mtreehugger

170°F at the tubes doesn't concern me. Brazzy, can you get a reading from the back side of the metal chassis roughly in the midpoint (to compare with my findings), or would you have to take it apart? I wouldn't ask for that! Thanks for the post in the other thread as well as this one! So now my concern about my amp's health is escalating again. I was experimenting with the L6 Link and the patches that come with the firmware for that and I smelled the smell again. Not as strong as before. Heat not as hot as before either. But reduced symptoms are to be expected because I have the back off and the guard over the power tubes off, so air flow is better than it was and the heat doesn't have the same opportunity to build up, I'll see if I can borrow an IR thermometer myself, as well as check to see if Walmart has its selection of fans on the shelf this time of year. So you're running the DT50 head into a DT25 cab? I've been thinking of picking up one of those so I have 2 cones, but standing in the sweet spot of just the one is so totally amazing that I dunno... THANKS!

Good post, Brazzy! I read their whole article and found it very informative. There is an information gap, though, as they say transformers only fail as an indirect result of some other failure, whereas Zap says the TSB is about bad transformers being the root cause.

This is true that it will be louder, however, to some ears setting input 2 to same causes the dreaded "fizzy" effect. I changed all my presets to input 2 = variax years ago0 to avoid this, but that was before I got the DT and back when I was running through a FRFR setup. Could be the DT smooths out the fizzies.

I had (and hopefully that remains in the past tense) over-heating. A bad transformer could do that too, no? (hopefully you say no, I'd rather not mess with it, but if it needs it then I have to)

That IS awesome, Brazzy! By "glass," do you mean the shiny faceplate the knobs are on? (Is that glass?) Wow, sounds like your amp gets as hot as mine did the other day. I was able to wedge the oven thermometer so that the back side of it rests up against the metal chassis, but the needle didn't even budge from its 140 deg min. But then my amp didn't run hot yesterday either. And really, if I'm in low power mode with the master at 4, things should stay pretty cool in a setup like this, I'd think. I take it you're gigging, you're not using LPM, and you're running the volume past five (i.e. 12:00), correct? You're still running hotter than I'd be comfortable with. I used to play with a guitarist who had an awesome 70's silver face Bandmaster Reverb head and the larger matching cab, and he had a tech install a fan so that whenever he powered it up the fan ran. "Gotta keep those tubes cool," he said. With my DT50-112, all I have to do is run to Walmart and slap in one of their little fans, but for the DT50 head you might consider what this guy did. It's good to know that my amp isn't alone in accumulating so much heat!! Heat is the enemy, always, but if it's designed to withstand a certain amount, that's reassuring. Thanks a ton for doing this!!!

I disagree, Silverhead, with your defense of Line 6's lack of transparency here. I've had some symptoms with my DT50-115 that may have gone away or may be intermittent, and I'd like to know: 1) if my symptoms coincide with TSB 059; 2) what's at risk if I take a "wait and see" approach, which you senselessly advocated without reservation in this thread; 3) if my serial number is on the affected list; 4) if there's any fire hazard. I've followed your links and these questions remain. This information should be posted, not hidden in a closet, leaving customers in the dark.

I just bought my DT50-112 Thursday, to link with the HD500 I've had since 2011. I'm going after classic rock/vintage tones. I'm mostly playing straight into the amp, and am stunned with the tones! I've got a great Marshall rhythm tone on ch1 (voice II class AB pentode gain<3) and a more saturated lead tone on ch2 (voice III class AB triode gain=10). In my basement, I have it in low power mode, which allows me to turn the master up to 4. This still isn't enough volume to kick in voice IV, but if I turn up the master the other tones would be too loud. (Volume disparity between modeled amps is something Line 6 would do well to rethink.) As far as the L6 Link goes, I have to say that we were failed here in terms of an instruction manual. The L6 LINK Connectivity guide for Pod HD and DT Series is really bad. It right away starts talking about hooking up 4 DT's. (So does the HD manual, now that I think about it.) Now seriously, wouldn't users want to learn how to run one amp first before connecting 4? It's so confusing because if you skip around you feel like you missed some important point, when in reality I think the manual(s) missed a few important points, in addition to failing to present the instructions in a logical, beneficial order. As the writer above said, "I think we're on our own." +1. The guide told me to take my favorite patch in my HD and swap out the full amp for a preamp, then turn on my DT and the L6 link will work its magic. When I played, I was disappointed in the over-compressed sound. To my great surprise, when I tried the patch as I originally saved it with the full amp, I could barely tell the difference between what I was hearing through my stereo before and what I was now hearing through the DT! Maybe a bit more bass and mid and responsiveness, but otherwise very much the exact same tone. Actually, the DT sounded more like my HD through my stereo than the PA I've used. Whooda thunk it? For years I'd been led to believe that I'd have to turn off everything but the pre-amp to run through a DT. So what happened, at least in my case, is that when the DT and HD linked, this caused my POD to change from "studio/direct" mode to "combo pwr amp." I believe I tried this setting before, going in the front of my Fender (and it sucked), but apparently with the DT and L6 LINK this thing compensates for amp, mic, speakers, etc. Well, at least for the one patch it seems to, a JCM-800 with a dyna-comp clone and the brit distortion clone. Line 6 implies that better tones are found using the preamps only, but this suggests otherwise. I'd say that if you had your HD first, try this before investing a lot of effort in the pre's. That statement is qualified by only the one patch, though. I've got some more experimenting to do here, obviously, so I'd best get with it. EDIT: I wonder if my above findings pertain only to low volume mode. It sounds like that may be the case. In low volume mode, amp modeling in the DT occurs because tube distortion/saturation does not. It could be that they set it up so that while in low power mode via L6 LINK, the amp modeling in the DT is disabled, i.e. effectively replaced by the amp modeling in the HD.

