Tele Twang on the POD X3 Live

Lots of you have asked for patches for the POD X3 Live – and I’m working on it…

Fun Seeker Sundar I. asked about trying to dial in a “Brad Paisley” tone, by which I assume he means a classic Telecaster, chicken-pickin’ country twang.

Well, I talked to our expert in that area, Steve Thomason, and he offered the following for his “Tele solo twang” patch on the X3 Live:

(Personal note: First you need to start with a really good Telecaster. Steve plays a ’52 Reissue Butterscotch Blond with after market Lindy Fralin pickups.)

OK, here we go. (Mom, you can tune out – it gets boring from here on…)

The following settings are easily attained through the X3 Live’s onboard menu, but here’s a Gear Box snapshot to aid your brain:

Amp Model: 1967 Class A-30 Top Boost

Cab Model: Default (2×12 1967 Class A-30)

Amp EQ: Bass 39, Mid (cut) 88, Treble 69, Presence 0%

Drive: 48, Volume 61

Analog Delay: 480 ms, 16% mix, feedback 35%

Mic: 57 on Axis

There’s a good building block. After that you can adjust the parameters to suit your guitar and your taste.

For example, with my G&L ASAT Special with MFD Pickups, these settings are a tad dark, so I’ll brighten it a bit with the Amp EQ, and maybe add just a tiny bit of room verb.

The final step in this process is for you to get some serious playing skills. That part, my friends, is up to you

Sunday Summary – Music: June 29, 2008

Man, what a fun weekend. Jennie and I love it when Michael and Ashley come and stay with us for a few days. Although I think Ella loves it the most! She can’t get enough of those two. We’re certainly gonna have a good time when we all get together with Mom and Dad next week on vacation in Florida. Can’t wait!

So this was a no-frills Sunday. No opener. No closer. No worries, man.

Instead, we got lots of extra time for worship, and we were able to take the crowds to some great, deep places of worship that we don’t often get a chance to do. There can be a lot of power in just an extra, freeing minute or two at the end of a set to say a few words about worship, and follow it up with a few tags of intimate, personal worship. I know that’s a bit of the old Charismatic in me poking through, but it sure beats being song-regurgitating robots…

We also had double Michaels, and both were great.

East – Michael Olson

West – Mike Gleason

BUT!!!!! The week was not without controversy!!!

We started Andy’s series “Letters to the Next President” this past Sunday, and had penciled in Chris Tomlin’s “God of This City” as a closer. However, Andy indicated that the song wasn’t related to where he was ending the message, Eddie and I opted to stick it into the worship set as the 3rd and final tune.

But, we honestly didn’t think it through. Taking it from a worshippy-performancey closer to a full blown worship tune – never having done the song here at all before – was not the right call.

On Tuesday, when I was really listening and learning the song, it felt weird to me for us to be doing it as a worship tune, especially in the 3rd slot. It was lacking that personal, vertical conversation between us as worshippers and our Savior. Normally that doesn’t bug me – we do lots of songs about God. It just felt awkward, especially since we had never done it before. (We like to put new “slow” songs in the #2 slot, so that folks can still worship with a familiar tune in the #3 slot.)

Then on Wednesday, Todd and I got to talking about it, and he had been feeling the same way. Then when Michael Olson arrived, and we got talking about it, he had the same issues. We called Eddie, who was away, and he shared that he’d been feeling the same things.

And so, on Wednesday, just a couple hours before everyone was slated to arrive for rehearsal, we called an audible.

It was a bit of a pain, and a few guys had to shelve what they had been learning and do some last minute woodshedding, but in the end it was very much worth it.

We replaced it with the Starfield tune “Son of God” which Todd covered on our Louder Than Creation CD. It seemed to be a tune that got lost in the sea of tunes that have come out of that project, but it’s a really great song – and a VERY powerful and personal “vertical” song of worship to our God.

Great, great tune. And a real chance to sing personally to our Savior, especially if you freely tag the Bridge and Chorus at the end…

So you can imagine how elated I was when our big boss Julie came up and told Todd, Michael and I that she was glad we switched tunes.

Sometimes you’ve just got to follow your gut.

WORSHIP:

God Is With Us by Michael Olson

Let Me Sing by Todd Fields

Son Of God by Starfield

It was fun doing these 3 together, since Todd, Michael and I all played on these songs on Louder Than Creation .

And now, everyone’s favorite feature: Candid Stage Shots (during the Welcome from the West Auditorium)…

Danny Grady

Michael Olson tuning…

(or staring at his shoes. I don’t know…)

Todd Fields on Rhythm electric/BGV, Wayne Viar on drums, Richard Meeder on bass, Andy on the screen…

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East Band – Michael Olson, Todd Fields, Danny Grady, Wayne Viar, Richard Meeder, Me

West Band – Mike Gleason, Danny Howes, Daryl Lecroy, Chris Arias, Guy Strauss, Earl South, Rachael Gillis

—-

POD X3 Live count: 4

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Did you personally worship YOUR God this week?

I did, and that makes a world of difference…

Sunday Summary – Music: June 8, 2008

Bienvenido!

This was no ordinary Sunday. This was a marathon. And it started last Wednesday night.

