amsdenj

This discussion has verified my preference to always use 1M. I want to get the most out of my guitar, not necessarily match the compromises of a pedal design that that may no longer be necessary. I'm looking for tone, not necessarily exact reproductions of existing devices. Guitars were designed for a 1M input impedence. They sound and respond best with that setting. There's lots of other things in Helix that can be used to control the tone. I don't know if Helix models both the input and output impedence of every device so that the impact of connecting blocks reflects potential mismatches. If it did, the Auto setting would be realistic, but not necessarily desirable. Otherwise it doesn't seem particularly useful.

I'd suggest a lot lower that -3 dB, more like -12 to -18 to give plenty of headroom. You can always turn up the PA master or fader. The reason is you never want to clip the PA, especially if its a digital PA. And as you keep adding channels, you can quickly overdrive the master buss if all the inputs are too hot. I try to make sure that if I turn the Helix volume all the way up, I'm still safe on the PA.

I agree with all these observations, especially regarding the tone of the HD models lacking presence compared to the single coil magnetic pickups on my Variax Standard (which are actually quite nice). That's ok, I have those magnetic pickups if I want that tone, and once I can get connected to Workbench HD, I might try blending in a bit of the mags to recover some of that presence. Yes, it could be the guitars they modeled too. I found the Variax 300 Spank model to be radically lacking in sustain and was able to recover the sustain without changing the tone by changing the body model. Then the Lister model bridge pickup was too bright and the neck pickup too dark. With the neck pickup I found turning on the 12sting processor but not changing anything added the presence back reasonably well. But all these things are to be expected to change the instruments to one's liking and style. It's not really a reflection on the quality of the models one way or another. And it's good that there is that flexibility to make the customizations within limits. I suspect the architecture of the models between 1.x and the 2.x HD models is different and might require some real work to translate them. Finding those development resources could be a challenge. I guess at this point I'd rather see Line 6 looking forward, not back on the instrument models.

This is perhaps a hint. Gain staging is critically important for anything that has digital in its signal chain, or perhaps unintentional block clipping or blocks being driven outside their normal sweet spot. Any of these things can create problems. Make sure you gain stage your patches from source to sink - guitar all the way to the speaker. Nothing should be overdriven but the amp model and distortion pedals, or those blocks that are intended to produce distortion. A simple way to do this is to ensure that no block is adding too much gain when it is switched on, and that you have the gain control on your amplifier set so that you're sure its not clipping through its preamps or power amps.

I would agree with this as well.

@clay-man I tend to agree with you on the new HD guitar models. When sitting in your music room by yourself, the old Variax 300 models sound more exaggerated, spanky, more tele to me than the new models. But when I used the Variax Standard a rehearsal last week, I found the models fit in very nicely in the mix with the whole band, much better than I had expected. As soon as my guitar gets repaired, I need to do a lot of volume leveling an fine tuning on the tones. I may experiment with stacked pickups, etc. to get tones that standout a bit more. But overall I think this is going to be a serviceable instrument that plays the role I need it to play. I don't really need the Variax to be a vintage guitar - to look, feel, sound or play like one. I have a couple of those already. What I want it to do is be a serviceable, playable, reliable, flexible instrument that can provide some reasonably realistic tonal differences than I can't achieve with those vintage instruments, avoid gigging with those instruments in places where them might be put at any risk, and to provide convenient tone changes that I might not bother with if they required changing guitars too often. I think the Variax Standard is perfect for this. And the fact that it much lighter then may Strat or Les Paul is an advantage for these old bones too.

I'm still liking a lot of the models in my old Variax 300. And with some work and changes, its a pretty playable instrument. I was thinking of selling it now that I have a Variax Standard. But the Standard has just be sent back for repairs (less than a week old), and doesn't play as well or have some of those 300 guitar models I've come to really like. I'm sure the Standard will get repaired, and I'll do the same setup and mods on that once it comes back so I'm pretty sure I can make it play really well. But I'm thinking of keeping that Variax 300, just in case... I know our tendency in the modern digital world is to think anything a year old is obsolete. But maybe not in all cases. I also have a Variax 700 Acoustic that is my main gigging guitar for acoustic shows. I've tried many times to replace it, including putting acoustic guitar body images in my Helix and using my Martin 00C15AE or Gibson J50 into that. Yes, they sound better than the Variax 700, but not when the feedback during a solo, or when I stand in just the right spot. I can rely on that Variax 700 to do what it does every time anywhere. That's hard to accomplish with amplified acoustic instruments. And its also a nice playing guitar.

A heart wrenching but beautiful song played with exquisite feeling. Thanks for sharing, I'm saving a link to this one. I love the guitar, the tone and the playing, but that Hammond Organ is made in Heaven. And that voice, what can I say. Stunning comes to mind.

For amps that don't have a master volume control, the modeled amp is with the master set at 100%. Try a different microphone on the cabinet. I tend to prefer the ribbon mics as the are warmer sounding. Get the right mic and mic position before you resort to high cut as this retains the dynamics of the IR.

Helix makes this simple feature a lot more valuable since you can put acoustic guitar body image IRs in Helix and use them to make a piezo pickup sound pretty good. Or run your Variax into a Fishman Aura Spectrum.

