clay-man

The electronics don't get moved on the Variax though. Nothing electronic on the Variax is getting moved besides a few wires on tremolo Variaxes. The motherboard doesn't have any physical interaction and shouldn't be prone to getting damaged because of use, other than if the components are shoddy and go out just from doing what it's supposed to. Yes it will go out after decades of use, but it should last at least a decade minimum if made properly and treated properly.

Well like I said, technology heavy things with complicated circuitry can last for decades if it's made properly. Saying something should last 5 years because it has a PCB of microchips and processors is a poor excuse.

It's true, but that doesn't mean that it should have a death sentence that short. Like I said, the problem is component quality. The JTVs are supposed to help correct any errors that the old Variaxes had though, so yeah. The only problem was that awful problem about the string balls ending up in the guts on the 69. If you take care of what you got it should last you a very long time. The Variax's guts doesn't really have any physical interaction so it should last pretty decently. The whole TV crapping out argument is ridiculous because TVs last a long time from my experience, it's just once again, the component quality control, and a bit of bad luck.

The problem isn't that it's not lasting forever, but lasting for a petty amount of time. It doesn't matter if the product has technology in it. Many technological things last almost forever. The problem is the component quality control.

That problem is arguable. Maybe from the component quality in technology these days being less good. There's plenty of technologically advanced stuff that lasted for decades on end. Something should not be considered to fail in 5 years just because it has a processor in it.

What if the scenario is that 1.9 doesn't sound as close to a strat as 2.0, but 1.9 strat is a strat that sounds better than a real strat (in the 1.9 lover's cases)? I say if that's the case, then you guys need to get used to it since we're trying to accurately model the guitars, not make a custom guitar that happens to sound better than a real strat. (wut) Many of us have stated: Adjust the 2.0 strat to sound as close to the 1.9 one as much as you can. It might not be that 1.9 sounds better, but has a more appealing tone than 2.0, which can easily be fixed. If it's not bright enough, then back the pickups towards the bridge a bit.

This. I had so much grief with my Variax when I got it cause a few weeks after I got it, the D string piezo went out from bad ground connection. I fixed it by putting copper wire between the piezo and saddle, but I tried pressing it in further to make sure the piezo was in as deep as it could be and I ended up breaking the grounding. I tried taking it out and accidently broke the signal wire, and the piezo was ultimately unusable now. LUCKILY I bought a new x-bridge piezo from LR Baggs (Piezos were out on Line6 and there were rumors of them not stocking them back up anymore) And I soldered the new piezo's wire to the old piezo's wire. Works great now. No more signal going out when I use the whammy bar. After that, I freaking love my guitar.

I don't think the JTV piezos are open to public for purchase, unless you maybe send in your guitar for repair. I got a new piezo for my 600 directly from LR Baggs because their X-bridge piezos are virtually the same as the Gen1 Variax piezos. The problem with the Variax is that they have their piezos exposed, which can lead to damaging them from string friction or sweat corrosion over time. The ghost piezos are encased in the saddles so they don't really get corroded.

The problem is that when we talk about the strat sound, we're expecting the traditional strat tone, and a lot of people are suggesting that the 2.0 strat doesn't sound like that.

Yeah, power supplies seem to always add some additional frequencies and hum to the sound. It's really annoying. Like I said, I don't really hear noise, maybe some, but I didn't think it was from the power supply, I just thought it might be the Variax's noise floor, though I remember everyone said the Variax was incredibly silent compared to other guitars, just didn't know how silent. I personally thought it was a lot more silent than my SG I have, and kind of dismissed that as the Variax being quiet.

LOOOL I laughed at this more than I should have. "WOW you hear that guy using those new awful 2.0 HD Variax sounds? Worst show ever."

Nice. I can't afford to get rechargeables right now though. I'd have to get 2 packs if I did which would cost like 20 or 30 bucks probably. Don't really have that money right now. I wonder if you could mod a JTV battery compartment on an old Variax.. Either way, I like the power supply unit. It doesn't add noise to my concern besides the obvious one I stated, but that's not noise that should happen at all. Though it happens very non-frequently, it still is annoying and could ruin a live situation, and would be annoying to wait for during recording for it to stop or worse, ruin a take that I might of done good on but was ruined by the noise.

I think it happened in multiple places. I'm hoping it's just a bad cable. I remember there being a tear in the cable's coating somewhere, but I try to move that around and it doesn't seem to really change whether or not the noise is happening. If it's my Variax, I'm going to be absolutely pissed. Another scenario might be the power supply box being broken, but I don't know.

