Rating:

First, the good things. It sounds pretty decent if you like to play rock or metal. Its not great, but for jamming along with your mp3 player and practicing it works perfect. There are a ton of different sounds you can coax out of this device. Other people have complained about the interface but I don’t have any troubles with it. There are some features you can’t manipulate unless you plug it into a computer and use their software, doesn’t bother me though. Its portable and runs on batteries. All you need is your guitar, cable, and headphones. Back-lit screen is nice and legible.

The bad: The modulation effects are pretty cheesy and digital sounding. Eats batteries very quickly Clean sounds are just meh, but if you aren’t using it for recording it should be fine.

Here my main beef: The build quality of this device is not up to normal Line6 standards. It is very flimsy cheapo plastic. I’m still wondering where the real Line6 device is because this seems like a crappy cheap Chinese copy of a Line6 device. I dropped mine onto indoor carpeting and the screen cracked, making it unusable. Line6 considers this device to be consumable and will not help you fix it. They tell you to use their authorized service center to repair…ok, I contact every single one on the list and they all tell me the same thing, deal with Line6 directly. So I try, and Line6 tells you to use an authorized service center… I don’t like being treated like this and playing these games. I broke it an am willing to pay for a repair but they just want me to buy a new one. Heck, sell me a new screen and I will solder it in myself (I work in electronics). No go. Digitech never treated me this way with any of their products, in warranty or not.

If you buy this be extremely careful with it. I’m not joking, this thing is flimsy. Its not high impact plastic… its thin and fragile. If you have an issue, good luck dealing with Line6. In this economy you’d think they would do whatever it takes to maintain customers but I guess thats not the case. Their business model must make them immune to these things.

I wanted to like this thing, I really did. My old POD 2.0 is great and sturdy. This pocket thing is an example of a great concept implemented very poorly.

Rating:

Now putting the core technology (which is very good) aside and getting into features. The Pocket POD comes with an excellent set of presets. You can select by BAND, STYLE or USER. As I mentioned, the POD is used by professional musicians, BAND presets are presets created with direct input from the pros. Want to dial up Hoobastanks guitarist sound on The Reason? It’s already programmed for you along with about a dozen others artist presets created by the artist themselves.

There are many more STYLE presets, style presets are approximation of specific artist recorded tone on specific songs, they have names easy to reconize like: CRAZY TRAIN, JUMP, FREE FALLIN, DUST WIND, SANDMAN, ANOTHER BRICK, WHOLE LOTTA LOVE etc.. Most of them sound fantastic.

Just dial up a specific tone patch then use one of the four silver knobs to adjust: Gain, Effect Level, Delay Level and Volume. There are so many of these presets many guitarist will probably never even bother to “deep edit”, but for those who want more, Line6 has a free program that you can download for MacOS X and Windows that allows you to build your own presets and store them in the Pocket POD. The Pocket POD connects to a PC through an included USB cable and then the user can select a specific amp head, amp cabinet, add effects, etc… You can build your own virtual guitar rig and then store it in one of the included user preset spots.

CONNS:

The “deep edit” software I mentioned above does not work on many notebook PCS and will not work through USB hubs. This will leave many users wanting more frustrated. Also, no power supply is included and the battery life here isn’t good. User manual is essentially 3 pages printed in many languages, no manual for the software (and how hard would it have been to include it on a CD-ROM in the box?)

Rating:

The only big downside is that it sucks down power like nobody’s business. I bought four high-end AAA batteries and the Pod ate them in a about a week of playing for less than 2 hours a night. Furthermore, the manual states that only non-rechargeable batteries (or the optional AC adapter) should be used. I now plan to buy the Line 6 DC1, which is line 6′s 9 volt adapter, from Amazon soon.

Another, much smaller downside is that the real manual is only available in PDF format from Line 6′s web site. But if you’re at Amazon, you probably have an internet connection.

While getting the manual, you should probably also download Vyzex, which is Line 6′s software for editing the tones from the Pocket Pod. This software isn’t absolutely necessary for using the Pocket pod, but it does make editing tones somewhat easier, and it also allows the use of download tones (which work somewhat like synthesizer patches.) I also think the software could be better designed.

Still, I’m very pleased with the product. When you consider it’s cost versus the cost of an amp head, plus stomp boxes, etc., the variety of amps and effects modeled, and the fact that the Pocket Pod doesn’t take up much space at all, it’s a great deal, especially someone like me who practices in an apartment.

Rating:

What you get are five different icons/graphics…the sitting dove, a flower, ’69, a peace sign, and a hand making a peace sign. All picks feature the same Woodstock logo on the back. Two of each style are included in the package for a total of 10 guitar picks.