Line 6 Pod 2.0

I've been playing guitar and basses for over a decade. I spent the first 4 years or so with a Behringer V-Amp--the reverse engineered Pod. It was okay when I was shredding away on a Squier Affinity strat and the crappy little amp that comes in a box with the guitar, but eventually I outgrew the limited digital modeling and went for...more digital modeling. I traded in a bunch of PA equipment from a band I was playing drums in to pay for a move to a new state, and the store had a dusty little Pod 2.0 for a couple bucks.

Things got rough after that. I kind of fell out of love with the guitar and focused on drums. I blame the Pod a little for this, as it kind of takes the joy out of playing. For me, at least, playing guitar had much more to do with finding settings that sounded good through headphones. I imagine this thing is super handy when you're on the road, writing new stuff, or stuck in a tiny apartment where you can't play through an amp. I spent all of my time on trying to get my sound out of the mic simulators, cab emulators, amp modelers, effects and other stuff, and no time on just enjoying being a guitar player

I didn't even really have an amp (just that same 15 watt Squier that I kept around because it had a speaker that could produce sound). Eventually, you just have to say: enough! This is not what guitar is about! It's about raw noise. I like making noise! Not trying to get a kidney bean to sound like a Marshall or an AC30. I traded this thing in for a little 5 watt Class A tube amp, a 2x12 speaker cab and started getting some pedals together. This is so much fun.

I shouldn't speak badly of the Pod. A lot of people use them, like them, and record with them. For me, it divorced playing guitar from making sound. Guitar playing became a grid, a rigid formula, a scale. It should be making music; moving air, and having some kind of fun or reaction to noise. I'm not going back.