cruisinon2

Oops...accidentally deleted my post, so things will be a little out of order, oh well, lol. Your ears are the best meter you'll ever have. Reliance on dB meters baffles me. Perceived loudness is what matters, not measured amplitude. If we perceived the loudness of all frequencies and tone qualities equally, then a meter would be useful...but that ain't the way our brains work. For a distorted tone and a clean tone at the same measured volume, the distorted tone will SEEM louder EVERY time. That being the case, the number a dB meter spits out is about as useful as an elevator in an outhouse.

Eventually one reaches a point of diminishing returns with any amp model. If you can't get either of those models to do your bidding, try others. Even if it's a model of which you'd never consider using the "real world" counterpart. You might be surprised...no rules with modeling. If it sounds good, it is good. Who cares how you get there...

We live in a world where plastic bags have to be stamped with a warning, explaining why it's not a good idea to stick one's head inside. Guitar modelers should come with a similar warning, expressing the exact sentiment quoted above. It would save us all from feeling like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day". Failing that, at the very least flash the same warning atop every thread on this site...in super-irritating 80's Ibanez colors. ;) "WARNING! WARNING! EFFORT REQUIRED WITHIN! YOU WILL ACTUALLY HAVE TO LEARN TO USE THIS THING."

This is a road frequently traveled around here...but it always ends the same way: dirt road in the middle of nowhere (listen carefully for banjos...tends to end badly ;) ), car puking coolant, and a weary traveler stranded and cursing a blue streak. There is but one way to dial in the tones you seek, and that's to experiment and find what works for you. The odds of someone else's "exact settings" giving you what you're looking for is essentially zero. You're using different gear, and you're a different player...the list of variables is of Biblical length. It will be a long and frustrating journey this way. You just hafta plug away at it until you figure the unit out.

This thread has gone on so long, I'll give 8 to 5 odds that it will eventually contain the last documented human interaction before the sun goes nova....2 to 1 that there will still be plinking Variaxes at the time. Any takers? ;)

Regarding that epic thread....if you have the dreaded "plink", it's a problem without a solution. The piezo element itself is probably fine. Others in that thread had piezos replaced, only to have the problem persist. Whatever the cause(s), it plagues some guitars and not others. Nobody seems to know why, including Line 6. And if they do know, they ain't talking.

I bought a pair of these (https://www.amazon.com/AKG-K701-Reference-premium-headphones/dp/B000EBBJ6Y%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-d-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB000EBBJ6Y) few months back. Love them...about as flat a response as there is. Just don't buy them from any of the big music retailers, you'll pay almost twice as much...among the biggest price-gouges I've ever seen.

Amen to that. It can get especially problematic when mixing with headphones, as anything but fully open-back designs with a super-flat response tend to suffer from some degree of bass build-up. This makes you pull down the low end...when you play that same mix on another set of speakers, the bass is suddenly absent. It's a balancing act, no doubt.

There are those who will tell you that a direct USB connection to your computer is "better" than going through an interface, as there is one less round of A/D conversion. As far as I'm concerned the difference is imperceptible, and I'm as loony a tone-snob as anyone else around here. Blindfolded, the overwhelming majority of us mere mortals will never be able to tell the difference.

Tube amp wattage is one of those weird things that varies from one amp to the next, regardless of what the spec sheet claims. I've owned 2 channel amps rated at 50W per side that were just barely adequate if you're playing with a loud drummer. On the flip side, I recorded an entire album with the tiny little Orange Dark Terror amp, which is all of 15W, (and can also run at 7W, to give nice saturated high gain tones at slightly lower volumes) but is perfectly capable of rattling windows in the next zip code...so it kinda depends on your needs. If you're playing live, I generally prefer to have a little more power than I need. Having extra headroom just in case is not a bad thing.