Well, folks, I don't know what was happening before, but it seems fixed now--and WOW! This amp is amazing!!! It doesn't meet, it actually surpasses my high expectations for tone. Best amp I've ever played through, that's for sure. And even at low volume it sounds so awesome. Now that I've shut down for the day, I'm still taken aback. All I did was re-seat the tubes and leave the cage off the power tubes and the panel off the back of the cabinet. Not sure how much difference either made, if any, but now it only gets warm in back. I could hold my hand on the chassis all day, and actually kinda prefer that, climate being what it is this time of year. I did faintly smell the cooking paint smell at first, but I think it's gone for good now. I'll be monitoring the heat back there regularly as well as investing in a small electric fan to keep my electronics cool and long-lived. If it acts up again, I'll revive this post, but for now, good bye folks--and thanks!

Thanks, guys! I think I'll give it a go with my flakey Tascam US-800 interface before I think about buying more equipment. But is it really a moot point anyway? If I've already got those amp models in my hd500, and I'm using the L6 Link, and I'm not using MIDI, do I really need the firmware update to the DT50?

Thanks, "I" and "B!" I'd give the guy a 50% chance of exaggerating a bit versus out and out lying. He'd owned it nearly 8 months and didn't use it much (supposedly). Some musicians buy on impulse. He had a lot of gear he didn't need. He described buying and selling gear as "kind of a hobby of mine," but he wasn't bragging, it was kind of like self-criticism the way it came off. Anyway, on both this amp and my Fender, the metal chassis that houses the non-tubular circuitry gets hot. To some degree this is just physics, because tubes heat up, heat rises, and the chassis sits above the tubes in these particular amps. (I don't understand why any amp builder would invert the chassis like this, but it's fairly common.) The DT gets hotter than the Fender, like maybe 20-30% warmer, even though it has less tubes by far. The question is how hot is normal? If it's hotter than normal, then I need to get it looked at. If the metal box that covers the electronics (the chassis) on your DTs does not get hot after 30+ minutes of playing the way I described in my OP, then I need to explore whether I actually do have 4 months remaining on the transferrable warranty or not. Thanks!

That would be awesome, Brazzy! I'm going to try to wedge an oven thermometer to it somehow, though I am not sure it'll work. I did fire up the old Dual Showman Reverb, and it did get hot, but not as hot. Plus it has maybe 20 tubes in it as opposed to the DT50's four.

I've had my DT50-112 less than 2 days. I'm playing at very low volume, low power setting, class ab, voicing III. I notice a smell, which I think is paint or varnish (or tolex?) at a temperature close to melting or burning, but it could be an electronic component too (I'm not an expert in odors). The guy I bought the amp from claimed to have only used it for 2 hours, so at first I thought it was maybe a normal break-in kind of smell. But when I touched the metal amplifier housing in the rear after playing a couple of hours, it was very hot. Not hot like a muffler pipe, but hot enough that if you needed to hold your hand to it for whatever arbitrary reason, you wouldn't do so for more than 2 seconds without leather welding gloves. Upon removal, the power tubes look mint to me. The screws did not appear to have been loosened previously, however, one of the transformers has a couple screwdriver dings in it--could be a factory thing, but I think that seldom occurs at the factory (even a Chinese factory). So is this kind of heat normal? (If so, I'll just get a fan.) My previous tube experience has been with a vintage Dual Showman, and I never was concerned with heat buildup. But with this amp, with basically only 2 tubes, maybe it runs much hotter in order to get that tube vibe?

