Line6 M5 Stompbox Reviews

Great choice (especially for lives)

If you are ok with having only one effect at a time, this is a great value for money choice. Probably not for studio work in terms of quality, but for live situations or gigging musicians this can be very efficient.

There are many sounds available and this might replace many pedals on a pedalboard (mostly modulation effects imo) if one rarely uses them or for a beginner who wants to experiment. Any sound can be modified and saved into the presets list. You can easily switch between presets by pressing the two switches for up/down. Also its tuner is pretty decent.

Considering its use, construction and sound options it's a great option for live gigs, especially at this price level.

Multi effect

Unfortunatelly you cant use up to one effect at the same time on your preset list.

I needed a multi Modulation box!

Needed that one pedal that has good sounding modulation, all from flanger, phaser, chorus, tremolo, vibe, rotary ...

Its big but is cheap and has great sound, and if its good enough for session men , its good enough for me too ;D

Totally happy with it! I already have a good delay and reverb and needed extra modulation but hated to spend lots of money on individual pedals. Looked at these multi boxes and many seems to cost a fortune! Line 6 M5 was rather affordable and fter a few review demos on YT I decided to get it.

Totally happy with it! All modulation is usable and some of them sound like 1000 bucks, and I get extra Filters, Delays, Reverbs (dont like the distortion/overdrives).

Patches can be created if one so desires! I think its a great box! For the price unbeatable!

Ah yes, midi in and out, stereo in and out :D whats not to like?!

Everything is perfect for the money

This pedal emulation processor can replace a lot of pedals in pedalboard. Personally I'm using this device for efects only (choruses, was-wah, harmonizer, whammy) not for the gained sound, and it works pretty well!

Works well with Boss FV-500-H expression pedal - personally I'm happy with this combination.

Also, works well as MIDI controlled device.

One thing you should have in your mind - it can emulate only one effect at the time. So, use can use only chorus, or only wah-wah, or only dist, or only Whammy. But not chorus and wah at the same time! To me it's Ok.

lifts my tone 100%

i bought this a cheaper alternative to the H9 i needed a pedal that would cover all the bases for anything i missed and it really works well and as a bonus it has a great leslie sound.. the smart harmony needs work but other than that im very pleased

Solidly built, sounds good

These are still a solid multi-effects choice: while new stuff has a lot of bells & whistles, a lot of the M-series effects sound great (especially in a live context) and the sheer variety of choices this unit offers is staggering - there's a reason you'll still see these on pro pedal boards still. This is a great purchase for someone looking to have access to lots of classic fx for very little money. Like always, the distortions are not particularly good (hence my 4-star rating) but the modulations, delays, and reverbs more than make it a great value.

I was buying this pedal to use with my basses, Fits nice in my pedalboard, play really good. I am pro for 32 years. So thumb up for this pedal.

Line 6 Swiss Army Man

Do not be mistaken, this hasn't got anything to do with the movie. Although you don't get to play with Daniel Radcliffe you do get to mess around with the hundred of effects this incredible pedal has to offer.

Sometimes when musicians hear the word "multieffect" they run away and seek for shelter. They are a good tool if you hold a degree in pedal nobness or you're just an adventurer of new sounds, but in the end they lack that organic and warm feeling only a mother (I mean, a pedal) knows how to give.

The Line6 M5 offers a wild variety of sounds which will keep you entertained for decades. They range from fantastic to horrible. Some are great replicas of other pedals while others simply suck. That kind of goes away when you start changing the parameters of each effect with the dedicated knobs, but still some sounds retain unusable.

The pedal itself is indestructible. When the apocalypse comes, cockroaches & M5s will rule the world. So fear not dear stompers: you can kick the s*** out of this pedal and it will still refuse to die on you. The footswitches are not so practical though. They are ok to turn the effect on/off & tap tempo (you can also hold the right footswitch to activate a surprisingly good tuner) but when you want to activate a preset (yes, you can create many and even name them as you see fit) you need to press them both at the same time. Being one next to another you must use your feet in weird ways or kneel to it to use you're hands. It's not a big deal but it can be frustating if you're aiming for precision and using different sounds in a set. Keep in mind that you cannot use multiple effects at the same time, you have its bigger brothers for that (M9, M13)

Overall buy this pedal. Line6 M5 doesn't pay me to say any of this but if you give it a chance you'll find a very affordable and awesome machine with even more awesome features. Sure you'll sometimes feel retarded when pressing it and it has a bit of a learning curve which can be overwhelming at times (manual comes in handy), but in general you won't feel disappointed and even if you buy single stompboxes you'll want to keep this one on your pedalboard.

All in one. You can only use one effect at the same time and it's quite hard to change presets. The presets are just line6 sounds and they sound "digital". Decent for a price but there are better pedals.

Imposible to mix efect

You can use only one efect...

I love it!