Pre-amp, OK...that might be useful.But what good is a modeled acoustic cabinet? One's only hope of a convincing acoustic tone is running into an FRFR speaker...if you're already doing that, then you've already got what you need. The rest is EQ. Running a modeled acoustic amp speaker into an actual FRFR speaker would be rather redundant. And running a modeled acoustic speaker into a regular guitar cabinet would be a complete waste of time, as that cab's native frequency response would undo that of the modeled cab anyway.

Who knows? But if you ask me, the longer scale length and somewhat unorthodox body style is gonna make this one an even tougher sell than the others they've already put out there. Time will tell.

Variax...in any of it's aesthetic variations...has not been a top priority for some time. Models have been unchanged, and no firmware updates of any consequence for several years now. For every Variax out there, there are a thousand PODs, Helix, etc. You do the math...

Even if the answer is "no", that shouldn't be a deal-breaker. There are some perfectly functional low-cost, and in some cases free "lite" versions of various DAWs. If you're willing to spend $400 on a plug-in, an extra $60 for something like Reaper is a no-brainer. Even something like Garageband will get the job done...which I'm pretty sure comes installed on the newer Macs, at least it did on the one I bought last year.

Lol...If there's any justice in the universe, he's found a new audience to pester with his weird fixation.

There's nothing mysterious about the mixer block...+5dB is +5dB. As long as you're not clipping, then all is well. I've never been able to hear a difference between direct USB recording and using an interface either (I have the Focusrite 2i4). With one less round of A/D conversion, the USB connection is at least theoretically the "purer" of the two signals, but in practice I doubt I could tell the difference if you paid me. YMMV...

Some FX work better before the amp model (OD, distortion, etc), and some after (delays, reverbs). A compressor could be placed before or after the amp model...you'll hear arguments for both. You can do both with "real" pedals, by putting some in the POD's FX loop, which can then be placed in the signal chain after the amp model, and the other pedals between the guitar and the POD itself, which by default will be come before the amp model. Play around and see what works. As for a clean amp model to use....the Hiway 100 gives a pretty transparent clean tone.

Ugh. There's money well-spent. "If you take two things that have never been nailed together before, and nail them together...some schmuck will buy it from you." -George Carlin

It's parametric because that affords the most flexibility. One of the biggest reasons the global EQ was requested in the first place was to dial out some of the harsh high-end fizz that often accompanies using a modeler with an FRFR speaker(s). It's often a very narrow range of frequencies that needs to be attenuated. That being the case, a graphic EQ may or may not get you there, and you'll probably end up cutting out more than you need, or want to. It's perfectly usable...but like everything else in life, the first time you look at one, you're not likely likely to be an expert. If you fiddle with it long enough, you'll figure it out. There's really no mystery to it.

Well, cows do fart a lot. Perhaps if we line enough of them up and aim their business end at the turbines...renewable energy, and a nice steak. Everybody wins, well...except the cow. ;)

In order for this to work, everyone will actually have to start ignoring him. As long as there's an audience, he'll never go away. The "ignore" feature is your friend...use it. You don't even have to see his posts if you don't want to...then everyone can discuss Frank Zappa, evolving shoelace technology, or wind energy until the cows come home.

Oooh! Cookie Monster vocals are my favorite...

I'm curious to see how many pages this thread has to go before everybody realizes that this guy will do nothing but dump all over any clip that gets posted. That's what he's here to do. All anyone is doing is providing him a target at which to aim his sh*t cannon.

Countdown to thread being locked: 3....2....1....

This is not surprising. These "authorized service centers" usually leave a great deal to be desired. Plus, many of them are like my local one here....it's an electronics repair shop. They deal almost exclusively with amps, PA's,and stereo equipment (and even at that, they weren't able to fix my rattling L2T properly the first time around. Ended up having to ship that back to L6 to be dealt with by someone who knew what they were doing). And they're certainly not guitar techs. I wouldn't even bother trying to bring them a Variax. You might have some luck with Sweetwater...at least they sell guitars, and claim to have a guitar repair guy(s) on the payroll.