Hi all, I was recently having an interesting discussion about how the Duo stacks up against more mainstream digital multi-effects boxes such as the Line6 HX Effects, and it gave me a few ideas for how the Duo could be improved and marketed better. Rather than confuse multiple ideas into a single topic, I’ve started to submit individual posts about each of these, and I’ll maintain an index right here:
But it also struck me that this forum seems to be lacking of discussions about how the Duo compares with its rivals, and what can be learned from those comparisons. So let’s fix that right now! If you have experience of a rival product, please share your opinions in this thread! It would be good to hear both the pros and cons.
By the way, if you want to see the full Duo vs. Line6 HX Effects discussion I had which sparked this, look in the comments of this video:
There’s lots of food for thought there, which suggests areas in which the Duo could be improved and marketed better.
I scanned through the discussion you had in the comments of the video. All very good points.
The flexibility of routing is probably the greatest asset of the MOD Duo. There is absolutely endless possibilities to it. I’ve made a video on my NS/Stick channel showing a very complicated setup I had. I don’t use it anymore since I’ve been trying to simplify things a little. However, coming from a studio engineer background, I love how I can patch things however I want and have access to all the effects. Also, being able to break the norms which have been ingrained in me for studio application is a game-changer. Put reverb before distortion? Yes please!
It would be interesting to hear/see some comparisons. The guitarist in my band is thinking about getting something from the line 6 HX group. If he does, I’ll let you know the differences.
Very new Duo user here. It took me 3 minutes to set up patch that routed one channel to a chorus and another to a delay. Same thing using the Boss MD- 500 and DD-500 took much longer, plus I had to read the docs prior.
The Mod Duo is interesting me… but I’m not sure if it’s for me.
At the moment, I own a Line6 Pocket Pod, but it isn’t convincing me all the way right now.
For distortion I get a pretty good sound, but for clean I cannot get a good jazzy vibe, and I’m looking for a nice fuzzy tone too, but cannot seem to get what I want with it, yet. Some stuff is sounding too plastic.
However, while the pocket pod is quite limited, and I’m still busy for a couple of hours finetuning sounds, to get the thing I need. While there’s only one delay/chorus/distortion option to make your combinations.
I’m wondering how long I would be puzzling with the Mod Duo, where you have around 30 delay stomps, 30 distortion stomps, and so on … endless combinations… If you have to get through all of them to find your tone of preference, or to see if the next stomp that sounds almost the same will be better sounding or not… we’re not done yet. I guess I’ll be retired when I found the right combination.
Don’t know if that would be good for me and my scarce spare time…
Some like to spend hours fine tuning. It doesn’t matter what pedal(s) they use.
The nice thing about the MOD Duo is that you’ve got almost everything at your disposal. You don’t have to trade one distortion pedal for another, or re-patch your physical pedalboard. You just drag something new into he mix.
Just wondering how it sounds.
There are a lot of videos online showing demos of it. Some of them put it into a big guitar amp and it changes the sound of course. The sounds will be different when using another type of guitar, active pick-ups,…
If you’re putting your signal out straight into an interface for your computer, for recording directly into a daw, would it sound warm and full aswel? (when not using an external amp)
And would you be able to create some muddy/fuzzy distorted swells like this:
soundcloud dot com /bulevardi/propagator
I want to be able to create the sound I had years ago when I still used Windows with Amplitube and Samplitude’s Vandal Amp.
The endless number of plugins has been a saving grace for me. Without the Duo, I would be spending more time and money on trying to achieve a sound that is in my head with physical pedals and effects. The access to all the effects has made my search more simple. However, I do see the argument that having too much will lead to an unending cycle of testing, never to settle on anything… but I think this is not the norm. If you are doing that, you probably have other issues… lol…
At the end of the day, it’s about your creativity and how you put together the plugins to create your sound. You want “muddy/fuzzy distorted swells” then start with fuzz plugins with the slow-gear plugin going through an amp/cab sim and some delay/reverb.
All the tools are there. Just need to put the puzzle together.
André Martins from Brazil has been publishing a lot of videos on his social accounts using just his acoustic guitar and the Duo and recording that. I absolutely love what he does and it shows a lot of the great characteristics of the Duo:
Are there any videos or at least opinions on the sound quality (especially in the amps) between the Mod Duo and the HX Stomp? Amp modellers have come a long way in quality over the years, but I’m not sure if the open source ones available to the Mod Duo are at the same level.