clay-man

that price is ridiculous.

What's the point of getting a JTV and putting it in a Standard? Why not use the JTV? I'm sure there's some way to hack a Standard to use 1.9, but do you really think that's going to happen? It's virtually impossible to get 1.9 on a Standard. Basically, if you like 1.9, do not get a Standard and look for a JTV.

Like someone said, just bend the pins out a bit. I had to do that with my 600 because it would loose connection if you pulled the VDI out as far as it'll go when locked in. Does it work via 1/4? If not, you might of fried something when connecting it...

That is very true. Feedback will not really work well since it's a different pitch hitting the strings you're playing, hence not really syncing up and giving feedback buildup like a normal guitar. It still works to some extent, but it's obviously not as good as the same pitch hitting the string. Another thing is, you can't get mag feedback from piezos, so you only strictly can rely on string vibration feedback. I will still say though, that the Variax is hands down the best sounding guitar pitch shifting hardware there is right now. It really sounds close to actually downtuning the strings, just gets a little muddy when you go super low.

Sadly, there will be some warble issues with a Variax, but it's controllable through some variables. I believe the pitch shifter has tracking, and possibly monophonic, but since there's individual pickups per each string, it doesn't need to worry about multiple notes. Because of this, there's always the possibility of warble though, which is when a pitch shifter rewrites the waveform of the signal incorrectly and creates this out of phase pitch problem. Like someone said before, magnetic pickups can be a variable. If it's super close, it's going to pull the strings and possibly cause the vibration of the string to become just unpredictable enough for the pitch shifter to go crazy. Another factor is setup, which brings in the question of fret buzz, but you're doing open harmonics, so fret buzz shouldn't be the concern here. If you can, back off your pickups a bit and see if it helps. Adjust your pickups to a prefered height, without sacrificing tonal characteristics that you want out of the pickup height. Honestly, compared to the old generation 300/500/600/700 guitars, the new Variax guitars have way better tracking. I used to have issues with doing pull offs and getting warbles, but not on my JTV. Best of luck to you.

I'm getting that series practically doubles the coil length so the resistance is even more, making it sound fatter. Right? In theory, you can use what I did to further expand how you want a model to sound even if you just want it to sound like 1 pickup. The only time it doesn't work is when parallel pickups are far apart because the drastic difference in tone creates the wide sound that we all know as quack positions. I was annoyed for the longest time that I wanted the Tele to sound brighter without sacrificing the overall tone of the original pickup position. When you move it down to the bridge, it gets brighter, but it also gets very nasally and gets rid of a lot of the body of the sound. Putting one on default 1.7 position and one at 1.3 a few DB lower created a really brighter sound while retaining the low-mid tonality of the tele sound, and I'm pleased to say I'm super happy with the Tele bridge setting now. It's super snappy and twangy now. Just wanted to kind of elaborate to help people when messing with workbench. Sometimes, don't think of it as literal as you want, and think of it in theory of how you could add certain tonality to the sound you have to achieve what you're trying to get. Basically, I didn't need to just use 1 pickup to get a 1 pickup sound, as 2 very close pickups in parallel sound like 1 single coil pickup with a wider/higher frequency range.

So, I've noticed some things. Would it be safe to say, parallel is basically like recording both pickups, then mixing both wave forms 50/50 on eachother? In a sense, I used this to make a brighter sounding tele model without loosing the nice low tonality that the stock pickup position gives. If they're close by eachother, it just sounds like 1 pickup, and not a quacky parallel pickup combination. So what technically is series? What is happening within a series wired pickup? What makes it sound fat and humbuckery? What is technically going on to smoothen out the high ends?

What do you mean by swapping the piezo wire? If you swapped a piezo to a different location and the problem traveled with it, that would indicate it's the piezo's fault. Can you refresh me on what happened with that again?

Ok how about: Get 2 JTVs. One with the problem, one without the problem. Exchange hardware from working Variax to problem Variax until problem resolves to diagnose the issue. The problem is definitely hardware. It can't be software related or EVERYONE would have the problem (it could be defunct hardware causing defunct software, but not software alone) It has to either be the electronics or how something vital was set up, and I'm not talking about the action or whatever the hell they said, I mean like serious hardware setup issue.

True. Why not just do a part by part take down of the guitar then?

Pretty sure you'll get 0 interference. The signal is strictly digital, so there is no analog interference that you could get from a normal cable, and I'm pretty sure the VDI cable is shielded inside.