If there's too little neck relief, then you might not notice fret buzz until you pick harder. If there's too much neck relief, there might not be any fret buzz in the low to middle part of the neck, but as you get up higher, you might start getting fret buzz from the high frets. You could also have some low/high frets that are causing fret buzz, but only in certain places.

See Provide Variax direct Piezo output to use acoustic IRs in Helix . The idea is to provide a neutral body, neutral pickup selection in Variax so that only the raw piezo sound is output. This would allow using a Variax with a Fishman Aura Spectrum, or with acoustic body image impulse responses in Helix to get more acoustic tones. Please vote so that Line 6 adds this simple but very valuable and flexible choice.

There's some really good reasons for having magnetic pickups on a Variax. First, they just sound good, and will probably sound better than the models for a long time to come. Second, they can be blended with the models in custom patches in order to taylor the tone. But most important, they work even if the battery is dead or the Variax electronics fails so you're not going to loose the guitar.

My work around is to always check the 1/2 Speed when turning on the looper. For me, the full speed loops are just too short.

I do this, but also use a JBL EON610 as a monitor in front of me. I have my monitor mix set to my vocal, my guitar and whatever else I need to hear, mostly a bit of keys, the other vocals, and our second guitar player. We're attempting to eliminate all stage amps to reduce our footprint, reduce the amount of equipment we have to carry, setup and tear down, and have better control of volume in small club situations. So far this is working very well. I wear ear plugs (-10dB) and find the monitor in front is different than the amp behind me, but you get use to it quickly enough. For larger or outdoor gigs, I still use a FRFR behind me, and take my guitar out of the monitor mix.

There wouldn't be much need to use the 1/4" and VDI outputs at the same time in something like Helix or HD500X as the VDI cable can carry the analog and digital tones. The 1/4" would be redundant in this case. Note that using Workbench HD you can also blend the magnetic and modeling tones. Use this to add a little sparkle to the model tones. the 1/4" variax output can be just the magnetic pickups if there's no battery in the guitar. This is a great feature because it means if the battery goes dead, the guitar still works like a regular electric guitar. When the battery is in and charged, you can press the modeling button and use the models from the 1/4" output. The digital to analog converters are in the guitar in this case. This is a very flexible design and could work quite well. Unfortunately my Variax Standard will not power up the models through the 1/4" jack. Have to send it back.

The tuner has a knob that controls what provides input to the tuner. You'll see it when you engage the tuner. Make sure it's set to the input you want to provide to the tuner.

Helix works great for this purpose. See https://jimamsden.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/using-helix-as-an-effects-pedal-board/

Do you have a link to that custom model, or can you summarize the changes? I've heard some people have ad success lowering the string volumes in the models. Maybe they were turned up to hype the models - things that sound louder are often perceived as sounding better. I can't get my Varaix Standard to connect to Workbench HD or Monkey, so I can't try these things yet.

I think the issue is that the small changes in the Variax Standard would require some minor updates to the 1.x firmware for it to work properly on that guitar. I suspect Line 6 is not interested in investing in these updates. That's fine. But I hope this is not an indication that there will be little investment in new Variax firmware going forward. That is, I hope I didn't just buy an obsolete instrument that is only one year old. The Variax shows the huge potential in what its possible in modeling instruments. I don't think the 2.x HD models are quite right yet, they seem entirely too dark, sound a little over processed, have too much resonance (that banjo sound on all the models) and don't sound as good to my ear as the earlier 1.x models at least in some cases. I think we have evidence that 1) Line 6 knows what they are doing with Variax modeling, 2) the hardware/software system architecture is capable of producing good, realistic sounds, and 3) there's still room for firmware choice and/or improvement. Let's hope Line 6 is committed to Variax and we'll see some choices and updates soon.

Auto sets the input impedance to whatever it is for the effect in the first block right after the input. This is to model the impact that effect has on the tone of the guitar and its cable. Setting a lower input impedance could reduce the high end of your guitar, but so can turning down the tone control just a little. This is actually convenient and quite common practice. Try setting up your clean tone with the neck pickup and the guitar volume and tone all the way up. Then when you switch to the bridge pickup you can roll back the tone just a little to warm up that pickup. If you setup your clean tone for the bridge pickup, then you don't have any way to get the sparkle back on the neck pickup.

You might find this post useful: Using a Looper for Solo Gigs.

My new Variax Standard has a lot of play in the tremolo bar. I know Fender Strats deal with this using tremolo arm tension springs. These are available at guitar center: Tremolo Arm Tension Springs. Does the Variax Standard use similar tension springs? Mine doesn't have one, but I understand its common for them to go missing. My guitar was a floor model from Guitar Center and didn't have one. Anyone know if these work with the Variax Standard? Otherwise its teflon tape.

Well all this aside, it seems there are some customer issues with the 2.x models, and some people prefer the earlier versions. Line 6, listen to your customers. You have a wonderful product that has the flexibility of software/firmware updates. I really hope you are working on redoing those 2.x models because frankly I don't think they are that much of an improvement over what you had before. Given what we heard in the earlier versions, there appears to be at least the opportunity for additional improvements. I suggest a very simple solution - provide the old 1.9 models in a 2.x firmware update so that all the tunings, switches and controls work properly, but the users can choose which models to use. That can't be that hard. Do it, and this issue goes away and you have happier customers. I personally would change the Tele, Strat and acoustic models - and that's a pretty significant set of pretty common models.

Does it come with a spring to reduce play in the bar?