Experiences using the VPDI live vs at home

[ej504]

How is it going for those of you trying out the VPDI live? Are the presets you are making at home are working out, or do they need a lot of tweaking at the venue?

Are you sending DI out to FOH from the VPDI, or DI out of your acoustic amp?

This is such a powerful tool, and having a decent amount of studio engineering experience myself, I don't have a problem dialing in a good direct sound at home. Yet when I get to the gig, I find new frequencies might be feeding back, and I start notching those out, and by the end of it sometimes I've taken so much out that the guitar is sounding a bit thin. At that point it would probably be better to start from scratch, eq-wise, but I haven't had proper time to do that in sort of throw-and-go situations.

There's obviously a bit of a learning curve here, and I'm just curious how others experiences are going, or if anything has helped you create presets that hold up well in different rooms.

(I think I may need to eq my presets LESS at home in the studio and leave more of it to be done in the actual rooms I'm playing.)

[Caleb_Elling]

The presets and EQ that I initially set up on my smaller speakers definitely had to be tweaked for larger sound systems. Although, even now that I have my sound pretty dialed in, I notice little things that I want to EQ out. I've done it enough times to where I just ignore it now. If I EQ it too much, I end up losing the character of my guitar in an attempt to get the most balanced sound. Imperfections are part of the character of the instrument to some extent.

I definitely EQ differently on headphones or in recording situations. That's to be expected though.

[Jim Nasium]

When I set mine up, I did it at home through a 12" double Celestion speaker cabinet powered by an EHX 44 Magnum pedal amp. I am playing a Taylor 360 mahogany top dreadnaught 12 string with the Expression System 2 pickup.

I take mine to open mic nights and plug the guitar into the VPDI;I power it with an individual 1Spot, and run no other effects. The output is always using whatever guitar cable on stage is running to a mixer. The thing sounds amazing, not just to me, but to the audience, and they are not shy about giving me constant positive praise on my sound. Could it be better if I had time to adjust it for each and every environment? I am sure it would, but as guitarists, I think we are our own worst critics. But I am telling you, I get compared against every other guitar that goes on stage, and my sound always shines above. That is what other people are telling me, weekly, if not a couple of times per week.

To me I am simply trying to hear what my guitar sounds like unplugged, only amplified. But to recap my response to your question, I run through no amp, and do not even run a balanced output, just a guitar cable to the mixer. Hope that helps some. I have never had any feedback issues.