Pod Go

I got one of these for my church for other musicians to use, using the KPA Stage exclusively myself. I was leading for a student retreat this past weekend and only playing acoustic, so I brought this along and left my Stage home, and it did that acoustic job just fine. Prior to going, I finally put the Pod Go through its paces making the best electric preset I could come up with and the best acoustic preset I could create; I had done the same for bass a while back. .

Pros: Software editor was easy to figure out. I was able to get enough effects going at the same time for most situations. The amps cabs and effects are identical to the Helix, but with a much more limited routing and number of effects capabilities of course. For the electric, I was able to find a amp/cab pair that I liked a lot, just using the built in models. Nothing that came close to rivaling the 3-d quality, warmth, and touch of good Kemper rigs mind you, but sounds I'd be fine using in a pinch. I was perfectly whelmed, nothing more or less. I was able to dial in some effects and snapshots to get a lot out of that Preset that sounded great. Then I duplicated it and made some adjustments to that for more variety.

The effects in it are quite good, lots of variety. Using one of the made for DI amp models, I was able to get a great acoustic sound in combo with a compressor model, EQ and reverb. Not better than my favorite Kemper acoustic rigs, but good enough for a good acoustic sound. Similar thoughts about using for bass guitar.

I wanna say it switches presets faster than the Helix if I remember from the brief time I owned one. Still no spillover between presets, but fast enough that it would be good enough in a lot of situations mid song. (helix can do spillover now if you forgo literally half its processing power!)

Cons: When trying to set up snapshots, you have to do this silly step of assigning each parameter a number that you want to altar per snapshot. Why wouldn't it just be auto when you select a second snapshot and start twiddling knobs? Kind of a nuisance.

I forgot how much I hate having to manually compensate volume on a digital all-in-one. In each snapshot, I wanted to tweak the amp gain and the overdrive model gain, so I was back to the good old days of going back and forth and compensating the volume cuts and spikes after each minor adjustment.

(As a side note, this one unheralded feature of the KPA, its volume compensation, has been a huge time saver since it's inception, and STILL is not found in ANY other all-in-one ever created.)

The effects, though good and numerous lacked many of my favorite things about the almost all kpa effects. I missed being able to use the ducking feature on any of my post amp effects like I can on my kpa. (The Pod go's dedicated ducking delay was quite limited otherwise.) I missed being able to mix in a touch of reverse delay in any delay types to soften the attack of the repeats. I missed having similar controls for filtering the high or low end on all the delays and reverbs.

Finally, I found the process of tweaking snapshots a nuisance. Would have been so much easier to have made a copy preset, tweaked that, make another etc. You can do that, but snapshots are a must when a unit doesn't have spillover between presets like the KPA has.

In summary: for $500 (mine was a B stock so even less) you can't go wrong. If you like the Helix effects, there isn't a cheaper way to use several of them at a time with your Kemper, don't think you have midi capabilities though, so perhaps the next model up, the XL stomp would suffice, minus the built in expression pedal. Since it is also an excellent backup rig with enough foot switches and an expression pedal, I'd highly recommend the Pod Go as a backup rig for KPA owners, or a rig for use in sketchy places.

Quote from RosboneMako

And like you, I use my Helix LT for effects, running dual IRs, etc with my Kemper. I don't see them as competing but augmenting each other.

One weird thing I found with the Helix is the reverbs. When I researched buying the Kemper most reviews said the Helix had better effects. But to my ear the Kemper reverbs are much better. Of course they may have been updated since the reviews I saw. But it was a pleasant surprise to hear how full and rich the verbs were. It is such a great investment to own because it constantly gets better.

* I could use the pod go to supplement, but don’t as the kemper effects do everything I’m looking for. Unless it’s a light spring or similar, I run about 1.0 of ducking on wet effects. Let’s me have all the sustain and ambience I want and hides the wet a bit when I strum a fuller pattern. Keeps me from needing to toggle. In most cases I can just leave on whatever wet effects I’m using on and let the duck handle it. But if you like this generation of line 6 effects, they are good, to complement the KpA, the pod go is a good way to go from a price point.