cruisinon2

I'll remember this one as long as I live...different issue, but still a funny audition story. We were looking for a new drummer...guy knew the tune's well enough, but had an awful tendency to speed up significantly at every chorus, didn't matter what tune it was. Comically noticeable. When this was politely pointed out to him, he paused and said: "Are you sure it's not you guys?" Can't make this stuff up...it's a jungle, folks. Lol...

Guts should all be the same, afaik...but it very likely has ancient firmware on it. I wouldn't walk out of there with it unless they update it for you. Firmware updates are a bit dodgy sometimes. There's no telling where that thing has been for the last 6 years. As for the "mint condition" designation that they've promised you...there's only one way to tell, but I tend to take anything a salesman tells me (particularly one peddling used stuff) with about 11 lbs of salt.

This will go over like a lead balloon, but it's true, so who cares... $5 or $1500...makes no difference. Every modeler in the world has a lag between patches...save one...the Digitech whatever it is. It's mentioned in this thread somewhere, maybe I've got the manufacturer wrong, can't remember. If you want the most important/rewarding interaction that you have with a unit to be the time you spend BETWEEN presets, then you know where to shop. Nothing's perfect...work with what you've got. I've been figuring out ways to camouflage the switch between tones for 20 years. Every rig I've ever had has suffered from this to some degree. If this is a deal breaker, I would have spent the last 2 decades throwing out gear every five minutes. We'd all be much better players if we stopped whining about gear limitations, and just played the damn thing(s).

Not a neck-thru design, afaik. It's a bolt-on, same as the Korean ones. They want nearly $4K...for a bolt-on neck.

Even if it's for purely aesthetic reasons, it's worth the money just to be rid of that kayak paddle headstock, with "James Tyler" emblazoned across it 43 times...surely once would have sufficed.

For the price of a US JTV, I'd buy another Korean one just for the guts, and transplant them into something else. Be it something built specifically with that in mind, or something else that got retrofit to accommodate the hardware. Another 3 thousand bucks for a guitar with the exact same specs as the "budget" version (yet somehow "better") doesn't make sense to me at all.

Difficult to say. The earlier ones had some issues with the necks (which are terrible anyway imho, but that's largely subjective and another discussion entirely)...poorly dressed and over-beveled frets, causing either or both E strings to slip off the neck under certain circumstances, QA issues with knobs, etc. The bridge on the 69 was slightly redesigned at some point, but the details escape me at the moment. Probably a non-issue. The overall design is really unchanged though, and firmware is updatable no matter how old it is. If it's used, play it first if possible...people are weird and stupid ;), so there's no telling what might have been done to it, but that goes for any guitar under the sun.

+1...unless you're an idiot savant, really "knowing" a tune takes longer than you think. Depending on how true to the original version everyone else is playing, there may be some subtle nuances or cues that are missing. It's not always the same as playing along with the recording. You might not even realize what cues you've been using to keep your place until one is missing. VERY easy to lose your footing that way...and I've been at this a long time. Listen to the tunes over and over...right up to the point where one more repetition would trigger a stroke ;)...

While it may not solve all of the issues you're having, the clean/dirty switch does have a solution. Almost all of my patches are dual-amp now. One clean path, and one dirty. Assign the channel volumes to the expression pedal so that toe-up is clean, toe-down is dirty (vice versa if you prefer). Morph smoothly from one to the other, no drop-outs. ...saves me a ton of grief.

I'm not holding my breath. The Standard is barely a year old...not to mention the fact that these guitars are not exactly a household name. To keep designing and releasing one model after another really doesn't make any sense. They're better off refining what they've got, and making the most guitar they can at the price points they've chosen. There's already 4 different Variax models still in production. How many does the world need?

