I still get some eyebrow raising, mocking laughter and mouthfuls of beer reunited with their sibling molecules in the glass they have recently departed every time I talk about it. To be perfectly honest, if someone had told me 10 years ago that I would be playing my guitar live through a pc and directly into a PA system, they could have just as easily waved a light saber at me and said use the force and they would have got a similar reaction!
Even when I realized that the technology had become a reality, I still hung on to the analogue for dear life, putting up with broken fuses, old broken valves and replacing speakers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t at all expect any of you to go forth after reading this and throw your Marshall stacks, Vox AC30's and Blues Deville’s out the window (although if you do feel so inclined perhaps you would be so kind as to send me your address and a rough idea of when it might happen :)).
The Rebellion
For those technophobic analogians amongst you, I would suggest that you avert your eyes now for fear of rashes and the like!
Let me introduce you to a little (depends on the model) gizmo called a Line 6 Tone Port UX1
(more recently renamed the Line 6 POD Studio UX1
. actually, this renaming offers a unique opportunity to those who jump on it quickly, as the older Toneports are now selling for cheaper and the only difference as far as I can gather is the color, the old ones have a red front and back panel the new pod studios are all black, the bundled software with the old models is Gearbox, but you can download the newer and better pod farm after). Now this box of toys is essentially for recording guitars into your favorite recording software and in that respect it excels, but because of the low latency (almost no delay between when you play the note and hear it) and ease of use it has an alternative unpublished usage (UX-1 and above, any smaller model has only one input and therefore cannot be used for vocals and guitar at the same time).
Recently I have been gigging with:
1 guitar,
1 laptop,
1 Toneport ux-1,
1 microphone
3 cables (1 guitar, 1 mic, 1 out to the PA or in some cases music system aux with some reasonably sized speakers, sometimes even unreasonably sized speakers … evil grin)
Yes that’s it! And it’s incredibly easy to set up and light. There is a small learning curve with the software but there are a bunch of presets built in, you can choose from a bunch of amps, preamps, bass amps etc and effects also. So basically I set up a patch for a song which includes the vocal and amp settings, select it from a list and play the song. I can arrive at the gig and be playing within 5 minutes and going home is even quicker, plus no hernias or other heavy combo/cab related injuries.
A New Hope
Sure, if you want to play Wembley or Madison Square Gardens it’s not going hack it, but for playing at the local (which is what most of us do anyway, having already had our 10 minutes of fame) it rocks.
The Empire Strikes Back
Other great uses are that after a hard day programming, I can almost silently, practice for a few hours and mess around with getting some authentic sounding cover sounds without risking divorce or waking up the neighbors. I had a real bunch of fun recreating some of the U2 Edges sound the other day using 2 AC 30's with offset delays (I will do a how to on that another time). That’s another thing I love about it, you can split the signal and run it through 2 different sets of amps and effects in much the same way as the big boys have been doing live for years, getting a good mix of different amps strong points to make fuller sounds.
For this price I don’t think you can do better, and it is currently the only bit of kit I wouldn’t want to give up.
