See below after ========

jdenkevitz wrote:

 

Renken,

 

First off THANK you for hopping on and giving us some info. I well appreciate the necessity for you not to say to much about a product in development (ive worked in a legal corporate environment and know what limitations exist). I currently own 3 variaxs, a 300, 600, and 700 acoustic, as well as  Pod x3 live.

========== Thank you for you kind words and understanding.

 

Secondly, although Im sure you guys have done this already, I highly recommend you take a deep look at rolands vg99. There are many features which I would love to have in the Variax 2. The main feature being an incredibly robust alternate tuning engine. The 99 has its own processor dedicated to just alternate tuning, and it makes for fantastic sounds to have a 12 string in DADGAD tuning at the press of a button. If there would be a way to store custom tunings and apply them to a knob, and then ANY guitar model can be switched on the fly to any desired tuning, this would be great. I believe you guys have an edge over Rolands guitar modelling in terms of sound quality, ESPECIALLY in regards to your acoustic guitar modelling. The 99 benefits from more recent dsp horsepower, and I really hope you guys leapfrog forward and enable 12 string tunings which additionally permit per string pitch shifting. This is something the vg99 allows and the original variax does not.

====== I believe you will be pleasantly surprised. This has been at the top of my list. 

 

Thirdly, I understand theres a technophobic mentality among many guitarist, who are purists in many ways and may shun modelling. Fenders VG strat attempted to simplify features taken from Rolands vg99 and they cut corners and made it too limited. I hope you dont decrease the level of customization (workbench, handshaking with other line6 equipement) in a desire to appease these purists. I realize this may be a stretch, but id love to see a variax with a built in 13 pin output. Or even make this available as an option or only on a few models. I think a large user base of current variax afficionados are pretty cutting edge in terms of their mentality towards gear, and many use midi converters. Including a 13 pin output would make a new variax more appealing to these guitarists. I would happily pay more money to have this feature - up to 200 bucks more. FWIW all my variaxs have gk pickups on them.

======= As far a 13 pin, that is a tough one. It is such a small market. We have thought about break out boxes that use the VDI and maybe 13 pin and many other ideas. But with this next generation. We want to give your hardcore Variax guys a good reason to want another, give you some of the things you have asked for over the years. But I have a strong feeling that we left a bunch of guitar players in the dust right at the guitar. Line 6 is so grateful for the success that Variax has had so far but we want to surge forward while turning a corner and scooping up the masses on the way. You bring up the VG here, and from what I understand, they are being blown out. I am not a fan of how the modeling sounded and many of my buddies who checked it out weren't either. I really believe that modeling is as important to the future of guitars as it is on effects and amps now and we started it, and I want to finish it and get the momentum going again. It is very exciting where we are headed and as soon as we can talk about it, you will hear. Stay tuned.

 

Fourthly, I realize I may be in the minority, but regular magnetic pickups are not important to me. Im extremely pleased with the modelled variax ones.

====== No prob. You won't be bummed if there are pickups right? For me they will do a few things. Make the guitar more aesthetically pleasing, give you peace of mind if something goes weird with the electronics, you can finish the gig, give you another tonal palette to use, give the guitar better longevity as far as being a "real" guitar.

 

Again thank you for your time. Feel free to contact me for any other feedback.

====== Thank you