cruisinon2

I have opinions too... and a good percentage of the time, reality fails to align with them...but so what? The world doesn't care about my opinions, or yours, and things are what they are. Lots of things that should be, aren't. Life's rough. In the end, the simple fact is this: No product will be supported forever, whether it's still on the shelves or not... dollar signs (and nothing else) dictate that. And the more tech- dependent a product is, the shorter and shorter it's lifespan will be going forward, as tech continues to evolve ever faster. And all of this, in all its glory, will roll merrily along without any regard whatsoever for opinions that say it should be otherwise. May as well get used to it...

Companies exist to make money. As long as people are still forking over cash for a product, they'll continue to sell it. However, long term support and/or perpetual development of an old product line is a pipe dream. They simply can't devote endless resources to everything forever. The HD500X is about as old as the Variax at this point, and there hasn't been an update for that thing in years either... yet it's still on the shelves, too. Why? Because people are still buying it.

One patch per song is the way you want to go, using individual snapshots within each preset to cover whatever changes (verse, chorus, solo, etc etc) you need throughout a given tune. But trying to set up an individual patch for each verse, chorus, and solo section of every song will get cumbersome very quickly. For 30 tunes you'd end up with almost 100 patches, perhaps more depending on the songs in question. That's nuts...it would be an organizational nightmare to name and curate everything so that you'd know what you're looking at at a glance, and would require you to access multiple banks of patches to get to everything... that's still gonna be a fair amount of tap dancing both during and especially between songs. Then there's the audible gap that exists between patch changes, which is certainly not what you want to hear between every verse and chorus. This can be avoided, but only by limiting yourself to single-path presets...with the DSP limit this imposes, it would require that all your patches be kept very simple, somewhat limiting what Helix has to offer. Using snapshots within a preset on the other hand, is instantaneous. There are no audible drop outs no matter how many simultaneous parameter changes are made, and for any one tone you'd have twice the DSP at your disposal compared to a bunch of single-path presets. This is really not the way to go...

Well on the plus side, the last firmware update of any significance was sometime in 2014... so there's at least a chance that it's not sporting a super-ancient firmware version. Firmware versions aside, depending on what OS you're running, you might still be able to get into Workbench through your Helix and tweak stuff on the Variax.

Technology evolves at a ridiculous pace now. At this point, "the next big thing" is always just around the corner...be it from Line 6, or somebody else. So if this is your yardstick, you'll never buy anything. If Helix fits your needs and you can afford it, then buy it and stop worrying about unknowns you have no control over. Life is shorter than you think...

I sympathize with your plight, but while the shortcut you're looking for has been begged for a thousand times over, it doesn't exist. The problem is not the headphones, and switching to a different pair will not help you. No pair of headphones will ever sound the same as an FRFR speaker blaring away at stage volume, at a listening position way off-axis, at some significant distance from your ears. These are night and day scenarios. So in a nutshell, you have two problems: Different output devices, coupled with a significant difference in volume. Unless you're insane or already deaf, your stage volume will be considerably louder than whatever you're pumping through your cans. The perceived loudness of different frequencies varies significantly with volume... it's a limitation of human perception, and there's nothing you can do about it...we're all in the same boat. (Google the Fletcher-Munson curve if you're bored, and you can read all about it). You have EQ-ing to do. Period. You can't "gear" your way out of this with a pair of magic bullet headphones. Patches must be dialed in for their specific intended use. This means at or very close to the volume at which they will be used, and at the very least monitored through the same type of output device(s). If you don't want to waste the rest of the band's time at rehearsal, book the room for an hour before everybody else gets there and tweak away... I've done it before, and you should be able to get reasonably close to what you want, with some minor adjustments being inevitable once you're in the mix... that's what the global EQ is for, not the wholesale transformation of multiple patches from one usage scenario to another. However you choose to go about it, dialing everything in at volume is unavoidable. End of story. If you want to minimize aggravation going forward, I suggest keeping different set lists containing the same patches, pre-tweaked for different uses... headphones, studio monitors, live, etc etc...I've done it for years, and it works. Otherwise you'll be in a constant state of tweaking everything back and forth, depending on where you are. (And in my experience it won't be as simple as turning the global EQ on or off. Any one EQ curve is not likely to be sufficient to apply to every patch you have, particularly when it comes to clean vs dirty tones. They often need very different treatments, but I digress). Yes, it's more work up front... but you only have to do it once. After a while, regardless of how a patch was created, you'll get to know what EQ changes will need to be made to adapt it to another scenario, and the process will become much less time consuming... but you'll never eliminate the grunt work altogether... welcome to the wonderful world of modeling.

