Line 6 Powercab 112 Plus Active Guitar Speaker Demo and Thoughts

Video Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

[00:00:00] Emily: Welcome to get off said, my name is Emily and I gotta say your hair looks nice today. Did you brush it or do you list looks like you rubbed your fingers in it. If you don’t have hair, the shape of your head, the shine looks really great also. Yeah, I have like, I love in my hair. I washed it today. I worked out a box this all over here.

[00:00:29] We’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about the power cab one 12, plus by line six, it offers a bevy, a speaker emulations that’s different than cab Sims. Um, they get into the differences of the tech in the manual, which you can read online. I won’t, they are different. It’s actually a lot more impressive you read up on it.

[00:00:54] Um, but first I kind of want to talk about. Y I like the power cab, uh, how I’ve been using it. And then I’ll run through a bunch of different sounds through the HX stop pans, the HX stop. Ooh, impressive, exciting. Uh, so stick around for that. I’ll try to remember to put us in timestamps and there for ya, but, um, let’s talk about who is this for?

[00:01:22] Why can’t I just use a normal car cab? Um, well, if you have a powered amplifier, you can use normal guitar cab, but if you’re using something like an HX stuff, a pod go an Iridium and ACS one, my walrus Kimber, or something like that. So I actually, I don’t know about that so that you would normally just plug into a PA.

[00:01:46] It doesn’t power, a guitar cabinet, uh, because normal guitar cabinets are passive. Uh, this is active and these are requires its own power is digital and, uh, it, it fills a gap. That you normally have a, with a loud speaker. I do a lot of DEI playing a lot of da gigging, I with my band Sunday crush. And, uh, normally it’s fine.

[00:02:15] You play a, uh, even like kind of a smaller venue, a basement venue, like Barboza and Seattle. Um, and they’re perfectly equipped to do a completely DIY rig shoot. I’ve played 85 cat venues done D. And it sounded great. I’ve been able to he’s like, I AM’s even an 85 cap dive bars. The technology is great. But there, there are a couple of things you’re liking and frankly, sometimes you just can’t get away with it.

[00:02:46] And, uh, the big issues are typically, uh, personal monitoring is kind of a big one. Uh, you’re not feeling like you’re playing live on stage. If you don’t have the items or they’re not equipped for the I AM’s, um, I am kinda make everything better. And, uh, Sometimes there’s just too much happening that to push everything through the speakers, it’s just not gonna work.

[00:03:13] Uh, the power cab really makes up for all of those, uh, potential things. If they go wrong and gives you that feeling of having an amp, when you’re playing a completely digital modeling amp simulation situation. So everything that can go wrong. This is your insurance policy is you’re going to be your best friend.

[00:03:38] Um, and for couple of reasons, here are the ways that I have been using the power cab one. When, so before I got the power cab, I was using some sort of, uh, amp simulator, um, ant modeler. I would just play it through my JBL monitors. That was fine. It felt like I was playing through a computer. It didn’t feel like I was playing through an amplifier.

[00:04:06] This definitely feels like I’m playing through an amplifier. It gives, it gives me that feeling of pushing air, um, that I don’t get through the JBLs, which, you know, had that perfectly flat wide frequency response. They’re great for listening to music. They’re great for mixing music. Um, they don’t make me, super-duper feel like I’m playing guitar and that’s.

[00:04:28] Kind of a bummer. I’m going to be honest, like it can kind of take you out of it. In, in, in, in that it doesn’t make me feel very good. Uh, I plugged into this, I get the exact patch, the sound I want. I feel like I’m a guitarist again, I feel like I’m playing guitar instead of just playing a plugin. And obviously you can do some routing stuff through your door if you’re relying on a bunch of stuff like that to, to get, um, uh, your, your sounds, uh, you can do monitoring through that via like kind of ramping sort of situations.

[00:05:01] Um, but like the hands it’s kind of the same idea. Um, but I, I don’t, I haven’t done that yet. I just know that you can. It’s so it takes away. It puts you back into the mindset. That’s one way, are you. Another way I’ve used it for gigging. I have, cause I get with the pod, go check out the pod, go video. If you haven’t.

[00:05:24] Um, the first week I had the pod go or something I gave with it, I gave with it at a small venue. Um, and just because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure they’d be able to accommodate a completely DIY set up. I brought the power cab and it sounded great. And, um, it was excellent. It’s better for monitoring. Uh, I still did Dai with the sound guy, so he had more control over, um, the sound, which was great for him.

[00:06:01] Uh, less potential for noise bleed and feedback loops. Uh, those are things you don’t want in your mixing. Cause that’s another problem with making amps is there’s that potential? For, uh, other things to bleed into those microphones. One more thing. The more mikes you have on stage, uh, the bigger that risk is.

[00:06:20] So to minimize the number of microphones you have on stage, I I’m personally a fan. I think it makes it easier and it kinda leads me to the next way I’ve used been using the power cab, uh, the power cab plus, um, Rehearsals and writing sessions with my band Sunday crush. Uh, I take this to our writing space and I leave it there.

