POD Patches – Guitar World (June 2008)

I have been way behind on cooking up some tasty guitar sounds to go along with the June 2008 issue of Guitar World. So in the interest of actually getting these posted there are no sound samples this month. As always, these guitar tones can be directly loaded into any Line 6 product that uses Gearbox as its editor. This includes POD XT, POD X3, all the TonePorts, and even the Gearbox Plugin. A few of the patches this month are dual tone pairs so you will only be able to use one part of the patch at a time if your device does not support dual tones. If you don’t have Line 6 gear you can still try dialing these settings in on your amp to see how close you can get.

Included this month:

• Children of Bodom – Lake Bodom
• Dethklok – Thunderhorse
• Avenged Sevenfold – Almost Easy
• Foghat – Slow Ride
• Heart – Barracuda

Children of Bodom – Lake Bodom

Preview the album version

Signal path:

• Dean ML-7 with DiMarzio Tone Zone 7 bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• 1992 Marshall JCM-900
• 1978 Marshal 4×12 with Celestion T-75s
• Sine chorus
• Dark hall reverb

The rhythm guitar sound of Alexi Laiho on this song is both thin and thick at the same time. The Marshall JCM-900 gives the thickness while addition of a very subtle chorus adds that thinly processed sound on top. Crank the reverb a little more for the solos and fills.

Dethklok – Thunderhorse

Preview the album version

Signal path (guitar amp 1):

• Epiphone Les Paul 7 with Seymour Duncan JB-7 bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• Line 6 Lunatic high gain amp
• 2001 Line 6 4×12 speaker cabinet
• Parametric EQ (to smooth top end)

Signal path (guitar amp 2):

• Epiphone Les Paul 7 with Seymour Duncan JB-7 bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• 1993 Soldano SLO-100 head
• 1978 Marshal 4×12 with Celestion T-75s
• Parametric EQ (to smooth top end)

I ran the Dethklok signal through two guitar amps. Both amps are very similar in flavor but are just different enough that some slight panning gives the effect of two very tight rhythm guitars playing together. This is a great way to give the sound of double tracking when you are playing in a one guitar band. You can vary the double tracked effect by altering how much the amps are panned apart. I went with about 50% to each side.

Avenged Sevenfold – Almost Easy

Preview the album version

Signal path (guitar amp 1):

• 1997 Ibanez Universe with Dimarzio Evolution 7 bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• 2002 Bogner Uberschall
• 2001 Mesa Boogie 4×12 speaker cabinet
• Universal Audio LA-2A Compressor
• Parametric EQ

Signal path (guitar amp 2):

• 1997 Ibanez Universe with Dimarzio Evolution 7 bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• 2001 Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier head
• 2001 Mesa Boogie 4×12 speaker cabinet
• Universal Audio LA-2A Compressor
• Parametric EQ

Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance both use dual amp rigs mixing Bogner and Mesa Boogie amps. I tried to duplicate that signal path here but I deviated from their setup by using the Mesa Boogie 4×12 cab on both amps because to my ears that gave a more accurate reproduction of their guitar sound. The production on their album really crushes the guitar under a lot of compression so both amps have the LA-2A set to a -20dB threshold.

Foghat – Slow Ride

Preview the album version

Signal path:

• 1998 Ibanez Universe with Dimarzio Blaze bridge pickup
• 1973 Hiwatt DR-103 head
• 1967 Marshall 4×12 with Celestion Greenback 20s
• Vintage plate reverb

Slow Ride is a classic and straight ahead rocker. I wanted to keep the signal path as pure as possible on this one. At first listen I was thinking I might go for a clean Fender (maybe tweed) with an overdrive pedal to get this guitar sound. After a bit of research I found the Foghat guys were Hiwatt fans. I called up this amp model, cranked the gain up a bit and there it was. This one required almost no tweaking, the Hiwatt sound is Foghat!

Heart – Barracuda

Preview the album version

Signal path (both guitar amps):

• 1998 Ibanez Universe with Dimarzio Blaze bridge pickup
• Noise gate
• Orange AD30TC Class A amp head
• Marshall 4×12 with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers
• ADA Flanger
• Vintage plate reverb

I didn’t really need to use the dual guitar amps to get this guitar sound but I think it adds an interesting layer of sonic complexity. The two signal paths are set up almost 100% the same. The only difference is a very slight difference in flanger speeds between the two channels. I found this slight difference added an extra bit of unhinged attitude to the flanger effect. You can certainly set this up as a single amp signal path with no ill effects, just turn off one of the amps and pan the remaining one back to center!

Gearbox files

If you have a Line 6 device compatible with Gearbox software, you can use these patch files to load my guitar sounds directly into your hardware. Just unzip these to your Gearbox patch directory and have fun!

Gearbox.zip

There is currently a bug in Gearbox that prevents dual amp patches from showing up in the tone locker. For this reason I have included three patches for each dual setting: amp 1, amp 2, and the dual.

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