i had been using line6 pods for 6-7 years when bass podxt first came out.  and then switched to x3 not necessary an upgrade, just way more versatile that i can use it for guitar and microphone together.

finally start putting a pedalboard together to carry my mostly used stomp boxes.  it's fun and let me go through some of my opinions about these gears.

 pod x3 live .  should be one of my best investment.  all around multi effect processor for guitar, bass, and microphone(vocal) 2 at a time.

 you can basically just bring this unit and your instrument to the gig.  setup is super fast, and the result is very good.

 the amp models sounds pretty close to the real thing for the few ones i heard personally, and many of them are useful.  and many of the effects are usable.  

line 6 is real good at modeling amps and boss is better on effects units.  the advantage of this unit is it runs dual amp, or processing 2 inputs at a time.  which not too many others do.  beside that, i think most of the effect boards are just as good as each others.  leaning to use them is the most important.

• korg pitchblack
• ebs multicomp
• boss obp-3 bass overdrive
• aphex bass exciter
• carl martin compressor/limiter
• radial bassbone 

ok ...  everything here starts from the carl martin compressor/limiter.   

it took me quiet a while to realize that i'm no longer satisfied with the built-in compressor on the pod as it sounds harsh in someway not very musical.  and not really sensitive too then i started to think about getting a compressor since that.

found the carl martin one from craigslist and you can just hear the difference right away.  very transparent sound and the 4 knobs can dial in lots of sound.  it makes the bass sound bigger, while still musical. the inventory grows ever since, not yet very crazy.  which is good.

this is a very basic setup for 2 basses, one is from tuner, compressor, over driver, enhancer, into the input selector / di. box (the radio bassbone), and the other input just basically the compressor straight into another input of the bassbone.    i've switched to 5 string bass now and no longer really need 2 4strings for different tunning.  most of the time i only use 1 chain on this board and use the 2nd channel with a different eq setting.  this gives me lots of tones on the feet.  

again, which tool to use is never the matter, just get the best ones that you can afford and spend lots of time on each of them to utilize each one of them.  i'm no expert on this and still exploring different sounds from these toys i have.  

 thanks for jacky who made me these patch cables.