cruisinon2

Lol...if there's no website, it doesn't exist. ;)

Glad you got it working...and 3 cheers for a part that should have been redesigned and replaced years ago. Hurrah! Well it seems one cheer is all I can muster, oh well. ;)

Why let this guy dictate what gear YOUR band has to use? To hell with him...show up with your Helix and a guitar. If there's no cabinet to throw a mic on, what's he gonna do? Refuse to let you play? Unless he owns the venue, that probably won't go over well with the guy who's paying you to be there. When you're on stage, it's your sand box. Don't let him pi$$ in it.

Good lord....conducting these sarcasm tutorials is getting tiresome. But just in case you've never seen it before, the little smiley face in my post meant "just goofing around". But far be it from me to deny anyone a fit of righteous indignation...rave on, and best of luck in your musical endeavors.

Funny you should mention that...I just put a set of Kinman "noiseless" (I use that term cautiously) pickups in one of my Strats. They come all wired up to a harness that allows for some interesting pickup combos. There's one master tone pot, and the remaining tone pot has 2 functions: 1) It blends in the neck pickup for toggle switch positions 1 through 3, and 2) It's a push/pull pot...in the "out" position, and the toggle switch in position 2, the bridge and middle pickups are then wired in series. So you get a reasonably fat "humbucker-ish" tone, which can also be blended with the neck pickup if desired. So far my favorite is the bridge pickup with just a bit more than half of the neck pickup's output rolled on...Strat bridge pickups can be a bit "shrill", this seems to balance that quite nicely.

Clearly, you are unworthy. The L6 Website Automated Response Oracle knows all...now bow your head, and don't let this happen again. ;)

Hey...I like my dolls! ;)

I wouldn't go smearing that crap on the piezos. Grinding away at them probably isn't a swell idea either. As for the nut itself, a little graphite from a nicely sharpened pencil will accomplish the exact same thing.

As far as I'm concerned, "real" and "functional" are the same thing...particularly if one can get it working inside of 5 minutes, skipping the 2 week round trip, cross-country excursion in a USP truck. Either way, it's a stupid problem to have 6 years out from a product's introduction. In the long run, less time and money would be spent designing a part that works without an after-the-fact "fix".

I keep my stockpile of Woodstock-era fuses with all my other important stuff...right there next to my collection of used bandages, and the jar of toenail clippings I've been saving since I was 8.

Well one obvious suggestion is to just try out the stock pickups...you might like them. But honestly, if you're not particularly interested in using the models, then why bother with a Variax at all? The modeling is the whole point...if what you're really after is a Les Paul with active pickups, then that's probably gonna make you a whole lot happier.

Just play on the 10's for a week, and you'll get used to them. Before long you'll be wondering what the fuss was about.

There's been a problem with these friggin' model knobs since day one. On some, you simply can't push it down far enough for the switch to engage. Most of the time it can be fixed by carefully removing the knob, and inserting a small shim (thin piece of cardboard, even a small piece of balled-up paper)inside above the post. That usually takes care of it. Nice to know that after 6+ years, the same sh*tty part continues to be a problem.

Do you mean you can spin the knob forever in one direction or the other, or does the knob itself just feel loose on the post?

Won't hurt to try a reset, but I'd be surprised if it makes any difference. Sounds like just a dead button and footswitch...in which case, it's service ticket time.

Amen. Plus, without an additional L6 product, the OP would already be relying on the Variax battery for the modeling. Multiple batteries powering a guitar, some rechargeable, some not...ugh. I'd rather gouge my eyes out...

I know it's come up before, and to the best of my recollection, the official word is that active pickups do not play well with the rest of the Variax guts. If you're looking for "noiseless" (well, LESS noise anyway) single coils, there are other passive options: Lace Sensor, and Kinman (which incidentally are really nice. I just put a set in one of my Strats).

The whole point of devices like the POD is to produce finished, "recorded" tones...what you would hear from the monitors in a studio's control room, from the mic'ed up tube amp roaring away in the isolation room next door. Dial in the tone you want, connect via USB to your computer and you're off to the races. No cabs, no mics, no barking dogs, door bells, or screaming kids making their way onto your tracks. Feeding a "real" mic'ed cab signal into a device that is gonna pile on additional amp, cabinet, and mic models on top of what's already there is gonna be a noisy, redundant mess.

I use a different Focusrite interface (2i4), but there's no reason the 1/4" outs shouldn't work. I do it all the time. The "instrument" setting however, is incorrect. It should be set to "line". A line-level signal is what the POD spits out. "Instrument" is for connecting a guitar straight to the interface, and using software based amp sims. With it set this way, the Focusrite is expecting a MUCH lower level signal than what you're feeding it. You'll be clipping all over the place.

Whatever. Continued debate it utterly pointless, as it will never be remedied anyway. That much has been made crystal clear. Everyone's time would be better spent driving ice picks under our toenails.

No, it won't. Helix has no power section. You'll need a separate power amp to drive anything other than headphones.

You're right...it isn't mechanical. If it were, one could not bounce the "plink" from string to string by switching piezo leads at the board, as more than a few users have reported. If it were purely mechanical, there would have to be some fixed point of origin for the plink. It would not be possible to divorce that sound from the string on which it was generated, magically linking it to pitches generated from other physical locations...ones that are otherwise plink-free, unless you move wires around. Makes no sense whatsoever.

This will always be the case, doesn't matter who's gear we're talking about. A patch created by someone else, with a diffrent guitar, a diffrent amplification method, in a diffrent listening environment, and with their own personal biases about what sounds "good", is NEVER gonna sound the same on your end. It's a minor miracle that some of those patches are even recognizable as a guitar. There are too many variables to expect anything that even vaguely resembles continuity from one player to the next. Ever been to a big-box music store on a Saturday morning, and witnessed the auditory crimes committed by the various "musicians" in attendance? This is where the majority of stuff on Customtone comes from...the lowest common denominator. You gonna trust that a patch will sound "just like Metallica", if it's coming from that demographic? I think not. And factory presets? They suck. All of them. Everywhere. Fractal, Kemper, Zoom, Digitech...for the exact same reasons as above. You gotta do it yourself, same as you did with creating your tones in POD Farm.

Well let's see...there were two choices for the default, on or off. No matter which one they picked, someone was destined to b1tch that they should have chosen the other one. Damned if you do, damned if ya don't.

Which of course begs the question, why does anyone want those things? ;)