Am i the only one? (confession thread)

...who uses the line out for headphones more than i actually use the speaker on my F-30? close to 90% of the time!

i used to use a line 6 for early morning play (~5-6AM EVERY morning before work) - but i sold it because i was so happy with the F-30 w/ phones.

I admit it's not perfect. maybe it's because i've been doing it for so long - but i've got face-melting sounds dialed in to my $20 Sony headphones...
sure, you need a boost for the high-gain... AND you need to jumper the effects loop for the pseudo-master volume mod... but i'm telling you - it impresses me every day.

whenever i can make some noise - the F-30 takes a backseat to the new-kid-on-the-block electra dyne. but in the wee hours of the early morn - sonic destruction in my Sonys! I've got breathtaking cleans too!

funny thing is - now that i'm so used to this routine - when it's time to rage through a speaker (my 3/4 back 112 cab) - i have a hard time dialing it in the way i want to!
this was never a problem when i was gigging 4 times a month!

LOVE the F-30.

Whenever I hook the line out in the PC I get great results with power amp sims and cab sims BUT if you have to open up the PC in the morning then it is a no-go. I tried using the headphones out but I didn't like it that much for heavy gain. Cleans good, light crunch santana good, heavy metal no!

So the solution was to take the line out or the headphones out and plug it to my portable zoom PS 02 studio. It has cabinet simulations on-board, pretty good actually. Much better than the pod XT for this job to be honest! Combine that with delay, post eq, exciter, modulations and a great stereo wide expander (for both the headphones!) effect and complete bass and drum modes and there you go!!! Plus you can record directly to the zoom what you hear. At 5 6 am!

For some reason, the headphone out still needed treble trimming for my tastes (so I used the bright stack sim on the zoom). For some even odder reason the zoom's cab sims did enhance the f-30's sound in low volumes somewhat when placed in the loop!

I specifically chose the F-50 over the Express because it had a speaker mute/headphone jack, and initially spent more time playing through Sony DJ headphones and a little Behringer Mixer. The speaker sim is very good -- better than my H&K Tubeman and almost as nice as my Behringer Ultra-G.

But you know what? The amp sounds so good through the speaker that I'm compelled to play it more without the phones. I'm mostly playing clean anyway, and so am actually able to get a a very pleasant sound at low volumes after tweaking the tone controls. I have to do that anyway for the headphones, so I don't mind. I just learn more about the amp.

Besides, even with the speaker mute ON, sound leaks from the speaker at high gain on Ch.2. According to Boogie, this is normal operation. That's fine for recording but not ideal for late night practice.