The Line 6 POD Sucks
This article has one very simple premise: I'm going to figure out whether or not the Line 6 POD actually sucks.
In 1998, Line 6 launched the POD and right off the bat they sold around 3000 units per month. Considering these products originally ran for $1000 apiece, this is a big deal. Eventually, they sold millions of these amps. For those doing the math at home, this means that Line 6 has made at least a $1 billion profit off the POD by itself, which is pretty baller.
Nonetheless, the name of the article isn’t “The POD Rocks.” It’s “The POD Sucks,” and the people have already spoken on this. The POD is one of the most crapped upon products in modern guitar. People swear it's horrible and that a digital amp can't possibly sound good, but those sales numbers, the tech inside of it, and the team behind the POD make a pretty solid argument in its defense.
All joking aside, this is an amazingly brilliant product. Marcus Ryle, the main developer, is an actual genius. He helped develop the POD, which in turn got the wheels turning for a lot of other projects, including the 4x4 units like the DL4, FM4 and MM4. People love the 4x4 series, which is pretty funny when you think about it. How can the same person say that the 4x4 series is genius, but hate on the POD? In many ways the 4x4 series is the POD, just deconstructed. People basically hate the package, not the product.
Nick, Addison and I did a series of experiments (read: jams) in the name of science, to test out whether the POD really sucks as much as people say it does. Here were our findings:
It clones the sound of a Fender Blackface Bassman amp almost perfectly, and it’s a heck of a lot easier to lug from gig to gig.
The Fuzzbox setting accurately recreates the sound of a dirty, gnarly, analog fuzz, even though the unit is 100% digital.
You can use the POD to make some really authentic shoe-gaze music, that multilayered effect that creates a big, huge ambient sound and lets the clean attack come through.
You can’t argue with science, and science has proven that the POD does not, in fact, suck. It’s actually a really cool unit. In this week’s episode, we capped it at three jams, but I could honestly do a hundred jams with this and never use the same sound twice. You can also run the POD in stereo or mono, which is a great option to have.
Here's the bottom line: Line 6 did this stuff before anybody had tried DSP, largely because of geniuses like Marcus Ryle, Jeorge Tripps, Terry Burton, Michel Doidic, Susan Wolf, Jinna Kim and Angelo Mazzocco. When the POD came out in 1998, no one had ever taken digital and made it feel right, but the Line 6 team did it. The people involved in this knew what they were doing and this stuff sounds really good, whether you like it or not.
That's really the moral of the story. If it sounds good, it is good. Period.