cruisinon2

Must be nice to have money...

Well said.

I don't think anyone here is advocating for a return to the medieval concepts of the Four Humours, alchemy, or bleeding people with leeches (though as I understand it, the latter is still sometimes used to get the blood flowing back into severed extremities that have been surgically re-attached)...I certainly wasn't. Nor was I "scapegoating teachers". However, their motives (like EVERYONE else's) are not entirely altruistic, it's impossible. Self-interest is hard-wired into human nature. Their performance is directly linked to students' performance on standardized tests. So what do they do? They teach to the test. Is this their fault? No. They have little choice, as their tenure and by extension, their livelihood, depends on it. Much like the medical profession (regrettably my chosen vocation), teachers...no matter how noble their goals upon entering the profession...are plugged into a system that handcuffs them from Day 1, and makes it difficult if not impossible for them to do the job for which they're trained. And why? Because there are lawyers and money involved. It's a wonderful world.

No idea why the footswitch on the amp is giving you trouble all of a sudden...however, running all your FX straight into the front of the amp tends not to work all that well in my experience. Doesn't much matter what kind of amp we're talking about. Some FX simply work better before the pre-amp, such as distortions, overdrive, fuzzes, compressors, etc, while others like reverbs and delays usually work better after the pre-amp. Without an FX loop though, that's not an option. You can still do it with what you've got, but it might take a bit a playing around with the order of whatever FX you're using to find out what works best in terms of creating the least noisy signal chain possible.

How to take standardized tests, which is laughably regarded "proof" that they've learned something, and therfore that their teachers must have "done their jobs". We'd like an extra $12 million in the budget next year, please....our pensions are feeling a little light. Vote 'yes', because after all it's "for the children".

It's a moot point anyway...Strat necks don't fit the Standard. It's been discussed in other threads. The heel might fit the pocket, but scale is an issue. The resulting position of the frets relative to the bridge are not the same as the stock neck. Intonation will never be right.

Millennials neither know, nor care about the "human element", though...and half of them are such galloping narcissists, the concept of other people is a bit "theoretical". And they're the consumers now. If it doesn't come with a #hashtag, it doesn't exist. They "interact" with little 3"x 5" screens, and have been doing so their whole lives. They whip them out mid-conversation at job interviews and medical appointments. Eye contact is a foreign concept...and certainly unnecessary for commerce. ;)

OK...but long term that's unsustainable, and will eventually be it's own undoing. If you drive all your own dealers out of business, then what? They'd be stuck selling directly to end users, and there goes all their minimum orders. It might succeed in making the quarterly reports look magnificent for a while, but it's a thoroughly unrealistic representation of the actual number of units in use, and sooner or later, it hits a wall...it has to. They're not selling disposable crap like cell phones that half (if not more) of the population owns, and replaces every couple of years. I bought the two Strats I own about 22 and 25 years ago, give or take. Fender ain't getting rich on me. Not to mention then having to suffer all the day to day crap that makes having dealers attractive...namely not having to deal directly with customers, which is a notorious pain in the a$$.

To each their own, but that's precisely why I can't play actual acoustics worth a damn...when compared to the way an electric is set-up, acoustics feel like they're strung with bridge cables an inch from the fretboard. Never worked for me, and I've had 11's on all my guitars for years. Half the reason I wanted a Variax in the first place was to get acoustic sounds without having to struggle through playing one.

The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain. Headphone out from the device of your choosing to mp3 in on the POD. Cans on, and you're off to the races...

Wouldn't much matter if they were...the Calabasas daily weather report is off limits, never mind the "secret" stuff.

Despite appearing a bit "toy-ish", Garageband is surprisingly functional. Even some of its built-in amp sims aren't horrible. You will need an interface however, and while I have no experience with that Behringer unit, for $20, I wouldn't expect miracles. You may find you end up with latency issues. Check out the Focusrite 2i Scarlett...it's ideal for using amp-sim software, whatever you choose. Very low latency, I've had no problems at all. Also comes with a quite a few FX plug-ins, compressors, reverbs, an "all-in-one" mastering tool for polishing a final mix (of which I was initially skeptical, but I can't argue with the results). ~$179 if memory serves.

