cont. from above:


Eleven Rack:

After an unfortunate interaction/exchange over the phone with a salesman in the pro audio dept. at Guitar Center Fountain Valley, CA (Moe I think his name was), Terry (the manager) and another much more professional salesman in pro audio got me setup in the pro audio depts studio/mix room where the 11R lives. Surprisingly to me anyway, these things seem to be scarce in SoCal--this is the first one I've seen in person and I think the fact that these are placed in pro audio instead of guitars is a determinant in this.

Sound: Well, after thinking I may be able to make due with the POD HD 400 or 500 for my intended uses and mainly for convenience sake, virtually as soon as I plugged into the 11R I had something that was in short supply with the POD HD--Tone.

I am not comparing this to an Axe Fx--I've never played one. The Eleven Rack feels and sounds real. A couple times I took out one of my earphones to make sure I wasn't coming out of their studio monitors they had in the room. I had that "feel" even with just my earphones. The response of the amps were dead on. Volume and tone changes on the guitar were accurate through the 11R. Keep in mind I had an hour with it though--I'm sure it has some flaws but they weren't glaring or even really noticeable in my time with it tonight.

Most all of my experience with modeling gear has been with line 6 products. I have played with older versions of a couple other plugins (guitar rig, amplitube) but I know line 6 products (and their limitations) pretty well.

These limitations were not present with the 11R. It took seconds to dial in good sounds on each amp and the tones stood on their own no effects needed.

Something that really stood out to me was the different cabs and mics--none of them sounded bad, just different and this is accurate in my experience micing up guitar cabs: some combinations sound better than others but none of them sound BAD and you can usually find at least a decent tone with almost any mic, it just needs to be placed right. This is something I was fighting with on the HD--not all of the cabs and mics sounded good on each amp. Post EQ can fix some of this but you shouldn't be relying on a post EQ to fix what shouldn't need to be fixed in the first place.

The effects that I spent time with sounded great. The univibe sounded very nice. I have a Deja Vibe to compare to and the univibe model in the 11R holds up. I tried the univibe model on the POD and it does not. The tube screamer and black ops od models sound great. The tube screamer in front of the deluxe or bassman model do just what you expect and want them to do. The delay and reverb models sound very nice as well but I need more time with them to give an accurate assessment.

Am I glowing over the 11R? Probably a little bit since I just played it for the first time tonight. For live use with in-ears, I was planning on still using an amp for feel but I actually may be able to get away without one.

I'm sure all or most of this is old news for Eleven Rack owners here on the forum but it's news to me.

I suppose it is ultimately unrealistic to expect a $400 or $500 product to compete with a $900 product but there's a lot of mystique and hype going around about these new PODs so I wanted to find out for myself since I will be in the market for an amp modeler/simulator hopefully very soon.

The Eleven Rack seems to me to have crossed over that boundary from tech/gadget to musical instrument and should hold its value through its lifespan as real tone never becomes obsolete...



Cheers!!