clay-man

11's. The problem might be hardware related. I remember sadly that my guitar fell over once, and I think that might of triggered when it happened to me. Nicely I've found a fix, but it's still a bit irritating knowing my guitar might be a little off. Luckily I've gotten around any problems and my guitar is pretty great. Stupid guitar stand.

This definitely sounds like the problem I had. Like I said, I turned down the global string settings on mine, but I don't know what to tell you. The HD might treat string volume different than the old Variaxes. The string volume on the old ones kind of acted like a preamp of the pickups, so it wasn't much of digitally leveling the volume, but more of how loud the piezos were. It effected the strength of the resonating effect of the sitar by how loud I put the string volumes and all, which kind of proves my point of it acting like a preamp control. Either the HD doesn't do that anymore, or yours is worse than mine. I backed my volume to about 50% on those strings (they were too loud anyways) and it stopped making the noise yours was making. Note that this also happened to me in alt tunings. G string on alt tuned strat, A string on alt tuned LP. All fixed by lowing the string volumes on those strings.

Is a piezo quack really bad sounding, or does it influence the sound of the Variax? I noticed when I start to play hard on the Les Paul model, it sounds a bit unnatural. Is that the pickup's fault? When I play hard it starts to sound more thin and bright and looses the warmness. My SG doesn't do that when I play hard on it. Would getting the ghost system fix this, or do I just need to not play that hard?

I've had an issue with my Variax where I'd get gross distortion on certain models on alternate tunings. It only happened when I played hard on those strings. I fixed it by lowing the global string volume down on the strings that were doing it. I'd try to get yet another replacement because yours seems defective. I know it's hard, and they honestly need to weed out their bad units better, but I wouldn't mess with a bad unit and try to get an actual good one. 4 bad ones in a row is pretty bad luck but the Variax does work when it's not a bad unit.

Have you tried turning down the global string volume in workbench? Sounds like you're pickup volume is too high.

List some people you know who use or have used a Variax in their career that are notable or are a musician people would know. Dustin Kensrue of Thrice used a Variax for about 2007-2012 until Thrice went on hiatus. He sold his Warmoth Variax transplant to someone on ebay. He used it for the drastic tuning differences in the Thrice catalog as well as having different guitars on their records. Here's a picture of him using it: Ed O'Brien of Radiohead has been listed to have used a Variax 700 though I can't find too much info on that. Ironically enough, if you look in your Variax manual, he is stated in the description of the Rickenbacker 360: "Though overshadowed by the success of the 12 string, the 6 string versions of Rickenbacker's stylish models continue to be popular with players looking for something a bit out of the ordinary, like Ed O'Brien of Radiohead." Do any of you know any big musicians that utilized the Variax? Can by any Variax; first gen, JTV, acoustic, bass.

True, but I didn't know the 600 was that well built compared to other guitars. Perhaps it's a mix of being used to playing on it as well, but it makes me appreciate my guitar more.

Does that mean my Variax has better playability? I didn't know it was THAT good.

Really nicely done. Question, does a new pickup selector and knobs work with the Variax or did you have to do something weird with it?

You don't know how many of us have problems because of a shoddy VDI cable. Mine disconnects if you pull the part that goes in the Variax out as far as you can until the clamp stops it from coming out. I'm glad you got your guitar to work. Workbench is a guitarist's disneyworld.

If you update your guitar drivers you have to also update workbench in correspondence to your drivers. I remember rolling back to try to fix stuff and workbench said my driver was out of date.

So I swapped my other TRS cable as fast as I can a few times when this happened and it's suggesting that it is the cable, because the noise happened again after I switched back to the planet waves cable. Hopefully I can just get another planet waves cable. They're really nice. I just think I might of damaged it by rolling on it with my computer chair. My other TRS cable sucks and picks up ANY tapping noise you do on the cable.

