cruisinon2

Oh goody...a brand new way to suck at tapping!😉

Not a big tremolo user, but it works with my delays...🤔

Aside from waiting around for someone who happens to have purchased the same tuners to respond, is to remove one of the stock ones and measure the diameter of the hole... then try and find the specs for these tuners somewhere, perhaps from Fender. The description from Amazon is useless unless it specifies the diameter of the hole required. Or look for a better set of tuners...all the good aftermarket stuff, Schaller, Sperzel, Gotoh, etc. tell you the home diameter that's required.

This is nothing new...opinions expressed as objective, indisputable truth are a daily occurrence around here. In a nutshell: "My finely tuned perception makes my assessment "correct"...and if you believe otherwise, you are deaf, stupid, or crazy".

IR's are do-it-yourself, 3rd party add-ons....but if I we're you, I'd start with the Helix cabs until you get a handle on the unit. IR's are a nice option to have, but there are tons of them out there, and it gets overwhelming quickly. Get comfy with Helix first...it's easy enough to get sucked down the endless tweaking rabbit hole with the stuff that's already in there.

And I'll stand by mine. Attempts to turn subjective opinion into objective truth, based on nothing more than sanctimonious declarations about your "golden ears", proves nothing to anyone but you. Subsequently dismissing anyone who doesn't clap like a seal at your every utterance, serves no purpose other than to inflate your ego and further justify an opinion which you're already convinced is Gospel. Have a wonderful day.

And there it is. "If you disagree with my assessment, it's because your ears suck, and you couldn't tell the difference between a tube amp and a Cuisinart." Lovely. How wonderful it must be to be you. 😂 It's been enlightening. Next...

Maybe, but as long as I live I will maintain that the incompetence of others should not become my problem. If you don't know how to do something, don't. I know nothing about transmission repair. Thus, in order to avoid having a car that doesn't move, I bring it to someone who does. But deliberately making the car harder to fix in order to dissuade me from screwing with it, is a stupid strategy that benefits nobody...but I digress. You can get away with that design if the guitar lives in a static environment where the humidity doesn't change much, but if you're somewhere with wide seasonal swings, then you're screwed. Taking the neck off repeatedly causes excess wear and tear on the mounting holes. Even if you're careful, there is a finite number of times that those screws can be removed before the holes get stripped, and have to be doweled and re-drilled. Warmoth used to have the access at the heel for all their necks...first one that I bought in the mid 90's was like that, and the above scenario is exactly what happened. Sometime in the early 2000's they started offering the "vintage modern" design with truss rod access at the headstock. As nice as their necks are, had they not made that change, I'd never have purchased another one. It's not worth the aggravation.

Lmao...how do I feel about them? My complete and utter indifference cannot be measured with existing technology. And if they took them all away, or even relocated them, there'd be a riot over that too. "What happened to all the pinned threads?!?!?!?!??!?!?! Blah, blah...righteous indignation...how dare they?!?!?!?" 😤 Talk about first world problems...I guess the last firmware update was too recent to start whining "where's the new firmware?" just yet.

Warmoth's fancy "modern" construction necks with their side-of-neck truss rod access are a whole other discussion...but surely you must have run across a vintage Strat or two in your travels. They all used to have the truss rod access at the heel. It's ridiculous and archaic, but that's the way Fender made them way back when...don't ask me why. And for a price, Warmoth will still make you a brand new neck just like those ancient ones (their "vintage" option)...I assume the target audience are those who have a soft spot for old, stupid designs that turn a 4 second adjustment into a 1/2 hour ordeal...and that's assuming that the first adjustment you make is sufficient. And how often does that work out?

Yes, anything can break... but some things are far more durable than others, and in this case I'll bet on the rocker switch over a sh!tty, thin wire power supply any day. After 30-ish year's of gear buying, I can't recall a single failed power switch, whereas I have had to replace innumerable comically priced power adapters.

Well that is one lesson they did seem to learn. I do enjoy Helix's power switch...and the fact that there's no 6" wall-wart, costing $40 or $50 to replace when it inevitably dies...

Don't think I've ever been annoyed, or even "disappointed" by a firmware update. Indifferent perhaps, if it was just a minor bug fix that didn't affect me either way...but generally speaking there's always something worthwhile in them. The ones who get progressively pissier with each update are usually those who think it should include a panini press and lifetime membership in the Jelly of the Month Club. That demographic will never be happy...

You can do that too... you can assign multiple FX blocks to the same footswitch. Save the patch with each effect toggled on or off as desired, then have one footswitch flip everything on or off as needed. It's just a more abrupt change between tones...I grew to like the expression pedal smoothly fading one tone out, and the other one in. No clicks or pops...works great live. You can also position your FX blocks in one path or the other, leave them turned on, and the effect will fade in and out with the expression pedal too.

Set up a dual amp patch... two paths, one clean, one dirty. Assign the channel volumes for each path to the expression pedal, rather than toggling them on/off with a footswitch. For the "heel down" position, set the desired channel volume for Path A, with Path B volume at "0"...then do the for opposite for "toe down" position. This way you can morph seamlessly from one to the other with no audible drop outs. Ran most of my HD patches like that for years before I Helix-ed myself a while back.

And unfortunately, the tones themselves will leave even more to be desired. What you'll find is that description is often completely divorced from reality on your end. It's not anybody's fault, and any given patch might sound great to the good samaritan who posted it, but there are too many variables that affect the end result for there to be any real continuity from one player to the next...guitars, pickups, and especially what you're monitoring through, just to name a few. Customtone seems like a great idea, but mostly it's a waste of time. You can easily end up downloading 100 or more patches for every one you end up actually using. It's infinitely faster to just do it yourself.

When in doubt, reflash the Variax firmware. It's pretty much the only user-serviceable "fix" when these guitars start acting weird. Could also be just a dirty pot...contact cleaner can work wonders. That's worth a try, too.

If they're building your neck from scratch, then you can request any diameter you want for the tuning machine holes...its just a matter of finding out the diameter of the holes on the stock neck. Pop one out and measure it. Or save yourself the trouble and get a better set of locking tuners. Warmoth makes it very easy... they list the diameter required for various different brands of tuners on their site. Check out Planet Waves auto trim tuners... buy now, thank me later. 🤘

Delirious with glee...

We have a winner!!! Dead thread resurrected after 4 years 2 months and 22 days!!!! This has to be a record...😂

Merry Christmas folks!

Why is it always the default response to assume that a product is being discontinued, merely because a single retailer ran out of stock, and/or decided not to carry that item anymore?

There is no right/wrong/should/shouldn't with modelers. I did the exact same thing for years with the HD500X...because I liked it that way. Even running into a power amp and Marshall cab, using just the amp model with no cab sims sounded horrific to me. So I did what worked, and in the end that's all that matters. The same is true of Helix...try it both ways and see what you prefer. If it sounds good, it is good. How you got it there is largely irrelevant.

If...and only if...both units have an FX loop. Guitar into the Blackstar, then FX send into the FX return of the Spider.

Everything that lives one the floor gets dirty...and the bottom of your shoes aren't exactly operating room sterile either.