cruisinon2

If you've already used it with an acoustic guitar amp, while that unit might not technically be FRFR, it's guaranteed to be a whole lot closer to true FRFR than the DT...if it didn't have a wider frequency range, it would be useless for amplifying acoustic guitar. In practical terms, and depending on the unit you choose to compare it with, you may not notice much of a difference between that acoustic amp and something's that's "real" FRFR.

Directed to no-one in particular: YOU. DON'T. NEED. ANYBODY'S. SPECS. For this, or any other guitar. Set-up preferences are exactly that... preferences. The only thing that isn't subective is intonation. The rest is up to you. This is fortunate, because we're never going to get any specs anyway. And not for nothing, but for those who have no idea what they're doing, specs are about as useful as an elevator in an outhouse. But I digress... I can get away with low action and a neck that's nearly pin straight, because I use a heavy gauge (11's...sometimes 11-52) and I've got a fairly light touch. I like the tight feel this provides. Obviously this won't suit everyone...but that doesn't mean I've set it up "wrong", no matter what some spec sheet dictates. If your pickups are close enough to the strings to screw up the modeling, then they're also very likely to be pulling on the strings enough to make intonating the guitar difficult, if not impossible...especially for those who have a 69, as single coils tend to have pretty strong magnets. Obviously, this would be an issue even in the absence of modeling. In other words, it's a guitar. Treat it like one.

Yes sir! Ever so sorry sir! I will be sure to clear everything with you first from now on.

A "good" retailer? I'm not sure that exists...;) Seriously though, Sweetwater is pretty good. 30 days to return stuff, no questions asked, and for the guitars, the photos they post are the actual instrument you'll receive. They even give you the serial numbers. That's about as good as it gets. But yes, Variax guitars are a niche product, and most places are not gonna have dozens of them laying around. Not sure about the black 69 in HSS...but I don't think they're making the 89 without the Floyd anymore.

Not a good analogy...I have 3 kids. And even if I didn't, lying to a toddler about your stash of Hershey bars, and refusing to divulge the recommended set-up specs for a guitar because you think it will prevent simpletons from deciding that the best way to lower the action is stapling the strings to the fretboard...are hardly analogous. ;) It's 4th grade arithmetic vs. differential equations. Stupid people are gonna f*ck things up on their own, with or without your help. Handcuffing those of us who are sentient, because you think it will protect the Forest Gumps of world from themselves, is asinine. Let them play in traffic. Eventually the problem solves itself. No one should have to suffer fools...

Hallelujah!!! This...and nothing but this. You don't need meters or flashing lights. You need ears and and IQ slightly larger than your shoe size. Where's the Tylenol?

Oh goody!!! Another volume discussion. If it's too loud, turn it down. If it's not loud enough, turn it up. Lather, rinse, repeat...why is this EVER a conversation?

I take it all back... clearly it's a magical concept. Aristotle is kicking himself for not thinking of it first.

Well it's a blue burst... that should be good for half-credit, lol. It's a custom piece made by a guy named Woody Phifer. He's got a small shop in Phoenicia NY, up in the Catskills. Makes a lot of arch tops, too. He always finds beautiful wood...

Well in this particular instance, and for reasons I've already detailed, it's neither here nor there, because one simply does not need "factory specs" to do a proper set-up. However in general terms, allowing the stupidity and ineptitude of the lowest common denominators among us to dictate a policy that denies EVERYONE access to information, is just plain stupid, and it solves nothing. Choking off the exchange of information helps no one. Ever. The suppression of knowledge had never yielded positive results, and often results in problems far worse than whatever was wrong in the first place. Yet this is now how society "solves" problems. "Zero tolerance" and blind adherence to policies that are doomed to accomplish nothing from the start. This is but a small example of how we are actually engineering failure on a huge scale. Withholding set-up specs will not prevent idiots from damaging their guitars...it's nothing but wishful thinking.

