Line 6 - the end of an era

mike_l

Drew_fx said:

Really happy with where my rig is right now. I don't foresee it changing for a while.

Who are you, and what have you done with Drew? 8-X

monquixote

I think the middle has gone out of the market. 

Modellers are now for beginners and pros who would have used a rack system. 

Semi pro gigging musicians like a lot of us on here aren't really served by most modelling companies (with the possible exception of Blackstar) probably because most of us don't seem that interested in them.

kelvinburn

Is Strymon not the old "Brains" behind line 6? IIRC they left Line 6, launched Damage Control then became Strymon. I could be mistaken though. I'm personally looking forward to the saturation of the 2nd hand market with their original pedals as more and more people buy mobii, big skies and timelines

Lev

monquixote said:

I think the middle has gone out of the market. 

Modellers are now for beginners and pros who would have used a rack system. 

Semi pro gigging musicians like a lot of us on here aren't really served by most modelling companies (with the possible exception of Blackstar) probably because most of us don't seem that interested in them.

From what I can tell from reading the posts in the FX/Amp sections the Zoom G3's, Line6 M5/9 and the Yamaha THR are pretty popular among the members here. But if you look at each of those products the commonality is the ease of use. The average gigging musician does not want to have to spend hours programming presets so plug and play is the way to go if modelers are to survive.

Fretwired

monquixote said:

I think the middle has gone out of the market. 

Modellers are now for beginners and pros who would have used a rack system. 

Semi pro gigging musicians like a lot of us on here aren't really served by most modelling companies (with the possible exception of Blackstar) probably because most of us don't seem that interested in them.

I think in the early days it was ease of use and effects - the old Flextone II amp head sounded OK and was a doddle to use. The Pod HD500X is a nightmare to use in a live situation. The effects companies have now caught up and supply a range of top quality pedals  and there's a wider range of valve amps at a decent price [due to Far Eastern manufacturing] so you can put a basic rig together for not a lot of money. Modellers are still useful at home and for recording.

monquixote

Lev said:

From what I can tell from reading the posts in the FX/Amp sections the Zoom G3's, Line6 M5/9 and the Yamaha THR are pretty popular among the members here. But if you look at each of those products the commonality is the ease of use. The average gigging musician does not want to have to spend hours programming presets so plug and play is the way to go if modelers are to survive.

They are, but the M5/9 isn't an amp modeller, the THR is a practice tool and most people using the G3 are using it as a fancy delay/mod pedal (or at least I was).

EdGrip

This is what I meant by knob-based modelling amps. Line6 used to be great at that. Just an ordinary guitar amp, but with one extra knob at the front to select the amp you want. USB connection so you can do deep editing from time to time, line- and XLR-outs so you can use the same little combo for any situation. 

The truth is I'm not that interested in modelling amps - I have increasingly found that what I enjoy is a good clean amp that I can use with all manner of noisy fuzzy pedals of muck. That's why (like many) I eventually had to acknowledge the beckoning finger of Fender.

But I am interested in people making the effort to keep pushing technology forward so that if all the good valves get used up or they stop being produced for some reason, we're not stuffed. I see modelling (and good SS) amps as the electric car of electric guitar.

PolarityMan

I think the market has been eaten by VSTs. I would bet the majority of pods sold never left the bedroom. Gigging guitarists really are a minority you know.

Jez6345789

Hi I said this before but line6 squandered their business advantage by not really innovating any further and having the curse of envy for other markets. So in the end lots of interfaces, keyboard, PA endless combo's then a lust for a bit of Boutique branding teaming up with Bogner and then James tyler for the Variax. In the end if they had continued to advance modelling at the speed DSP processor advanced they could of easily produced something like Kemper or AxeFx, along with a great range of amps.

I hope variax comes back in Pacifica form as the old budget Variaxs were great for recording and getting useful tones to fill out a mix.

regards Jez

JayGee

PolarityMan said:

I think the market has been eaten by VSTs. I would bet the majority of pods sold never left the bedroom.

That and iThingies.

I've got a Pod XT which used to see a lot of use as a practice tool and travel amp. These days an iPad, a Mobile in and Jam Up fill that space, the Pod's on loan to someone else, and I'm in no particular hurry to get it back.

hugbot

digitalscream said:

I think the main problem is that there have been too many failures. Line6 stuff has been somewhat fizzy since the XT range, and since the X3 it's tried to be too clever and lost the usability factor. The AxeFX is very much a niche product; there aren't many around, really, and it's got a massive price tag.

The Eleven Rack was supposed to fix all these things, and it did a brilliant job - but then Avid killed it by essentially abandoning the product (it didn't help that it was designed for recording, but only worked properly with Pro Tools).

Boss...COSM. Need I say more?

Then there's Zoom - they had an awesome product in the G9.2tt. It really did everything you could want and sounded head and shoulders above anything in its price range (Line6 flagship products included), but it was again one of those products that was basically abandoned and lost a lot of ground against subsequent generations from other manufacturers; if they'd released an updated version with the G3-class modelling and abandoned the useless valves, it would've basically ripped Line6 a new one in the sub-£500 market.

Now, modelling is more of a commodity thing, I think. It's no longer really the focus of a unit - "hey look, we've got a great new modeller". Things seem to have moved on to "hey, our product does this and sounds like that". I think that's why we're seeing a lot of things like TC's TonePrint range and the Zoom stomp effects units. Also, and this is a bit of a finger-in-the-air thing, guitarists seem to be a lot less concerned with how an effect does its job and more bothered about what it sounds like and how it fits in their rig.

To me, that's most definitely a good thing. Of course, we now have to deal with Boss and their bonkers new digital pedals like the Tera Echo, but I'm pretty confident the market will sort them out in pretty short order

Im totally down with the new boss pedals, I think its great that a company as big as boss would release something as bizarre as the tera echo, I much prefer that to the "try to please evreyone by digitally copying the same old favourites" philosophy digital stuff was going down.

I've been using the MO2 and AD2 a lot, and the people who've tried the tera echo are saying its a lot of fun too.

EricTheWeary

Interesting though that looking at what boxes people were carrying out of the B'ham guitar show I would say the number one contained that new Line 6 amp which had met with an almost universal meh on here.

Although based on a lot of conversations from yesterday the amount of folks looking at guitar stuff on the net beyond youtube makes us on here part of a minority chattering class and that the majority are still looking to Guitarist for information and buying Line 6 gear so they can sound like Rock Gods in the privacy of their own homes.

EdGrip

It's met with universal meh here because everyone's busy bumming the THR on other threads. I rather like the idea of a Bluetooth-enabled party boom-box with added guitar amp functionality (as I see it).

Cirrus

I saw them at the show. They look like paper shredders. In fact, I'd go a step further. If I decided to go direct and do a Rush style ironic back line i'd use those line 6 things because they'd look more out of place on stage than actual office paper appliances.