cruisinon2

This is just a guess, but it seems to me there would have to be a considerable increase in mass to produce any real increase in sustain...who wants that? This guitar is heavy enough. If a little more sustain is gonna cost me a laminectomy, I'll pass...;)

Lol...NY Mine was a totally tongue-in-cheek comment though. I was practically raised by my Scottish grandparents. Grew up on meat pies, bridies, and those currant pastries that granddad referred to as "fly cemeteries", lol. I miss all that stuff. Hard to find around here now. We used to have a Scottish bakery/deli that had it all...even haggis if you wanted it. Place is long gone now.

Lol... I'd also like to nominate: "Fine English cuisine" and "I'll just have one beer, I've got an early day tomorrow"

These are the two best, and easiest places to start. I've been playing 11's for years. Yes, you will find it difficult to bend strings initially. Yes, your fingers will hurt. But it doesn't last long, and you will gain both sustain and tuning stability. Before long you'll wonder how you managed on lighter strings. 9's might as well be cobwebs....

This is ridiculous. They're passing the buck. Sounds like you've only had it for a day or two. They must have some kind of return policy for defective merchandise. And if you don't want to go that route, I'd try re-flashing the firmware before you start shipping the thing all over the world for repair. ..for whatever reason, that fixes a lot of glitches on these things. It's worth a shot...can't make it any worse.

Lol...well, as I recently learned in another thread about the world's only candle-powered guitar fx pedal (no, I'm not kidding), "weird and useless with the potential for disaster" is now synonymous with "creative and groundbreaking"...so with that in mind, let's call this rendition a "re-imagining". Welcome to the 21st century, where everything is valid and varying degrees of wonderful. ;)

The sustain on mine isn't any worse than other bolt-on necks that I've had, but a bolt-on will always be somewhat deficient in that department. Might be worth seeing if any of those bolts need tightening...wood moves more than you'd think. Failing that, there's always these goofy things:http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Fatfinger-Bass-Sustain-Enhancer/dp/B001L8MBBQ%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-d-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB001L8MBBQ Can't vouch for their effectiveness, and you'll probably get tired of people asking why there's a doorstop hanging from your headstock, but they've been around forever, so I'd assume that someone is buying them... Might want to consider a heavier set of strings too...that definitely makes a difference.

Anybody remember Marillion?

Lol... Are you a native Scot? My maternal grandparents were both from Glasgow, so I'm a "half-breed", I suppose. ;) Wife and I were there for the first time last summer....only a week, though. Wish it could have been longer. Beautiful country.

True enough. I like the bendy straws...reminds me of being a kid. ;)

Well said. Personally, I think that whatever the problem is, it may be a chance combination of factors...which would explain why only a small number of guitars are affected, and also why the home-grown remedies are not universally successful. There may not be a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes life is like that. But at the same time, some of those sound clips are atrocious, and I find it very difficult to accept the assertion that it's due to nothing more than a poorly set-up instrument, when it only affects one string. If I were in their shoes, knowing what these guitars can do when they're in working order, I'd be a little annoyed if that was the response I got. There are no winners here...at least not at present.

Not for nothing, but this statement holds little water, and for those affected it inspires even less confidence in a product or company...and there are 2 very good reasons for that: 1) It's dismissive, and carries the implication that the customer is either stupid, crazy, or lying. and 2) Because it's been used by every warranty department, for every conceivable product from blenders to sedans, since the year of The Flood. I'd like to be clear that I'm not accusing anyone of anything, because maybe neither is the case here, I don't know. BUT...imho, history in general being what it is, skepticism is entirely justified when this becomes a common refrain to a often-raised complaint.

100 hours of bagpiped "Amazing Grace" (at close range), as penance ;)

Probably not. In 25 years of trying, some days it was great, some days....well let's just say "less than inspiring", lol. Love my current set-up.

Lol... I actually know what those are. Similar to the bagpipes, but smaller, quieter (Saints be praised ;) ), and ***I believe*** they're a fully chromatic instrument, whereas as the bagpipes are not, which obviously limits what keys they can play in comfortably...if there's anything "comfortable" about the bagpipes. There's a reason the Scots (my forebearers, bless them ;)) used to blare those things at the enemy before the running them through with a broadsword... Incidentally, most of the "bagpipes" you hear on the Braveheart soundtrack are actually uilleann pipes.

Lol...if swapping it wasn't an option, as much as I like the sounds, I'd have sent it back.

A floating bridge should sit parallel to the body of the guitar. If you changed the string guage (and sometimes even if you didn't...wood moves), the amount of tension on the tremolo springs will need adjusting. If the bridge is now resting on the body, then loosen the screws at the claw that anchors the springs to the body, then tune to pitch. It's trial and error. You will most likely have to do this several times until you find the right balance between string and spring tension. Good rule of thumb with floating bridges: Don't remove all the strings at once unless you have to. Change one at a time, and you'll have fewer issues.

If all else fails and you can't find someone to play the bagpipes for you, you can always just step on a cat...;) And just in case any of the perpetually offended are reading this, I actually like cats (we have 3), and no I don't step on them. It's just a bagpipe joke...

I ran studio/direct mode into a power amp and cabinet for a year or so before going FRFR. It might be the "wrong" way to do it, but it worked for me. Other output modes sounded dreadful to me. As far as what cabinet to use...that's entirely subjective. They're all gonna sound a little different. No way around that.

Cool, thanks.

Ahh, I see. Just for my own morbid curiosity, are stainless frets an option? Different size fret wire, etc?

Nice...The 69 is a whole different instrument with a neck that's actually usable. I'll hafta check out CEG hardtails. Not familiar with that one.

Ouch...lol. But are you SURE it's not the action? If you raise it the width of a dandruff flake, it might help. ;)

It either works, or it doesn't. If it works for chords, as we've established, then that is polyphonic pitch shifting. Might get dicey if you're aiming for huge interval shifts, but then again so do a lot of the other "polyphonic" pedals out there. It also might not track as well as a Variax, but that's completely different animal anyway. More than one note at a time = "poly". Don't care what the spec sheet says.

Lotsa folks have more than one device. If they made you buy a separate license for each one, people would riot.