You're not building anything, though. You're playing it. Setup specs are of little use if the result is a guitar that's uncomfortable in your hands. Shoot for whatever works for you. I haven't paid for a set-up in decades. I do it all myself and never looked up the manufacturers' set-up specs, and every guitar I own plays just fine. Obsessing over numbers will get you nowhere, especially if it turns out that the "0.024" recommendation is the correct, published number. It's obviously too high for your taste...then what?

This never happens, except by dumb luck. Claims that retailers make about setting up the guitar prior to shipping notwithstanding, it would amaze me if it actually happens. It's a sales pitch. And I suspect that if anything actually is inspected beforehand, it's a 17 year old kid plugging it in to see if any sound comes out. If it makes noise, PRESTO! Set-up complete, and off it goes. I've purchased several guitars online over the last few years, and not a single one was ready to go out of the box. A couple of them required considerable tinkering. But let's assume I'm wrong about all that, and a genuinely experienced tech gets it playing perfectly before slapping the shipping label on... what good does that do? The guitar will then spend the next several days to a week rattling around the back of one or more trucks, under less than ideal conditions. Wood moves...sometimes a lot, and sometimes quickly. You can utterly destroy a neck in the trunk of a hot car in a matter of hours. Pick up a guitar that you haven't played in a while. Odds are something will need to be adjusted, and that's for an instrument that's been sitting in a case, relatively unmolested. Shipping one half way across the country is a crap-shoot at best.

Luthier, yes... especially if you have no idea what you're doing. However, I would argue that any competent luthier is more than sufficient, be it also an "authorized service center" or not. Depending on one's location, such a center may not be within any reasonable distance. And personally, I think it's an enormous disservice to tell people that shipping their guitar out of town for a set-up is their only option. Any improvements from the out of town set-up are likely to be un-done in transit. It's the most impractical suggestion I've ever heard.

Strict adherence to factory specs is both silly and unnecessary, imho. The two things that matter are whether or not the instrument plays comfortably for you, and how it sounds. Action and neck relief are almost entirely personal preferences, influenced primarily by how hard you beat on the strings. As with any other guitar, you'll want to keep fret buzz to a minimum, as the piezos are sensitive and tend to react poorly to excess buzzing. But if it feels and sounds OK, then who cares what a feeler gauge tells you, or if the number it spits out is the same as some set of theoretically "optimal" specs? It's just not that critical. These guitars can have weird issues, but they're not Fabergé eggs...set it up however you like it, and everything will be fine.

Does such a thing exists anywhere else in nature? Never seen one...

Trying to use other people's tones IS the problem. It simply doesn't work...and there are a thousand reasons for it. The top 3 variables are the guitar and pickups, how it was amplified when the patch was created (amp/cab, headphones, studio monitors, a large stage-ready FRFR speaker, etc) and the volume at which it was dialed in. You'll never know the answer to most of those questions, and even if you did, the odds having the exact same stuff is essentially zero. Duplicating the settings is a complete waste of time... it will never sound the same on your end. Start from scratch. Forget FX until you've found an amp/cab/mic combo that gets a basic tone that you can live with. Then you can add the window dressing. Yes, the process sucks and can be genuinely maddening until you hit on a recipe that works for you. Its also possible that this just isn't the gear for you. It happens...I've forgotten half of the gear I've gotten rid of overt the years.

You could add a corkscrew, an ankle holster for a snub nose .38, and a potted ficus if you want...the question would be, for what possible purpose?

Sounds like this was a recent purchase... if so, and assuming that you don't enjoy aggravation and needless suffering, send it back to that pit of despair from which it was purchased and start fresh with a new instrument (from somewhere else) ...this one is gonna be nothing but an albatross.