Well given that this product made its debut at winter NAMM 2019, at best it's 2 1/2 years old... that's about as close as you'll get to figuring it out on your own. You can always call up the mothership with the serial number and ask... but getting an answer hinges on two assumptions: 1) Whomever answers the phone has ready access to that information, and 2) They're willing to disclose it in the first place. Neither of those things are a guarantee, and personally, I'd bet against both. Just for my own morbid curiosity, what difference does it make?

No... because I'm not in the market for one, so there's only so much grunt work that I'll waste my time on. I'm merely pointing out that the page you keep directing everyone to yields nothing but a $100 price tag. There is no mention of an "accommodation price" or "$49" anywhere but in your screenshot... which suggests to me that the link provided and whatever page you're looking at on your end are not the same. I shall not hazard a guess as to why... but what is obvious is that you're staring at apples and all I see are oranges.

I seriously doubt that gain is the culprit... nearly all of my patches have snapshots that cover the spectrum from crystal clean to saturated lead tones, and I don't get any funny artifacts. Time-based effects (mostly delays) on the other hand, if the tempo is being stored/ changed with snapshots, can cause all sorts of weirdness until the dust settles and repeats fade after the switching from one to the other. But in the absence of any sort of real description of what's going on, we can all guess at a cause until we turn blue, and we'll get nowhere.

Lmao... I'm pretty sure this is a new record for a Zombie thread... hell, 8 years is long enough for a budget case company to disappear entirely. ;)

Like I said... it's $100, lol

Well perhaps it's me, but this link takes me to the exact same place as the first one. When I go to that page and put the item in my shopping cart, it's still $100... so how exactly does one manage to secure the "accommodation price" of $49? I can't find a "Click here to pay half" button anywhere....

I'm not surprised. We're not talking about old school analog signals that would gradually degrade along hundreds of feet of cable... we're taking about a bunch of 1's and 0's traveling 6,8, or 10 feet. They either get there, or they don't....

Been a long time since my last econ class, but I'm reasonably certain that says $99.99...

Actually there's a new shutdown procedure: 1) Burn some sage. 2) Chant supplications to the Gods. 3) Flip the power switch. Or (assuming you're not crazy) you can just turn it off...;)

The one thing you might want to consider is that the "latest and greatest Variax technology" is now 11 years old. Technologically speaking, that's ancient... and updates ceased years ago at this point. It's a good bet that the next generation, whatever it is/will be, probably isn't too far off... exactly when is anybody's guess, of course. Just food for thought...

This is one of those useless debates that will never be resolved because various "experts" produce mutually exclusive "truths". Some will tell you that constantly leaving things on is the worst thing in the world for electronics because of the constant heat of being on all the time, or you'll get the contrary warning that "on again/ off again" puts more stress on various components... frankly, I don't think anybody actually knows one way or the other. Either way, the closest thing there is to "truth" on the matter is that it is very likely that long before you ruin your gear in either of the aforementioned ways (if that's even possible), you're gonna get tired of it and buy something else anyway, so who cares? Think about all the gear you've moved on from over the years... I've forgotten half of it at this point, and I can recall exactly one catastrophic electrical failure...a Marshall head that (literally) smoked itself to death at sound check one time. There's real stuff to worry about out there...this doesn't even make the first cut.

I have a Magic 8'Ball... we could ask it. That's about as close as you'll get to an answer...;)

To what?

You'll probably get an answer a lot faster if you ask the Choptones people... it's their product.

You can physically tune the guitar however you wish... the alt tuning algorithms will change the pitch relative to those it receives. In other words, if you physically tune the instrument 1/2 step down, and then select the 1/2 step alt tuning, what'll come out of the speakers is the equivalent of physically tuning the guitar one whole step below standard tuning (DGCFBbD). However, as the manual states, the algorithm is expecting the guitar be in standard tuning, so the farther away from that you start out, the more you invite hickups, tracking issues, etc. As to the use of both outputs, the powers that be have repeatedly warned against using both the VDI and 1/4" outputs simultaneously. Apparently it risks some sort of circuitry "overload". Why this is the case has never really been adequately explained, but nevertheless the official edict is "Don't".

Yes.

My, my....a little testy today, are we? Well allow me to retort: You are an angry little person (not to mention tardy...but I digress), clearly lacking in reading comprehension and grammar skills. But fear not, I'll be glad to help, because I'm a giver. Let's review, shall we? Here's the question the OP actually asked: "Is anyone else experiencing this issue?" And the reply he received directed him to the appropriate forum where he could read all about the numerous others who were experiencing the very same problem. Question asked, question answered. I'm terribly sorry that this somehow offended your delicate sensibilities.... actually, I take that back. I'm really not all that sorry, and I'm afraid that I'm just no good at faking sincerity. Have a terrible day. Too-da-loo!

With or without the use of alt tunings?

Yeah, for that kind of relatively low volume coffee-house gig, it would be a dissonance nightmare... even if the guy at the back table couldn't hear your guitar acoustically over the PA, you sure as $hit will... it'd be basically impossible not to.