cruisinon2

Unfortunately, trial and error is the only way to get there with any sort of modeling, be it a guitar or an amp. Listen, tweak, repeat...

Retailers are universally full of $#!^. They'll promise you their own mother if they think it will result in a sale. I suspect that most, if not all of the online outlets taking pre-orders are prefectly willing to take a limitless number of orders, regardless of how many units they themselves have actually ordered, or realistically expect to get. They know most people won't cancel no matter how many times the ship date gets pushed back, because they fear waiting in line even longer if they try ordering elsewhere. Never pre-order anything unless you enjoy being disappointed, especially not something that's likely to be in high demand.

Can't go wrong with Warmoth, and stainless frets are the best thing since indoor plumbing. Just installed my 4th one on a Strat rebuild a few weeks ago. I'm surprised yours needed any fret dressing at all. They're usually pretty meticulous about that.

Those roasted maple necks seem to be the new "thing"...I've seen them pop up all over the place lately. Gotta get my hands on one for a test drive.

You just need to replace the smokes with something else....like crystal meth,or heroin. You'll forget all about the cigarettes. ;) Seriously though, cold turkey is the only way to do it. Been there myself...good luck!

Don't think you can isolate the models of the power amp sections...not sure why you'd want to anyway. It's not like it could be used to drive a cabinet...

Thanks anyway...would be way less here in the US for a new one. Good luck!

It happens...how much you want for it?

Full amp models have the power amp section modeled...pre-amp only models do not. The 4cm is really only worth the extra connections if you want the option of using your amp's pre-amp for your basic tone, and just want to use Helix (or any other unit for that matter) for FX. It also allows you to place FX either before or after the pre-amp. But if you only intend to slave the amp for power, the 4cm is not really necessary, unless you just really enjoy connecting cables. Just run straight into the amp's FX return, and have at it. Somebody's bound to disagree, but that's how I see it.

If you ask me, with the amount of fancy electronics in these guitars, swapping out the pickups is a much bigger gamble than replacing the neck. It's 4 screws...assuming that you can operate a Philips head screwdriver without ending up in the emergency room, you're good to go. Yes, I'm over-simplifying to make a point....but not by much. The neck is your interface with the instrument...yes, you can acclimate to a degree, but generally speaking, you'll play better on a neck that you're comfortable with. It can make all the difference in the world sometimes. Ymmv...

Unless we're talking "40 days and 40 nights" kinda rain, I'm sure a good old fashioned garbage bag would have gotten you from the front door to the car without any permanent damage...;)

This is precisely the reason that drag-and-drop tone solutions don't exist. Build your own patches folks...it's the only way you're gonna be happy. And once you get the hang of it, it's a hell of a lot quicker to dial one in than downloading dozens of "ready made" patches, and auditioning them one by one. Nope, this one sucks, next...Nope, this one sucks, next... You'll waste days this way. Or you could just learn how to use the unit...in the long run, that's the time-saver.

You can have a dermatologist remove those...

First, you're gonna get different opinions on this. Here's my 2 cents: 1) 4CM only makes sense if you want the option of using your amp's pre-amp for your basic tone rather than the models. If you're only using the head for power, the 4cm does nothing for you other than getting a couple of extra unemployed cables off welfare. 2) Plugging straight into the front of the amp is a noisy mess. Your amp's tone stack will color everything the POD does. It's generally harder to dial in tones this way. Just go straight into the FX return, and be done with it. Life will be much easier.

Thin strings = thin sound...Billy Gibbons' claims of using cobwebs (8's as the legend goes) for strings, notwithstanding.

Cause they don't build 'em like they used to...cheap imported components. It's universal now.

Maybe the JTVs are done, maybe they're not...but I fail to see how this proves anything either way. If you already have functional hardware and firmware, why start from scratch when you can just dump them both into the new body? Makes the new design easier to get into production, and future firmware upgrades easier as well, since they'll only have to push out one to update everybody.

I'll preface this by saying that I want one too...but I think it's a little to early to tell if their price-point gamble has payed off. There are always tech-hungry early adopters with money to spend, who get in line months before a product is released. And I don't think you can guage demand based on the handful of forum regulars who've been salavating over this thing since June. If it's really that much better than their previous flagship device that's 1/3 the price, and they're still cranking them out at $1500 a pop in 2 years, then I'd say it's a home run...till then, who knows?

You don't wanna trek to some beautiful, scenic vista, and share an intimate moment with your Helix? Heartless rogue...don't forget the champagne and strawberries. ;) If a Helix plays in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it sound as good as an Axe FX?

Well, L6 might not be willing to say it out loud just yet, but this is not the first report of a retailer openly announcing that the JTV line is living on borrowed time... Frankly, I suspected the JTVs were done for as soon as I saw the Standard...in all it's corporate, generic "glory", lol. Maybe it's me...but they're just not pretty guitars.

Price is irrelevant, unfortunately. I'll bet you spent more money on your TV than your Variax, and how long do you think you'll keep the tube? My last idiot box lasted 4 or 5 years before it started acting up. Not worth fixing...and thats the whole idea. Make the repair cost half, if not more, than the cost of a new one. So what do you do? Toss it...and just for insurance, they hang enough bells and whistles from the new model that nobody wants to fix the old one anyway, even if the cost were minimal.

Well they're not exactly easy to get service for now...my "authorized service center" is an amp/PA repair joint. They don't have a guitar guy, and I suspect many of the others out there are the same, no matter how many super-secret spec documents and magic decoder rings they're issued. And back at the mother ship, L6 has exactly one guy who works on them. Which is all irrelevant anyway....Ours is a disposable economy. Companies don't want to fix things, they want you to buy the new version of the device that just crapped out. This is not going to change. The current generation of "adults" (I use that term loosely) with disposable income were all raised in a world where you get a new cell phone every 2 years as a matter of principle, not because it stopped working. And going forward, these people are the ones you market to, if you want to stay in business.

I've been saying it for months...simply doesn't make sense for them to continue producing 4 different Variax models. These things don't exactly fly off the shelves...and that's assuming you can actually find a shelf with one on it.

Hmmm...actual truth. That's refreshing...useless and uninformative, but refreshing nonetheless. Lol. ;)

I wish this were the case for me...my single coils are considerably hotter than the than modeled Strat, which I find VERY anemic...doesn't matter which cable I'm using. Switching between them, the model sounds as if I'm rolling back the gain 50%. Totally useless for the tone I'm after. I abandoned the modeled Strat after 2.0 in favor of one assembled in Workbench, that someone was kind enough to post a while back. Much closer to the 1.9 version. On the plus side, I quite like the single coils, except for the noise...I use them for clean tones on a couple of dual-amp, clean/dirty patches.