They're made-to-order, so you won't find one anywhere, unless someone's unloading one on ebay. You have to order it through L6...what the process is and how long you have to wait, I don't know. Someone will probably chime in. I've never played a US JTV...maybe they're the greatest guitars ever, and the handful of guys who've taken the plunge and commented on here seem to like them. However, imho the extra $3G that they want for them, is insane. As the owner of a boutique instrument, one in which I was involved in every step of the process, from selecting the cuts of wood, to sitting in the guy's shop when it was time to shape the neck so it came out precisely the way I wanted it, I know what you can get for this kind of money. In this case, the extra cash seems to buy you a quarter-sawn neck, a few more colors to choose from, and some vague assurances about more attention to detail. The modeling engine is the same. If you want a real "custom" instrument, all that money can be much better spent. Just my 2 cents.

Bottom line is, Customtone is a great idea upstaged by reality. One could conceivably get wildly lucky, and download a dozen patches on day one that suit your needs prefectly...but you're far more likely to find little to nothing that's usable without extensive tweaking. In which case, why bother? Just do it yourself. You'll learn a hell of a lot more about the unit, and what combinations of amps/cabs/mics work for you, than you will by gambling that Eugene from Squashed Possum, TN actually did make a patch that "sounds just like Yngwie".

And they're never going to. Ever. The only common denominator is the POD. EVERYTHING else is different. The guitar, the pickups, the rest of that guy's rig, the acoustics of the room he sat in when he made the patch, the strings, etc etc. The list of variables is almost endless. Might have sounded God-like on his end...very likely won't for you. It's just the way it is. You can waste days, if not weeks wading through Customtone. Forget it...build your own patches, and you'll get what you're looking for a whole lot faster.

Problem never ended, discussion never ended... Take 3 or 4 days of from work...you'll need at least that long to read through this mess. Happy plinking! ;) http://line6.com/support/topic/6764-do-you-have-the-same-problem-with-6th-string/

It's loud as f#/!... Unless you guys are trying to set a new Guinness record for dB every night, if you put an L2T on a stand be behind you, it should be plenty.

Well it does add another weird dimension to the problem...empirically, at least in your case, this would seem to indicate that the POD is the problem (or at least a contributing factor. Bizarre.

Guessing is all we got...who knows what fate the free world might suffer, should this info fall into the wrong hands? Keeps me up nights...

There's nothing surprising about it. Somebody else's patch is exactly that....created with their guitar, the other pieces in their rig, in their bedroom/living room/rehearsal space, with their band, etc etc....the list of variables is of Biblical length, yet everybody always wants to know why there's no continuity from user to user with Customtone patches. Baffles me.

Only the powers that be, who've thus far been unwilling to part with such "sensitive" info.

The bolts are offset on the JTVs, so that will need to be dealt with. That aside, they're a perfect fit.

+1... How old are the strings, Clayman? New set couldn't hurt.

You're right, it's not chump change. In fact, the price is really the only reason I don't have one yet.... However in the minds of some, it seems that "Expensive" = "Instant Awesome"...and that's what I find exceedingly odd. These are complicated devices, with enough bells and whistles to keep you occupied for years. Why would one ever assume that using it would be effortless?

A vice-like grip on the strings doesn't help, no matter what size the fret wire is. You can press a note sharp on just about any size frets.

Yup....I have no problem admitting that I have never played MOST of the real amps modeled in this thing. I did have a JCM800 years ago, but that's about it. I was a rack-gear player for many years before FRFR...various tube preamp/multi-fx/power amp combinations, so I'm quite used to sculpting the tones I'm after. Never much cared who's logo was on the front, as long as I got the sounds I needed. So when it came to the POD, it was all just "let's see what this one does"...

I doubt it. The amount of relief affects playability, certainly...but sustain, not so much unless it's wildly out-of-whack. Too much relief, and the strings are flapping in the breeze, too little and they're sitting on the frets and buzzing. But sustain is more a function of the inherent resonance (or lack thereof) of the guitar itself. It's a bolt-on, so you're losing a great deal right there. Might wanna check the mounting bolts...wood moves. Over time they loosen, even if you're not swinging the thing around your head. String guage will also make a difference...a heavier string rings longer.