Ugh...it's infuriating. The only consolation is that as brick and mortar retail continues to disintegrate, those dealer agreements will eventually become irrelevant. For the younger generation, buying stuff online is the norm. They live their lives through a hand-held screen. Tap,tap..."compete your order". I doubt many care about test driving a purchase first...just look at YouTube, and the myriad "un-boxing" videos that get posted. There are tons of them for guitars. So what good is mandating a pretty display case with 75 guitars in it, if there's no one one there to see it? Sooner or later some marketing genius will have that "epiphany". It'll just take a while...till the old guard is all put out to pasture. The music industry hates change. Look at how long it took them to accept the fact that digital distribution of music was inevitable. They actually thought they could bully the populace into continuing to buy CD's by suing their own customers. There's a business strategy... And the "relic" guitars are probably my favorite absurdity. Build a nice new instrument, then take a belt sander and ball peen hammer to it...that'll be $5K, please. Boggles the mind.

Many people just use big box retail chains as a place to kick the tires and actually see an item in person. Then they go home and buy whatever it is online for 10-20% less, and often no sales tax. THAT'S the future of "retail". On a long enough timeline, most "stores" will be nothing more than Amazon showrooms, loosely organized by product category.

Congratulations to the OP!!! You just f*ucked up a free lunch...and no doubt made oodles of friends in the process. 😅 For the record, I payed for mine quite some time ago...😉

If you're listening to what you record through studio monitors, that's likely part of the problem. No two means of listening to your output are gonna sound identical...headphones, especially closed-back designs, can be especially problematic, as they tend to artificially increase the bass response. You need a pair of flat-response, studio headphones if you want to get anywhere close to what you'll hear through other sets of monitors. Most consumer-level headphones designed for passive listening, as opposed to monitoring while recording, will usually have a pumped-up low end, and nothing that resembles a flat response. Then there's the issue of how to apply EQ...if there's too much bass, hiking the treble is usually not the answer. Removing frequencies that there are too much of, rather than increasing what seems to be missing will almost always yield better results. Too much bass? Lower it, and leave the treble alone, otherwise you just end up with too much of both.

Makes sure the 1/4" out switch (just to the left of the expression pedal) is set to "LINE", not "AMP" which is putting out an instrument level signal and is intended for running into the front end of a guitar amp.

As pathetic as it sounds, I've never even pondered updating firmware on my L2T...but I haven't got an M20 mixer anyway, as I imagine is the case with plenty of other L2T owners as well. Since you can't assume ownership of both units, how important could any updates really be if half the folks who have one wouldn't be able to do it anyway?

I do my best... ;)

Why bother? The way you've done it works just fine. I've been doing the exact same thing for a couple of years now...it's about as simple a set-up as one can get.

Well surprise, surprise...where are all the pitchforks and righteous indignation from the "Why'd I hafta pay for mine?" crowd? ;)

We have a winner!!! A 3 year, 4 month+ resurrection!!!!! ;)

Retailers have been floating different iterations of that basic statement for a while now, and every time it comes up around here, somebody official chimes in and says "Nope"...so somebody, possibly more than one somebody, is either misinformed or lying. Personally, I see little point in continuing to release different versions of Variax, unless there's been some quantum leap in the technology. There simply isn't enough interest in these things...the Standard is just a little over a year old, and it ain't cheap to tool up and produce new designs all the time. These things don't exactly fly off the shelves...but who knows?

I know I'm gonna regret this, but where's that written?

Given the price and the apparent inconsistencies in the description vs. what a US version should be, this smells like a heavily discounted hatchet job. Only question is, was it butchered by the clowns at GC, or by the guy who sold it to them?