clay-man

I think if the guitar makes any tonality that is different than it was intended, it should fall out of the whole "tone is subjective" category and be a legitimate problem. If it doesn't sound like intended or advertised, it's not a subjective tone issue, but a software/hardware problem, and they need to accept that. Try reflashing as said. If you still have issues, try swapping your guitar for another Variax.

You shouldn't file too deep. You'd have to file pretty badly to go into the piezo. I've filed the piezos before on my 600 and it's fine. Piezos are probably the easiest thing to repair on the guitar that works with the Variax side of the guitar. I've done it many times on my 600. I've never done it on my JTV, but I'm sure it's virtually the same process. Just file what you need to file, and nothing else.

I've been playing my SG more lately, so I don't know. I love my JTV, but right now I've been taking a rest from using it as my main guitar, especially after I bought a morpheus pitch shifter pedal.

So you say it's the side of the string hitting the piezo element casing in the side of the groove?

Sounds incredibly close to the magnetics on my 69s. I never did a comparison to 1.9 and the mags, as I like to avoid unnecessary flashing of the firmware, but I doubt that would sound closer. It's mostly a preference thing.

I bought the black 69s because of the maple neck. I would of preferred a sunburst, and possibly an HSS setup, but because all my guitars I have are humbuckers, and the fact that I wanted maple, I got the 69s. Sadly, it's true. Buying a neck isn't going to fix anything even if I had a rosewood. The dramatic beveling on the edges of the frets really make it unnecessarily harder to play both E string without having it slipping off the neck when fretting.

Doesn't the Auto Tune guitar use piezos too? The reason they use piezos is because it has a better frequency response to work with than a magnetic pickup. The whole point of a modeling guitar is to make it sound as accurate as possible to what it's emulating, and if you're cutting out a bunch of frequencies by using a mag pickup, you're not going to get good results.

1.82 uses modeling from 10 years ago on the older Variaxes. The new HD models are brighter. They still have a bit of high roll off than magnetics if you're doing DI, but through an amp, you can't hear it. Give it a try.

Did you check if it still pings when picking that part of the string? pluck that part and if it makes no noise, then the problem is the piezos (or whatever else contributes to this problem) and not the floating strings.

That's why you don't put anything on the string OVER the piezo, but BEHIND it. It kills the sustain really bad, but the problem is the string that is floating BEHIND the piezo/saddle, which can vibrate and add a PING noise to the attack of the strings. The tape mutes those parts of the string.

That's a nice idea, but it might not be thick enough to mute the strings. I donno, should maybe try it someday.

There's something more comforting on playing on a Maple fretboard. If they released a Variax Standard with a Maple fretboard, I might of gotten a Standard over the JTV. It's also a style thing. Any Fender-esque guitar, maple is mandatory.

It's great. I'd rather not risk having a ball end drop into the electronics like people said, so the masking tape helps prevent that, as well as cure the whole pinging noise. The only thing is that it might look weird on your guitar, but if you can get past that, it's great.

JTV no contest. I've actually noticed, the JTV, might have one of, if not the best, pitch shifters for a guitar on the market, and here's why. When you pitch shift, there's 2 things to worry about tone-wise: -Warbling -Flubbiness Warbling is minimal on the JTV, it's not the best, but it's good. Since there are 6 instances for pitch shifting going on for each string, it allows for polyphony and to avoid warble. But the main reason why it's so great, is reason 2, and that's because the JTV actually has formant/timbre/tone preservation going on during the process. Most pitch shifters, when you shift down, the tone of the sound will become more loose and flubby, more deep sounding, and the highs will disappear. When you have timbre/format preservation, it shifts the harmonic content in the signal to make it sound natural without the obvious pitch shifting tonality. Now the problem with this technology, is that it'll limit the range of notes you play. The JTV has it just right, and it actually sounds really really natural. It only gets flubby when you reach towards an octave down. The pitch shifting up isn't the best, but it's better than most other pitch shifters. I just got a morpheus droptune today, which is probably the best hardware pitch shifter for guitar, and the JTV still sounds better.

Annoyingly, my original guitar had a replacement setscrew or 2, and my exchanged Variax had no setscrews and was missing the hex wrench for adjusting intonation. I don't know if this was sweetwater's fault or Line 6's, but it is annoying.

I doubt the DSP is flat out not working, just not processing anything, because the flashing process was borked. Your guitar should be fine and just needs to be reflashed properly like Psarkissian said. Hopefully all is good. Getting any sound is better than getting absolutely no sound, it means it's somewhat working still. I had a firmware update fail on my POD HD over and over again because of a bad USB port I had to fix but it flashed fine no matter what after I fixed it, so hopefully the Variax is the same.

Make sure you use something that'll stay in position and always be touching that part of the strings. I just literally put masking tape around the ends of each string. It solves the problem, and it makes getting out the ball ends that break a lot more easier. It also means you don't mod your guitar since it's the strings.

I've got this too, it's not bad, but it's noticeable.

Well, I didn't have pickups flickering between eachother on my 600, but I did have pos 1 register as pos 2 until I flipped it again, which was annoying. Spraying electrical contact cleaner (NON automotive, for electronics) into the openings and then flipping the switch back and forth to clean out the crap messing with the function for a minute completely fixed the issue for me.

If the problem is because of the string floating behind the saddle, yes. Putting the material over the piezo is going to hurt your tone and sustain if the problem is because of the open string behind the saddle. If it's because of an oversensitive piezo, then putting the material over the piezo might help, yes, but like Charlie and I said, if it's because of the open string, then just put material to dampen the string behind the saddle, and it'll fix your problem.

There's no guarantee that it'll fix it either. I'm not 100% sure what causes it but sometimes it has to do with the piezo. The thing is, it's usually more or less to do with if you have a plunking noise when palm muting, and not just the E string in general sounding off compared to the other strings. Now, most guitars naturally do have a bit of a overtone on the 6th string that the other strings don't have, but the problem is that it's over-exaggerated on these problem Variax guitars. If I switch between mags and spank on my 69s, all the strings except the 6th string sound very identical, and the 6th string has thing clanky overtone. Again, it's natural, but over-exaggerated, and it shows when playing. It's at it's worse when you tremolo pick the E string. Laying the pick flat instead of slanted helps reduce the sound. Either way, it's kind of a "live with it" thing at this point for me. My very first Variax sounded perfect, but I thought there was an issue with the processor (sadly it was just a firmware glitch) My first replacement, I noticed the 6th string sounding awkward, so I asked for another replacement. My final guitar that I have now still has the problem. Some people argue that it's normal because it's hard to point out unless you are actually playing the guitar, but I really do think it's an issue, because like I said, my very first guitar didn't have this problem.

is it the pickup positions or the modeling knob selection? I and other people had success spraying electrical contact cleaner to keep the pickup selector from freaking out or erroring.

You can just use the pitch shifter like arislaf said. If you want the guitar to fine tune by itself, you need to make a model in Variax that has parallel pitch on, +12 off on all, 100% wet, then change the cent amount equally on all strings to the desired pitch.

This is where we find out the standards are actually better than the 69 guitars, haha.

Good luck!