cruisinon2

It shall forever remain one of life's great mysteries....

At the very least, the factory patches should be there, and amongst them all, just about every available effect is used. If you didn't tell it to keep your patches during the re-flash, then anything you created would have been deleted. If you have various FX turned on and you can't hear them, that's another issue altogether, and it will likely require service.

Exactly. You've made my point for me. The vintage guitar market baffles me. Vintage anything for that matter. Absurd values are placed on old things for stupid reasons...and it's all arbitrary. The only thing dumber are the "relic-ed" guitars. Build a perfectly good instrument, then pound on it with brass knuckles and drag it behind a truck for a mile or two, all so the buyer can PRETEND that he has an old guitar with "character". That'll be $2800, please... We play this game with everything from cars to kids toys. Hell, you could probably find a vintage lava lamp convention to attend if you look hard enough. All because humans are intrigued by old stuff. Why is a '59 LP valued so much? Because some famous players had one? This makes all of them worth the 4 or 5-figure sums they command? Based on what? It's nuts.

This is a well documented problem, for which the remedy is now years old. The problem is the fan assembly...at volume, it rattles at certain frequencies. The original part had to be redesigned to to correct it. Supposedly newer units all have the updated part. Evidently you got one that's been sitting in a warehouse for any extended period of time...given the source, I'm not surprised. I had the exact same problem when mine was new, but that was more than 2 years ago now. Not exactly comforting that old defective ones are still being sold.

Well if the FX don't function, its not working...

Ha...just as I was thinking to myself that a trem would be just about the only way to make that axe less appealing. ;) Everybody's different, lol

You're not they only one... http://line6.com/support/topic/26543-sad-to-be-another-pod-hd500x-code-80007211-victim/?do=findComment&comment=205467

If it makes you feel any better, it drives me batty too. If I need to loop something to play over, I record it on my DAW and play along with the playback. Never fails.

I'd love to see it, but the link doesn't work for me. Tried 2 browsers...hmmm

I'm not upset, and I know exactly what you were asking. The problem is, it's an unanswerable question. "Better, brighter, cleaner, and more responsive" are not tangible things one can measure. They are amorphous, entirely subjective terms that get thrown around as if they had concrete, universal definitions. It's ad copy...as the saying goes, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t". And for the various reasons listed above, those who've dropped nearly $4K on the US versions will be predisposed to thinking that they're awesome, because the alternative is admitting that you've made a four thousand dollar mistake...it's just how our brains work. It's nobody's fault, it just is. We all do it. They may very well be worth every penny...as I said, I've never seen one, so I have no idea. It's something you would really have to decide for yourself, however.

Time and time again it has been demonstrated that people will give glowing praise to expensive stuff over their cheaper counterparts...it's Psych 101. Pricey things are supposed to be "better". Why else would anyone in their right mind ever spend more than they have to on anything? The entire advertising industry is based on this premise. Now I've never played a US version, and I have no idea if the fit, finish, materials, etc are really so much "better" that it justifies a price tag almost 4x that of the Korean versions...I suspect the answer is "no", but that's really not the point. What I do know is that an instrument is generally easier to play if you're not fighting issues like lousy tuning stability and/or intonation, poorly dressed frets, noisy pickups, etc...and when something is easier to play, you're gonna play better. If you've spent the extra coin and you're comfortable playing it, you'll play better, and your perception of the tone will likewise be favorable. Will it actually sound any different? Who knows, there's nothing to measure...but you'll probably think it does. It's all perception, and you'll never "prove" anything one way or the other. SRV's "No. 1" Strat was a $100 pawn shop guitar....but now Fender will be happy to sell you a copy for $2K. Nothing is what is seems...

Absolutely...feels like glass. I bend a ton as well, and with 11's. Stainless frets definitely made it a bit easier on the fingers. When I pick up a guitar with standard frets now, it almost feels like I'm dragging the strings across sandpaper. Some may like that "bite", but why fight the instrument of you don't have to? Stainless is a much harder and smoother surface. Highly polished (depends on who's doing it) nickel/silver frets can give you a similar feel initially, but it doesn't last.

Maybe it's just because I grew up in the Tri-state area, but I won't even leave loose change in the damn cup holder, let alone anything of value whether it's visible or not. You can't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever leave gear in a car overnight. I know a guy who lost a guitar his father had left to him that way...worst part is, it's 100% avoidable.

