cruisinon2

This is a $500 solution desperately in search of a problem... besides, if I get super-bored one day and decide to void my warranty, I'll just do it for free with a hammer.

You win. Hanging up the guitar destroyed it. Don't play it... it might burst into flames next.

You've just described every electronic device on earth that has ever died. Everything works fine until it doesn't. If I sneeze 4 times while loading the dishwasher, and then it craps the bed and floods my kitchen, it doesn't mean there's a correlation. That's "after this, therefore because of this" reasoning...if you threw the thing at the wall and then it stopped working, OK... but I fail to see how merely hanging it up could induce a malfunction.

You could spend the rest of your life soliciting suggestions and get a different answer from everybody you ask. What are your needs? Playing at home, live, both? Jazz, Slayer, or a Duran Duran tribute act? Bottom line is, there's no one answer, for any guitar... be it a Variax, Tele, or Gretch Silver Jet. Want to do it all? Buy a Helix....

This has nothing to do with the JTV...take any other guitar you own, and try and bounce back and forth with the same POD patch, listening through FRFR studio monitors vs. a "real" guitar amp like the DT, and they're never gonna sound the same. The frequency response of the two different speaker types are worlds apart, and you can expect the tone to change, often drastically. You're battling physics...and you will lose every time. It may not be practical, but unless you want to be constantly editing patches every time you need to listen through something different, you're gonna need separate banks of patches for use with different kinds of monitoring. I have patches for my studio monitors, headphones, and then the ones I use live. Every time you change what you're listening through, your tone will change. It's just the nature of the beast...we're all in the same boat.

It's rather unlikely that any one maneuver pulled the connections loose... stuff like that tends to happen gradually, and could easily be the result of not having been seated properly in the first place. Mine is almost 5 years old now, been to countless gigs with no similar issues. Sounds like you've solved it anyway. I wouldn't loose any sleep over it.

Apples and oranges, man... ain't happening, there's no backwards compatibility. And even if you were to try and recreate every patch by transferring settings manually, there's zero guarantee that the tone would be even remotely similar... they're very different devices, a couple of generations apart.

When will "then" be "now"? ;)

That's a weird one...upload the patch, either to Customtone with a link here, or just attach it to directly to a post. That way others can load it up and see if it behaves the same way.

Ahh yes... the Eternal Question... lol If all else fails, there's always displacement volume... we just need a pint glass, a graduated cylinder, and something to catch the overflow. ;)

It's been years since art school, but I was thinking more along the lines of a tasteful artist's rendering in charcoal, or perhaps pastels...;)

I can settle this... both of you drop your pants, and I'll get the tape measure. Eyes front, no talking...;)

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but turning it on is generally step 1... lol. ;) A USB connection is all that's technically required... though there other options, such as connecting through a separate audio interface. But even if you go that route for the audio, you'll still need the USB connection to update firmware and backup your patches. Download the HX Edit and Line 6 Updater software. The updater will walk you through installing the latest firmware (version 2.54). Beyond that, the rest of the adventure is up to you in terms of how you intend to monitor everything.... headphones, studio monitors, through a "real" amp etc etc.

You may find the need to do both. The Strat models tend to be a little anemic on the B and high E strings, while the low end sometimes punches you in the face. I have the low E and A string volumes down in the 50-60% range for Strat models, and the high strings left at 100%. Other models like the LP don't require quite as much tinkering. It varies from model to another, and from Variax to Variax... piezo outputs can be all over the map.

Ok, I'll bite... what does any of this mean?

Get the JTV69 instead of the Standard... solves that problem. And far be it from me to discourage you from trying one out first, but many of the typical issues that arise in the Variax world require the edit software to address, and you won't be able to do that down at your local Megalomusic. My initial impression with mine was "I just wasted $1K". If all I had was a few minutes of noodling in a music store, I would never have purchased the thing...and I would have missed out on a versatile instrument that I've come to like very much. Most of us had to spend a fair amount of time getting used to these guitars... just the nature of the beast.

"New" doesn't guarantee "better". Especially with something as entirely subjective as guitar tone...you couldn't get 10 guitarists to agree on what "better" even means. There are still plenty of guys running older firmware because they just prefer the older models. This forum is lousy with threads discussing that very topic. We guitar players are all crazy in our own special way ...the "newest" version of anything may or may not float your boat. Advertising is.... well, it's advertising. "Try our new firmware, it sucks!" doesn't have much of a ring to it. ;)

It's not a defect... it's a "feature". ;)

Results will vary widely when using a "real" guitar amp/cab or combo to monitor the POD. Much of it depends on the chosen output mode on the POD, and exactly how you have everything connected...straight into the front of the amp, into an FX return, the 4 cable method, etc etc. We'll need to know some more details about your set-up to offer any advice....

Huh? Double tracked guitars are almost always panned hard left and right... you never leave them up the middle. Hard to do that without stereo.

Translation: "If you come home with a $1K guitar, I'm gonna waltz in with $2K worth of shoes." ;)

They're just a little different...especially with the acoustic models. You might find it requires playing with a lighter touch than you're used to. Piezo outputs also tend to vary, affecting individual string volumes. This is easy to compensate for with the edit software, but usually requires a bit of work to get everything balanced, and it tends to affect different models to a greater or lesser degree. Set-up is also critical... intonation and the height of the mag pickups can affect the alt tuning algorithms. Piezo pickups are also very sensitive, and tend to pick up sympathetic vibrations and fret buzz more than mag pickups do. What would be an acceptable amount of fret rattle, inaudible through the amp with mag pickups, can easily make the models sound like garbage. Again, I like mine...I find it extremely versatile, especially live. To be able to go from acoustic to electric with the click of a footswitch, or change tunings without having to grab another guitar is fantastic. But I wouldn't give up all my other guitars for it... or even one for that matter. It's good, but it's not that good.

I wouldn't go selling off other guitars until you find out if you actually like the Variax... as much as I like mine, not everybody gets along with them, no matter how enticing the concept of a couple dozen guitars in one looks on paper. If you can't try one out before you buy, order from someplace like Sweetwater that has a 30 day, no questions asked return policy... spend some time with it before you unload other gear... especially if it's a guitar you like. Variax is not everybody's cup of tea... 

The regular amp is a lost cause...FX return, front end, doesn't matter. It's the speaker that's the problem. The acoustic amp on the other hand should theoretically yield decent results, but as always ymmv. Never tried one with the Variax, personally, so I've little to offer on that front... but through Helix and an L2T they're quite useable. Perhaps not as pristine as the real thing if you're sitting and playing in a room by yourself, but live to crowd of Friday night drunks, it's more than adequate... also covers up the fact that I can't play real acoustics worth a damn... ;)

What are you playing through? If it's ANYTHING but some type of FRFR speaker(s), you'll never get a convincing acoustic tone. Trying to use those models with a traditional guitar amp is futile...the frequency response is far too narrow, and it'll just end up sounding like an anemic, clean electric guitar.