The one thing you don't get is a pitch shifter, for creating a slightly detuned sound - which is a pity - and a tube-mic model would have been nice too. A noise gate is always available, so its a good idea to employ this when creating heavy overdrive sounds. Using a simple carousel-style gear browser, choose from an arsenal of vintage and modern amps, cabs, studio-standard effects, classic stompboxes and colorful preamps. There's also no shortage of fuzz and distortion devices, each of which has its own character. POD Farm® 2.5 is a premium tone plug-in that brings world-renowned POD® tone to your favorite DAW. Of the effects, I particularly like the tape delay, rotary speaker and spring reverb, but the designers have really gone to town on filter pedals, and even some pseudo synth effects. There are some nice, jangly clean amps in there too - and they don't sound clinical or sterile: they ring nicely and respond well to dropping a compressor in front of them.

Owners of some Line 6 hardware are entitled to a free download too.

If Uber Filth is your thing, there are plenty of more aggressive combinations to get you shredding, and no shortage of inspiration amongst the presets. Pod Farm is one of the least costly ampmodelling programs around: the Platinum version costs 200 300 but the standard version is only 77 100 and online I found some Line 6 hardware that was cheaper than that and gave you a free download. Despite the huge range of amp types in the Platinum version, most players will quickly gravitate to the few that suit them best: I invariably end up looking for the best blues sounds that are just slightly dirty, because these tend to be the most difficult sounds to get right - but Pod Farm tackles them really well. Farm it may be, but there's nothing agricultural about the sound.

Line 6 pod farm