cruisinon2

There are pills for this kinda thing...😉

Because Odin wished it...😂 Who knows? You'd have to ask the developers.

This seems odd...my 69 has 4 bolts. One is offset relative to the others due to the sculpted heel, but there are most definitely 4 of them. Either way, the swap is easy...put a Warmoth neck on mine as well. I too chickened out and had a luthier I trust do it for me, lol...but if you're careful, tapping and drilling the holes is really no big deal.

Dont hold you're breath. It's a rapidly aging product line...verging on "ancient", by today's standards. Helix is clearly their main focus now. They'll probably keep selling and supporting HD in its current state for a while, but I wouldn't count on any significant updates.

Downloading them works fine...Helix doesn't like them, however. Gives me an error "target not supported" when I try to import them. Who knows?

With all 8 footswitches set for snapshots, the only way to toggle between different patches is to set the two up/down switches all the way on the left to "preset". But this only allows you to go up or down 1 patch with each click...so to switch from patch 1A to 5B, for example, it's a whole lot of tap dancing. If you really need that many snapshots per patch, you'll have to store them all in the order they'll be used live so its just 1 click to the next one. Unless there's some other magic way to do it that I'm not aware of... For me, the best configuration for playing live is 4 patches on the top row of footswitches, and 4 snapshots at the bottom. I rarely find the need for more than 3 snapshots per patch anyway... usually clean, dirt, and a lead.

Anybody else have trouble getting the IR's Along with this patch, there are two IR files...anybody else having trouble importing them?

Still news to me... oh well, lol

No idea that thing or anything like it existed... but obviously it's another option.

Or better yet, a small electric shock if you're about to do something stupid... think of all the time it would save in here. 😉

Yes, I've since upgraded to a Helix. IR's can be a useful addition to the toolbox. I have a few that I've experimented with, but I also find the cab sims in Helix to be perfectly usable, and more tweakable than an IR. An IR is a fixed entity, whereas the cab sims in Helix can be paired with multiple mic models and distances, early reflection parameter, etc. I'm not a jazz guy at all, but most of the companies making IR's offer tons of different kinds of cabinets, big and small. Finding what works for you is largely trial an error, and will probably require spending a few bucks, as the free offerings are usually quite limited.

Well that's not entirely true. It is possible to use IR's with the POD, but it's a pain in the a$$. It's accomplished by disabling the POD's cab sims, monitoring through a DAW, and using an IR loader plug-in. Rosen Digital has one that can be downloaded for free... sorry, don't have a link at the moment. To the OP: An IR effectively replaces the cab and mic sims in the POD. Disable the those, leave the rest of your chain alone, and with the aforementioned plug-in and the DAW of your choice you can get an idea of how IR's work. Sources include 3 Sigma, Ownhammer, RedWirz, among others (not sure about the spelling on that last one). They're all over the web, just do a quick search. Most companies will offer a couple that you can download for free, as well as bundles that you'll have to pay for. Ultimately, the POD is not really suited to using IR's, as they're not stored on the device, so you're stuck having to use it in conjunction with a DAW, making live use difficult...unless you want to be running a laptop on stage. So in the end, yes...if want convenient IR use, you have to look at getting a unit that supports 3rd party IR's, like the Helix.

I've yet to see ANY factory produced guitar that didn't need some degree of adjusting right out of the box, regardless of price. I've owned dozens of guitars over the years, and unboxed 100's more serving out my music retail sentence...outside of extraordinary dumb luck, it just doesn't happen.

It's no more difficult to adjust the relief on a Variax than it is on any other guitar on earth. It's wood and a truss rod...subject to the same environmental changes as any other guitar, and will respond to adjustments in the same manner. That being said, while it's not difficult, if you're not comfortable doing your own set-ups, don't. Damage is easily done, no matter who's logo is on the headstock. Any competent luthier can do it, fancy guts aside, it's still a guitar...

Fair enough...it's not a feature I use. I've got 2 Strats with a blend pot that allows the neck pickup to be blended with whatever else is selected, but it simply adds or subtracts neck pickup output. Adding more neck pickup doesn't subtract anything else...I thought this was the same arrangement. Either way, the proposed method of switching from mags to models is still needlessly convoluted. It's like flying NY to LA via Tokyo...

Wow...that's a really good price. They're nice monitors.

One man's "ridiculous" is another man's "awesome". No matter what the default settings are, somebody's not gonna be happy. Every default could be set right down the middle, and there'd be weeping and gnashing of teeth over that too. Damned if ya do, damned if ya don't...

Half your tone depends on the speakers you're playing through. You don't have to go broke to get a decent pair of studio monitors, but dont skimp either. 3" speakers will likely have difficulty with low end, forcing you to crank the bass, and you'll probably find that patches created with them will be very boomy when played through anything larger. Some guys will tell you that even 5" speakers don't have good enough bass response, and some probably don't. That being said, I have a pair of JBL LSR305's with 5" cones, and I have no issues getting enough bottom end. You can't rattle the windows with them, but that's not really what they're for anyway. Usually around $300/pair... maybe a little less if you catch a sale.

It's very easy to be fooled by this. If you're not playing at or close to stage volume, then you're hearing the strings acoustically. Everyone does, all the time...they're inches from your head. It's easily ignored until the physical tuning and what's coming out of the speakers are no longer the same pitch. I didn't want to believe it either, and was convinced I had a defective guitar. Fortunately, it's easy to prove otherwise... record something direct into a DAW using the alt tuning, and listen to the playback. If the playback sounds normal, then there's nothing wrong with the guitar.

Just "Bob Ross" it...😉

"Good" guitar tone is entirely subjective...as such, "sure things" absolutely do not exist.

The solution is pretty much always the same, whether you're using amp model distortion, or a dirt box...low EQ cuts to deal with the flub, and high cuts to deal with the fizz. This can be accomplished any number of ways, from using an EQ block, the low and high cuts under the cab parameters, mic choice, input impedance etc. etc... finding what works best for you is mostly trial and error.

Full Compass stocks some JTV replacement parts. Haven't seen the pickups specifically, but I haven't sought them out either. You never know...

No matter what you buy, you'll have to get used to how to tweak your tones. Running into ANY kind of FRFR speakers, whether it's a PA, studio reference monitors, or a pair of quality headphones, you'll will almost always find the need to apply low and/or high frequency EQ cuts to get rid of excess the low end muddiness, or high end "sizzle" common to this kind of rig. With a "real" guitar amp, the speakers themselves and the construction of the cabinet they're in apply these cuts naturally, but modeling is a very different world. There is no magic speaker solution that's gonna give you exactly what you want right out of the box.

You're chasing your tail. If you want to use the mags, use them. If you want to use the models, use them. And no, you'll never get one to sound exactly like the other... that's the whole point of having both options. Selecting "preset" when creating a patch is not exactly climbing the Matterhorn... it's a mouse click. Hit save, and move on. Or you can continue torturing yourself, trying to create a "custom" model that's doing nothing more than taking the scenic route to turning the modeling off and using the mags. Hell, reaching down and turning the modeling off manually is easier than what you're proposing...