- I had two of them in 2000 and in 2007. I didn't keep the first in 2000 because i find the sound thin and trebly. In 2007 i decided to give it a second chance in case i got a faulty one the first time: the sound was still synthétic to my ears (even on a tube amp). I also had EMG 60, 85, SA and only dislike the 81 and the 60 (those two have céramic magnet).
- as the others EMG, the 81 has great clarity, définition and gain, they are great for métal, and i think they would be perfect with Mésa tube amps (to bring more clarity and articulation to the distorsions)
- a very good pickup, but i prefer by far the 85

- The century has a cutting sound: bass are not huge but very defined, mids scooped and good treble frequencies.
- until now i had two V30 in my 2x12 mésa vertical rectifier, i like the warm tone they provide, but i wanted more bite for my heavy distorsion patchs so i swaped one of the V30 for a century vintage. The century vintage sounds not as huge as the V30, but it has more clarity and definition.
- I think that a 100% century vintage cab would best match for agressive métal, with heavy gauge strings and heavylly detuned guitars.
- and last, the century vintage weights three times less than a V30.

- The all in one HP: great for cleans but also for distortion: thick sound, great bass and treble, spike in the mids. Brand new, treble fréquencies can be a little harsh but it's much better when broken in
- had two of them in my 2x12 mésa vertical rectifier, i like the warm tone they provide, but i wanted more bite for my heavy distorsion patchs so i swaped one of the V30 for a century vintage. The century vintage sounds not as huge as the V30, but it has more clarity and definition.
- V30 are excellent HP, you can't go wrong with it.

My Ibanez Ghostrider guitar, in similar fashion to a Les Paul has a mahogany body and a 2-piece bookmatched maple top in a cherry sunburts finish, although tobacco sunbursts are rare they were also avaible) It sports cream binding on the body and neck, fairly high quality rosewood fretboard with abalone inlay fret blocks, and gold hardware all the way down to the pickup covers. Just like a Gibson it boasts a true set neck and tune-o-matic bridge. The controls, however unlike a Gibson LP, are limited to a single volume and tone with a 3-way selector.

The neck is very reminiscent of a Les Paul, slightly clubby feeling definitely slim enough to feel graceful when playing. Access to the 22 fret is possible, but may not satisfy shredders who want unrestricted access all the way up the fret board. To myself, it doesn't matter.

If you love playing a Paul but regret it halfway through a gig due to their weight, then this guitar is for you. Somehow, maybe due to a slightly smaller body and the double cutaway they have made a guitar thats several pounds lighter than an LP, and its very balanced and comfortable to play.

This is by far the most gorgeous-sounding guitar I have ever played. Granted I swapped in some Gibson P.A.F. pickups and that has sweetened it all the more. But to pick up this guitar and play it, and then remind yourself it doesn't cost 2000.00 is like a dream come true.
I play everything from hi-gain palm-muted metal riffing on the bridge pickup, to crunchy indie rock, to noodly jazz and Santana soloing, or back the guitars volume down to instantly clean it up for soulful bluesy licks and chords. When through a clean amp, the neck pickup comes through thick and almost jazzy, with enough fatness and sustain to satisfy me when playing mellow chords and licks. The neck pickup is also great for sweet overdriven soloing as this guitar will almost sustain like a real Paul.

I think the bridge pickup is a bit thin or lacking lower end when clean, thats my only real criticism. I usually reserve the bridge setting for crunchy distored sounds.

The POD Pro is basically the same amp modeling technology and effects contained in the POD unit but contained in a rackmount unit with actual knobs so editing presets on the fly is much easier. It has the capability to be controlled by a floor footswitch, though I never forked out the money for it and I don't play out so I don't require that kind of control.

On the rear of the unit it has stereo outputs to go to power amp, footswitch jack, effects loop input and output, and a single guitar input on the front.

Its pretty sharp looking, sitting in a rack all lit up.

Editing the presets is super easy, its as simple as twirling knobs to dial in the desired amp model, gain, eq, and effects. Fine tuning the paremeters on some of the effects would probably require the foot controller but the stock settings aren't bad and satisfied me. I actually did read the manual which is unusual for me, it was very informative and saved me some time tinkering with it.

