Recreating sound - Cover band

Slaanesh

I am currently in a cover band that does stuff ranging from Snow patrol to Led zeppelin to pink to cranberries.

Setup:

Amp: Marshall AVT 100
F/X: Pod XT Live
Guitar: PRS Custom 22 (Stock pickups)

When playing through headphones with the pod I can really tweak sounds etc but when it comes to putting it through the amp it either loses or gains in tone and doesn't sound like what it should.

I play mostly lead and another guy plays rhythm, he has a strat through a lovely fender twin reverb type thingy. He uses a various assortment of pedals and doesn't do half as much tweaking as me so his sound pretty much stays similar for every song.

I want to sound as true to the original as possible yet obviously make my own twist when I feel inclined. The levels of the pod are all over the place, I really need to sit down and match everything perfectly. I have a different patch for each song in the setlist but some of them just sound a bit crappy.

I can't really crank the sound in my current house but I intend moving on home just to practice where I can make as much noise as I want but I don't want to have to haul my computer each time for practice. I essentially need to be able to play the track and play along with it to figure out if my guitar sounds correct of not. I can't really fiddle in rehearsals because the XT live is best configured through the computer. If I have it sounding true to the original track then I can tweak it easier when it comes to playing with the band. It takes alot of time and patience to do this for each track and I'm still not 'up' on all the setting of the pod and wouldn't know the first thing about most of the settings and how they should be tweaked for each song.

Should I get some sort of PA system that I can play the music through and sit my amp in front of it so it sounds like I will be playing along? As opposed to just playing along at low volume levels with the track coming out the PC speakers. I also sing one or two songs and can never really here myself because their are no monitors at rehearsals and where I'm setup in the room the PA speakers are pointed past me.

Not really sure the point of this thread but maybe people will post some suggestions or experiences that they have had trying to do something similar

bombidol

The amp is going to add its own twist on what you are playing through the pod. Your best best would either be to go straight through the pod into the PA during gigs or use a power amp and a keyboard cab.

JHet

The Atomic Reactor amp would be the best option in this situation.

http://www.atomicamps.com/

I don't have an XT Live but i do have a GT-8 and it works great with it.
The tube poweramp section really adds some nice cream on top. To my knowledge its the only amp on the market designed for MFX units.

G66 is the European distributor.
http://www.g66.eu/

Thats were i got mine. Great folks over there. Customer service is probably the best i've ever had. Word of warning there not cheap. My 2x12 50w was 750 yoyos. The 1x12 is 100eur cheaper i think

Best of Luck

NeMiSiS

Why not put the POD through the loop on the amp, it won't totally cut out the sound ..infiltraiting ..from the amp but there should be a noticable difference.. as in loop in through the amp.. and turn the loop to max..
TK

crosstownk

What I do is I plug the guitarist's Pod XT Live into the mixing desk and run it through the PA - this is sufficient for practice sessions and gives a better representation of the tone acheived by the guitar. For gigging, I send one of the sub outs to the effects return of the guitarist's Marshall AVT150 which gives a nice 'colour' to the live sound. Not too much that it drowns out the PA, but just enough - it also means that the AVT acts as a good stage monitor for the guitar too. I have to say, it works quite well.