I’m not sure if it’s 100% what you’re looking for, but I remember hearing that the designer of the Korg MS-20 synth gave it an external signal in specifically so he could test it out with his guitar. If you wanna try it out they make a mini version of that synth currently, though you’d need a 1/4 to 1/8 adapter to plug your guitar in.

Tbh even when there aren’t such blatant errors in their reviews Linus has felt out of touch for years. Sometime in 2018 or 2019 (I don’t remember exactly when) Linus did a review of some $150 Alcatel phone and he kept complaining about how it had a micro USB charging port instead of type C, arguing how physical type C ports only cost “pennies” more than micro ports and how there was “nO eXcUsE” to still use micro USB. Mind you, type C had only started appearing on flagships around late 2016-17, so it hadn’t yet started to trickle down into the mid-range and budget segments of the market at that point. That made it all the more jarring to hear Linus ranting about a budget device still using micro USB only a couple of years after type C had even begun to see market adoption.

As someone who’s stuck to the low-mid end of the market (~$150-250) basically since getting my first smartphone, it was immediately obvious watching that video that Linus doesn’t know what the hell he was talking about when it came to tech outside of the high end, and expects every big new feature or standard to be crammed into budget devices regardless of the effects it might have on the final cost of said devices. Sure, type C ports only cost “pennies” more than micro-B ports at that time. But those extra pennies add up on devices that might only cost a handful of dollars to manufacture, plus the extra engineering and design work that has to be put in to implement it, and the added cost of type C cables over micro-B that would have to be included in the box.

After giving it some thought after watching that video, I started to gradually trust Linus less and less regarding anything budget of mid-range over the last 5-ish years before I unsubbed entirely last night. It sucks seeing a creator you respected so much at first go down this path, but I guess nothing can last forever.

I’ve been wearing Reebok Walk Ultra 7’s for ~8 months and I haven’t had any major complaints so far. The outsoles are wearing down as I expected them to, but they’re wearing down slower than I expected, tbh, especially for how soft they are and how often I use them. And as someone with quite big feet, seeing a big, established footwear brand like Reebok make a good shoe I can actually wear (and not look completely like an off-brand New Balance) is nice.

I’ve also owned a pair of Airwalks with gum soles that held up quite well for walking around. In my experience, athletic and skate shoes with harder outsoles tend to last MUCH longer than a typical sneaker, and that pair of AWs had harder outsoles than any other shoe I’ve owned. That pair was made before the brand went out of business a few years back though so YMMV on their current lineup, though it seems they still have a handful of gum sole shoes available.

My main guitar is an Epiphone SG with GFS Pro Series pickups, and my amp is a Line 6 Catalyst with a POD Go for additional effects. For the most part I play alternative rock, running the Clean channel totally clean with a Vox-esque tone for light dirt and full-on high gain for heavier stuff. Generally I run my amp channels treble-heavy, though I still like to keep some lows and mids in the signal for balance, and through the POD I run the studio compressor, octave fuzz, chorus and digital delay models with the 4 cable method.

I’m not sure if this will be of help since I don’t listen to/write 80s-style hard rock/metal tunes. But generally speaking, I’ll learn a couple songs from my favorite bands in the genre(s) I want to write a song in, and then experiment with different chords and keys until I get something original that I’m happy with. I’ve picked up on a handful of techniques that I’ve since started to employ more in my own songwriting from using this method the last few years, and it’s really satisfying once your noodling starts to click and you belt out a more-or-less complete song out of nowhere.

YMMV of course, and you’ll probably still wanna work on your material with other instruments and musicians to really round it out, but that’s what’s worked for me.

The API change fiasco and the fallout from it was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, but if I’m being completely honest all the other missteps and fuck-ups from the company were pushing me closer and closer to finding an alternative for years. I stayed for as long as I did mainly because it was a good place to get news and interact with various niche communities, but really Lemmy does all of that just as well, for the most part.

That said though, I don’t think I would’ve been as ready to leave Reddit were it not for Elon buying Twitter and absolutely fucking that up too. That was the main thing that got me to look into alternative social media sites in the first place, though I haven’t been as fruitful with finding a good Twitter replacement yet.

I probably should have clarified in the original post, I’m not trying to run amp models on top of my amp’s tones. Rather, I’m trying to put together presets using the Pod’s built-in amp models to use through either my amp’s effects return (effectively making it a power amp) or my headphones.

With the way 4CM works on the Pod Go, the preamp section of your real amp is routed through the Pod’s effects loop, if that makes any sense. It goes like this:

• Guitar -> Pod guitar input
• Pod FX Send -> Front of amp
• Amp FX Send -> Pod FX return
• Pod main out -> amp FX return

The presets I’m trying to make with the built-in amp models from the Pod have the effects loop disabled. Instead it goes from Guitar -> Pod input -> Main output -> Amp FX return, so I’m certain it’s not a case of multiple amp tones stacked on top of one another that’s causing my troubles.

I wouldn’t say I’m more active in terms of posting and commenting, though I wasn’t too active on Reddit the last few years to begin with. Though the fact I haven’t logged into my Reddit account of 10 years since checking out Lemmy speaks to how at-home I feel here, even after basically giving up one of the sites I used the most in the past decade or so.

I’ve found that most modeling units with decently high-res screens have really good tuners built into them that would be perfect for things like setting intonation. My Pod Go specifically shows me exactly how in tune my strings are and the tuner reacts in real time to any changes in pitch I make. If you already have a pedalboard you like though, it wouldn’t really be worth it.