Bedroom Practice Setups?

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Hey guys!

I'm looking at updating my home practice rig.

At the moment, I'm using a 30 watt Vox Valvetronix, and to be honest, I'm not too happy with the tones I'm getting....the cleans are good, but the gain seems muddy to me in high gain. Great classic crunch, but when really looking for aggression it doesn't put out all too well :frown: Not to mention the headphone out sounds like complete poo.

What do you guys use? I wouldn't mind going to a headphone setup....I don't need to play outloud at home.

How is the POD XTLive? Can it get good tones for headphone practice? Maybe just the regular POD would be enough?

I wouldn't mind another regular amp either, but I have honestly yet to find one that gets a nice clear tone at high gain settings.

I've also considered going with a preamp and headphones, like say the Marshall JMP-1.

Thanks for all your input!

 

[RJ2213]

i got a PODxtLive a few months ago with the metal pack and effects pack already installed. i only use it in the living room with my sony studio headphones, and it sounds AWSOME. i read up a bit before buying and was thinking about the JMP-1, but everyone i asked said the headphone outs sounded horrid. ive also had the v-amp2 and various digitech units in the past and the PODxtLive is lightyears ahead of them all.

dont get me wrong, its no replacement for my triaxis/2:90 setup, but its great tones for minimal cash if you pickup a good used one on the bay.

 

[6L6C]

I have a POD XT Live also and it aint no tube amp!
But it is still a nice tool to have you can get some decent sounds, plus a great device to lay down those tracks 2:00 AM.
I also have a Peavey Classic 30 which I use at home and love but even this amp is a loud little *******.

If you plan on a POD get the XT

 

[MusicManJP6]

The Roland cubes are nice. I used to have a POD, but got tired of the sound. I left my amp in the practice room the other day and was dying to have something to practice out of and wished I still had the POD to at least have SOMETHING. But, usually I just use the Mark IV with an attenuator...

 

[Mr_You]

This guy has the right idea...

Plug a head into a speaker load box and have the line/slave out go into a smaller tube amp.[/url]

 

[Beserkr]

The Vox Tonelab LE might be worth a shot. I tried one you this weekend and it had nice tone.

 

[SixVeeSix]

The Vox Tonelab LE might be worth a shot. I tried one you this weekend and it had nice tone.

I have the Tonelab SE and used to have the same Valvetronix the OP has. To get anything interesting you must hurt the tube. On the Valvetronix, turn the little volume knob on the back all the way down. Turn the Volume and Master on the amp all the way up. Bring the little knob back up a bit and set Gain to your preference and adjust the tone knobs. There is not enough treble, I think they rolled it off because it was noisy. Still, sounds like a tube amp because they have the 12ax7 configured as a tube output stage.

The same idea holds true for the Tonelab stuff, saturate the 12ax7 and you can get decent tone. I like it more than the POD, it feels more natural to me. The PODs have some great effects though!

 

[Charlie]

+1 on the Line 6 stuff for practicing at home w/headphones. The new spider valve looks like it might make a really nice practice amp...