Rockin' out with the new Line 6 Spider IV

I recently picked up a new guitar amp called the Spider IV, from Line 6.  I was speaking to Andy about picking a new one up and then perhaps selling my older Line 6 AX2-212.

Today I finally unpacked the amp and set it up in the recording room.

The first thing I noticed after setting it up and plugging in was how awesome this amp sounds.  It's very loud (75W), but crystal clear and the tones are just amazing.  It makes me want to play and keep playing.

The next thing that caught my attention is the amount of options on this unit.

  

The unit comes with over 250 artist and song presets.  Yup, you read it right... feel like jamming out to AC/DC's "Back in Black" - there's a preset for it, tune to it and this amp will digitally model the amp and settings that were used for the guitar track of the song.  Don't worry though - it's not like Line 6 ties the hands of your creativity at all, each of these presets can be edited and saved as user presets. This is going to be really fun to experiment with...

 

Other features that make this amp attractive are CD / MP3 input that will allow you to jam along with your favorite tracks while playing them through the amp, ability to record using a direct out, built in tuner, foot control using one of the available foot boards (which I picked up as well, but I'll post another blog when I've had time to play with it a bit), built in Looper (frickin' love this feature!), and auto FX such as smart pitch shifter, auto-wah and more.

The Looper allows you to turn this amp into a sequencer, which is great for coming up with rhythm and lead parts and seeing how they sound before actually recording them.  It may also make it interesting for being able to do some live show looping.

Below is the older Line 6 amp, which I think I'm going to keep for a while longer, but I have a feeling that the Spider IV will be the amp of choice when practicing.

 

Rock on!