Nice. I run mine into guitar rig 5 as well. I EQed it and it sounds a lot better. I suggest you guys do the same. A bit of EQ on a 100% dry channel. No amp no cab. If you're not doing it on the computer, do it on a proper set of speakers (Acoustic amp, PA speakers, or any type of speakers that you can plug in) Dial in the lacking parts of the tone that you want, and push back anything overpowering that you don't like. The point of the new acoustics is to sound like a genuine mic'd acoustic. The old Variax acoustic models still sounded very piezo-based. The new Acoustics adds a lot of missing body and resonance as well of the nuances of sounding like strings being recorded through a mic, and not a pickup system. Remember that even at that stage, most people EQ their mic'd acoustic a bit to sound better in a mix of a track.

Sad. I guess my Variax is a bit borked.

Which Variax are you using?

Please try another if you can't fix your current one. The Variax is jaw droppingly amazing when it actually works. There's nothing like it. Other modelings guitars don't even come close when it comes to it sounding amazing. The only thing I can possibly ever regret about my Variax is that it's not a JTV Variax. This is coming from a guy that avoided Line 6 stuff after my GX crapped out on me, then I saw this guitar being played by a band I like and was sold after watching videos about it. Just so amazing if you love variety of guitar tones as well as using a vast amount of tunings.

The problem is that the strings are were the sound comes from. A pickup/body is filtering the steel strings, not making the sound, so it's easy to replicate. Meanwhile, modeling nylon strings isn't filtering strings, but trying to change the strings itself which is harder. it's probably not going to hit home. Maybe the tonality will sound similar but the other nuances will probably be off. I'm sure if anyone is going to get close though, it'll be Line 6.

The graphtech stuff is possible to get, but I'm not sure it would fit on the 69 because of the 69's saddle design. In fact, I think it would require a lot of changed to the guitar to be able to use the piezos: Possibly a whole new bridge, including tremolo block, because the bridge also has the weird screw design with the saddles.

"L. R. Baggs Radiance Hex piezo pickup system" Not available to buy directly, I don't think. This is the piezo quality from best to worst I think: Graphtech Ghost system LR Baggs Radience system 300/400/500/600 LR Baggs X-bridge-esque piezos

This. I found playing hard makes it sound very unnatural. Might be that "piezo quack" thing going on that's causing that.

Now this thread is just a theoretical wish list, and doesn't mean it'll happen, but is a place to announce what guitars that the Variax doesn't have, that you wish to be added someday in the future if possible. Mine: -Gibson standard SG (Like an LP, but it has more bite, less chunky sound) -Fender Jaguar -Fender Jazzmaster -Nylon string guitar (This might be hard because the Variax models the body and pickups, which is practical, but modeling nylon strings might be hard because we're trying to get steel to sound like nylon, which means we're changing the string sound, not adding onto it, which is what the body and pickups do) -EMG/active pickups (I'm not sure if the 89 does this, but I'm pretty sure the 89 is just high output, not active pickups. I'm not sure how hard it would be to model this, but I think it might be possible) -Add back removed guitar bodies that the HD update removed from 1.9 (Thinline, Standard Tele, Goldtop LP, Custom LP, possibly others)

Yes. The JTV and Ghost system are way higher quality than the stock piezos on the Gen 1 Variax guitars. The HD update finally kind of shed's the JTV's skin of lingering in the old Variax's technology. Everything is now updated and now you have a completely new guitar from the old Variaxes.

Remember that JTV's pre-HD modeling was the same as the 300/500/600/700. The piezos are what gave it a different sound.

Ok. That does make sense. I still think a decade is a bit too short, maybe at least the minimum depending on how well the components are, how well it was built, etc. Anything under that is just bad luck and poor component quality. I remember I got a POD Studio GX and it died in a year. It's stuff like that that shouldn't happen.

I think the new acoustics sound great. The old acoustics sound like high quality piezo acoustics (It is litereally piezo of course) but the new ones sound like actual mic'd up acoustics, and I really like that. It paves way for plugged acoustics to sound like mic'd acoustics. I can get my 600 to sound kind of like the new acoustics by heavy EQing but it's definitely not as good as the JTV acoustics. But I guess it's all a matter of opinion. I do think the new acoustics are a bit too rolled off on the high ends. I suggest trying to EQ it a bit and see what type of tone you can get out of that.