and maybe i don't need to? i bought this baby yesterday. i've hooked up the midi to my pod hd500, attempting to use that as my usb interface. (per the dt50 midi implementation guide: "Got a POD HD500 or POD HD Pro? These devices are capable of functioning as MIDI controllers, where you can configure the specific MIDI CC messages to be sent from its footswitches & pedals. See the POD HD Advanced Guide PDFs at http://line6.com/support/manuals.") so i read everything i could find, but nothing really tells me to do anything. but monkey will not see the DT! i tried powering it up in safe mode as well, to no avail. monkey sees the hd500, but when i try to change devices there's nothing there. there's an option to find device via midi connection, but that route fails to find the hd500. i also tried it using a mic cable in lieu of the l6 link in hopes that since midi passes through this connection, maybe that's how the firmware is installed. nope. same story--monkey can't see the dt. (the midi cables were disconnected for this attempt.) so then i thought maybe i needed to set up my hd500 for midi, but can't find anything anywhere that tells me to change the pod settings from the default, which is where it's set. however, since i will connect through the l6 link, what i've read seems to indicate that the hd500 will do the job for me anyway, whereas if you are using midi to control the DT50 then you'd want the v2.0 firmware--is that an accurate statement? it's so frustrating because most of what passes for instructions on the subject are more like sales pitches: "you can do this, you can do that, blah blah blah..." but no, i can't, because you don't tell me how or you tell me wrong! any help will be greatly appreciated!!!!

It wasn't easy, but I finally got my arms around the situation. The ethernet cable swap gained me nothing. After multiple failed attempts to reinstall the firmware with the original Line 6 cable--and let me tell you it's no fun when the popup says it failed and your switches are the wrong color--and it happened repeatedly--i finally reinstalled Monkey, then the variax interface, then the firmware to 1.82 and it FINALLY took. But I still had the ghost tones in alternate tuning (alt tuning +mags) and was unhappy with the tones. I re-flashed to the latest FW and it was the same as before. The only improvement I could see over 11 days ago was that the volume of the models was now about the same as the mags instead of being well below the mags. I gave up playing through the VDI cable thinking that with a TS cable I'd escape the issue, but could never find a decent tone. Some chords in certain models sounded fairly sweet, but playing in any of the models always led to artifacts, warbling, unnatural distortion, and frustration. I didn't want to play the thing, but I had to make some kind of decision on it so I kept trying. Then it hit me. I was trying to channel Keif in the Tele in Blues G and I heard ghost tones on the high E. Was it those damn acoustic tones again? (using the 1/4" TS cable as stated above) I recorded a loop in the HD and listened carefully and there it was--the ghost notes were in the patch. Very, very faintly and hard to pick out, but unmistakably there. And as we all know, any false tone, no matter how low in level, will wreck the sound. This tells me that my mags are always bleeding through. And I don't care much for the mags--they're pretty plain Jane and boring IMO. At this point I wish they weren't there! And actually, since the models are now louder than they were, the bleed through was probably proportionally more severe before. (this explains much for me) My problems are: 1) big time bleeding of the mags into the models through the VDI cable to the HD 2) slight bleeding of the mags into the models through the 1/4" ts cable 3) white noise in all the models (much louder if I have a "stomp box" in my HD chain, whereas the mags and other guitars are very quiet in comparison). I hear it more in the TS cable, but can still hear it in the VDI cable. If anything, the models should be quieter than the mags. I called MF and they were VERY cool about a return/exchange. He asked if I wanted to try another variax, saying that they don't mind if they ship multiple guitars until I'm happy. And since my 45-day trial period would be reset and the shipping would be on them, I'm very tempted. After all, if the JTV is good enough for Steve Howe to play in concert, it oughta be good enough for me. Plus I've still got 2 weeks, so I'm going to think about this some more. The tuners and the whammy bridge on this guitar are VERY cool. It intonates better than any guitar I've tried over the past decade--right out of the box it was set up perfectly, and unlike most guitars the interval from nut to fret 1 is perfect! I like the look (black/rosewood/blonde peg head) and the balance. But I'm more than a bit shaken by these electrical problems as well as the strings slipping off the nut and fretboard when I play. Another shortcoming: I notice a huge lack of sustain when playing lead. Is this related to the electronic defect(s) or a characteristic of the JTV-69? Anybody? Thanks!

Stevekc, mine's been set to variax. I just tried variax mag. It seems to be functioning as described. The next time I picked up my Variax, the dual tones in alt tuning were back. Bummer! When the problem flares up, the ghost tones are VERY noticeable, but I still record a loop in my HD to be sure. When it's working correctly in alt tuning, those acoustic tones aren't all that noticeable through the VDI cable (thus far). Either it sounds like one would expect, or I get complete, utter discordance. Yet through the 1/4" jack it was not so black and white for me--it was really more like shades of gray. This causes me to suspect that the amount of bleed-through of unaltered or incorrect tones through the analog output varies, which (if true) would no doubt explain why I and others were so confounded and amazed that acoustic tones were so loud. While in fact they are quite loud in this guitar, I'm not convinced that an attenuated false tone wasn't also electronically transmitted. I've been scanning other threads in this forum, and it seems as though my problem is not uncommon. There is also an issue with warble, which I've also experienced. Someone wrote that they found that the variax cable that comes with the guitar was bad. They swapped a good ethernet cable, re-flashed, and problem disappeared. Others wrote that they dialed back the firmware to previous to 2.0 and the problem went away. I will try these and report back.