It's an amazing pedal. It's perfect to have for those "I wish I had the '***' pedal" when you're playing something. It's not at all complicated. I've had enough of these complicated multi-effect units. In this one, you just choose an effect and go.

An absolute must have

This seemed like the obvious addition to a small pedalboard after some research.

Pros: For roughly 100 quid, the same price as any other individual pedal, you get anything you could possibly need in a single pedal. The models in this, for the money, are better value than that of a standalone pedal. This has become my main tap tempo delay, modulation, low octave, solo boost/compressor, weird reverb and synth pedal. A must have on anyone's board.

Cons: Not really any. A second one would be nice as you can only have one effect at a time. I'm aware the m9 is basically that but it is also too big and expensive for my needs. Obviously the models are not of posh handwired quality but they definitely stand up to other reasonably priced pedals.

Great for delay/reverb/mod

I bought this on a whim and have used it extensively. I find that most of the delay/reverb/modulation sounds are very usable. The tap tempo is especially useful for delays and I love the fact that you can set the subdivision for the tap so you can get dotted eights for example. Line6 is known for great delays and this pedal has all the sounds from the legendary DL4. The particle reverb is also a very unique sound that you won't get anywhere else.

The construction is solid and the range of sounds is simply amazing. The drive sounds are not the best, but I bought this mostly for the other features so that does not bother me at all. It comes with a power supply which is always a bonus, and it can be set to be true bypass if that's your thing. I prefer to leave it in buffered mode so I can get trails when I turn the pedal off. The tuner mode is not the best, sometimes it has a hard time recognizing notes, but overall this is a great pedal and I am already looking to get the larger version, M9.

Highly recommended

A Swiss knife to pedalboards , you can use only one algorithm at a time but it contains all the effects imaginable, perfect to complete a pedalboard and be used as a wildcard.

The quality of the effects equal to those of the HD family.

It can be controlled via MIDI but Line6 did not provide the midi then thru the M5 can only be put down to a midi chain, or used with a midi hub and other midi devices.

Great pedal

title

A fantastic little pedal. tonnes of effects all in the one very sturdy case. if you're looking to dip your toes into the world of effects this is the unit for you, its a bit of a swiss army knife, chorus, flanger, delay, reverbs, distortion. i wanted a small pedal with load of effects and this is it.

Line6 M5

Really underrated bit of kit, use this with an expression pedal and you've got yourself a whammy or wah basically everything you need but only one at a time.

An excellent swiss army knife for your pedalboard.

I bought this because I'm setting up a pedalboard for the first time after moving from a Pod HD500, and needed something that would provide some of the lesser used effects without having to purchase separate pedals.

It's incredibly well built and having the ability to directly edit the effects with the knobs rather than having to navigate menus.

The only negatives are that the power supply would have been better if it'd had an in-line transformer rather than a wall-wart type, as it doesn't fit underneath my board. Also the handling of presets is a bit fiddly. You have to press both footswitches to at the same time to enter preset mode which I often seem to struggle with, and also there is no PC-based editor, which makes entering preset names a bit laborious.

However, having said all that, overall it's a great utility pedal for a great price - currently less that most Boss pedals!

Line 6 M5 - Fill the last space on your board

I bought my M5 to fill a bunch of spaces in my pedalboard and it fulfills that function perfectly. Instead of buying a Chorus, Phaser, Flanger and Filter pedal, I got one M5 that does the lot.

I have an overdrive / distortion pedals and a couple of delays. My Amp has reverb, so I was really looking for something that could fill several gaps. I wouldn't normally use more than one modulation effect at once, for example, so having all of them on tap in a single pedal is terrific.

That's not to say that I don't use the other effect. The Delays and Reverbs in this pedal are stunning, with a huge variety of models. In particular, I have found myself selecting the ParticleVerb and noodling for 20 minutes - it's great fun.

Desirable models include the Echoplex and Space Echo, the Univibe and MuTron. Using an external expression pedal with the Univibe is especially satisfying.

There are hidden gems too, in the Chandler Tube Driver model and the Bias Tremolo - somehow much more musical than other tremolos.

Not to forget a built in tuner , an up/down preset mode and midi ports for external control. This pedal is HUGE value for money.

Good quality, good sound (except for distortions)

I use this pedal mainly for bass to add some modulation, delay or special fx. For that kind of effects it is really great and cheaper than buying all kind of single pedals ;)

Only thing to mention is, that the distortion effects weren't really usable for me. Don't know why but they always sound unnaturally..

Apart from that the M5 is really useful and has a great build quality. I've played nearly 40 gigs with it and never had any kind of problems.

PS: For Live-Situations: It isn't possible to switch between presets effectively by scrolling up or down, so you have to switch the presets between songs!

If it looks too good to be true...

For the money, it's an amazing one-stomp that does it all. Some sounds are great, but beware that many are not, some quite similar and some do introduce an unacceptable level of noise. I stay clear of those, and find it s versatile addition to my 'board.