cruisinon2

These are all what-ifs and assumptions. Regardless of claims made by retailers, the "set-up" allegedly provided prior to shipping is mostly a fantasy. Most simply do nothing, and those that do seem to have a very loose definition of "set-up". Half the time I suspect it means that a high school kid making minimum wage plugs it in, and if sound comes out, it's designated "all good". Now let's assume that isn't the case, and that someone who actually gives a damn, AND just happens to know what they're doing, attempts a set-up based on some theoretical destination...what difference does it make if it's going to Death Valley or a Louisiana swamp? Breathtaking morons aside, no one is storing their guitars outside...they're indoors with some degree of climate control. We can guess all day long where Earl from Des Moines keeps his thermostat set, but most of the time we'd be wrong. Bottom line is, when you take it out of the box, it'll take a couple of days to adjust to the environment...if you leave it on a stand and don't play a note, 3 days later something will have changed. There's no point in setting anything up until it gets where it's going.

Damn near 100% I'd say...easy it ain't, even for someone familiar with modelers, but the sounds are in there. Your job? Find them...;)

Believe me, they're not oblivious to it. This is hardly the first thread full of "the tuner sucks" rants (Granularity anyone? ;) )...others having been commented on rather extensively by at least one L6 "official". I just don't think it's very high on their list of things to do...

$1000...unreal... and you were upset about the set-up, lol ;) It's things like this that drive me to Warmoth to build my own guitars...been wanting a Tele lately. For the same, if not less money, I'll get something that's almost guaranteed to be prettier than anything Fender will sell me (unless one is willing to pay exorbitant prices and go the "Custom Shop" route), and I won't have to wonder if the guy who assembled it was asleep at the wheel. I couldn't care less what it says (or doesn't say) on the headstock...I want a functional instrument, and to know that my money wasn't spent on something that I then have to pull apart and fix. If I'm doing the work anyway, might as well do it from the get-go.

In theory, yes...however, no two speakers will ever sound identical. Just depends on the PA in question, and how closely it mirrors the frequency response of whatever you choose as your stage monitor. There's only one way to find out...buy and try.

Any generic case that fits a Strat should work. Don't bother with Strat-specific, form-fitted cases, as the body shapes are slightly different.

Nobody who frequents a L6 forum is gonna tell you that BOSS makes a better product...

You don't mention how you're amplifying Helix, but if you're not running an FRFR speaker(s), you can forget about getting anything that resembles a convincing acoustic tone. You'll never get there with a traditional guitar amp or cabinet, and you'll lose your mind trying...the frequency response just isn't there. As the saying goes, "you can't get there from here". As for the piezo "plink" on the lower strings...good luck. Any one unit either has it, or it doesn't. Alleged "fixes" have been debated to death, are mostly ineffective, and even when one works it's usually peculiar to that particular instrument. A universal solution has eluded affected Variaxers for years.

Why involve the Spider at all? If you want to play through headphones, just use the headphone jack...tweak specific patches for use with headphones. No matter what you do, a patch created with an amp (ANY amp) will never sound the same through headphones, and vice versa. The frequency responses are worlds apart.

While there's no excuse for faulty switches on brand new instrument (Yay quality control!), I learned not to expect playable out of the box a long time ago... from anything, no matter how much you've paid for it, or who's selling it to you. But especially not from an instrument you're buying sight unseen via the internet. Who knows how many planes, trains, and automobiles it's been on, (under no doubt delightful environmental conditions) to get to your front porch? Even guitars you buy in a retail outlet are rarely if ever in playing condition on day one... they've either been hanging on the wall for some indeterminate period of time being poked at by children in between periods of collecting dust, or they're rotting in the stock room in a box. My buddy's wife surprised him with an Ernie Ball EVH signature model for Xmas...the "US Platinum" version, a $3K guitar. The neck had so much back-bow, it looked like Captain Hook's prosthesis.

3 cheers for quality control. Without looking at it, all anyone can do is guess, but it certainly sounds like it was set up by someone who had no idea what they were doing... It could be just about anything. Not enough neck relief, one or more high frets, poorly cut nut slots (too low if you're buzzing all over the place), etc. The list goes on...

Use the global EQ if you can't wrap your head around the percentages. At least there everything is in Hz, as the Lord intended...

Doubtful.

Why not? It's been at least 6 minutes since some bunch of disaffected crybabies have unleashed phony outrage at s convenient, soft target that they don't actually care about, except for the social media opportunity it affords them to appear "concerned and correct" to the rest of the Twitterati...;)

Can't ride two horses with one a$$... Besides, the real cost is your sanity... after a while the money doesn't matter so much. ;)

Ours is any instant gratification society...which has given rise to the following world view: "Give me exactly what I want, right now with the touch of a button...if I see it on YouTube, it must therefore be simple for me to replicate with little to no effort." If only...

Lol...

Which is all well and good if such a set-up happens to be comfortable for you...otherwise it's nothing but a handicap. And please forgive the pun, but all this fretting over millimeters (or fraction thereof) in action and it's perceived affect on tone is ridiculous. I keep mine set up the way I like it...the same as the rest of my guitars. Forcing yourself to contend with a set-up that doesn't suit you in pursuit of "better tone", is horribly misguided,imho. If you're not comfortable with an instrument, you tend not to play very well...and all the magnificent tone in the world will not rescue your performance. Faults and idiosyncrasies aside, if these things were really that sensitive, they'd be almost unusable out in the world. It's still a guitar...

Well that's it... if they can't retrofit the USB port to charge my phone with the next firmware update, I'm going Fractal. ;)

These videos crack me up. Doesn't matter how many of them you watch, or who made them. ALL modelers can be made to sound good, or like garbage. However, trying to extract some sort of objective truth from that which is entirely subjective, is a fool's errand. You either like a piece of gear, or you don't. And much of it rests on whether or not you know what you're doing, and are willing to put the time in to learn how to get that unit (whatever it is) to produce the sounds you hear in your head. Put me on the track at the Indy 500, in a car with a couple of million dollars worth of race-tech engineering in it, and I'll still come in dead-a$$ last...but it wouldn't be the car's fault. It'd be because I'm not a race car driver. Same thing applies here.

Cause(s) aside, if a universal solution existed, we'd all know about it by now. This ain't exactly a new problem....what we do know, is that the plink has been blamed on everything from gingivitis to sun spots, and the "it's just a set-up issue" is ridiculous at face value, and always has been. Any remedies that have actually produced results have been highly variable from one guitar to the next. It's great that the heavier gauge string worked for you, but you're not the first guy to try that. It's hit or miss, just like EVERY other "fix" that's been discussed around here.

20 to 30 ms is getting into slap-back echo territory...way too much to play with (unless you're willing to "learn" how to be terrible ;) ). It'll drive you nuts.

I used to think that too. Except in this case, the guy who designed this particular axe is a djent-y, high gain, palm muting, chug machine... yet he experiences no plink issues. If he can palm-mute until the cows come home, everyone else should be able to as well. There are only so many ways to apply that technique...

Its unfortunate, but I'm not surprised. It's been an issue for years, and to the best of my knowledge the guts are the same as the rest of the current Variax models. If you get one that works, great... if not, it's a constant headache. Seems that until there's some fundamental change in the technology that addresses this issue, there will be plinky Variaxes aplenty... and yet it's always a mystery to the powers that be. Everybody's plinking guitar is the first one they've heard of. Everyone is Patient Zero...astounding. ;)

Warmoth all day long...