Is this a JTV or a Gen1 Variax? I'm talking about a Gen1 Variax, which is better to have a power supply than a battery. Mine can take a 6 double A power supply, but I only have that as backup and generally use the power supply box all the time. It hasn't made noise until recently this month or a month ago. It happens randomly. I can't control when it stops or starts at all. It defeats the purpose of using the guitar. I'd see if I could get rechargable double As but I'm not sure I can do that right now. I believe it lasts 12 hours as well just like the rechargeable JTV batteries when you use the x6 AA battery adapter.

Yeah, but I mean the Variax tuning thing on the JTV where you can tune the strings on the fly on a non-preset basis.

Hello. I have a A/B Power supply unit. Once in a while, I start hearing noise, and it is making me worried. The noise seems to happen randomly and I can't control it without turning off the power. Now, the A/B box still works without power, but obviously it won't give you any juice. When I take off the power, the noise stops. When I switch from my long planet waves cable, I THINK the noise stops as well. Is my planet waves cable the problem? It sounds like the line that transfers the power might be goofy. I don't know. I hope it's not my Variax. I tried moving my cable around but that doesn't seem to change the noise from starting or stopping. It's all random. What do you guys think?

I forgot to state the obvious here: Another thing the JTV has against the old Variaxes is that the JTV has superior piezo pickups. We've all seen the "My X string is quiet and noisy" thread multiple times. In fact, I was one of those people, and had to replace my D string piezo, and this is weeks to 1 month after just getting my guitar. Not only that, but the sound quality of the piezos are higher too. They were high enough for people to notice a difference between old Variaxs and the JTVs even prior to the HD update, and the old JTV firmware had the same modeling as the old Variaxes. But like I've said, the old Variaxes are still amazing if you don't have a JTV. I still think they hold up in the guitar world, and can still easily fool people as sounding like the real guitars they're modeled after. Just think of it as a nice budget Variax, cause that's what I did.

You realize the point of the piezo pickups is to allow high accuracy modeling and for you to tune each string individually? A magnetic pickup cuts out the highs and lows and only captures mid-frequencies. This would make modeling impossible, or very inaccurate since you basically deleted the frequencies it needs to model guitars right. The point of the piezos is that it's the closest thing you can get to the pure tonality of your strings. I saw some video of someone talking about piezos and how they have an extremely flat and broad frequency response compared to magnetics. It's perfect for modeling.

Erm, we already have a topic regarding this. Like I said, I get the love for some of the old models, but I just think it's awfully counter productive to keep the old models. Do you know what will happen if we did that? People would whine about the HD models getting special features that the old models wouldn't get in the future, and it's not going to be Line 6's fault, because they're old outdated models that they can't work with anymore to provide the same features the HD models can possibly provide in the future. Once again, I highly suggest that if a compromise was made, that Line6 model the same guitars as the old firmware, so we can get pristine HD versions of the tones that we've grown to love. If they did the modeling right on their end, then it's either time to literally stick to 1.9, or get over it and go to 2.0, since that's what the real guitars are supposed to sound like. If they modeled guitars incorrectly or models poor copies of vintage guitars, then it's a good argument, but they should update it to HD, not rollback to 1.9. It's absolutely counter productive.

It's because when you palm mute on a Variax, the piezos are sitting behind the palm, giving it a different sound than a magnetic guitar, because when you palm mute on a magnetic guitar, it is picking up the sound in front of your palm than behind like on a Variax. The result is a bit of a chunky compressed palm mute sound. I think the palm mute code in the Variax helps smooth out your palm mutes, maybe give it better decay/release to give it a more natural sound. Pretty nice approach, and I applaud Line 6.

I'm sure they could of made it able to change tunings on the fly, but they probably wanted to limit it to about the same features the x3L gave to the Gen1 Variaxes to influence people to update to JTV if they want those features. Personally I would love if I could change the tunings instantly with the Variax tuner on the 500, but I understand they have a product they're trying to sell you.

Is that to keep in tune or to for alt tunings? In my opinion, benefit-wise: Variax Alt Tuning > Robot Tuner Alt Tuning Pros: -Doesn't wear the strings down which cause string breakage -Instant -Can capo up -Strings tension stays the same at all times, and therefor... -Doesn't sound muddy when tuning down (a little bit when you got really low, but still pretty good) Cons: -Small latency -Minor artifacts here and there

No, but they replaced models with other models. The memory thing is from the fact they replaced models instead of adding models to the current selection.

I still think this is because they're hitting the memory's capacity. Nothing you can really do, unless you want to deal with them making a new suite of guitars with new memory, then we'll end up having the whole "they don't support my Variax anymore wtf" argument again. Maybe if it's the same design models, you could opt for a memory upgrade on your Variax if this actually happened. I highly doubt any of that would happen though. I'm sure they were aiming to give you more versatile options when they did this though. I personally can see new pickups and higher quality modeling to be more important than multiple bodies, but it's all opinion I guess. I'm going to miss the Thinline Telecaster and Custom Les Paul, that's for sure.