I played through a normal amp without headphones, and it appeared that it functioned properly, but of course I heard the acoustic tones. I plugged into my HD using the VDI cable and the issue was present. Next I looked at Workbench HD and the mix was all the way over to model, so that isn't the cause. I re-flashed (the 2nd time) and didn't see any change with the alt tuning problem. I then played a bit in standard tuning, then went back and tried alt tuning again, and lo and behold, the dual tone problem had gone away! It's hard to imagine that re-flash would take some time to be digested by the variax, so I'm thinking it's an intermittent hardware issue. We'll see if it rears its ugly head again. Meanwhile, the tones I'm hearing suggest that perhaps I'm still getting the mags plus the models, but this is just my hunch based on a few minutes of testing with no prior experience with a variax. Everything sounds too much like the mags to me, but further exploration is called for before I can make any conclusions.

Thanks to you three (and all the others also)! As jbreher noted, it could be in my HD-500, but I'll first look at the Workbench HD screen per edstar1960 and reflash multiple times. As davidb7170 says, nobody else seems to be reporting this issue, which I find surprising. There are a lot of folks running their variaxes into HD-500s, I think. I'm also going to plug into a standard amp just for kicks (I use my HD almost exclusively as my amp).

After trying the VDI cable, I'm now having a dual tone nightmare. Problem is, I don't have a dual path set up like Phil describes above, yet I'm somehow getting false notes (or something). This ties in with my other question/thread, and I suspect there would be a common solution. Please help me in the other thread (maybe just read my latest post at the bottom): http://line6.com/support/topic/9837-my-new-jtv-69-has-bad-modeling/ THANKS!

Up until now I've been using a standard guitar cord to connect to my HD-500. Today I tried the VDI cable it came with, and holy cow! I've got dual tones all over the place. It seems as though the alt tunings are super-imposed on the regular tuning. There is no question about the dual tones, I even recorded a loop and heard absolutely no difference. The good news is that in standard tuning, the sound is much better with the VDI cable. With the 1/4" jack there was a lot of white noise with all the models--like too many distortion boxes turned on at once. But all is quite now, and the tones are much better. Still, though, I don't feel like I hear enough difference between the mags and the models, and even the acoustics sound pretty electrified. This has me thinking that I'm getting both at the same time in standard tuning too. So either there's a setting I need to fix or I need to try yet another re-flash or my variax is junk. After hearing this dual tone problem so very clearly today, I'm sure this is what I was hearing back on day 1 (last week). While the acoustic tones are certainly more noticeable than one would expect when using alt tuning, this doesn't explain it. So my problem is most prevalent (apparently constant) with the VDI cable, but it also occurs intermittently though a regular guitar cable.

Aha! So as a general rule for most uses, it's better to connect Variax to HD-500 with the VDI cable, then HD-500 to amplifier in the usual way, correct? (I haven't been able to pin down basic connection instructions, probably my blurry, tired eyes at fault.)

Phil, this requires a 1/4" stereo cable, correct? (I assume but have not yet determined as fact that the variax/ethernet cable does not carry "sound" to the HD.)

How do you achieve 2 distinct sounds through the HD?

I'd like to know more about how to determine if both modeled and mag tones are going through my HD-500. It seems like this might be happening intermittently, depending on how hard I pick, and mostly on the E-strings. I do know that the HD-500 by default creates patches with dual signal paths, but I've changed that, and all my patches are cloned from patches that had the second path deleted. So maybe this isn't happening for me?

I poked around last night and found what looked to be the official instructions for reflashing a jtv--FTFMS (follow the f_ing monkey, stupid), so I did. The phenomenon where I heard the dual tones on certain notes was gone, but damned if I didn't pick up on the acoustic notes! I had to put on headphones to be certain. Damn, this thing is RESONANT indeed! I can't say for certain, but anyone who wants to believe that all along I was hearing the acoustic tones combined with the altered tuning, feel free to do so. It may or may not be. I don't think this explains why on some notes I didn't hear the acoustic tones and on some notes I did, but the resonance of the Variax is so surprisingly loud, and it's possible that I hadn't tuned in to what I was hearing sufficiently. Thanks for your help, folks! Now, does anybody know how to get good fender and gibson tones out of the models? I use a lot of gain and crunch through my HD-500, and the variax isn't meshing well at this point.

No, it's not that. Both the intended note and the false note are at equal volumes. (plus I play with enough volume that the acoustic sound is nearly completely drowned out.)