cruisinon2

The real-world answer is that it will depend entirely on the headphones or IEM's in question (AND the person wearing them), and whatever amp/PA speakers you're running through live. What works for me, may or may not for you... it will forever be a crap-shoot. For every guy you find who says model "X" headphones translate perfectly to their live rig with little to no tweaking, I'll show you 3 others who'll swear on their mother that the very same combination resulted in horrifying sonic chaos from one to the other. There's really no "buy these and you'll be fine" solution to this one...too much of it subjective and dependent upon YOUR ears. What you can be sure of though, is that after a while you'll start to know ahead of time what tweaks you'll need to make between different monitoring methods, and the whole process will get faster... but don't expect to be able to create one set of patches that can be used for any and all circumstances. You're not gonna get that lucky, none of us do. I've got live patches, and headphone/ studio monitor patches...never the twain shall meet.

Ahh, leave it...grime gives it character. ;)

Exactly. They're both good units...and if you can't find a way to beat either of them into submission and get tones that you like, then the gear isn't the problem, and it's likely that nothing will ever satisfy you.

Lol...what a world. So Joe Douche's product is sub-par, but rather than spend money making it not suck, he hires people to $hit on the competition via social media. Success through mediocrity and subterfuge. Our species is doomed, lol. Makes me proud...;)

Whenever the wife throws the old stink-eye in the direction of new gear, I just wander over to her closet and start counting (aloud...) pairs of shoes. By the time I get to double digits, the conversation is over. ;)

It's inescapable... if it's not the amps, its the guitars. Years ago when I was entombed in music retail, I was always amused by the bored rich guys who dropped 3 or 4 grand on a new axe every couple of months, couldn't pluck out "Mary Had A Little Lamb" if you held a gun to their head, and babbled endlessly about "tone". But no matter...because everybody knows the more you spend on gear, the better you get, lol.

I keep trying to get Microsoft Word to communicate with my old typewriter...never seems to work. ;)

Who cares? Fanatical devotion to anything is creepy and weird...and the loudest voices always have the least to say, and often couldn't play their way out of a paper bag. You could argue with them, but to what end? You won't change any minds, and most of them are only squawking so much because they need to justify the exorbitant amount of money they spent on gear. Let 'em rant...and rot.

Well at least I'm not the only one losing my marbles...;)

wow...good show in here today, lol

Well that was quick, I rest my case...lol

Oh goody! I love teasers... Let the wild speculation and requests for more info (which shan't be forthcoming) commence! Will it be "better" than current Variaxes? Will I like it? Will it like me? Will it be out by Christmas? Will it come in chartreuse? Will it have Helix integration? Will there be a lefty version? (I'll go ahead and answer this one: No.) Have they solved the dreaded "piezo plink", or will we be treated to lengthy threads touting various home-spun "fixes" that involve chanting supplications to the gods whilst juggling chipmunks? What'd I miss? 😂

Lol...with any sudden weirdness, I always assume user error until it's proven otherwise. My personal favorite is trying to chase down the cause of complete silence after I've powered everything up...plugging in the guitar seems to help with that. ;)

lol... uglier than usual in here today. Anybody in here qualified to hear confessions? 😂

Hair is no longer a concern of mine...give me a lollipop, and I'll win a Tele Savalas lookalike contest. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress...;)

Everything. Or, possibly nothing. It's a bit hard to tell...your post lacks depth...;)

If this is what we're left with, does this mean that we've finally exhausted all possible Helix questions?...;)

But how many actually own one?

You announced that you're selling your MFC-101 because you don't like the way it works with the AF2 long before I said a word. Then a few posts later you proceeded to elaborate on why that unit is a "pain in the butt". I voiced a similar sentiment, questioning the redundancy of adding yet another piece of hardware to a rig that can already to do the same thing...yet somehow I'm now the bad guy. I didn't say a single word about anyone's "moral and/or artist merits", nor do I care. This is a practical debate, not a philosophical one. May the Force be with you...

Dude, the OP dropped in to pen his ridiculous "I'm giving up music and it's all Line 6's fault" diatribe nearly 3 years ago...he ain't reading this.

He sounds like crap. Many FX don't work well before the amp...delays, reverbs, chorus (on dirty tones anyway), pitch shifters, just to name a few...that's why FX loops exist. I wouldn't pay money for an amp without one. Distortion boxes, compressors, noise gates, and wah and volume pedals are all OK (and generally preferable) on the front end...

Half the point of having a unit like Helix or Axe FX, is they're both all-in-one solutions to dragging around an amp, cabinet, and pedal board...and now we're daisy-chaining the two of them together via 3rd party hardware? As a means to what end? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And frankly, if you can't dial in a sound that works for you with either Helix or Axe FX, then the gear isn't the problem...

Brace yourself for the inevitable "official" declaration that only an "authorized service center" is capable of setting it up properly...then ignore it. Fancy electronics notwithstanding, it's still a guitar. Set it up the same as you would anything else. Make it comfortable. A set-up is only "good" if the result is a guitar that's playable for YOU...and much of it is personal preference. Pickup height, if set too close to the strings can start to mess with the modeling, particularly the alt tunings. Single coils tend to have strong pole pieces, so if you're close enough to muck up the modeling, it's likely that they're also close enough to make setting the intonation difficult... which you obviously wouldn't want, even without the Variax guts as a consideration. The point? Treat it like any other guitar with single coils, and you'll be fine. Don't obsess over "specs". Common sense is just as good as a bunch "official" numbers.

Is that a two or three position switch? If it's 3, I've never seen that before. Usually it's just "bridged mono" vs. "stereo", bridged mono sending the power from both channels to a single output (usually channel A), and stereo with both channels and outputs functioning independently. If "stereo", "parallel" and "bridged" are all separate options, I don't know what to make of it...seems odd. I'm assuming from the specs I looked up that in this case: Bridged = 2×700W @ 4 ohms, and Parallel = 2×450W @ 8 ohms. That's all that's listed... There's no impedance selector switch, so you're stuck with it as is. They're only providing power ratings for 4 and 8 ohm loads...so if you're using a 16 ohm cab, you can expect to get considerably less power than the claimed 450W @ 8 ohms, but what the power output will actually be with a 16 ohm load, I don't know...and they're not saying. Will it work? Yes, sound will come out. Will you damage anything? Depends on what the amp is actually pushing out @ 16 ohms. It's a 300W cab, so as long as you're not exceeding that, it's fine... but unfortunately that's the unknown in the equation. Matching impedance is always easier...then there's no guesswork.

Don't hold your breath. Variax guitars in general don't exactly fly off the shelves, much less one with a baritone scale neck and styled to appeal to a very specific demographic. I'm a bit surprised they made it at all...and judging by the fact that days to weeks routinely go by without any posts in the Shuriken forum, I'd say guys aren't exactly lining up to get one.