That's the best part. I was instantly hooked. Bending is effortless by comparison. Wish I had done it years ago.

If it's a guitar you like, go with stainless frets...one and done, especially if it's not a daily player anymore. You'll never have to think about it again.

Ahh, the joys of the "authorized service center"...I'd poke fun at this, but it hardly seems necessary. Clearly they gave you the wrong hardware and/or flashed the right hardware with the wrong code. Take it back...

Yes, you can use it as an interface.

"Better" is 193% subjective. It's dependent entirely on your personal preferences and needs. Studio monitors won't do you any good if you play live, and a tube amp often needs to be cranked to stupid volumes to get a decent tone, which is usually overkill at home. An amp is a very different animal than studio monitors, and the way you will end up EQing your patches on the POD will be very different depending on which one you choose. Good results can be achieved either way, but they are not at all similar in terms of frequency response.

It's an issue that affects some guitars and not others. There's never been a satisfactory explanation as to why that's the case. It can also be exacerbated by certain playing techniques, most notably palm-muting and the use of high gain tones. There's no software "fix", and I doubt there ever will be. Without a universal cause(s), a satisfactory remedy is hard to implement. Despite some recent ultra-vague allusions from one guy "in the know" that there may be some sort of solution on the horizon, L6's last official comment on the matter was "a fix isn't a priority for us right now". The alt tunings are a compromise. Some work quite well and others don't. But this is mostly due to the way piezos work, and not a faulty design issue, per se. Crosstalk can be a problem under certain conditions. Tunings that apply the same correction to all strings generally work quite well. I use 1/2 step down all the time. But others that alter some strings but not others, or those that alter different strings by different intervals can present a problem under certain circumstances. Bottom line is the technology has it's limitations. Overall, I like mine. I don't have the "plink" issue. It allows me to switch from an acoustic tone to crunch seamlessly, and without switching guitars. The tunings aren't quite as versatile as I thought they'd be, but it does save me from having to keep one or more guitars permanently tuned down a half step. Assuming that you get a good one, it's a nice tool to have, but it'll take some time and tinkering with Workbench to make it useable.

I'd be lying if I said I knew one way or the other if the hotter ones would cause problems or not...but I'll bet that they'd work just fine. I don't think that these guitars are quite as sensitive as is often portrayed. Regardless, I love my Kinman's. I put the "blues set" in one of my Strats. Did you go with their wiring harness? That's the best part...no soldering, and the option to have one master tone control, while the other blends the neck pickup with whatever else is selected. Bridge with about 2/3 of the neck pickup's output blended in is a great sound. Still get the character of the bridge pickup without the piercing shrillness that usually comes with it.

Try these. They ain't cheap, but worth every penny. It's a small operation, and the site is hard to view on mobile devices, but they make some great noiseless pickups. https://kinman.com/

No argument there. The neck on my 69 was the first thing to go...

I don't think much can be inferred from a product's MSRP. Its an essentially meaningless number...it's primary purpose is to appear next to the actual selling price in ads, to give the impression that one is getting a "deal". There are those occasional items that are actually sold at the MSRP for extended periods of time, but for the most part it's just a marketing ploy. As much as I like my JTV, it's simply not worth $2499. I'd never have pulled the trigger at that price, and I don't ever recall the Korean versions selling for that much. They were $1400 initially if memory serves, and even that's a stretch, imho. I held out until they were letting them go for $1K.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. People are gonna b1tch no matter what you do...it's all part of the narcissism tsunami currently sweeping away the last vestiges of common sense. "But what about ME! Every entity with which I interact must take my personal feelings into account before doing anything, because I'm special and I have NEEDS! And when those needs aren't met it is clearly someone else's fault. And they must all be named, blamed, and shamed...now excuse me, I have 3 other phony outrage targets to vilify this afternoon". Boo-hoo. The sun will still rise tomorrow.

Are you using the USB dongle, or connecting through another L6 device? If it's the dongle, try downloading the firmware to your computer first and updating from that file, as opposed to trying to pull it directly from the website to the guitar. That dongle sucks...the connection is dodgy. Mid-update failures are common. I could hardly get it to work at all when I first got the guitar. Connecting through the POD (or other L6 device) is a far more stable connection.