cruisinon2

Plug some headphones directly into the POD. If you don't hear it that way, then the problem is further down the line...

The whole "invitation" to purchase the thing is rather off-putting, imho. They have a product, I have money...The End. The idea of having to wait to be invited into their little club nauseates me. I have no need to feel "special" for owning this or that brand of musical equipment...or anything else for that matter. What's next? A supervised home visit from a sales rep who'll decide if it's a suitable environment for their fancy box?

Yeah, I have no volume issues with mine either. They're near-field monitors...you neither want, nor need tsunami-inducing volume for them to accomplish their task. If I want to melt concrete, I've got my L2T, and a 100W tube amp and Marshall 4x12 sitting right beside the JBL's.

Less ugliness ;)... Official proclamations notwithstanding, the Standard is a Pacifica with Variax guts. Not the prettiest guitars in the world, imho. But as always, ymmv. Seriously though, the only real answer is more body style choices. You didn't say which JTV you have, but the Standard is basically a Strat-style guitar, closest to the JTV69 in looks and (I assume) feel. LP guys want the 59, shredders the 89...it's just personal preference. The 69 can also accommodate a Strat neck, if you're not a fan of the stock one. Many of us have replaced them. The Standard's neck pocket has different dimensions, so that's a no-go.

A quick spritz with some plastic-safe contact cleaner will cure an astonishing percentage of volume/tone pot-related issues, from crackling to intermittent drop-outs. Costs almost nothing, and won't make anything any worse. I'd start with that.

Don't waste money on absurdly priced cables. Gold-dipped, assembled by vestal virgins, alien technology, and whatever else a certain company claims makes their cables sound "better", is a crock. They've been fleecing the gullible for years. The signal either gets there, or it doesn't. If you're not connecting speakers hundreds of feet from the source, or running them inside a wall, then they don't need to be 3" in diameter, have Kevlar shielding, or diamond tips. Just make sure you use the appropriate type...balanced or unbalanced, depending on all the ins and outs in question.

. Though they're often sold individually, having one studio monitor is ridiculous. Given that their primary function is to mix/monitor recordings, it baffles me that they're not sold in pairs...but I digress. Especially if you want to play along with recorded music, one monitor will be somewhat less than adequate...by about half. ;) Besides, with that budget, you can get a really nice pair of monitors. JBL LSR305's are excellent, 5" drivers so they don't take up a huge amount of real estate. Usually about $300 for the pair. They'll do quite nicely for playing at home, or mixing/monitoring recordings from a DAW, should you decide to get into that.

Consider it a blessing. The factory presets are aggressively awful, and almost entirely useless. You're gonna end up starting from scratch anyway...

They all do...except the handful of older models ported over from other devices. Turning HUM to zero is the first I do with a new patch.

Yup. Honestly, I don't get it. I suppose they had to include it for the sake of the models' "authenticity", but who the hell wants more noise? I'd love to meet the guy who's turning the HUM parameter up from it's default...there's always one. ;)

Lol...yeah, like a month. ;)

I've got the Focusrite 2i4...L&R 1/4" outs from the POD. No level issues.

Lol...just another couple of months and the thread would have been comatose for 2 full years. ;)

Yup. And you could spend the rest of eternity looking, and never find anything useful. You're always gonna have trouble trying to use someone else's tones. The list of variables is Biblical in length, and there's no way to know who did what to achieve a given sound. Guitars, pickups, amps, cabinets, FRFR speakers, headphones, outboard EQ-ing...the list is endless. What else was used to dial in a sound? No way to know. And even if you did know, you're not gonna have the same stuff...it's that simple. It's never gonna sound the same for you, as it did in ShredderBob83's living room. Now that doesn't mean that ShredderBob83 is deaf, stupid, or crazy. The patch might sound great for him, with his rig, so he decided to share...but that's the rub. It's HIS rig, not yours. As such, Customtone is mostly an incredible time-waster. You'll find what you're looking for a whole lot faster by experimenting, and finding out what works for you. It's unfortunate, because the concept of Customtone is a good one. Reality is unforgiving, however.

Get a short little cable, like the ones you'd connect two stomp-boxes with back in the good old days. Connect the FX send straight into the return. Put the FX loop as the last block in your signal chain. Scroll over to the FX loop on the display, and under the edit parameters (same way you'd go in and edit any other effect), you can add a dB boost to the return signal. Only drawback is the FX loop in this thing is kinda noisy, but if you just need the boost for a solo, it doesn't matter much. You only really notice it when your not playing. I generally don't, but if it works, it works. You can't think of these things as a regular amp...

There's a knob for that...;) Yes, the relative volumes of the amp models vary. Boost options abound, however. Mixer block, channel volume, wiring the FX loop back into itself and using the adjustable gain on the return, various EQ options, etc

It's more or less official, folks. The "fix" is the same as it always was: Get one that works. They clearly don't all suffer from this issue. A universal retro-fit ain't coming anytime soon...if at all.

As with most things in life, I'll believe it when I see it...

Very concise...someone put a sticky on this one, with big flashing neon lights around it. Excellent explanation.

Yup. I wouldn't want prefect pitch. To always know when something is the tiniest bit off, must be maddening. I think I'd go nuts.

It's hard to argue with a good idea. Might go that route myself.

I'm never going back to an amp. With a little tweaking (OK...a lot of tweaking), I've got the best sounding (and smallest) rig I've ever had. No pedals, no batteries, no retube-ing pre-amps or power amps, and no having to turn everything to 11 to get the tone I want, especially when I'm in a space that isn't suited to window-rattling volumes. And, for your stated goal of getting Variax acoustic tones dialed in, no DI boxes or funky signal routing in and out of amps and PA's. L out to my L2T for my stage volume, R out to FOH. No fuss...

Hallelujah, a voice of reason. More info, less problems, indeed...most things in life obey that premise. Then again, who doesn't love a good old fashioned smokescreen? And rocking back and forth in the fetal position, muttering "authorized service center" like a meditation chant is fun too. Neither one will help you fix anything, but it'll give you something to do for a month while you ship the guitar to hell and back 'cause it needs a set-up.

Apparently it's long overdue...much like a fix for this problem, lol.

You're the only one babbling about conspiracies. Or am I imagining the fact you refuse to divulge basic information, readily available from every other vendor on the planet? This is about voluntarily choosing to treat customers like children, who need to be supervised when playing with their toys. But go ahead and paint me as a delusional nut if it makes you feel better. Have a nice day. I surrender.