I think these are cool ideas, but not gonna happen with this generation of JTV's. I have a midi guitar pickup -- Think it's a Roland G2K -- and a Roland midi interface. While it is a hex pickup -- 6 independent poles, they are kept separate to the output that goes into the Roland interface. The interface works with each string's signal individually. It then decides the frequency (note value), note on, note off, and note velocity - each are then turned into the appropriate midi control signal by the interface and sent to the tone generator, whether it's a midi module, midi keyboard, or their guitar synth to generate the sound. The pickup itself is never actually heard by your ears....

The Variax is 6 individual piezo pickups that pump the actual sound into the Variax DSP -- or digital signal processor, that shapes the sound into what you hear. By the time it comes out the 1/4" jack or down the VDI digital cable to the POD, it is a combined signal of all 6 piezo's that have been molded into the sounds you hear, but you still hear string scrapes and other non musical noises that guitars make, while the midi data would not know what to do with these things or how to represent them. The Variax pitch shifting is not "the string is playing note X, substitute note Y" type of processing that you'd find in midi, but rather "the string is playing frequency X, multiply the frequency by some fixed quantity to Y" that you'd find in a DSP. Every noise it hears, it shifts up or down, depending on the setting. If you're out of tune in standard tuning, you'll still be out of tune in the shifted output. If you're out of tune in midi, the midi note conversion will hunt before it picks a note value midi control number to send to the tone generator -- right or wrong. It doesn't know any in betwen, unless you set up pitch glide controllers, etc.

Midi - actually hex output on a Variax would be possible if the separate piezo outputs were split off before the the DSP processing, and routed to a 13 pin cable, but was not apparently the design worked into the guitars by Line 6. The output of that jack would need to do the note to midi conversion in some outboard device, as the DSP is not capable of that function. Several folks on these boards have added the Roland hex pickup and used outboard guitar processors. They seem to be happy with their outcomes. Some have just used the surface mounted pickups, some have done some pretty involved installs because they wanted the wires moved internal to the guitar. Do a search here for midi conversions on Variaxes, and you'll see quite a few discussions on their angles on the subject. Inclusion of a midi option on a Variax would be a total redesign of their product -- pretty major redesign.

My 2 cents.

Dave

Seems like a step backward - Autotune just gives you custom tunings, if I"m not mistaken. The new Vax gives custom tuning plus modeling.

Whatever. I love my Parker Fly, but I find myself playing the JTV more often; Its heavier to be sure, but more satisfying in many ways.