Yesterday was the first of a three week pilot series for North Point en Espanol – a Spanish language service at North Point.

Here’s the short version:

We normally have 3 services in the East Auditorium (9:00, 11:00, 12:45), but only 2 services in the West. So the idea, at least for this pilot series, is for a traditional North Point style service to take place in the West Auditorium at 12:45 (the 3rd service time).

So how does that happen?

It started months ago with choosing an older series that Andy preached about a year ago and had it professionally overdubbed in L.A. And not some hack interpreter, but someone literally “acting” the voice of Andy – inflections, pauses, idiosyncrasies. Just imagine Andy speaking Spanish, plus a little extra “machismo”…

It also started with a grassroots base of Latinos and Spanish speaking folks within the church to partner with Host Team to be greeters, information tables, etc.

As for the music, we did the same worship songs as the first two English services – but in Spanish! How’s that for a brain twist!

Casey Darnell led the English, and newbie Duane Nisley led the Spanish, while Rosie Iraheta sang BGV for BOTH languages! Rehearsals were almost comical, as the band just played the same worship tunes over and over as we rehearsed both languages.

Throw in a closer for the English services AND a different closer for the Spanish, and you’ve got one crazy week on your hands.

In all, everyone was a real trooper, enduring long rehearsals on Wednesday night and Sunday morning as we all adjusted to the learning curve.

We learned a lot from week 1 of the Spanish pilot, and have since adjusted rehearsal schedules, call times, off-stage production personnel, Host Team strategies – you name it.

Fortunately, due to our typical over-preparation and trying to solve every little problem before it happens, the needed tweaks and adjustments are minor. So that’s good news.

It’s great to be surrounded with other folks that agree that foresee and fix issues even before they happen.

WORSHIP:

East – Todd Fields

West English – Casey Darnell

West Spansih – Duane Nisley

- Salvation’s Chorus

- Mighty To Save

- How Great Is Our God

- How He Loves (English closer) **also be sure to check out THIS version!!!!!

- My Savior My God (Spanish closer)

We’re revisiting a few older, more familiar tunes over these 3 weeks to aid the Spanish service – doing a few songs that have already been translated (to cut down the translation workload) and that our Spanish Worship Leaders Duane and Seth are already comfortable with – again, to reduce the learning curve for them.

—-

East Band – Todd Fields, Ashley Appling, Pat Malone, Steve Thomason, Danny Grady, Chris Arias, Jen Carrozza.

Yep – a band so good so good, it’ll make you slap yo mamma…

West Band – Casey Darnell, Duane Nisley, Scott Meeder, Richard Meeder, Bill DeLoach, Mike Hines, Jeremy Moyers, Rosie Iraheta

Yep – a rhythm section so good, it’ll make yo mamma slap you back…

—

POD X3 LIVE count: 5

All 4 electrics plus Todd’s acoustic.

—

What challenged YOU this week?

…

X3 Live comment

So yesterday Bob commented:

“At first, as a long time FOH mixer, this trend offended my religion. To me it was just the next evolution of the Ipod generation. The more people get used to listening to 128kbps encoded music, the more digital instrumentation will be acceptable.

Now, to be honest, I have heard the X3 used by the great musicians at NPMI and my conclusion is – I still think that Analog Amps distort better – but these things do sound pretty good in the right hands.

My bottom line is that we will know that these things are the real deal when the guitar players you mention actually sell their boutique amps. So far I don’t know of anyone who has sold their amps and only have a X3.”

In case you’re interested in this topic and didn’t get a chance to read my responding comment, here it is:

(And I do agree with Bob’s comment)

“Yeah, those guys won’t – nor should they – ever sell their sweet boutique gear. THAT would be an atrocity. And some of them still use those in a stationary recording situation.

The difference for them is the experience – load in, load out, no more 50 pound combo amps, no more running back to the iso box to tweak amp settings, no more flight cases, cartage dollies, expensive pedals and pedal boards, power supplies, batteries, a case full of 1/4″ connector cables, cars and back seats getting beat up, tubes blowing, mics getting bumped out of their placement, etc.

No more sweat. No more back pain.

All that for little to no difference sonically.

And, in some cases, it’s actually improved some guys tones going to FOH, not to mention the arsenal of effects and stomp boxes they might not have had before.

BUT – as with any musical instrument, it’s ultimately ALL IN THE HANDS OF THE USER!

You could give me a top of the line guitar rig and it’ll sound like crap. You can give Danny Grady or Todd a $99 Epiphone acoustic and they can make magic.

So I’m ultimately cool with whatever each guy wants to use that he feels comfortable with and that inspires him. That just happens to be the X3 Live for a lot (and now most) of our guys, but obviously not all.”

** And please don’t get the X3 Live confused with any of Line 6′s older, inferior gear (like the XT models, etc.). At this point, I would frown at (and make fun of) anything less than the X3 Live.

…

X3 Live Count

POD X3 Live count for this past Sunday at North Point Community Church, East and West Auditoriums:

5

All 4 electrics (2 on each side) and 1 acoustic (yes, it has GREAT pre-amps and effects – verb, compression, etc…)

Amplifier Isolation Boxes used: 0

How ya like them apples?