cruisinon2

Pleased to meet you...apparently there are two of us. 🤣

Everything you quoted above illustrates quite nicely why the "fix" some are fantasizing about it's likely. How does one go about fixing something, when they can't even get a consensus on whether or not it's broken in the first place? If they "fix" it for the vocal contingent who've all decided it's awful and unusable, how much do you all want to bet that it'll end up "un-fixed" for those who don't currently have an issue with it? They'd just be trading one group of pi$$ed customers for another... Yet another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. If I were L6, I'd carry on as if Helix didn't even have a tuner at this point...eyes front, no talking. What tuner? lol... 😂 No matter what they do, somebody is gonna be pitching a fit. They can't win...

"Utilize" how? It's a toggle switch, they all do the same thing...buy whatever pickups float your boat.

Best to wait until you get it, and see what firmware is already in there. 2.3 has been around for a couple of months now. Plus, the 2.5 update is dropping in a matter of days... you'll find several threads around here discussing it ad nauseam. May as well wait for that.

Well there are no magic universal settings for anything, whether it's headphones, studio monitors, a PA, etc. If you gets sounds that you like through other means, then as you've said, it isn't the patches. If none of the headphones you try can produce anything useful, then perhaps there is problem with the Helix's headphone output... anything is possible. You can always open a support ticket and see what they tell you.

Then it's not the headphones... You should be able to "force", for lack of a better term, a decent sound out of just about any chosen monitoring method...it's all about how you got go about setting up your tones. Now obviously, using cheapo headphones or lousy PC desktop speakers will admittedly make creating patches harder, but if you can't get a decent sound from ANYTHING, then the problem ain't the speakers or headphones.

That's kinda what I thought. I had a Fernandez Strat knock-off years ago with a sustainer in it...you really could essentially hold a note forever, like an eBow. Don't see how a pedal could reproduce that.

News to me... but I suppose anything's possible. From it's description though, that pedal creates feedback at low volumes. Seems like it's not quite the same as forcibly inducing a string vibration for infinite sustain... then again I've never used the Freqout, so perhaps I'm wrong. Either way, a Variax still ain't gonna help.

A Variax isn't gonna help you, nor will anything else. Those pickups work by projecting magnetic pulses at the strings, forcing them to vibrate. No digital effect can reproduce that...the string is either moving, or its not.

And you COULD wrap your guitar cable around your neck 3 times, so it won't get pulled out if you step on it onstage... you'll knock yourself over backwards and pass out, but the show goes on! 😂 Some folks hafta take the scenic route...

If this is your main concern, I'd say you'll be far better off with the JTV...I can't see the tone control producing a convincing tremolo bar dive with a pitch-shift effect...you'd have to be very precise in manipulating the knob, and depending on how "tight" that knob is, you might have trouble rolling on and off fast enough to achieve the desired effect. It's likely more trouble than it's worth.

Me, me, me...more, more, more. Oh, and Jeeves...have it delivered yesterday, with a bag of chips. When you buy a toothbrush, Colgate is not obligated to send you new bristles. There is no free lunch, folks...you bought what was in the box. A one time transaction at a price we all decided to pay. Didn't say "And coming soon: x,y, and z at no extra cost!" on the box mine came in. No matter how much you spent, or how entitled you feel to more, you just aren't...none of us are "owed" a blessed thing.

Lol...indeed. He's a super nice guy too. Met him at an open mic in NY last summer. He's no slouch...studies a lot of jazz.

And when I was a kid, I wanted to play center field for the Yankees...nobody ever gets everything they want. You may as well resign yourself to the fact there is no such thing as an all-in-one solution to anything, anywhere on this earth, no matter what the ad copy says, or what you've decided some device "should" be capable of. It's never going to be possible for any one device to satisfy every need, desire, and whim of all who acquire one...nothing's that good, and no two user's needs are identical. Don't care what you buy, there is always gonna be some feature that you wished was different/ better/ chartreuse/ or smelled like rose hips instead of lavender.

Yes, all the modeling is in the guitar itself, and you can run into any amp on earth with a 1/4" cable...BUT, you're stuck relying on the battery to power the guitar, and without using a VDI connection to a compatible L6 product, you have to control everything manually from the Variax, such as changing models, tunings, etc. Using a compatible amp modeler like Helix or POD HD allows all of that to be done with the click of a footswitch. Not sure if the Spider is equipped to do that or not. Also, if you intend to use the acoustic models in the Variax, some sort of FRFR speaker(s) is a MUST. The limited frequency response of a traditional guitar speaker cabinet or combo amp, is simply not capable of producing convincing acoustic tones. It'll just end up sounding like a clean electric.

Lol...sadly, I can stick my arm out the window and knock on the neighbor's front door, too. ðŸ‘

Cleary you've never been to a Sizzler in Florida when the early bird special-ers arrive...😉

See 2 posts above yours...volume doesn't much matter. You're not gonna be heard in the next zip code with any pair of small monitors. If you're limiting yourself to these 2 choices, go with the Yamaha's.

Good luck with that...it probably would have worked years ago, before we lived in a world of comically unrealistic expectations, driven by the ridiculous notion that essentially everything is now a birthright. For many, if they've spent $5, they feel that they're entitled to $10 worth of stuff. For those folks, there's no such thing as "enough", and satisfying them is impossible.

This guy is long gone... hasn't responded to anybody in years. https://btpa.com/?target=search&mode=search&substring=Variax&including=all&brandId=0 You can order any length you want... how fast is anybody's guess.

Tube driver, tube comp, and dimension chorus.

The end of the "where's the update?!?!?!?!" posts. 😂

Lol...HUGE can of worms, man. Stand by to be pilloried for suggesting that perhaps those who are having issues don't know how to use a tuner.... Can't wait to see how this one plays out.😉

I've changed my mind. The tuner is indeed an unmitigated disaster of Biblical proportions. Not only are we all $1000-$1500 poorer, but we should all be overcome by waves of paralytic fear that it may never again be possible to play in tune. On the other hand, if that ever starts to seem silly for some strange reason, we can just tune up with something else, until there's a fix from above...

Amen...but it'll never stop. We've all been conditioned to believe that we have a right to free stuff on demand. When it fails to materialize instantaneously, someone or something must be blamed, and run out of town on a rail...Only after we've all Tweeted our trampled feelings to the world, and absorbed sufficient fake sympathy to steel us until the next existential crisis (mostly from people we've never met, who actually couldn't care less if we fell off the earth tomorrow), can we then move on to tomorrow's phony outrage.