cruisinon2

I lost consciousness about a month into that post... no idea how long I was out. Who's the President? ;)

You'll have better luck (and probably and easier time) ripping the inards from a Tesla and cramming it all into a '72 Pinto chasis...

Just seems like much ado about nothing to me...I'd get it if the devices that have pictures of each modeled unit allowed the user to tweak parameters on the image itself, "turning" a gain knob on a touch screen, etc... at least that would be closer to the tactile experience of working with actual amps and pedals... but that doesn't seem to be how it works. They just give you a big silly graphic to drag and drop onto your "pedalboard", and that's it... then you're right back in the digital realm, scrolling through lists of parameters to tinker with. I fail to see how that's any more "creatively stimulating" than doing the exact same thing without the image of the fuzz box on the display. Just my 2 cents...to each their own, I guess, lol.

I'm curious what you plan to do with the pictures... We're in the business of creating sounds, no? So who gives two wet farts what a model's real world counterpart looks like?;) I've never actually seen half the stuff that's in there in person anyway, and pretty pictures certainly won't make anything sound better, lol. Maybe it's me...

All Variax models were officially consigned to the dustbin of history a couple of months ago. While it took some time for them to be formally discontinued and announced as such (see link below), it's basically been a dead platform for nearly a decade, as the last update of any significance was sometime back in 2014. Whether or not there will be a successor is anybody's guess... but my money's on "no", as previous iterations, despite having a rather devoted cult following, never really caught on with the masses. Yours is a relatively uncommon situation when compared to much of the guitar playing community. Most guys are one trick ponies who gravitate towards a fairly narrow range of musical genres and tones, and they simply don't have the need or desire for a product like the Variax. The guitars themselves are also notoriously finicky, and require a great deal of tweaking out of the gate to get usable sounds, which I suspect turned a lot of people off if they weren't particularly tech-savvy, or willing to put the time in. There was also a huge disconnect between the marketing and reality for a lot of folks. As evidenced by the numerous threads on the topic, a lot of guys bought them thinking that a booming jumbo acoustic tone would come billowing forth from their Marshall 4x12 with the flick of a switch, because they were blithely unaware that typical guitar speakers simply lack the frequency response necessary to do that, and it would never happen no matter how many knobs they fiddled with... so they blamed the technology and the guitar, when the problem was the actually everything else BUT the guitar, lol. Collectively, it all adds up to a tough sell for Joe Average Guitar Player. Without significant demand for a new version, I'd say the odds are slim at best... there's just not enough money in it for L6 to bother. That's just my 2 cents, though...I have no inside knowledge one way or the other.

All of the above... and then just accept the fact that it may have some weird issue(s) that only crop up under certain circumstances. It's a complex device that does lots of different things... and to quote Capt. Montgomery Scott: "The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain";)... so while it's a good idea to give it a test run beforehand, no matter how thorough you think you are, there's just no way to audition everything with just a few minutes of noodling. Used gear is will forever be a gamble...

You can't... you'll know you're at or near the DSP limit when almost any additional amp or effect you try to add becomes "grey-ed out" and unselectable. Keeping a running tally wouldn't really help you much anyway... having some counter tell you there's "17% DSP remaining" isn't gonna prevent you from hitting the wall. There's either enough room for everything you want to shove in there, or there isn't. Doesn't much matter how you find out...

The HD/HX designations are essentially meaningless... little more than marketing blather for press releases and product descriptions. All it does is allow you to roughly determine the relative ages of different products. The current generation of devices has carried the "HX" moniker since Helix debuted 8-ish years ago. Prior to that it was "HD"... but do they actually mean anything? Not really... but they need some way of announcing "this is our newest $hit" to the masses. Eventually some new platform will put Helix/HX out to pasture, and a snazzy new designation will take its place. In practical terms all you need to know is that nothing is backwards compatible... you can't load HX models onto an HD device. Occasionally older "legacy" models are ported over in the other direction into newer devices, but it doesn't happen very often, and generally only if they were super popular, and after enough people have all clamored for it.

Or just cycle through them in HX Edit, and you don't have to bend down and fiddle with knobs...

This has been a "set it and forget it" enterprise since day one... and even if that weren't the case, I seriously doubt that you'd ever see any of the rabble being promoted to "Sheriff of Nottingham". First of all, it just ain't L6's style. And second, the last thing we need around here are more swelled heads ;)

Lol... good luck. The very people you're seeking action from are never here ;)

Won't help you level things as much a you think. Keeping patches level is all about perceived loudness, not measured amplitude. A patch that's midrange heavy will always seem louder than a tone that's more scooped, even if they're both registering exactly the same on a dB meter. It's just how our brains are wired...blame biology, thank Fletcher and Munson...;)

Can't swing a dead cat without hitting an A/B box... pick your favorite, they all do the exact same thing.