[00:06:41] Um, the band can hear me. I can bring my, again, HX, top XL. I can make any kind of effect, uh, patch I want to, uh, on the fly is really easy. I play around. Everyone else can hear me through this and the, we can route through the back D I it’s directly into our interface and we were dying everybody. So everyone has their own specific mix, um, of, of what’s happening.

[00:07:18] Uh, so, so before that, we just been like recording our sessions or writing sessions on a phone. And then when it was time to be like, oh, well what let’s listen back. We’d be like, kind of struggling to hear like, what, what the heck was I playing? What was it like,

[00:07:39] what were they doing next with what we’re doing now, since everyone’s going to separate tracks and because it’s DEI, it’s so clean, you can completely plot every single other thing. Cause the only thing that’s not DIA. It’s the drums and any vocals that we put in. So it makes it so much easier for us to, to, to write these, we’re figuring it out together and it’s just, it’s just making it so much easier for us to pull our ideas together.

[00:08:07] So those are just some of the ways I’ve been using the power cat. As someone who uses a lot of modeling stuff, I’m someone who really has been loving the pod go, the HX stab, uh, someone has used, I’ve used, uh, like, uh, the Iridium for years and a lot of ways and a lot of capacities when using digital apps and things like that.

[00:08:27] Um, for tons of shows, it’s been a dream. Love it. So, uh, you know, typically, typically as someone who uses something like, uh, Uh, pod go in any tech stop. Your, your two options are either to just not use the amp and calves simulations at all, and play through an amp and just use the patches for the effects or to use a loud speaker, which again, just doesn’t quite feel like playing through an amp.

[00:08:55] Um, so this bridges, the gap. It’s cool. Uh, well, thanks for listening to that. Let’s reward you. Let’s let’s let’s build an extremely, super duper simple patch on the H X stomp. Uh, right now I have a match stick, a chieftain ask amp here. Let’s hear that. Um, and I’ll just go over here to my other camera. I’m starting with the vintage cat.

[00:09:26] Um, you can find, uh, descriptions of all of these in the manual. I’m not going to read from the manual. I trust that you all are able to do that. Um, but I’m going to go through them all and I’m going to go through them. Uh, hopefully. Mike with an S and 57. And then I’m going to compare that to the DIY sound.

[00:09:52] The sound will be an essence, 57, both are about an inch and a half away. That’s where the setting. On the power hub. One thing that’s really cool about the power cab is you can pick a bunch of different amps microphone sounds, and you can specify the, the miking technique. I think that’s really neat that kind of puts it above and beyond a lot of different options.

[00:10:14] Like even the tone master series with fender, which I really, really love. For what it is, uh, they, they, they just let you pick between two microphone types. Um, and then some other cab SEMS, they just, I think they might let you pick between that. I own, they might let you pick between some different, um, microphones and they let you pick the distance from the center come.

[00:10:38] Um, so they all have different kinds of options. Uh, but yeah, let’s get back to this. Um, It should stop. So I’m my chiefs in south

[00:10:52] and I just have a simple, oh, spring reverb. And I think I’m going to add just a little, uh, compressor, mano compressor, maybe. No,

[00:11:10] the Lux. And, um, I really, oops. Desperately want to keep it simple. So that’s going to be it for now. Um, I’ve already tuned up. I promise. Uh, let’s let’s get to the settings here. So this is again, starting with the vintage. Uh, there’s one thing, another thing I like is there’s always a different color on the, uh, select there.

[00:11:50] So you just, you change it by selecting boop, and then it changes. So you can see that one says flat. And how did you take a cab simulator? I would go with the flat response, but I’m not. So I’m using. The other ones. So, yeah, let’s um, listen to this on a vintage miked.

[00:12:37] okay. That sounded pretty good.

[00:12:43] Now are on green. I wonder what that could be.

[00:13:12] cool. See, what’s next? What’s next? I liked that the color for green is green. All right. Cream is cream. All right, I’m going to tune the g-string again. Ooh, that was actually not so bad. All right, let’s hear it. Might

[00:13:56] So next up Jarvis. My favorite Jarvis is Jarvis Cocker. When I interned at beggars group, um, my boss Sonya had a big cardboard or was it Lisa? One of them had a big cardboard cutout of a Jarvis cock. I just thought it was like the coolest thing.

[00:14:29] I love that thing, man. All right. Woo. Miked.

[00:14:45] And

[00:14:58] I feel like your brain is broken. Like that was one of those moments next up by you makes me wish. I knew that. So. Oh, it Moshe NIS and Dr. John songs. All right, Mike

[00:15:24] and did, oh, that was too loud.

[00:15:30] Let’s do it.

[00:15:50] it was loud. I turned that down a little bit to come up and to compensate. All right.

[00:16:01] That’s sexist. Next sticks, Mike.

[00:16:31] I’m working on very limited space. So I’m just so worried. I’m going to bump the mic. All right. Natural. The natural, one of the great baseball movies.