I played a couple of humbucker equipped Les Paul style guitars through it, while running it into a samson 120 watt power amp, then into a crate 2x12 combo amp I turned into a speaker cab.

The amp models are the typical Line 6 stuff, sometimes you are suprised at how close they get capturing the "essence" of a particular tube amps sound like the Dual and Triple Rectifier models, but since modeling technology is not quite capable of emulating the dynamics and behaviour of tube amps- some models don't stand up to the amps they seek to imitate at all. I LIKED the sound of the "blackface" model but it doesn't actually sound like a Fender.
If you are into heavy riffing, you will LOVE the "Insane" model. Think of a Boss metal zone morphed with a typical Marshall hi gain sound, and there you go.

The effects are quite good, not as good as the Flextone III I had owned previous but the POD Pro was of an older generation so it shows Line 6 is contantly improving their products. Playing in true stereo makes a real difference here though, the effects don't come alive nearly as much otherwise.

I've been using this pickup for a few weeks now. I installed it into a Switch Wild One guitar, which is a solid body guitar made out of "Vibracell" material (plastic) with a single humbucking pickup in the bridge. I had planned on changing the pickup before I even got the guitar because I'm a pretty big fan of Seymour Duncan pickups, but the Switch pickup sounded pretty good, better than I was expecting, so I waited a while to change it out which turned out to be a good thing, as I had gotten used to the sound of the old pickup.

The first thing I noticed is that the output of this pickup is much higher. That is to be expected, as the Invader is designed to be a high output passive pickup. Despite the higher output, it sounds as if the noise that this pickup makes is actually lower. Perhaps the noise is masked somewhat by the higher output, but I've listened closely to the pickup without playing it, and I can't hear anything.

I wired the pickup to the coil tap switch just like the old one, and what I've noticed is that, when playing the guitar clean, the output drop from humbucker to single-coil is more than it was with the old pickup. This makes sense to me though; if there are two coils and both have hotter outputs, then obviously dropping one out will make a bigger difference because you're losing more output. Anyway, I say this is noticeable when playing clean because when you throw a couple effects into the mix, it becomes a moot point.

One of the great things about this pickup is that it seems to be more flexible because of the higher output. Some of my effects change their character quite a bit when I use the volume knob on the guitar, and when I tried the new pickup, it immediately threw the pedals into overdrive, almost a bit too much. The range of the volume knob has basically been extended.

Some hot humbuckers seem to get a bit dirty at full volume, even when played clean, but this pickup sounds clean to me. Cleaner than the Hot Rails for Strat that I have in my other guitar (which isn't very dirty at all). Even when playing hard, it's just not dirty, just nice and loud. Traits like this are what always impressed me and made me come back to Duncan pickups again and again.

This pickup at full volume thrashes the Little Big Muff and tears my Synth Mangler a new one. Sometimes I have to dial it down a bit for the Synth Mangler, but it's always been useful to adjust the volume knob with the Mangler; now it is even more so. And yet the pickup is good for just about anything. It's got a great, full clean sound.

I've heard some people say that once you put an Invader into your guitar, you won't want to play another guitar without one. I can see why they say that. It's a fantastic pickup. For me personally though, I'm not going to be replacing every pickup in every guitar with an Invader, because that's just not my style. If I didn't like trying new pickups, this would be a good one to stick with though. I'm pretty sure I like it a little more than the Hot Rails, which I already loved. Duncan is simply the brand I go to when I look for pickups, and this is another example why.

The pickup was a bit of a surprise to me, for the reason that I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. You can read about the pickup and Duncan's recommendations for applications of it on their website, but from reading that, I was almost expecting this hot humbucker to be dirty. I'd say it's as clean as a humbucker gets, which is a great thing. It's simply LOUD. I think the only hotter pickup you could get from Duncan would be an active.

I can't say enough about how much I like this pickup. It's just great. It almost seems a shame that Seymour Duncan recommends it for heavier styles of music, because I feel it could be suitable for just about anything with a simple tweak of the volume knob.

