cruisinon2

Yes. Trial and error with the closest model available... and you've already noted which one that is.

The whole world is out of everything, from computer chips to shoelaces. "Supply chain problems" are the new go-to excuse for the lack of pretty much anything. It's a great answer, too... possibly the best bull$h*t excuse ever devised, because as long as the item you're looking for materializes before the end of time, then whomever fed you that answer was "right". Good luck getting a response that isn't vague, unactionable nonsense... We now return you to your regularly scheduled "new normal". Enjoy!

I think we all would like to see it evolve... but given the years-long plateau, I'd say that one, or perhaps both of the following factors are at work here: 1) They haven't seen enough progress with any technical hurdles that have contributed to the various issues that have plagued these guitars over the years, and they don't want to market another iteration that has some/ many/ all of the same problems. 2) The dollar signs just aren't there. It was always a niche product, and I suspect that their market research is telling them that there just isn't enough interest out there to bother. My guess is it's a little of each...I was totally enthralled with mine initially. But the fascination waned after a while, as the limitations became more apparent. They're not "bad" guitars... but they're not great either. They do some things well, but others not so much. Mine mostly collects dust, now.

The JTV's debuted more than a decade ago, and the Standards share the same modeling engine. In tech terms, anything that's 10+ years old is ancient. The last update of any significance that actually contained anything "new" (besides bug fixes and/or behind the scenes processing that no one would notice anyway) was in 2014... cross your fingers if you like, but the currently available models ain't getting a face lift....

Ok, I bite... what does that mean?

I've been hanging around this forum for many moons, and I've never heard of an Mk1 Variax model... doesn't mean they don't exist, but I'd make sure they're not offering you some other product entirely. One never knows anymore, and they wouldn't be the first retailer to try and pull a fast one...

There's really no answer to this question, as it's entirely subjective and dependent solely on what you're trying to achieve, tone-wise. If you want a SRV-style Texas blues tone, then choosing a Les Paul and a Marshall wouldn't help you... you'd go with a Strat and a Fender amp. But that doesn't imply that one combination is any "better" or "worse" than another... they'll just yield different results. If you genuinely don't know what your looking for, then trial and error is really your only recourse, until you find a combo you like.

Locking up is never normal...If it's only happening with one specific patch, then I'd say that the patch itself is likely corrupted. But if it happens on multiple patches, then it's If it's the latter, you might as well bite the bullet and open a service ticket, as it's not likely to be something you can deal with yourself.

Uh...the term is "zwiggabibble"... who the hell is gonna know what "squank" means?

You can poke around in there until the end of time and you're not likely to figure it out. These guitars are touchy, and can easily go haywire if everything isn't "just right"...generally speaking, they work fine until one day they don't. As for getting an answer to any technical questions regarding the inner workings of the electronics... don't hold your breath. Everything under the hood is proprietary, and the Mothership isn't gonna tell you anything beyond, "If it's broken open a service ticket, or take it to an authorized service center".

SPOILER ALERT: If you defer every purchase because you're waiting for "the next big thing" to come along, you'll be in a constant state of waiting and you'll never buy anything. SPOILER ALERT#2: The next big thing IS coming... and sooner than you think. The pace of technology is hard to keep up with today... there's always a new toy, if not from Line 6, then it'll be somebody else. And maybe that thing would have suited you better... who knows? So what's the moral of the story? Any high tech toy you buy is a gamble... maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't, and maybe that thing will be rendered obsolete 2 weeks after you buy it. There's no way to predict it all. If something suits your needs and you want it, buy it... but second guessing the decision forever is pointless. Unless you really enjoy being in a perpetual holding pattern, then by all means, waffle away...;)

Post this on the Helix forum... it'll rot in here forever and nobody will see it.

It's really a non-issue at this point. While the Shuriken is a the "newest" Variax iteration, it's running the same modeling engine as the JTV's and the Standards (the only difference being some of the factory supplied alt tunings), and there hasn't been an update of any significance for years on end. Don't hold your breath for any future updates to this platform... development ceased some time ago.

Another marvelous creation brought to you by Customtone, a musician's most trusted source for limitless frustration and wasted time....;)

In case you hadn't noticed, the whole world is out of everything from shoelaces to baby formula... brought to you by your swashbuckling "leaders" in gov't. Welcome to 2022... enjoy! And the smart money says that high-tech toys are likely to be at the bottom of the list of things to get back on the shelves...

Mostly a non-issue going forward, I expect. We spawned an entire generation that never goes outside, and can't make eye contact because their whole existence is virtual. Half of them are allergic to air, and the other half are fat and diabetic by the time they're in middle school. Bugs, dirt, and campfires are scary and "dangerous". Just queue them up for their turn in the safe space, and make sure to celebrate all their "disorders" on the evening news... Oh, and be sure to pay your taxes so their existence is financed... after all, their student loans were expensive, so it's everybody else's responsibility but theirs, now.

The same reason you "need" that 312th pair of shoes and the 38th handbag to go with them, dear...

Well its possible that the ones you're seeing are US made versions, which are laughably overpriced at ~$3800 (or something close to that, I forget... but that's in the ballpark) even here in the states. However, even if they're asking $8K for the Korean ones, this phenomenon is nothing new. Practically anything on eBay coming from Japan will invariably cost orders of magnitude more than it should... doesn't much matter what the item in question is. Who's paying these absurd prices for stuff is a mystery, but I've seen it repeatedly over the years, for an astonishing variety of products.

You can't get 12 beers from a six pack... Mono is mono. When everything is piped straight up the middle, there is nothing to "widen". If you want a stereo spread, then you have to run stereo fx, end of story. For live use though, you really don't want to. 99.97% of the time it does more harm than good, because the only one in the audience that'll hear everything is the one guy standing dead center between the mains... everybody else will only hear half of the delay anyway.

Ok... an acoustic IR, perhaps... and I'll go ahead and assume that there's no amp block in that chain, either. But good luck with mic/cab sims placed before an amp block. That'll be forever useless.

Well one certainly wouldn't want to put the IR as the first thing in the chain... or anywhere else before the amp block for that matter. Yes, we all like to repeat the "no rules in modeling" mantra, but blanket statements like this overstate things a bit, because you really can't just toss your signal chain in a blender and let the chips fall where they may....because nine times out of ten you'll end up with a boiled turd as your end result.

I like potato chips.

"Let me tell you a story about a little fat boy that nobody loved..." ;)

I've witnessed pro-life debates that didn't go on this long....

While some single coils pickups are worse offenders than others (and those in the JTV's fall squarely in the "worse"category), you've basically just described every Strat on earth. They're all noisy, and positions 2 and 4 tend to be worse... it's the nature of the beast.