The plink is strictly modeling related. I'm 99% sure it's related to the piezos and having defective piezos. My 600 honestly has the problem and I never really noticed it until I use the Les Paul in standard. There have been times when I swapped the E piezo and the problem went away, so yes, it is related to the piezos. The main question here is, why can't Line 6 simply do quality control over the production of the piezos? What's so hard about plugging in one of these guitars, playing to hear if it has the problem, then replacing piezos on ones with the problem?

make sure you're also not switched to the "fart" model.

Yes, remember, the Workbench interface does not double as an Audio Interface. You will not hear anything through your computer via the workbench interface. This is merely for the computer and the Variax to communicate with eachother so you can alter the settings of your Variax.

That's why I suggest buying from a place like Sweetwater where you virtually can keep swapping the guitar for a replacement until you get a proper one. It's why I didn't get it used off Ebay because I was afraid of getting a problem guitar.

I think he's talking about the morality of passing a broken guitar off to someone to disappoint them with it as well. I mean, if I was trying to get a used Variax off Ebay and got one with this problem, I'd be pretty pissed off.

screws will be loose, and the screw on the bottom of the variax strap button is shorter than the other so it doesn't go into the electronic cavity. If you ever install new stap buttons, make sure you shorten the bottom one as necessary. Either way, I had these on another guitar, was going to swap it to my Variax and realized the screws were too thin compared to the stock ones. Tried using stock screws but it doesn't fit into the locking straps. Unless you use different screws, or do some modification, you're not going to be able to use those.

That's still highly insulting considering that the JTV is a 1k guitar, is meant to be a more high end version of the Variax guitars, and was also released to fix flaws in the first generation of Variaxes. You really want to be that anal about saving money, just make the guitar 1000.30 and call it a day.

Seriously. All you need to do is have wires to wherever the f the bridge is grounded. Are you saying that people try to ground their piezos incorrectly and that it ends up frying the guitar and going to your bench? What was so hard for Line 6 to tell LR Baggs to make piezo units with 2 wires and ground those wires to the ground wire connected to the bridge? No it wasn't. I'm pretty sure the piezos used on the JTV are special designed for the JTV line anyways, so what the hell was the excuse?

Dude as long as they're doing this much work, I'm happy. Going to people to address the problem is pretty significant. It's a lot better than spouting rhetoric through the ticket system.

It really is poor design, as much as I love the guitar. They had a perfect opportunity to correct this problem when jumping from the first gen Variaxes to the JTV series. They could have told LR Baggs to redesign the grounding mechanism into a wire form. Us guitarists are going to sweat like pigs into the cracks of those piezos and it'll eventually lead to problems. It should of been a no brainer. Luckily this problem is extremely easy to fix. It's why I didn't send my 600 back when I bought it off ebay because I figured the problem was insanely easy to fix. It seems like the issue isn't as bad on the JTVs as the old Variaxes though, but time will take it's toll.

Because it uses Graphtech instead of LR Baggs. Either way, try the contact cleaner thing first. Dampen a Qtip with a decent amount of contact cleaner and rub it against the piezo's sides where it contacts the saddle, and the opening on the saddle where it sits in. I guarantee if the piezo is merely failing because of gunk building up between the piezo and saddle, this will completely get rid of the problem. I used contact cleaner on stuff like game cartridges, and even my old Variax's pickup selector, and it's pretty much an instant, brand new-esque fix if the problem relates to dirty contact issues. Way more effective than rubbing alcohol in my opinion.

Replacing piezos are super super easy. Like holy crap easy. I've done it on my 600 many times. The only problem is, you'd have to find out where the piezos are soldered to on the 59. When it came to the 600, I had to take the bridge off of the guitar and get to the little board where the wires are soldered to. There was a ribbon cable that I had to disconnect that leads to the motherboard of the Variax. I'm not sure if it's any different on my 69 either. Another thing I'd try, is sliding out the piezo, and trying to clean between the saddle and the piezo to get a better ground contact. If you can get your hands on electronic contact cleaner, I'd spray a bit of that on a qtip and then rub it against the saddle and the bottom of the piezo. If you can't get that, try getting high percentage rubbing alcohol. Like Charlie said, signal is through a wire, but ground is done through contact against the saddle, which really is, a bad design, as it leads to this problem.

Kind of lame if the person that sold you the guitar held off on the interface. Without that you can't connect to the PC unless you had a VDI cable and POD that supports Variax communication with the computer. You can run Line 6 Monkey and check your firmware version if you did. There, you could flash, update, or reflash through monkey. Reflashing is basically just reinstalling the same firmware version, something you might do if you're experiencing problems with an incorrectly flashed Variax.

Very cool on the Variax, especially since it has glowing knobs.