amsdenj

Note to my ears, the magnetic pickups on the Variax Standard are a bit better than the JTV-69S. I was surprised by that and decided not to migrate my left over JTV-69S pickups to my Variax Standard when I replaced them. Of course, that’s pretty subjective.

I have a pretty big investment in my JTB-69S, new magnetic pickups, new nut, really good setup, etc. Its a very nice guitar at the point, models or not. I sincerely hope that if Line6 produces a new Variax line, that the new hardware can be retrofitted into the current JTV line. This would be a good way to leverage new sales to existing customers. I’d pay for it in a heartbeat.

I suspect it also has a lot to do with that guitar, and how loud the amp is in the room. We often build our patches at pretty low volume levels.

Try using a lighter pick with the acoustic models, especially when using light electric guitar strings. The pick interacts a lot with the piezo pickups and the pick material, thickness and shape can make a greater difference with Vairax models than it might with the usual magnetic pickups. Experiment to see what works for you, addressing feel, tone, picking speed, ability to hold between your fingers, etc.

There's a reason for this. We all know how a tuner should work, and how good tuners do indeed work. When the Helix tuner has accuracy and stability issues compared to other tuners, we left wondering if there are other inaccuracies and stability issues that aren't as readily apparent. I'm not saying there's a correlation between tuner accuracy and usability and the other Helix blocks, but that's something we might feel, even if there is no correlation.

Highly recommend Reaper for usability, function, and community.

This would seem to indicate there’s a potential problem with your signal chain. What your’re describing sounds like digital clipping. There’s no reason the patch should sound that different for you.

Start with what you already know and reproduce it in Helix. Get to know how to do that. Then explore setups by professionals you like and reproduce those. Then start building your own tones for your own purposes.

The 700 acoustic models are different than the HD acoustic models in th JTV. Personally I prefer the older models and I hope Line6 provide an update soon that gives us more choice on Variax models.

If I were a pro, and had my own signature sound, I'd likely use a Les Paul or Strat into a boutique tube amp with 2x12 Celection G12-65 in an open back cabinet. But I'm not a pro. I play in a reasonably busy reasonably good club band playing rock dance music. Helix and my JTV-69S are perfect for this. I can get any sound I need easily. Is it the best? No. Is it good enough? Absolutely, more than go enough. I had to work on that JTV-69S - new nut, good setup, polished the frets, and Amalfitano Daytona pickups. But now my Strat Deluxe (with the same pickups) sits on the stand and my Les Paul stays home most of the time. I love that JTV-69S and don't mind at all making the changes that make it mine. I also like the thicker neck even though I don't have big hands. The thicker neck is more stable and has better sustain. Now to the marketing - there are a lot of pro guitarists that use ultimate and/or vintage pro gear. Great, we can learn from them and set our Helix and Variax to come close to their rigs and tone. But there are LOT more guys just like me playing in clubs all over the world for $100/gig, having a great time, and buying our share of gear. So I think there's a place in the world for Variax, even if all the pros don't decide to use it.

I do exactly the same thing. 1/4" outputs to to my two JBL EON610s setup as backline behind me and controlled by the Helix output. My IEM monitor is my own mix out our our X32-Core and two SD-16's. I use two busses in the X32-Core and two outputs in one of the SD-16s into a Behringer stereo headphone amp that is mounted on my mic stand. I have hearing issues, so I really need to have the IEMs and my own mix or I couldn't play. One issue - with 4 out of 5 of us using IEMs, and using acoustic drums and stage amps (except for keys which are direct FOH only), we don't really have good control of our stage volume - because we feel it, but don't hear it. This is getting too complex to run without help from a sound man.

I have tried it. See https://wordpress.com/view/jimamsden.wordpress.com. I replace the tone controls in the Normal channel of my Showman amp with Hi-Fi tone controls (flat on 5 with boost/cut) so its a good input for Helix amp models. It sounds great, but isn't flexible enough. I need to use FRFR so I can also do acoustic tones using my JTV-69S.

You didn’t say (or I didn’t see it) what OS you’re using or the drivers. Its possible that the driver you are using with Helix USB has an input volume control that is turned down.

Exactly the same for me. I use a Drive switch to control gain and use studio tube pres to control voicing of the drive pre and post amp. I use Teemah! for overdrive and Minotaur for greater, more mid-focused/aggressive distortion. What I like about pedals vs. preamp or amp distortion is the flexibility for controlling the voicing. Amp models like Cartographer have the gain, but don’t yet have the pre and post distortion tone controls that most pedals have.

I’m seeing a pretty large CPU load with Helix Native in MainStage too. Patches with similar capabilities around S-Gear have much lower CPU demand.

I too use my FRFR (two JBL EON610s) behind me. I use IEMs for monitoring so the FRFR is primarily to 1) let me feel the guitar, 2) let the guitar hear the speakers for some interaction, and 3) to provide stage fill in small clubs so the dancers hear some guitar too. I tried having my vocal and guitar monitor on the floor in front of me, but it didn’t work well at all. I had to use ear plugs to control the overall band volume and the monitor didn’t sound right or provide the feel I was use to. IEMs provide just a bit of high end to complement the bleed from the FRFR behind me and the feel of real speakers in the room. I couldn’t play with a monitor in front of me without the ear plugs.

