My tone problem & fix

I recently bought a Variax 500 and a PodXT Live at the same time. While these sound amazing together on headphones and by yourself through an amp, they sound TERRIBLE through a PA. Every clean tone is nice, but empty-sounding. By that I mean theres no warmth, or kick.

Every distortion is empty, but moreso, because u have an overabundance of dirty and not nearly enough low end, and this CANNOT be fixed with an equilizer.

Instead of getting a different unit, or anything drastic, I did some research and decided on getting a tube preamp to add that warmth and boost in volume. I tried the Presonus TubePre for one channel, and i loved it so much, i got its big brother, the Bluetube DP. Now the PodXT runs in stereo, like it should live/recording, and the acoustic sounds are even more believable, where before they sounded fake to a degree.

Of course nothing sounds exactly like the original, but the Pod has definately opened up my eyes to what eventually i will end up using full-time, without having to search for it and buy things continually.

In my opinion, the Pod is a great unit, but one meant for finding your sound rather than using it for your sound...its also awesome for recording =)

Glad you found a solution to your lacking of tone. I have the PODxt as well, but really only use if for recording. I've heard of a lot of people doing the same thing you've done, but haven't had a chance to try it out for myself yet. At the moment, I'm running a Peavey Rockmaster tube preamp into the XT and then out to my soundcard. I'm only using the XT for cab and mic sims, and fine tuning with the post eq. This setup sound great, and is very versatile. It's amazing at all the different tones you can achieve with the Rockmaster.

BTW, Welcome to GT!