cruisinon2

Never made any sense to me either... For the sake of comparison: http://www.industrialnoisecontrol.com/comparative-noise-examples.htm Seems there are any number of household appliances louder than that. Personally, I've yet to meet the drummer who'd break a sweat drowning out a friggin' garbage disposal. And when was the last time you had to scream to be heard over the dishwasher? ;)

Lol...quite the assortment. I'll never truly be happy though, until somebody builds an FX pedal that will make my guitar sound like an over-ripe avocado blasted into a peat-bog with a compressed air cannon...ugh. Seriously, what would one actually do with most of that crap?

Sometimes it's difficult to teach an old guitar player new tricks...but hey, could be worse. We could be talking about the drummer. Can't teach them anything, no matter how old they are. Sit, fetch...never mind, drink this beer. ;)

No piezos, no modeling...at least until some miraculous new means of isolating the signal from each string comes along. If you want another one, I'd get another JTV. The Standard is basically a Pacifica with Variax guts. A Strat clone is a Strat clone, and you've already got one...plus you can drop a Strat neck in the 69 if you're so inclined. Not an option with the Standard.

I'll have to disagree with that assessment. FRFR rigs have replaced "real" amps for plenty of us. And I know I'll get hammered for this...but the attachment to a tube rig is largely emotional. We all get used to things, and change sucks. But once you learn to use the gear, you can coax just about any sound you want it of it. Play with the various output modes and see what works...just don't bother with "electric guitar mode" for your acoustic tones. That ain't gonna fly.

7 months, 9 days...respectable, but hardly a record-breaking resurrection. ;)

Guys are wary of running computers live for good reason...the fastest and "best" ones out there (whatever that means), with as much RAM as you can stuff in them are still computers, and prone to the occasional bizarre hiccup. When that happens at home practicing or recording, who cares? Maybe a take gets ruined...oh well. But playing live is considerably less forgiving. The average listener might not be able to distinguish a Strat from a Tele, but they'll sure as hell notice when, in the middle of your solo, the laptop decides to start playing that rare copy of the Sesame Street theme song in Yiddish, that's buried in your iTunes library...;) The universe will throw enough "Spinal Tap" moments at you as it is...you need gear that's reliable, and as close to bulletproof as it gets. I wouldn't even consider taking a laptop on stage.

The powers that be repeatedly warn against running both outputs from the JTV simultaneously...supposedly it overloads circuitry somewhere. Proceed at your own risk.

Yup.

EVERY amp/modeler/profiler/whatever needs to be tweaked differently for stage volume vs. comfy home studio/living room volume. It's always been this way, and it always will. There will never, ever be any exceptions to this...unless we all wake up one day, and the human brain(s) collectively start perceiving sound differently. Don't hold your breath...

If you're sound guy isn't deaf, and actually knows what he's doing, then it was probably fine. He/she/it should have EQed away any problems....but one never knows. If you really want to find out, get a nice long cable (or wireless if you're so inclined) and go stand out in front of the stage during sound check, minus your in-ears...then you'll know.

Best things about pairing the two are that you can: 1) Ditch the battery. That alone is worth the price of admission as far as I'm concerned. I loathe depending on batteries.... 2) Control the Variax from the POD. You can save a particular guitar model and/or alt tuning to a patch on the POD, so no need to fiddle with knobs on stage. And my personal favorite 3) A dual amp patch with your acoustic model through one, and the guitar's mag pickups through the other. Assign them both to the expression pedal, and seamlessly morph from acoustic to a crunch tone without changing patches...no lag, no latency. It's priceless for playing live.

Well the L2T weighs about 40 lbs, I think? Whatever it is, it's the smallest and lightest rig I've ever had. I could show up with just that, the POD and the JTV, and play the whole night (though there are usually 2 other guitars in tow)...but it all fits nicely in the back seat of the car, and set-up requires 3 cables and 5 minutes. As for replacing tubes...it has for me, and don't ever see myself going back. There is a learning curve though, and you kinda have to throw out the "rule book", if you will. Learning to create the sounds you want doesn't happen over night for most of us. As long as you're willing to put the time in, you can generally get excellent results. And modeling will only get better... Looking to splurge on a Helix as soon as the wife isn't looking ;).