Yup... and this time around seems to be worse than usual. I counted no less than 9 separate threads of update woes over the last few days. Either nobody ever learns, or the need for instant gratification is the most powerful force in the universe. Hard to say, lol...

Coder 1st Class, Philip A. Schumpfgeek will be pleased to know that you appreciate his efforts ;)

Alexa? Really? Count your blessings that Amazon isn't airlifting a pallet of guitar strings onto your front lawn every time you power up...;)

I think "chewing on tinfoil whilst caught in a thunder storm" is closer...;)

I love the smell of Firmware Russian Roulette in the morning... It doesn't have to be this way, folks, lol... this happens with practically every update. DON'T be an early adopter, unless you like being a guinea pig. Barring some sort of "my life depends on updating Helix TODAY" scenario (and frankly I cannot fathom what might cause such a situation), just wait. Your Helix is still every bit as good as it was yesterday. Give it a week, perhaps two. By then, courtesy of everyone who volunteered to be cannon fodder, the bugs will either have been squashed, or they won't... but at least you'll know what the score is. Either way you'll have saved yourself hours of aggravation and wasted time, and you'll still have a functioning device... while the "I need it now!" contingent goes quietly (well ok, maybe not quietly) insane. So rock on, if it still turns on... If not, we now return you to your regularly scheduled stress-induced alopecia ;)

It wouldn't be odd... it would be miraculous, lol. It's hard to get directions to a place that doesn't exist...

Sure... for session guys who have to be EVH one minute and Joe Pass the next (and can actually pull that off), the Variax is a dream come true. But the other 99.97% are generally only interested in one or the other. Most guitar players, even the good ones, are one trick ponies... and yes, I'm including myself in that lot, lol

There's lots of reasons why they never really caught on... but mostly I think it's due to the fact that Joe Average guitar player just doesn't have needs/wants that are sufficiently diverse to justify the purchase, as those you've described... and that makes it a hard sell on a scale that would make it worthwhile for a big multi-national corporation to bother with. It's also a device that requires a great deal of time and tinkering to get the desired results, particularly with the acoustic tones... and I think that was a turn off for a lot of folks who aren't that tech-savvy and/ or knowledgeable about what makes different types of guitars sound the way they do in the first place. The latter was exacerbated by the way it was advertised, which convinced a lot of people that a realistic jumbo acoustic guitar tone would come flowing out of whatever electric guitar amp/cabinet setup they already owned, with just the flick of a switch on the guitar. Many of them, having no clue that the frequency response of typical guitar speakers simply can't do that, blamed the resulting crap-tastic acoustic tone on the Variax... there was a new thread complaining about this every 11 minutes back in the day, lol. Plus, most of the guitar playing universe gravitates towards a particular genre, with limited crossover outside of whatever it is that they like to hear and play. There just aren't that many guys out there who are equally at home playing a dobro, banjo, and shredding their way through "Matter of Puppets". The Variax concept was ambitious, and while not without its limitations, was largely successful. I just don't ever see it being widely adopted by the masses, even if there is a next generation at some point. My guess is that the bean-counters came to the same conclusion some time ago...

The only thing that surprises me about this, is that it took this long for the axe to officially fall...(pun intended) ;)... development ceased long ago, as the last update worth discussing was in 2014, if memory serves. That's an eternity for any product that's heavily tech-dependent.

That's nothing... after your free trial is up, you have to send them a complete set of dental records and a DNA sample. ;)

Like anything else in life, your mileage may vary. There are always lemons, and somebody gets stuck with them. Nevertheless, I stand by what I said. The overwhelming majority of users are not touring pros, and their gear will not be subject to the ravages of life on the road. If they gig at all, it's every third Friday down at Walt's Trout Hut, and they have far more to fear from spilled beer than anything else. Not to mention the fact that half of the guitar playing world is still afraid to give a truss rod a 1/4 turn... they're not gonna confidently go futzing around with the Helix's inards, and especially not when there isn't a compelling reason to do so in the first place. And even if I'm completely wrong about all of that, appealing to L6 for some interior preventative maintenance cleansing protocol is a compete waste of time. In a million years, they'll never openly encourage customers to tinker around inside their products, because too many would f*ck it up beyond recognition.

This is a solution desperately in search of a problem... I've owned my Helix for at least 6 years now, and I've had numerous similar floorboards, midi controllers, and pedals of just about every conceivable variety over the years/decades prior... and not once have I ever had the need to open one up to clean anything. I suppose if one regularly performs out in a wind-swept desert, then you might have some issues eventually... but that aside, this simply isn't something that most people will ever need to do. And not for nothing, but we live in a society where it's necessary to put warnings on plastic bags, so Joe Average doesn't stick his head in it....encouraging folks to start poking around under the hood of these things looking for a problem that isn't likely to exist, is a recipe for disaster. It's the very LAST thing that L6 themselves will ever encourage, and they're certainly never going to provide you with something that for many, would end up being a "How To Destroy Your Helix in 3 Easy Steps" manual...