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Line 6 M9
- Thread starter Gus Borden
- Start date
I've tried the modeling route several times before and was less than impressed. The M9 is much improved. The effects are tweakable and great sounding with bass and the unit almost looks like a Bradshaw switching system. Thumbs up from here.
Do you have to press two mushroom knobs together on the M9 / 13 to activate the built-in Tuner ? Does it display as an analogue needle type tuner or how does it work?
How are the filter and dirt sounds on it? Those are the 2 most important pedals to me and what most multi units seem to fail.
Yes, but it's an easy one foot deal.
The tuner is analog in appearance with a decent sized dot that slides depending upon pitch.
I never used filters before, but I'm loving the Q filter.
There's quite a few dirt options, the overdrive is pretty good, the fuzz face sounds like a fuzz face. All are quite tweakable and translate to bass very well.
Thusfar I've been wildly surprised by the tracking on the M9. The octavers are bypassing the performance I've personally experienced with OC-2, OC-3, EBS, and most recently Aguilar octavers.
Also really liking the ability to put a -1 bass octave on one slot, and a +12 note pitch change on another slot, with Mix controls for both, and effectively have a PoG .
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Also really liking the ability to put a -1 bass octave on one slot, and a +12 note pitch change on another slot, with Mix controls for both, and effectively have a PoG .
.
I put the M9 Fuzz Pi up against my Supercollider. Having not tried it in a live situation I can't say for sure but it looks like the Supercollider is coming off my board. The M9 model was actually sounding a bit better to me at first, but then I realized it was because the mids were so scooped in the M9, and that sound can be appealing in a bed room situation. I think I'm really gonna have to crank the mids on the M9 for live but it sounds damn good so far.
Actually I think trying to match the sound of an analogue dirt pedal that you have in front of you is sort of the key to learning to tweak that aspect of the M9. It was for me anyway.
Actually I think trying to match the sound of an analogue dirt pedal that you have in front of you is sort of the key to learning to tweak that aspect of the M9. It was for me anyway.
The M9 arrived today, just playing with the different presets, getting used to the functionality. I love it already. There are obviously a couple of effects that seem not to translate to bass (perhaps with some serious tweaking), but overall, so far, it sounds awesome! I am gonna like this thing.
But... apparently there are still some floating around on Ver 1.1 and I have to upgrade it to Ver. 2. I've never done this before... what do I need a midi to usb cable? I downloaded/installed Monkey, but I am fairly lost on the rest. I will have to do some reading!
Any pointers on the upgrading process would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks - Gus
But... apparently there are still some floating around on Ver 1.1 and I have to upgrade it to Ver. 2. I've never done this before... what do I need a midi to usb cable? I downloaded/installed Monkey, but I am fairly lost on the rest. I will have to do some reading!
Any pointers on the upgrading process would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks - Gus
Now that I am completely happy (I know, but I think I am) with my amp and bass, maybe I should do some messing around with effects. I can get a pretty good deal on one locally. I have tried it and liked it. Maybe if I had one I would actually try to use it at gigs - sparingly of course. I do like the idea of having a tuner, compressor and filter available. And one "scene" for jazz trio, one for jazz quartet/fusion, one for pop/rock covers and one for church is pretty cool.
Acceptable, but not as good as analog pedals. The biggest drawback is that none of the models have a clean blend.
Thanks! How is the true bypass / tone suck when it's turned off; i might combine this unit with my analoge darkglass /tech21 overdrive stuff. Seems handy to have delay/chorus/reverb and other modulation in 1 unit
I've not noticed any tone suck. My biggest concern would be reliability. My Line 6 gear tends to have a habit of stopping to work.
I had and have now sold the smaller M5. The sound quality was great for what I wanted it for ('that' TIRO synth and occasional chorus), however what I found a royal pain in the backside what the complete inability to adjust overall volume of different effects. For example, the chorus was always louder than bypass, even with the wet/dry mix rolled all the way to dry, and the afore mentioned synth was way too quiet. Oh IIRC none of the drive models have a clean blend.
Apparently these volume dependencies are due to the high accuracy of the modelling - if the original pedal/unit had a volume boost, so does Line 6's model. That's all well and good, but I'd much rather Line 6 take a leaf out of Zooms book and try to improve the original by implementing clean blends and individual effect volume controls on effects that didn't originally have them, to make everything consistent. For example, Zoom's BDDI has a mid eq control - not on the original, but makes it much more useful.
Apparently these volume dependencies are due to the high accuracy of the modelling - if the original pedal/unit had a volume boost, so does Line 6's model. That's all well and good, but I'd much rather Line 6 take a leaf out of Zooms book and try to improve the original by implementing clean blends and individual effect volume controls on effects that didn't originally have them, to make everything consistent. For example, Zoom's BDDI has a mid eq control - not on the original, but makes it much more useful.
I found it too "digital" sounding for me and pretty noisy, although I won't discount the possibility that came from my power supply.
Tonewise, IMHO, you can get way better sounds from many other pedals. I was hoping to get some sweet DL4 sounds out of this but was disappointed.
If you find you like the tone, its hard to beat the useability of this pedal. Very simple and intuitive. Just not my favorite tone-wise.
Tonewise, IMHO, you can get way better sounds from many other pedals. I was hoping to get some sweet DL4 sounds out of this but was disappointed.
If you find you like the tone, its hard to beat the useability of this pedal. Very simple and intuitive. Just not my favorite tone-wise.
It's more for guitar but there's still a lot of useful sounds for bass. I'd reccomend saving some money by getting a m5 unless you're doing solo bass looping. The m5 does not have a looper. IMO the delays are the highlight of the m series. Some of the reverbs are really nice also. They are also great as a Swiss Army knife type pedal if you only use say a chorus or Flanger or phaser or soMething for like one song a night. On the downside... I found the overdrives and distortions unusable for bass, the synth stuff wasn't so hot and the m series draw a lot of power which limits what power supplies you can use. I do think the m5 in particular is a good pedal to own because it'll help you figure out what types of effects are for you. Every player, band, genre, has certain types of effects that are more useful to them in their specific situation. That's not to say you are limited to certain effects in any way. But I do respect Line 6 in that even though their stuff may not always be the best thing out there, their effects and amp modeling are decent enough to get you headed in the right direction. For example I love my digitech polara. Probably would have never considered using reverb with bass but I messed around with the reverbs in he m5 and found I really liked reverb. So it got me into dedicated reverb pedals.