Oh, I almost forgot: the single-coil sound is great! It sounds pretty much exactly like a nice Strat on the bridge, very bright and yet full. Crystal clear sound. The old pickup was good but didn't sound too great as a single-coil. But this pickup sounds fantastic!

I can't ask for anything more from such a reasonable priced pickup. No real flaws at all.

The Flextone III Plus is a modeling amplifier delivering 75 watts of power. It has a single input, and as a bonus it sports stereo outputs to drive a larger (2x12 or 4x12) cabinet of your choice for extra volume and fullness.
Controls are typical of combo amps, gain, volume, 3 band EQ, "amp model" selector knob, and controls for the effects

Dialing in your desired tone on the Flextone is not that different than with any other combo amp, with the exception of having to select your amp "model" with a dedicated knob. Settings are easily changed on the fly by turning knobs, and you can store 4 settings with the use of push buttons, which comes in handy.

Its fun to play around with and is fairly user friendly, I never used the manual.

I played through this amp with a couple of Les Paul style guitars with humbuckers, which is what suits my indie rock to metal sound. I dig some of the clean sounds you can dial in on this amp, though some start to sound so similar they seem kind of redundant. Theres a good range of high gain amps modeled; the boogie, bogner, and soldano models rocked pretty hard. I was a bit worried about the speaker "whoomph" that I got when doing metal style palm-muting riffs, as the stock speaker just doesn't handle the low end while staying crisp. Thats something for heavy rockers to consider.

Another beef I have, although I can't really blame them- is that since this amp cannot AT ALL reproduce the sound of a tube amp cranked up into natural compression and gently breaking up. That magical area between "clean" and "distorted" where its just dirty enough to get some sustain but still has clarity and dynamics.... well this amp isn't capable of that. Who knows if modeling technology will ever replicate the beauty of power tubes breaking up.

The effects are pretty gorgeous sounding, considering its all just a computer chip and not analog circuitry. You will be impressed by the thick delays and the classic swoosh of the flanger. Nothing cheesy here.

Boss GT-8...wow. Loads of effects.Loads of amp models.Loads of DISTORTION pedal models! Sheesh...what will they think of next? Anyway this guy has MIDI,USB,PCP... lol. All digital..I think..unless there is something analog on the compression and e.q.'s. Definitely ZERO tubes in this baby. Everything seems to be a model of something. Foot pedal...definitely not rack mountable, (but they do have the GT8 studio version... twice the price... not sure the benefits.. besides sticking it in a rack and then having to buy ANOTHER footcontroller.. grrrrr)

Um...Very simple as far as programming, saving presets, etc. Pretty intuitive, but you will need to consult the manual.... which compared to the manual for the Digitech GSP2101 (yeah, yeah...I have a review out for that) is very, very simple. It is pretty straightforward, but like anything else, when you want to really seriously build your own presets from the ground up..you will have to use the manual..(sorry kids!)
Lots of knobs, dials and buttons... so for sound shaping, amp models,distortion models.. easy to get started. The presets are actually not terrible either... so... you can hit the ground running.

Mmmm.. varies. I am not so crazy about the cab models...I prefer running this into a tube poweramp, then into closed back cabs as a preamp. Quiet. Exciting high gain models.. clean models are good, certainly usable... bordering on very, very good. I have heard a lot of complaints about digital artifacts and fuzziness from this unit. I think with a good tube power amp, it adds an organic flavor, and couple this with some good warm speakers you can get a bit more tube life and more active harmonics. The effects on this unit are not great...I guess I would compare them all to floor pedal type effects. No TC or Eventide here. They are missing the parameter controls and quality that you would expect from any world class effects unit, but it is certainly usable for live work as an all-in-one solution... very convenient and easy to tweak according to the venue. The highlight models would be the 5150 and Soldano models...not spot-on, but lots of fun. Pinched harmonic madness with either of those. Wah models are surprisingly decent..fair amount of variation and gets very close to Crybaby's etc. Using Les Pauls,Strats,Tele's, other metal-ly type guitars. Run it into a Carvin T100 power amp into a pair of Eminence Cannabis Rex equipped closed back cabs. Sometimes run a Keeley TS-9 and Vox Clyde reissue on the front end for variation.