snhirsch

I just went through the same exercise. The company must operate on a shoestring. Spelling errors on the website, lack of meaningful information and slow e-mail response do not inspire a lot of confidence.

<sigh...> Why does Line 6 not consider putting overload indication on the various virtual processing stages? This idea has been near the top of your "Ideas" forum since day one. I'm not a DSP applications person, but I am a software engineer with 30+ years of experience. It seems to me that it should be possible to set a flag somewhere on a digital overrun. Then, have the display logic show, e.g. a little dot or marker on that stage at the next refresh. An indicator feature has no hard real-time requirements and shouldn't add any latency.

All I hear is a tiny hint of splcing artifacts. As clay-man points out, this is unavoidable.

Achieving stable tuning on any floating tremolo system can be a bit of a black art. A couple of things to look at: - Is the bridge plate absolutely level when you look in from the lower strap button end? I've seen a lot of cases where folks try to adjust treble and bass string height by cranking the pivot posts to different heights. That's a non-starter on this type of bridge. It needs to be absolutely level with the height adjustment made only at the bridge pieces (or in extreme cases by shimming the neck). - Try removing the middle spring and retensioning the remaining two. Sometimes you get more linear behavior that way. While you have the spring cover off, check very closely for anything that might be binding or rubbing against the guitar body. On older 69s the cable dressing was a particular problem. - Dan Erlewine and others recommend that you bend the hook at the bridge end of the tension spring to match the angle of the hole it seats in (when tuned to pitch). You don't want the spring being torqued laterally as the bridge moves back and forth. This can be a bit tedious to do, since you need to relieve tension in order to get the hook out each time. I think it does make a difference. - When you look at the bridge from the side, the rear should be about 3/16" higher off the body than the front. I find this gives the best stability - YMMV. - More expensive and invasive options: Replace the plastic nut with a lubricated Graphtec. Install a MagLok. The MagLok is not a magic bullet for tremolo stability problems, but if you have all the other issues addressed it can help get you that last little bit of accuracy when setup correctly.

Sounds like 1/2 of the Buzz Feiton tuning system.

When the modeling circuitry is off, you are dealing with a conventional unbuffered instrument.

Heh. Iron Butterfly used a Hammond B-3 and Leslie belonging to our keyboard player for a 1975 gig in Glens Falls, NY. I drove it over in the truck. Wonder if we met that evening? If you're pushing 60 the timing seems about right.

Yes, just amazing that any sound at all comes out of a string that light! I dragged out my Strat this weekend and put D'addario EXL115s on it. What an amazing difference! Notes just leap off the guitar and they are not as tough to bend as I feared they might be. I'm sold. If I'm not having any aches or pains from the additional tension after a few more days of playing I'll put them on the JTV69 as well.

The late, great SRV used 12's IIRC. The man must have had furniture clamps for fingers :-). I am going to try putting 11's on my Strat and see if it's even feasible. If that works out, JTV is next.

The bigger the string, the better the bite! I'm trying to work up the nerve to try 11's on my JTV-69.

Either that or there is something going wrong with the profit-protection mechanism that guards against the use of third-party batteries.

Just be aware that off-the-shelf Cat5e cable is designed for semi-fixed usage. It's plastic jacketed and won't have the flexiblity or durability of a proper rubber-covered portable cord.

<sigh...> Please actually read the message thread before you dive in? I was corrected almost immediately and fell on my sword over the statement.

Thanks! How silly of me to search the notes for the word "Spank" :-).

Has the issue with Spank 2 (not being correctly updated from Workbench HD) been corrected? Not a word about it in the release notes.

Why not use both, then? Setting the HD500 inputs to guitar doesn't stop it from sending control information on the VDI cable, does it?

You do not specify what your virtualization environment is (Vmware? Virtual Box? Other?). I can tell you from experience that Vmware's emulated sound card for WinXP guests causes problems with the Line6 USB driver when attempting a firmware update. Line6 code is convinced that there's a midi interface out there and hangs trying to access it. That said, I have had no problems running Workbench or WorkbenchHD in a Vmware Win XP session on my Linux box. Still, it may be worth disabling the sound card in the guest machine configuration, restarting it and trying Workbench. As a general rule, latency between the virtual machine and host hardware will vary as a function of other system activity. If you are doing something that's very timing sensitive this can indeed cause issues. I use the Floorboard tool in a Win7 VM to talk with my Roland GR-55 and it occaisonally crashes during data transfers. Most of the time I can get what I need to do accomplished, so I put up with it.

If you modify the guitar to connect the + and - battery terminals to ground and ring of the 1/4" jack (instead of the internal PCB) I have to believe that any physically compatible 7V battery will work. The OEM arrangement uses a digital handshake with the battery to ensure you have a gen-u-ine Line 6 battery, but since the guitar will power from 7V DC on the cable it ought to run from battery there as well. Disclaimer: I have not tried this and do not intend to since my Line 6 batteries still hold a charge and I'll be moving to an XPS mini soon.

Precisely. What they don't know won't hurt you.

Stewart-McDonald makes a kit precisely for removing broken tuner screws. It's very clever, but may be overkill for working on only one instrument.

I wonder if you are hearing the bridge pieces hitting the side of the cast metal they sit in?

It's not a pretty situation. Line 6 appears to have nagging quality-control issues in two primary areas: The selector knob on JTV-69s and the selector toggle switch on JTV-59s. The latter seems to be far more serious since it's not trivial to replace that part. This is why the purchase by Yamaha is so important. Line 6 is at the point in the growth of a company where I believe they were running out of operating cash. This explains why defects in the v2.0 Variax firmware have not been addressed (probably short-staffed on software developers or unable to budget for a suitable contractor) and why much-needed redesign of switches and knobs hasn't occurred. Getting an injection of cash from the much larger Yamaha Musical Instruments group should help in all areas. The concepts and algorithms behind the Variax are sound, but the execution has lagged. I look forward to this changing for the better!

Coolness! Glad to be of help. My JTV-69 started doing this about two weeks after I brought it home.

Heh. I've often described it as having all suppleness of a garden hose.

This issue will get fixed at the same time the tolerance issue with the JTV-69 model/mag switch does. Like the old New Yorker cartoon: "How about never? Does never work for you?".