Line 6 M13 test report

[Flinto2002]

The guys at L6 were kind enough to let me check out one of these bad boys in person, I've been messing around with it for the last 5 days. I'm still diggin in to all the features and parameters but overall my impressions are very favorable.





First off, the modulations are superb. The vibe is good, the 3 chorus models are awesome (Analog, Dimension and Tri) The Phaser is cool, but it's more green BOSS that MXR so getting your VH fix is a pain.

The delays are what you'd expect, really good, though definitely digital sounding...for me that's cool though. They have all the subdivisions accesable through one of the knobs so you can set the delay up to be tapped or you can enter the time exactly in milisecs. The big suprise for me was the Echoplex model...whoah dude, EJ in a box. It's meant to replicate not only the delay but the effect the unit imparts to your dry tone as well. I've never played a real one, but what I had coming out of my 4x12 last night sounded like EJ's clean tone. Stellar

The compressors are good and sound musical as do most of the overdrives and distortions. This unit excels at the med gain sounds, the high gain stuff was not for me, models felt fake and exxagerated, but the drive tones were good, and cranked up loud into the front of my OD100 sounded killer.

The unit also has an insert loop, assignabel as to location, so you can run it with your favorite head or preamp using the 4 cable method

Forgot to mention ease of use. L6 dropped this off without a manual...didn't need it. It is SUPER intuitive, what you see is what you get, all knob settings are displayed on the LCD want to change something....turn the knob, like the sound? cool, no need to save anything, it's set and forget. Step on another button and the LCD screen changes color to let you know the family of pedal selected (delay, gain, verb etc..) and all current parameters are displayed. This is completely idiot proof.

[TheFlash]

Hows the looper...is it pretty easy to use?

[lxm]

i wants! thanks for the review. should be out in a few days right?

have you tried running multiple delays or multiple anythings. does it sound good? honeymoon or keeper?

[JimH]

So I'm guessing the 4 cable thing means you can put whatever effects you want in the amps loop?

Is there a wah?

[Vettavillenl]

Thanks for your review.

Here's some more info on delay trails, manual, and a short video
for those interested.
http://www.vettaville.nl/page.php?id=110

[Vettavillenl]

Originally Posted by JimH

So I'm guessing the 4 cable thing means you can put whatever effects you want in the amps loop?

Is there a wah?

There's no wah, and the routing of the effects is explained in the manual
http://www.vettaville.nl/page.php?id=110

[JimH]

Thanks - so it is possible. Very interesting.

[codenoise]

could you take a picture of it next to something like the dl-4 or another recognizable pedal to get a better idea of it's size?

also am i right in thinking it is 4 effect units PLUS a looper, or do you have to assign the looper to one of the units to use it.

[LaXu]

Thanks for the short review. I've got one on order, I hope that the 14.8. date estimated on Thomann's website is right.

Am I correct that the "scenes" thing is the same as patches, meaning it changes the effects setup so in one "scene" I could have like a compressor, delay, chorus and reverb and in another one an overdrive, flanger, another delay and univibe?

What about tone sucking? Is it transparent with everything off or do you notice a difference?

I'm hoping this box will work for me. I don't use effects that much and I hate rack multifx with a passion so this seems like an easy to use all-in-one box to me.

[swampthing]

Originally Posted by Vettavillenl

There's no wah, and the routing of the effects is explained in the manual
http://www.vettaville.nl/page.php?id=110

There are 2 auto wahs in the m13 (one sweeps up, the other down). In addition there is a filter effect called "Q Filter" that with an expression pedal can very much be used as a wah. It's just not a model of one and you'll have a bit more control of parameters with this effect.

[swampthing]

Originally Posted by codenoise

could you take a picture of it next to something like the dl-4 or another recognizable pedal to get a better idea of it's size?

also am i right in thinking it is 4 effect units PLUS a looper, or do you have to assign the looper to one of the units to use it.

[LeifK]

sweet! Thanks for the reviews and the pix. I've had mine on pre-order for a while now. Can't Wait!!!

[Flinto2002]

Originally Posted by LaXu

Thanks for the short review. I've got one on order, I hope that the 14.8. date estimated on Thomann's website is right.

Am I correct that the "scenes" thing is the same as patches, meaning it changes the effects setup so in one "scene" I could have like a compressor, delay, chorus and reverb and in another one an overdrive, flanger, another delay and univibe?

What about tone sucking? Is it transparent with everything off or do you notice a difference?

I'm hoping this box will work for me. I don't use effects that much and I hate rack multifx with a passion so this seems like an easy to use all-in-one box to me.

Scenes is very similar to patches, but not exactly. A scene is like a new pedal board so all the pedals can be assigned diff functions. you can have a 'rock' scene, a 'roots' scene, a 'delay & mod' scene....whatever. you get 12 of them.

You can use a scene like a patch in that each scene can be configured to activate with certain pedals on, so you could recall a scene with chorus delay & reverb for clean, and then toggle to a lead scene with distortion and a different delay.

regarding tone suckage: you have 2 options for Bypass. Buffered bypass and true bypass, can be configured in the set up menu. I haven't gone over each with a microscope yet to me the buffered bypass sounds fine, but i'll need to investigate further.

[Flinto2002]

Originally Posted by TheFlash

Hows the looper...is it pretty easy to use?

the looper is retarded easy to use, and you get the looper plus all your effects. You toggle the looper controls by holding down the looper button. Set up and record your loops, then disengage the looper control while leaving the loop playing, then you can select new effects to jam on top of the loop, or record additional loops.

[LaXu]

Originally Posted by Flinto2002

Scenes is very similar to patches, but not exactly. A scene is like a new pedal board so all the pedals can be assigned diff functions. you can have a 'rock' scene, a 'roots' scene, a 'delay & mod' scene....whatever. you get 12 of them.

You can use a scene like a patch in that each scene can be configured to activate with certain pedals on, so you could recall a scene with chorus delay & reverb for clean, and then toggle to a lead scene with distortion and a different delay.

regarding tone suckage: you have 2 options for Bypass. Buffered bypass and true bypass, can be configured in the set up menu. I haven't gone over each with a microscope yet to me the buffered bypass sounds fine, but i'll need to investigate further.

Thanks for the info. I read in the manual that the buffered bypass is required if you want delay trails and stuff like that so it's good to know that it doesn't suck tone.

How do you assign global options like which effects are in the loop and which ones go into the amp input?

Also since it's stereo, do you think it could be used for any kind of A/B/Y switching? Is there a possibility to turn the effects off for just one side of the outputs?