Another possibility is that mic and speaker IRs are composed into the resulting cab model to reduce the number of IRs. Its also possible that part of what Line6 did is to find a way to reduce the DSP load to do the convolution.

Sag, Bias and Bias X won’t do much unless the power amp is distorting. If the master is turned down and the gain turned up, the preamps will be contributing the distortion and Sag, Bias and Bias X won’t do much of anything. If the master is turned all the way up, the the initial distortion will be in the poweramp and then these controls will have some impact. Rather than talk about cold/hot bias, I’ll use the parameter values. Bias at 0 will make the power amp a bit cleaner, brighter (it will take more drive to make it distort) and possibly harsher. Bias at 50 will be how the amp was generally intended to run and is a good starting point. Bias at 10 will make the amp distort earlier and make it harder to clean up as you turn the drive or guitar volume down. Some amps might distort all the time if the bias is set really high. BiasX is like sag - it controls how much the bias changes as the amp is driven harder. If the power amp isn’t clipping, BiasX will have no effect. If the power amp is clipping a lot, the BiasX will have more effect. BiasX at 0 will not change the amp tone much as the power amp is driven harder. BiasX at 10 will cause the Bias to change more as the amp is driven harder. Now how that matters and effects the sound is a bit less clear to me. Here’s a guess. As the power amp is driven harder, the power supply sags under the load - plate voltages go down while the bias voltage goes up (since the bias voltage is negative). Having the bias voltage go up makes the bias hotter as the amp is driven harder. So the amp will distort a bit more. But it will also get warmer, there will be less highs and fizz as you drive the amp harder. So BiasX might act somewhat like a dynamic hi cut - as the amp is driven harder and distorts more, there’s a bit more high cut to tame the fizz. This can be very useful.

Personally I’d rather sacrifice action to avoid fret buzz, especially when using Variax models. Also, having the strings fight you a bit can have other advangates for tone and feel. And if I don’t play quite as fast or as many notes, that’s not a bad thing either.

I don’t treat the Variax as a means of reproducing the tone or multiple instruments. Rather I treat as a new instrument in its own right. It has its own feel, tones, flexibility and limitations, just like any other instrument. It is those characteristics after all that make all instruments and their contribution to music unique. Take palm muting for example. It does sound a bit different than palm muting magnetic pickups. And that does change your hand position and technique a little. But that’s not necessarily bad. The different tone produced is certainly different, but might be considered better in some context. Its finding those contexts in which one instrument contributes better than another that is worth striving for. Variax provides a pretty wide range of capabilities in a broad range of contexts. That’s almost always a good thing unless you’re looking for something very specific that isn’t there.

Really beautiful. Exceptional work.

I also use a JTV-69S with Helix for all gigs (my Strat Deluxe and Les Paul have become backup guitars!) and have no problems with VDI or saving models. I use snapshots for open tunings and short acoustic sections of a song. I believe the VDI cable is all digital - the magnetic pickups are converted to digital in the guitar and sent as a digital signal to the Helix. So the cable should have no impact on analog tones. The VDI cable can have connection problems at the jack on the guitar. I've used the same VDI cable for many years with no problems. However, I recently got a new one and it is very intermittent with my Variax 700 Acoustic. Works fine in three other variax guitars, but is loose in the 700. I'm guessing this is your problem. The cable isn't making good contact at the guitar. This could be bent pins in your guitar or a bad connection in the cable. I try to not step on the VDI cable too much, but its hard to avoid. Wish I could get a shorter one.

Regarding your K12 sounding differen than the PA, this could be caused by different listening positions. PA horns are pretty directional, especially vertically. If you have your K12 stage amp behind you and down low, it will sound a lot different than as a floor wedge pointed at your face in front of you, or the PA speakers up high and in your face. Regarding different guitars in the same patch: why would you want them to sound the same? Isn’t that the point of using different guitars? I also use a Variax, and occasionally bring my Les Paul to gigs along with may backup Strat. I typically play the whole gig on one patch, and love the different sounds and feel of different guitars in that patch. I sometimes end up with the “wrong†guitar in my hands as we move from song to song pretty fast to keep the dancers on the floor. By that I mean I might end up with my Les Paul on a song where I would typically use a Strat middle pickup. In those cases, I try to use the different sound to alter how I play the song a little to keep things interesting.

I have two backup solutions. Since my band uses an X32-Core for PA, we have to have a computer at gigs. We use an old 2011 13†MacBook Pro which has been totally solid. I have a very nice setup in MainStage that uses Helix Native for front of the amp effects, and S-Gear for everything else. I carry an Apogee Jam to gigs as the I/O device. I use a similar track in Logic Pro X in our studio rehearsal setup. I’m working on a blog post describing that now. More to come soon. I can also use my phone with JamUp Pro or ToneStack. These can use the same interface. Never had to do it through - Helix is been 100% reliable for the last 2 years.

For me the update was very smooth and easier than any of the others. As far as changes go, I typically touch up my basic goto patches with each update. For this one, I change compressor, Wah and my high gain patch to use Cartographer. These are not big changes that are going to significantly change my patches. Rather they are small incremental improvements over what was already just fine.