Well don't count me among the "everyone"... and unfortunately, nobody can really tell you if you're choosing the right options. We're not hearing what you are. Modeling is a little weird and somewhat unpredictable from one player to the next...strike that...it's very unpredictable. There are a thousand ways to set up your patches, and numerous variables are involved. Quite often what works for one guy, won't for the next. For proof I invite you to download ANYTHING at random from Customtone, and tell me if it sounds even close to it's description. I'll bet you a hundred bucks that it won't. The biggest mistake to make is to assume that one amp model or another "makes sense" for a particular goal. Chances are that you'll get results just as good (if not better) from something else, once you're comfortable with the unit... which is both a blessing and a curse. There are so many options with these devices that it's super easy to go down the rabbit hole of endless tweaking, and forget to play anymore, lol. Also, the cab and mic choices are a bigger part of your sound than the amp model, imho. I've been working with the POD long enough now that I can dial in a consistent tone from pretty much any amp model, just by choosing the right mic and cab. But if any one amp isn't getting you what you want, try a dual amp patch... mix and match. The possible combinations are so numerous, you'll never try them all. Plus, the audience neither knows nor cares anything about tone. Unless you fall off the stage, or drop your guitar, they'll never know the difference anyway. ;)

That's not gonna help you much either. Customtone is full of patches you can download, and you'll find 99.97% of them utterly useless for a multitude of reasons. There are too many variables... the guitar, the chosen monitoring method, and the volume at which the patch was created being the biggest contributors. I'm not using an Alto...I run an L2T as a stage monitor live. While they may both be full range, they will not have the same response curves. At home it's either headphones or studio monitors...and I have different patches depending on the application. I'm afraid there's really no way around the experimental phase. You'll get where you want to be a whole lot faster creating your own.

Using an FRFR speaker requires some getting used to. You can't treat it like a guitar amp or cabinet, because it isn't. You're dealing with a FAR wider frequency range, and much flatter response than any guitar amp on the planet. EQ-ing needs to be done quite differently than you're probably accustomed to. The low cut filter on the cab parameters are your friend. That should take care of the boomy low end . You might have to back off the bass significantly on the amp block as well... some of my patches the bass is at less than 10%, which is generally not something you'd ever do with a "real" amp. Fizzy highs are best tamed with a mid- focus EQ after the amp block.

Yup. Barring actual malfunctions, the biggest variable from one day to the next is you. The gear stays the same...

Nobody can answer that...all you can do is try and see if it helps. The problem tends to vary in severity from one guitar to the next, some hardly suffering from it at all. Likewise, the various "fixes" (if you can even call it that) you'll see mentioned have had varying degrees of success as well. There's only one way to find out... Also, you wouldn't necessarily have to change the entire set. If you're comfortable playing 10's, just swap out the low E, or perhaps try a set of light top/heavy bottom strings, which are usually 10-52. Not that there's anything wrong with 11's...I've had them on all my guitars for years, but they will take some getting used to, especially with the longer scale length, because that increases the string tension as it is. Your fingers will be a little sore for a bit, especially if you bend strings a lot.

Price doesn't really mean much. AKG 240S now sell for about $75, are quite good, and have been a studio mainstay for more years than I can remember. I've also used cans that cost 5-6x as much that I didn't particularly care for. It all depends on their frequency response, the application for which they were designed (passive listening vs. mixing/monitoring), and of course one's personal preference. Regardless, you've got no useable cans, and you're already out $200. If it were me, I certainly wouldn't be gambling yet another hundred bucks on the same thing, especially when there are numerous other options from which to choose. Any one unit crapping out before it's time is always a possibility...but two of the same make and model developing the exact same problem would seem to suggest an underlying design flaw, cheap parts with a lack of durability, or miserable QC practices... or any combo thereof.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that they're just crappy headphones...same issue with 2 units sounds like a QC problem to me. It's either that or you're beating the daylights out of them and destroying the wire. ;) Plus, while I know nothing about these cans specifically, I do know that Tascam is generally NOT the first name that comes up in headphone discussions (or the 2nd or 3rd, for that matter). In all likelihood, you can do a whole lot better for whatever money you spent on them...just my 2 cents. AKG, Beyerdynamic, Sony, etc are the ones you see mentioned most.