Diving into Line 6 TonePort UX1 USB recording interface

Well, my dear friends, yesterday I have received my little toy, TonePort UX1, the USB recording interface from Line 6. I ordered it on Wendsday and I received it yesterday…That caused a lot of frustration, to be honest,but OK, it is here…

So, when I’ve got home with it, I was already impatient and I couldn’t wait to install it. I could tell you right from the start the same thing I have observed when I purchased the guitar, the guys from Line 6 give a very big importance to marketing. Everything is packed up nicely, beautiful packages, it gives you that special thrill, like you are a kid waiting for the toy that Santa is going to bring you this Christmas! Well, this is how I’ve felt, anyway…

The package brings one USB recording interface (Line 6 TonePort UX1), 1 USB cable, 2 CDs and a lot of papers for registering, if you want. Speaking about marketing and support, I don’t think they left something out, I felt that when installing the software and the hardware. On the 2 CDs it was written very large, to not miss it, which CD to install first, which the second, they were very careful to inform you to not connect the hardware before the installer reaches a particular point, etc. I was impressed by the fact that they put a lot of weight on explaning to the customer how to do things right. I liked that a lot, because, even if I am a computer professional, I realize not everybody spends his days around computers.

I installed the Ableton Live software also, plugged my guitar and wheee…or not!?!!! WTF? Play, damn it! 

If there is anything that I hate in this software world, is to read the documentation of a product. I am impatient and I expect everything to work from the start and I have the conviction I can usually learn any software without too much reading…Well, in this case the damn thing didn’t wanna start!

Back to school, then. Of course, the device is not connected in anyway to the sound card of the computer, so in order to make it work, to hear it using your sound card you need to take the line out from the recording device and plug it to the line in of the sound card. Pretty obvious, but I expected it to know about the sound card, one way or the other.

After overcoming the fact that everything on the recording device uses large jacks(1/4) while on the computer everything works on small ones, I still haven’t been able to play it using my computer. My mic line has a problem and i can not record a mic, seems my line in also has the same problem!

Head phones maybe? Yes! It work, finally! Let’s roll!

And the adventure begins

Man, I knew from the start that this toy is loaded with a lot of amps, but come on! After playing like 10-15 tones there I’ve got really dizzy! The software comes with 3 predefined tone sets: clean tone, cruch and heavy, each of these folders containing around 25(?) tones. Now think of the fact that you can adapt any of these tones and save them as your own, in another set, user defined. Man…

I can tell you that I played them all until the end of the evening, but I couldn’t find “my tone” among all those tones there. The same as with my Variax modeling guitar, which has it’s models based on famous electric and acoustic guitar models, tones there are based on famous tones that somebody once used. Like for example I could find a tone named Achtung, based on The Edge tone, or another one called “Aint talkin bout love” or something similar, based on Eddie Van Halen’s tone. What really made my day from this point of view was the tone named Hell’s Bells. Now you do the math and tell me the original band! I had a lot of fun with this tone since I couldn’t make a tone on my BOSS processor for You shook me all night, because I am not very good at cutting gain on my distortion. I can not feel it, seems something is missing, so I need to turn the gain on, losing ACDC’s spirit. But when the tone was already created, played using the Gibson Les Paul model, sounds nice! Yeah!

I was able to find a couple of tones there to get somehow closer to what I want, it was a tone called “80’s rhythm guitar”, pretty self describing, I guess, pure distortion, a bit too open in my opinion, but OK, it’s a preset. Also, the tone that I found to be the closest to what I want is called Blizzard and is based on Randy Rhoads’s tone. I will probably start working on it from there. I will see…

The next thing I tried was to create a tone from scratch. Damn, system overload!!! Let’s look at it this way. Suppose you are a very experienced, professional guitar players, with a lot of money. How many amplifiers would you be able to gather in order to really find the tone? More than 18 in one single room? And if you manage to put them together in one single room, how many cabinet sets do you think you would be able to gather? More than 18-20?! Well, and if you managed to do this: NOW COMBINE THEM, EACH AND EVERYONE OF THEM! Damn it!

Now add the line of stompboxes, a few on every position, like 2-3 types of delays, 2-3 types of wah, etc. And when you think it can not get any worse than this, think of how the sound is taken from those cabinets. With a mic. Aaaa…which kind of mic? There are 4 types, changing them changes the sound that much that you can not even compare. Ah, yes, now that you have chosen a mic, start moving it closer to the cabinet or very far away, on the other side of the room…get it?

…now multiply this by the number of available guitar models on my Variax guitar!

I reached a conlusion that I could virtually create any tone I want, combining the guitars with the amps I have there. This thing is a great learning tool, gives you the feeling of different types of amps. Very interesting to observe, when you play a particular tone, sounds lousy, then you look at the tone description and you see it is built for a humbucker and you play it using a Tele. Change the guitar to a Les Paul, and everything rocks! Really! I had the impression that my Stratocaster model on my Variax guitar does not have personality! Man, I played it using SRV tone!!!Yes!

At about 1.30 AM I went to bed. System overload!! Too many guitar tones available!!

By the way, all these tones are updatable, I mean you can buy upgrades from the internet, the software is integrated with the web site. 

Another interesting thing, even if does not add any value to the device itself, but makes your life easier, you have a player where you can play an mp3 from the harddisk or from the internet in order to jam along.

Want more? There is a digital, chromatic guitar tuner, there is a metronome, that can be adapted to play clicks or drums.

Nothing about Ableton Live for the moment cause I couldn’t make it to record anything, but I will try again this evening. By the way, today I spent at least 1 hour in the morning playing the damn thing before leaving to the office! The cool thing is that the TonePort is always connected to the computer, it does not need power, it takes everything it needs from USB, so I let the cables connected also, all I need to do is to plug my guitar and start the software! Now we’re talking!

Also nothing about the preamp models, about voice and bass models. Not yet.

Still want more? I know I don’t!

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