Line6 Pod Express Bass

Seven amps and cab combinations are all good representations of the real thing. These sounds have been passed on to the Pod Express Bass from the Helix and other more expensive Line 6 amp modellers.

The effects are nice with the option of an external switch or volume pedal if desired to improve the functionality of the pedal even more.

The Tuner works well and is high visibility for tuning in dark environments.

I really only use 3 sounds when playing..... clean, overdrive and chorus. I set up 3 patches that represent these sounds with clean in the middle and overdrive and chorus either side of clean. I can change sound mid song to suit this way.

The LED lights are clear and give excellent indication of levels of each effect. You could totally gig with the Pod Express Bass without any issues. Just get a good 9V power supply and don't skimp on a cheap one to keep any potential humming to a minimum and you're good to go.

Now that the software with a sound editor has been released for use with this product it now has bags of potential. You can make, edit and save all your sounds on your laptop and save them as patches to the pedal much faster now.

Lightweight and well made and sound reproduction is excellent. I'm very pleased with my purchase. Highly recommended.

I’ve bought it mainly to get a good always-on compressor and an amp/cab simulation. I like the sound of those a lot.

I am pretty happy with the octaver, chorus and phaser effects. I never use flanger and delay.

I don’t like the distortion effects as I can’t seem to dial them to my liking - they are either too bland or too over the top. I much prefer to use the distortion from the amp simulator stage.

The overall downside is volume inconsistency. When I adjust the compressor, octaver, and distortion knobs the volume increases a lot and it’s not possible to adjust it without affecting the sound (because it is done with either amp gain or master volume).

This is somewhat doable using the companion computer app, where you can adjust each amp and effect in much more detail including staging the volumes. This was however surprisingly a lot of work when I set up a couple of presets to use instead of fiddling with the knobs on the spot. I made a clean, edge of breakup, chorus, octave below, octave+fuzz presets, which sound good on their own, but getting them to similar levels was surprisingly hard.
However, I found myself wishing I could dial in a bit more or less of something when playing live and I couldn’t because it would disturb the levels. So I have to stay on my presets.