a bit of old-school street cred. With the amp all out it still isn’t very distorted so I pitched a Tube Screamer on it to pump up the saturation a bit. The noise gate is set pretty extreme on this patch to match the stoppage of the first patch.

Guitar and other Gear

This song is tuned down a whole step. I used my 7 string Dean ML to record it. The guitar has a fixed bridge and a single Dimarzio Tone Zone 7 pickup hardwired to the output jack. There isn’t so much as a volume knob in the way of that pickup! I plugged in to the POD X3 using a vintage Whirlwind Leader Elite 18′ cable. The X3 went into the computer digitally, via USB. Monitoring during tracking was done direct from the X3 using a set of Aiwa X815 headphones. Monitoring during tone tweaking was done through a Carvin HT150 power amp into a pair of Event 20/20 mid-field studio monitors.

DiMarzio Tone Zone Guitar Pickup price check

POD X3 Live recorded sound sample

I don’t want to give too much away for Stumpy Ron but here is a short clip demonstrating the completely unmixed results of this tracking session. Drums and bass are scratch tracks.

• Stumpy Ron POD X3 guitar tracking sample
• Read about recording the bass track (and hear another sample)
• Read about recording the guitar solo (and hear the whole song!)

Line 6 POD X3 price check

Line 6 POD X3 LIVE price check