allan

I found an easy way to temp-fix this issue to be sure it's grounding. I took some pieces of copper tape I have for insulating the cavity of regular guitars, and simply laid them across the top of the saddles touching the saddles and piezos. Works like a charm! http://imgur.com/gallery/jSonDYd

Sorry all, I've been away for awhile. I was getting no sound and no connection to computer with everything set up perfectly. I even took it all apart, cleaned every piece, checked for bad solders, and put it back together- no joy. I eventually found a replacement coffin on eBay and snatched it up. Problem solved. Would love to know what caused the original issue, but I'm just happy to have it working finally. Tl/dr- replacing the entire coffin assembly fixed the issue.

As for the cables, I grabbed a brand new RJ-45 cable, workbench interface, VDI cable, and power pedal when I bought the guitar, so I'm quite sure the fault isnt anything outside the guitar. I'm inclined to think that psarkissian was correct about the solder points oxidizing and now just have to convince myself not to attempt to resolder it myself, lol. That should be easy enough, so long as inter-island shipping isn't more than the guitar is worth (which is possible).

I like to think I have some experience with electronics, but yes I think oxidization is likely the issue (judging by the state of the coffin itself). Thank you for the referral, I'll call them.

Upon greater research (and I'd been doing quite a bit), I see how this post could be problematic as it comes quite close to asking "How's this thing work?". I'm honestly down to two options if I can't get this figured out on my own. 1) Send it off to someone who is qualified to fix it. 2) Buy a cheap, working 300 with a crap body and swap in the coffin to this amazingly beautiful 600. So, if nobody can help me troubleshoot, does anyone know what the closest qualified Variaxuthier is to me (Hawaii)? Or know where I can find a viable replacement coffin?

Hello all, This is my first thread. I recently bought a used Variax 600, and am having a hard time with it. I bought all the necessary accoutrements to hook it up and when I plug it into the Workbench interface I get green lights on the interface. When I plug it into the power supply it switches from Orange (no connection) to green (good connection). However, when I go to open up Line 6 Monkey or Workbench on my laptop, they don't see the guitar connected, only the Workbench Interface. I took the coffin out and took the whole thing apart, cleaned it, threw some stickers in between where the PCB sometimes shorts with the coffin (although that didn't appear to be the problem) and then reinstalled it after reseating all the connections. Same issue. I'm in Oahu (no possibility of driving to someone who services these), and am fairly competent with a soldering iron. Really, I could just use some help narrowing down where the issue could be. The potential for these guitars is amazing, and I'd love to get one working, but I am also not disillusioned enough to imagine it will be simple.