This is my first post in this forums - I never had any problems with my variax, but last week it started to drive me crazy...
I have a JTV-89 with fixed bridge, purchased December 2011 and I really love this Guitar, but since I started to try different tunings naturally (not modeled within the variax) the sound got terrible. The deeper I go naturally (I love low drop tunings) the more problems I get when I switch on the Variax electronics. As mentioned above, these problems are ghost notes or bad resonances or whatever you wanna call it, when I switch to different tunings or to a 12-String model. It sounds like the modeled tone is a half or full step above the note i am playing.
I tried reflashing, rollbacks etc and had no luck. I cleaned the bridge and did a completely new setup (with extra high action so no fret buzz can occur at all) and had no luck. I also tried the factory reset directly on the guitar (holding down model poti while putting 1/4 cable in etc.) with no luck... The next step I want to try is to restring this beauty with stock gauge 10-46 and see if the problems still occur (I still have to order a 10-46 Set since I play in Drop C with very thick strings and don't have normal gauges at home). I am 1000% sure these ghost notes weren't there when I made the purchase. I recorded demos and played it in many sessions (using 10-46 strings in standard tuning, sometimes a half step down) while always using the variax electronics with different models, virtual tunings and 12-Strings and there NEVER was anything like that!
It's been a few weeks since I played my variax and I can't tell exactly when these ghosts came in my guitar because I play it in the natural tuning 90% of the time. Then I picked it up last week (before I made the HD update) and I noticed these strange notes as I wanted to try a 12-String in open A - this was the first time I noticed it. I hoped the HD Update would fix this but... you know...
I don't know if this is a help or something, but maybe it has to do something with different naturally tunings or the string gauges... I opened a support ticket as well two days ago.
what do you think about this point? Do you others that have the same probs play in different tunings or with different string gauges?