Line 6 Pocket Pod

Gary Mortensen · From: Elgin, TX

I'm looking for a small practice amp to use with headphones, for practicing late at night and for traveling with a lap steel. The Line 6 Pocket Pod looks like it would do the job just fine - does anyone have other recommendations?

http://www.zzounds.com/item--LINPOCKETPOD

Thanks,

Gary

Pit Lenz · From: Cologne, Germany

Hey Gary,
looking for a small headphones amp to warm up before a gig I first tried the Pocket Pod, but then decided to get it's smaller cousin, the Pocket Pod Express, which sells for about half as much as the Pocket Pod that you mentioned.
It has 5 different amp models with increasing distortion, the first two are usable for clean(ish) steel sounds.
My pickup is quite hot, so I soldered me a short cable with an attenuator pot in the jack´s housing. Besides the lower gain (to stay clean even with the 2nd amp setting) It tames the trebles a bit, without that fix my singlecoil PU tends to be a little on the bright side, especially with small earbuds.

But this small amp serves me very well, it has a decent stereo reverb, a tap delay and an mp3 mini jack input, all that for around 50 bucks...

David Venzke · From: SE Michigan, USA

I use the Pocket POD for both practicing and gigging. If you want more than one setup the Pocket POD allows 124(?) user defined setups that you can easily switch between. There's PC software that makes it quite easy to twiddle all the settings from your computer (much easier than using the POD's interface). You can also save all your setups on the computer -- very handy should you ever need to do a factory reset on the POD. I had to do just that a couple days ago in order to clear up an issue with the tuner not wanting to work. But I had all my settings stored on the computer and just downloaded my stuff to the POD after doing the reset. This would also be very handy if you had to replace the POD (nothing lasts forever, you know), or if you wanted to have a second POD as a backup with all the same setups as your main unit.

If a basic headphone practice amp is all you really need the Pocket POD Express might work, but the much expanded functionality of the regular Pocket POD makes it more useful.

John McClung · From: Olympia WA, USA

Gary, earlier this year I did a lot of research into small headphone amps that I could use personally, and that i could recommend to students in my E9 seminars.

Bang for the buck, the Line 6 Pocket Pod Express was the winner because:
- it had sufficient decent sounds to make the steel sound pretty nice in earbuds without going through any outboard rack or stompbox gear (I use the clean or twang amp settings; plus a bit of delay or reverb)
- in A/B'ing it against the more expensive Pocket Pod, that unit had a lot more hiss, the PP Express was oddly quieter. Pocket Pod does have a lot more settings, but like most FX units, most are for 6-string guitar and pretty worthless for steel.
- You can plug in your headphones, guitar AND a CD player, iPod, any 1/8-inch jack music source, so it's a great small, lightweight, portable practice unit.
- it has a built in tuner. No fancy presets like a Peterson, but dial in the E9 strings 4,5 8 and 10 to the tuner, then fine tune other strings in headphones, and you're good to go.

NOTE: this unit was just recently discontinued, so if you want one, better shop quick. I bought a spare at Sam Ash on Black Friday for just $40, sweet.

My first unit developed a problem where it would only work with a wall wart, lost its battery-running capability. So I can't claim they're super sturdy.

There may be better units, but they all are a lot more expensive. All headphone amps tend to get overdriven by a pedal steel pickup, I wish someone would develop a great one for us steelers.

The little Vox practice amps are very cheap, but the only one I found close to suitable for steel was the bass guitar model, it doesn't include as much overdrive as the other models. They're also tiny, but feel pretty flimsy.

Hope this info helps!
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Tony Glassman · From: The Great Northwest

I have a "Pocket Pod" I use in the bedroom. It sounds great w/ headphones and has a CD/Computer input. So I can practice late at night w/o annoying the family.

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