Requesting assistance re: setup

[Dono]

I have been lurking this forum ever since I purchased my Tele. I purchased it back in September after attending the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Geez, it seemed like *everybody* there had one and they sounded so freakin' great! However, it has created an issue. I did a search on this site and only found one post re: my question/issue. Allow me to explain my situation.

After 35 years or so of playing Les Paul's and Strats through a Marshall Super Lead 100, I bit the bullet and purchased the Tele to accomodate some of the country/country rock stuff played in the band I play with now. The Marshall was too loud and cumbersome to carry around anymore (with my back), and not knowing how this band was going to work out, I originally bought a cheap 100w 2x12 Crate (don't ask why, moment of insanity, not thinking clearly). The idea was that at some point I would get into something much better. The Crate is sorta vanilla and doesn't sound terrible, and since I have been using a POD, it actually can produce *fairly*decent sounds. BUT --- I am craving the clean tube tone I have been hearing from,for instance, the HRD's.

The problem is that while the HRD (or whatever) would handle the clean stuff just great, I really would like to use the POD for other effects. BUT, I don't think you can bypass the POD. I've heard that you could "bypass" by using the tube preamp setting, but that seems odd...

I guess I could consider some sort of distortion stomp box to augment the clean tones, and get rid of the POD, but I think I would miss the POD's versatility. Plus I did spend $299.00 on it over a year ago!

Any suggestions? Any opinions? Is using the Tube Preamp setting on the POD something to consider? Should I just count the POD as sunk cost, assign it to studio duty only and move on?

BTW, how is 399.00 for a slightly used Blues Deluxe? Saw one at GC and it sound very nice!

I would sincerely appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance!

[Ben Harmless]

I suppose if you're running the POD into the front of a HRD you could actually build a simple bypass box to take it out of your signal path, but if you're wanting to stay clean and just use the effects, then you'll definantly get a tone shift. I have serious doubts about being able to create a good bypass using the tube preamp model. At least not one that would be transparent enough to use vs. a direct signal, and even if you used the tube preamp model the whole time and just switched the effects in and out, you'll sort of be defeating the purpose of getting the nice, clean HRD anyway.

My advice - keep the POD, it's a great tool for practicing and writing. Then pick a few of the effects you can't live without and build a small pedalboard to run into the Fender. Yeah, it's more wires and cables, but the effects you can get out of pedals are probably going to be more versitile and of higher qulality in the long run.

I think $399 for the Blues Deluxe is pretty decent. I'd like to see $350, but I could live with it. Heck, you could always go all in and trade the POD toward it and some pedals.

This is all just my opinion. As we almost always say around here - your mileage may vary.

Also, don't beat yourself up over the Crate. None of us think any less of you for it if that's what you're worried about. I'm sure there's plenty of folks on the TDPRI who play into Crate amps and are perfectly happy with them. The folks in the amp group are just the ones who tend to never be satisfied with anything for very long.