ricok987

The Variax Standard is really similar to the Yamaha Pacifica 212. I should know-I have both guitars. The neck is your basic strat-clone type. The standard is very playable and sounds great, but, since I have the 212, and know how much I paid for it-the variax technology is contributing the bulk of the cost of this guitar.

Yup-got mine last Thursday. I think they are going to be trickling in for the next 2 months due to filing backorders. I see the black ones seem to be more available, but, mine was the sunburst model. I was quite surprised to get it when I did.

My opinion, patch creation on the firehawk is very fast & easy. Thing is, you might have an issue with the limitations such as only single amp signal paths, and time lag on patch changes. Also, if you use loopers you would need an external unit-not going to work with the variax cable. If you play songs that use 4 different sounds or less and have a large pad this is most likely the easiest device to use on the market to create custom patches with. However, I installed the app on a smartphone, 7" pad, and 10" pad, and I can tell you-the bigger the better.

I'll tell you what: with the variax standard + firehawk you get an almost insurmountable amount of guitar sound possiblilities-I mean it's almost overwhelming! I am going through my custom patches to see which guitar sim is best suited for each butI am still trying to figure out how to control the variax with the firehawk app. I think my next step is to map out on paper what kind of sounds I need, and then build them into the user patches on the firehawk. I think I may even use several of my own patches clean, overdrive, acoustic multiple times in different banks in order to be able to play certain songs with multiple patch changes with as little effort as possible. I created one O. D. patch that sounds great with just about every electric guitar simulation on the variax. I also need to practice playing and editing the app on the fly. I also am working on integrating my voicelive play gtx into my variax rig.

Got mine on Thursday. Was surprised how similar it was to my Yamaha Pacifica 212 in size and shape. A few minor differences in the headstock, pickups, pickguard, and that's pretty much it. Plays pretty nice, and without battery installed pretty lightweight. I'm currently reading the manual and trying to figure out how best to use it with my new firehawk effects unit.

I think your post can be summed up in 1 word: Versatility.

I remember having a Yamaha PRS keyboard once that had a song list of about 400 songs in it that due to copyright issues had incorrect titles. The titles made more than half the songs useless because you couldn't figure them out. Others were easy to figure (Born Running, AKA Born to Run) Well, to make a long story short a user group user, that was real good at programming uploaded a file that changed all the song names to their proper title-and it was free-you just needed to load it into your keyboard! All of a sudden I had a trove of new songs I could play! I wonder, down the road if there is a savvy Android/Mac programmer that might do that for the firehawk amp list. Remember, this is most likely a text file stored in the programming code somewhere. All that would be needed is to edit the text.

I was actually praising Obama-if it wasn't for him, the west coast, and east coast problems would be much worse than they already are. Maybe a slam would be he should have done something a little sooner, and nipped the port problem in the bud...

I work for an importer here on the east coast & let me tell you-that back-log-jam on the west coast also affected the east coast as many companies diverted shipments to the east coast (logistics would make sense for any business located east of Chicago) Well, the east coast could not keep up with the additional ship traffic and we are still jammed up today as trucks line up in lines running up to 6 miles long each day to pick up containers. LCL shipments even takes longer as the container needs the extra steps of unloading, sorting, warehousing, and reloading on trucks for final delivery. I think that is why Obama invited both sides to "negotiate" at the White House-if the slowdown lasted any longer it eventually could have affected the food supply, and caused massive inflation. I know that both sides would have lost the negotiation if Obama was arbitrator.

Yes-I emailed my sweetwater sound engineer Jeff Law about that last week, and he emailed back to me that they checked with Line 6 and found out their picture was of an older planned model that had since been updated.

The Bean was hooked up to the same rig, the exact same way. I was comparing the bean factory presets to the firehawk factory presets.

I see that Zzounds website shows shipping in May, yet M.F. has "shipping by July" . I have one of these on pre-order so this mystery waiting game is kind of odd since I would think Line 6 most likely would not show favorites with any specific retailer. My guess is that even retailers have no idea what is going on. M. F. must be playing it save while Zzounds posts what Line 6 tells them...

I experienced a delay in the app display, not the preset sound. The app display could take about 0-2 seconds to appear for me when switching between the presets. I did get unwanted overtones when switching between a few presets, but when I muted the strings when switching that took care of it.

My Firehawk is in house. Hooked it up to the android app-paired it via Bluetooth and went through all the presets. Some are really nice, amp emulations-great, others-not so much. Thing is-it is super easy to edit-all parameters are right there and tweak-able. So, if you do not like an amp, or effect for a preset, just click the amp or effect tab in the app, and switch it out. I did notice a slight delay in the app when switching preset buttons on the unit-about 0-2 seconds-no delay in the sound, just in the display, and some switches between presets did produce unwanted overtones, but muting the strings when switching presets solved that. Also, I have a POD-HD Bean, hooked up exactly the same as the Firehawk. The output of the Firehawk via stereo 1/4" outputs to a PA was leaps and bounds better than the POD-HD. I will be using the POD with the PC, and the FIrehawk into my recording rig/PA. I did not hook this into an amp yet. I do not think the amp is going to be better sound than going straight into a PA unless you use stereo channels with the amp. I think right now my plan is to map out a list what custom effects I will be shooting for then build and save them. I did notice that many of the on board presets were similar, and a few I would never need so I am going to replace almost half the presets with custom. I also plan on experimenting with the mp3 functionality and see if it really gives you the good starting point that it claims as it may cut down the time to build the custom tones.

FYI-my order from AMS in the US shipped out on 4/10/15 via fedex ground. My tracking shows delivery on 4/16/15. Here is the deal though-last week I had called customer service and they were only receiving 4 units in their initial order. They had 5 pre-orders, so I got lucky. They were expecting another 4 units in around 4/24. I am guessing Line 6 is only issuing small shipments to all retailers in order to allow each to get some units sold. I would expect that retailers will be able to get bigger orders in a few months when the early adopters all get their hands on the initial shipments and their reviews hit the internet. If interested in the Firehawk make sure to check all online retailer sites in the next couple of weeks to check out the reviews. I just hope I am equally lucky in getting my order of the Variax Standard.