clay-man

Sounds great! I don't know why people complain about the new acoustics, I think they sound amazing, especially on your song. Sounds like a real mic'd acoustic! The Les Paul tone is great as well, very nice mid-range tone!

Nice work. I remember seeing your Telecaster video before.

Nice demo. I originally didn't care much about the hollow guitars when I got the Variax, but I'm loving the 175 a lot now. The tonality is superb.

Have you listened to videos of the Variax and liked it? How different does yours sound? Yours might have a problem if it's that bad. though there are some people that just don't like how the modeling sounds. I don't think you're one of those people. Even if you were, You'd maybe at least think that it's decent if you don't think it's spot on. Try boosting the levels in workbench. Maybe your global string volume is very low.

I could hear the zipping you guys were talking about but it's really quiet, almost not even a problem. It happens when you roll the knob fast. What firmware are you guys using?

Is the modeling the same despite the different material/body shape and stuff? Not even a slight difference?

I only notice the "zipper" noise when I'm plugged into workbench. This is because it's communicating in realtime with workbench. I'm not sure if it does the same with a POD device. I hope not.

We already have neutral body, so why not have a neutral pickup, or piezo pickup mode that also bypasses the pickup modeling? While I think the acoustic models sound way better than a raw piezo sound on most piezo guitars for acoustic sound, I think it's still applicable and can be used if someone wants that sound out of their guitar.

That's not what I mean at all. It's fine to tune it up perfectly, but I'm talking about someone who never touches the tuning pegs after they string their guitar. It's lazy because it'll sound off if it's way out of tune physically.

There's a difference between effects and processing to change the sound of your strings, and then there's letting your strings flop around because they're poorly tuned, and could eventually be severely out of tune. That's my argument. Perhaps to tune perfectly is fine, but to just throw the strings on and hit the "tune for me" button is getting lazy. It's just something I think you should always do, have your stuff actually tuned up decently.

I still think bypassing modeling via firmware > switch that physically bypasses the variax processing hardware. Piezo alt tunings, you guys!

I believe autotune's system detects when you're doing bends, so it turns off the autotune feature when you do. I do think the perfect intonation thing is amazing, but something about digitally tuning an out of tune guitar just feels really lazy to me.

I always thought this might be a little nice to do. You have the piezos, so why not be able to use them normally? Would add more functionality to the guitar. All they need to do is bypass modeling. In fact, it would be awesome if you could use the raw piezo sound with alt tunings. The closest you can get right now is probably the acoustic sounds, but obviously it's still pretty different than the raw piezo signal.

Like I said, they mostly need to get rid of warbling all together. It hurts tne guitar player not being able to do techniques because the pitch shifter can't read it. I think it would fix 12 strings as well.

pitch shifting is always done by some sort of resampling and resetting the time at a set frequency, and that set frequency is what causes latency, honestly. Through that, you need to do some code to keep formants/timbre from shifting with the pitch so that it sounds natural, as well as smoothing out the time resets without it sounding weird. warbling will be caused by the algorithms not knowing how to treat the input because it doesn't know the information it's reading.

Wouldn't that be a fun part of having a Variax though? "Someone has some kind of wizard guitar!"

I know, but I switched my TRS cable with another and I still heard the noise. If I unplug the AC adapter from the XPS, the static noise stops. It seems like the power connection is being wonky somewhere in the mix, if it's just fine on battery mode. Luckily nothing happens other than random static noise for a minute to a few minutes. It's still very concerning though.

I think they should maybe rewrite their pitch shifter function a bit. I'm not familiar with Variax HD, but if it's still doing warble with hammer-ons and pull-offs, then I think they need to fix that. That's something I will argue that Variax does need improvement on. I know latency is an issue, but they need to look into it a bit more and try to find fixes for that stuff. The alt tuning on a Variax requires you to stay in tune physically, while the autotune function doesn't care if you're in tune at all and just needs the press of a button. It IS cool, but it's also lazy, and I don't think it's a healthy habit either. Your tension will be off if you rely on that all the time. Maybe it's just me, but that's the breaking point where the whole traditionalist technophobia starts coming in. I love technology, but that's just too lazy. Even the Gibson Robot tuners would be better than that, because it's actually tuning it back physically.

That's not the problem. The noise isn't hum or buzz or anything, it's loud static noise like as if the cable was loose. It sounds like the cable is loosely being jangled in the jack. It happens randomly at least once a day. It'll stop after a few minutes (usually).

I remember it saying 12, even on the old Variax. I don't know. 6-8 is not too bad. I just really prefer to have no interruptions, but at this point, that's what the noise is, an interruption. I can't really find a way to diagnose if it's my XPS because it seems to only happen when it's sending power to the Variax. I unplug the adapter to the XPS and my Variax goes in battery mode, but I hear no noise even when it's still plugged in the XPS. I hope it's not the "variax coffin" problem.

If you're a Variax user, workbench is a must. Opens new doors as a guitarist.

You need to use capo mode and set all your tunings through that. If you don't know how to use capo mode, then you need to learn it. After you learn it, simply replace all the tunings with the tunings you want via that mode. I'm not sure if workbench has a way to change your Alt tuning knob's banks yet, but workbench will work on model-based tunings, which is where you let the model/patch tell the Variax what tuning you want. On a JTV, you have to switch the alt tuning knob to "Model", then your tuning will be changed to that patch's tuning.

What do you mean? If you want an Autotune guitar, then you're probably gonna need to buy an autotune guitar. It's not like the Variax is a computer you can install software that you like on it. It's a product, and they'll obviously put the software/firmware that goes with the guitar, on the guitar. While Autotune's intonation and instant retune thing is kind of cool, I think it makes for a lazy guitarist. There's something that makes me want to have a guitar on a proper tuning than let a computer digitally keep it in the correct tuning. Alt tunings are fine, but constantly pressing a button to digitally retune your guitar is just lazy. That's just me. I also think the Variax has the best modeling out on the market.

It's 12 hours on 6 double A's right? Which type should I use? The reason why I'm frustrated about this is because I got the bundle with the power on ebay for a reason. I use my Variax almost every single day, and I like to leave it plugged in for quiet a while, because I practice throughout the day. It's one of the reasons I got a power supply, but I don't know. If I really need a power supply, I suppose I could try to find a 9 volt power to 9 volt adapter-to-battery thing. I'd need to look into it. I don't know. Just really annoying to face more problems after you think you fixed them. The problem is rather infrequent, so I could use a power supply to lay down tracks for music, and if I ever do live, I can use rechargeable so the staticy noise doesn't interrupt performance.

Noise continued on my other cable. Either it's the power supply or the guitar. I'll have to deal with this for now. The only solution I can think of right now is possibly wasting money on a new XPS to find out it's my guitar, or using rechargeable batteries.