[00:17:13] People wonder how I pick the rifts that I pick. And it’s usually because I find that those picks are a mix between like chords and, and like some leads.

[00:17:31] it’s called. And this is what sounds like Mike’s

[00:17:49] was really weird as I very briefly. Uh, riff from the Michelle Sullivan song, little pink room just now. And then Michelle Sullivan texted me really weird. Here’s how that sounds dyad.

[00:18:15] oh my God.

[00:18:22] I’m not too proud to leave mistakes in these demos, much to the chagrin of the haters,

[00:18:29] but.

[00:19:13] Uh,

[00:19:17] cha

[00:19:21] this Harold. Harold might

[00:19:43] Harold

[00:20:04] Wonder wonder who that can be for one cool thing. That’s in the manual that I really do want to mention is that they tell you what amp types traditionally pair with which speakers they don’t make, you pair them with them. But, uh, it’s helpful to know to start out with, uh, because it’s good to know the rules before you break the rules.

[00:20:39] Yeah.

[00:20:58] Shade, what gets thrown in my comments, sections miked.

[00:21:48] Jetson meet the Jetson. Ah, I wonder what this one could be like up.

[00:22:08] I like that one a lot.

[00:22:24] Like that one it’s so like open and hollow almost and a good way.

[00:22:55] Oh, 64 64 AC 30 G 12. That feels specific. Mike

[00:23:36] 59 Tweed P 10 N. That was a mouthful.

[00:23:46] Mike

[00:24:13] cool. 64 deluxe P 12 N.

[00:24:52] 67 green back. Mike’s

[00:25:22] favorite.

[00:25:27] 67 seventies, 100 Mike

[00:26:05] all right. And nineties Kelly V 30.

[00:26:36] Is there anything else? The last one?

[00:26:44] So that was the last one, but I’m just going to roll through all of the presets with an open

[00:26:50] So you can hear really, really hear the differences side by side. I’m probably just going to do a DEI on all of these, just for a more consistent sound. Um, but then I’ll just get my final thoughts, feelings, emotions. Oh, shit about this. Uh, just things that, you know, I don’t think w we’re probably going to translate, uh, in a video because I don’t think they can, but I’ll get to that.

[00:27:15] Uh, let’s go back over.

[00:29:16] all right. So, um, my final thoughts are, I think if you’re going to get a power cat. It’s worth the money to upgrade to the power cab plus for the extra stock impulse responses. And so that you can upload your own. Um, also there’s many capability, which I think is pretty cool. Um, and just a host of other features.

[00:29:38] Yeah, I just think, make it more worth it. Um, so like obviously I have the power cab plus, um, I’m glad I have the power club cab plus. Um, and I just, I think it’s a better product hands down. Uh, they also have a two 12, um, I don’t have that, so I can’t really speak to it. I also did know. Research a lot about it.

[00:30:01] Um, but let me talk about the stuff that like, it’s hard to convey in a video like beyond sound. And that is really like the feeling. And I know I touched on this in the beginning of the video, but we all know as guitarists, there’s a feeling. Of playing an amplifier in a room. There’s that feeling of pushing air and, um, it’s kind of hard to translate, but, uh, playing through speaker monitors, uh, doesn’t get you there.

[00:30:35] Um, playing through like open back headphones even doesn’t quite get you there. Um, this will get you. There, this will make you feel like you’re playing an amplifier because you really truly are. Um, at this point. So that’s, that’s I think really key. I think it makes it kind of an essential ingredient for anybody.

[00:30:56] Um, playing a lot of amp simulators, um, these days, because most of them are not going to power a cabinet on their own. So if you want that feeling, if you want that vibe, if you want that experience. This is a great option. I really believe that. Um, I think that after like the first six, they get more unique, more diverse and interesting and words, frankly, different from each other.

[00:31:23] Another reason I think that getting the power cab plus is personally for me, I would think it’s the better investment. Especially if you’re not just going to use the flat response all the time, which I don’t think you should just use a flat response all the time, because I think the other cabinets, I think the built in speakers are really cool.

[00:31:49] Yeah. But thank you so much to line six for sending me this. I know a lot of you have been asking about this product, so I’m glad I finally got to it. Um, Please consider using our affiliate links from Sweetwater, especially if you’re interested in anything you saw in this demo. Um, I played my rep star, my HX south XL, and of course my, um, power cap plus I’ll drop links to all of those in the video description.

[00:32:17] Um, I have shirts that get like this. I get off the head podcast.com/shop. We have a Patriot patrion.com/get offset, please like comment, subscribe below. Those are the best ways to help the podcast. And the YouTube channel, which is what you’re watching, not the podcast. Uh, but there’s also a podcast. You can subscribe to that on apple podcasts and Spotify.

[00:32:40] Whew boy, howdy. And my tired of talking. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding. Keep doing whatever you’re doing with, uh, with your noggin and your hair and your head. My name is Emily, and until next time, uh, goodbye.