No DT25 for me...I use an L2T as a floor monitor, and go straight to the PA. Once you really get into the modeling world, it almost demands running an entirely FRFR rig, imho. Now there are plenty of guys with the POD and a Variax, who run into some kind of tube amp, or head/cab combination...and that certainly can work if you don't care about acoustic tones, or for those who can't bear the idea of not having tube watts and a 4x12 blowing their hair back. But if you want convincing acoustic tones, FRFR is really a necessity...electric guitar amps and cabs just can't do it. Also allows you to scale down how much crap you're lugging around as well. No more dragging around tube amps and Marshall cabinets...my back can't do that anymore.

The DT25 isn't gonna help you get realistic acoustic sounds...it's an electric guitar amp, and like every other one on earth, has a limited frequency response that's not suited to acoustic guitars, be it a "real" or virtual one. FRFR speaker(s) will always be the best and least complicated/frustrating choice for this. Running straight to the PA with perhaps just a little reverb, and some EQ if needed, same as you would if you were playing an actual acoustic usually yield some pretty good results. I've been doing exactly that for couple of years now. I'm kinda surprised that you didn't like what you heard with the set up you described.

Try setting Input 1 to "guitar" and Input 2 to either Variax or Mic...anything except "Same". When both inputs are set to the same source, you're effectively doubling the input signal. If you've got hot pickups, and are using a ton of gain on top of that, sometimes things get a little unpleasant.

Not really. Unless you're dealing with identical sets of pickups, (and even then...) one set is bound to be hotter than the other. I rarely use the same patch with more than one guitar...hardly ever really.

Lol, indeed...but it will never end. Both sides have their heels so firmly dug-in, that nobody will throw in the towel at this point...too much time and energy invested in being "right" to give up now, no matter how pointless the conversation. Just like politics...;)

Most likely, yes... Modelers don't necessarily play by "real world" rules. Just because Biff Rockstar used this amp, that guitar, and those strings, doesn't mean that you couldn't achieve a really good emulation of the tone using something else. If the first thing(s) you try don't work, experiment with something else. It's the end product that matters...who the hell cares how you get there?

Moving from amps to a modeler generally requires some growing pains. Signal flow, the order of FX, etc can be set up in ways that you'd never even consider doing with a "real" amp. Experimentation, over a period of days or more likely a couple of weeks, will be the only way to decide if it's for you or not. As others have said, fiddling with a Helix (or any other modeler for that matter) for a few minutes or more in a store is not likely to be a terribly rewarding experience. Factory presets are generally useless, regardless of how good you can learn (heavy emphasis on LEARN) to make a unit sound. Some guys (myself included) transition away from amps and cabs altogether and run direct to the PA with just a monitor for their stage volume, others stick with some kind of power amp (tube or not) and cabinet, and still others never really make it work to their satisfaction, and swear off modeling forever. Only one way to find out...drop some coin, and cross your fingers.

The powers that be have repeatedly warned against doing that, claiming that circuits get overloaded somewhere, and you'll eventually destroy it...an explanation as to why this is the case is yet to be forthcoming, but it's apparently a no-no, nonetheless. Proceed at your own risk...

Yeah, I've tried various different wireless units over the years...they all rob you of tone one way or the other. Just adds another layer of tweaking, to undo whatever it does to your sound. I've been gigging for 20+ years, but I'm not running across a 200' stage, playing to stadium crowds...that being the case, what do I really need with wireless anyway? That and I f#/$ing HATE batteries...;)

That's gonna be difficult for anyone to answer who isn't familiar with that software...is that tone you mentioned emulating a specific amp/cab/mic combination? What fx are there? You can start by choosing amps and fx that are at least theoretically "similar", but modeling is a strange world...there's not much anyone can say except try different combinations until you hit on one that works. The cab and mic models on the POD make a HUGE difference in your tone, often more so than the amp models themselves. I'd start there...

There aren't anywhere NEAR enough Variax owners for that to make sense...it would be a horrendous financial decision on their part. If it's gonna cost $1K for wireless VDI, as the powers that be have indicated, then building it into Helix will push it to a $2500 unit...there are plenty of folks (such as myself) who haven't moved on from the 500X because the current $1500 price tag isn't exactly chump-change...adding another grand isn't gonna convince anybody who's on the fence to take the plunge.

Lol...