Line 6 Flextone III Plus Hates Pedals

[Butch Snyder]

I have a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe that consider my main amplifier. But, I also have a Flextone III Plus that is a fantastic amplifier. I have the extension cab too. I use a pedalboard that has a compressor, OD, volume pedal, tuner, chorus, phase shifter, delay, and clean boost. The tone of this amp is great, but it doesn't like my ODs or clean boost. I have my signal chain with the clean boost first from the amp. Through my Fender, everything works and sounds great. Through the Flextone III, the clean boost and OD doesn't really do anything. Any suggestions?

 

[Wally]

I am sure the feeling is mutual! (;^)

 

[Les H]

I have a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe that consider my main amplifier. But, I also have a Flextone III Plus that is a fantastic amplifier. I have the extension cab too. I use a pedalboard that has a compressor, OD, volume pedal, tuner, chorus, phase shifter, delay, and clean boost. The tone of this amp is great, but it doesn't like my ODs or clean boost. I have my signal chain with the clean boost first from the amp. Through my Fender, everything works and sounds great. Through the Flextone III, the clean boost and OD doesn't really do anything. Any suggestions?

Are you using the same settings on your OD through the Flextone as you do with the Hot Rod?

If so it's possible the OD pedal is pushing the preamp tube of the Fender into distortion quicker than what the non-tube Flextone can. In short the amount of overdriven gain sounds you get through the Fender may be at 9o'clock on your pedal's gain knob because the tubes are going to add a certain amount of additional distortion being pushed by the pedal but in order to acheive that same level of saturation on the Flextone it may require the gain on the OD pedal to be at 12o'clock or higher. If that makes any sense?

 

[Jakedog]

^^^ This.

The Flextone III is REALLY old modeling tech at this point. In that world, that is a nearly prehistoric piece of gear. They hadn’t worked all the kinks out in getting them to react to outside effects at that point. And in fact, one of their big sales pitches was that you didn’t need any pedals, because everything was built in, just purchase the “Floorboard” to access it all on the fly.

Those amps were not designed to be used with outboard pedals.

It can be done, but they won’t act anything like they do with a conventional amp. A lot of modern modelers are much better at it. It’s twenty years later now and the makers have figured out that even if a guy wants 200 amps at his fingertips, he wants to use his pedals. Back then they were really striving to sell people on an all in one, self contained setup.

 

[robt57]

I can speak from experience, it is the stock speakers.

I experimented with a Flex-II and a ext cab with the last 1961 Marshall G-12-80 I had and it was sooo different. The modeling speakers have near zip voice as designed. That said the amp became a one trick pony with the G12-80. But no more so than mostly any vintage tube amp I have. It was a great tone no doubt. I also used a 210 cab with a P10R/10F150T that was VG also, but the voice of the G12-80 was what I grew up with, very Page/Zep 2, VERY!