cruisinon2

I'm the last one on earth to defend retailers, as there are many shady ones out there. However, some places will open gear like this to install the latest firmware... it's possible that's all that was done. Plug it in and see what version is on there, and look for any custom patches in the user set lists, deviations from default global settings, etc... you'll likely be able to tell if this unit has been returned, used as a demo, etc.

Even if it were possible, what would that accomplish?

Nobody ever said it was impossible... it's merely a question of how much people would be willing to pay for it, and whether or not they sell enough units for it to be worth the cost of bringing it to market. They quoted a $1K price tag when trying to gauge interest a while back, and not surprisingly there weren't too many folks lining up to spend as much, if not more than the price of the guitar itself, on an accompanying wireless unit.

Well that all depends on how you define "corrected"... the "fix" for the possibility of overheating was to just artificially cap the charging capacity via the firmware update, so that the battery never actually gets fully charged anymore...hence the complaints about battery life. Said cap was allegedly 80% of the battery's inherent capacity, although in practice it's obviously turned out to be considerably less than 80% for lots of users, myself included. So the problem was circumvented, but "corrected"? Not so much, imho...but enough to satisfy the lawyers, I guess. The unfortunate side effect was the neutering of an otherwise really good unit. Most likely... but try it out and see what happens. It won't take you long to figure it out.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but you're kinda setting yourself up for failure, for one simple reason: Guitar players are crazy, tone-obsessed, creatures of habit. Yeah, there are those blessed few who can make any rig you put in their hands sound magnificent... but the overwhelming majority rely on hundreds, if not thousands of hours of familiarity with their gear to be comfortable enough to perform at their peak, and you're not gonna find too many who are willing to experiment with new stuff at the 11th hour before a performance. If you hand a complicated device like Helix to somebody who's never used one before, you'll just get a blank stare, and they won't know where to start... and the odds of you having prepared for them in advance, tones that they'll like or find useful for their material, is nearly zero. You'll never get a consensus for how gear like this is used because there isn't any... by virtue of how modelers are designed, approaches vary widely. Whatever works, works... and trying to guess what any one nutty guitar player will want or need is a virtual impossibility... there's really no "one size fits all" with this stuff.

If you enjoy charging batteries then it's the best money you've ever spent...;)

If you're putting an external wah in the effects loop, then you can insert the loop anywhere you want in the signal chain... though why you'd want it anywhere but first is beyond me. Wah pedals expect a raw, instrument level guitar signal. If you start feeding it a signal that's already been processed in various ways with an amp model, distortion fx, etc, it's just gonna sound weird. And, if you're just gonna be placing the fx loop first in the chain anyway, it begs the question, why bother using the effects loop in the first place? You're just using up DSP for no reason. Just plug the guitar into your wah, and then go straight into the input on the Stomp. You're making this harder than it needs to be... see above.

Headphones aren't a magic bullet either... if they're open back cans, you'll still hear the guitar acoustically unless you're cranked up to a decent volume. Happens to me all the time with my AKG 701's.

ANYWAYS... I'll wait for the movie. ;)

The short answer is no. Storage space in the device is finite. However as others have indicated, you can backup an essentially infinite number of patches and setlists on your computer and swap them in and out to your heart's content.

If you're playing at low volumes, then you are also hearing the guitar acoustically... it's impossible not to. The strings are inches from your head. Record something with the pitch shift and listen to the playback... if the dissonance is gone, then that's what's happening. Electric guitars ring out acoustically much louder than you think... and when the pitch that's coming out of your speakers is not the same ad what's coming directly off of the guitar, dissonance is inevitable.

I really like their products, but "quickly delivered" is not L6's M.O...;) Besides, nobody in a position to do anything about it will see this thread anyway. The powers that be don't show up here much. Ideascale is the place to put requests, but that's for product features/ updates, etc... it's got nothing to do with the website.

Without hearing a clip it's gonna be more or less impossible to diagnose... it's entirely possible that all you're hearing is typical single coil noise. Depending on the what else you've got plugged in on the same circuit and how good your power is, single coils can be unbearably noisy. Other stuff nearby can cause problems too, ceiling fans and dimmer switches being two of the more common offenders. And honestly, I find the single coils in my 69 to be a bit noisier than most others in my arsenal... As it should be...the piezos should be dead silent when not playing. It's one of the best things about a Variax. And while this is just a guess, I'd say that the fact that the modeling is working fine argues against a software issue. A bad switch or pot would be more likely. I've got a PRS with a push/pull tone pot that went south the other day... first the coil splitting just died, then stupid loud noise showed up even when not trying to split the coils. $15 and one new pot later, all is well. Without more info and investigation, it's very difficult to say. Could it be software? Theoretically... but it could be a whole bunch of things hardware related, too.

The time to worry about the proliferation of junk on Customtone and any effect that might have on the platform's usefulness to Joe Average has long since passed... it's already festooned with junk, and none of it is going away anytime soon, so what's one more? If you genuinely want anybody to hear your new creation, just put it up there, and don't lose any sleep over the old one.

I think if I had a thousand years to guess what is or isn't theoretically possible to do with a particular combination of amps/ speakers, and algorithms that I won't even pretend to understand, two things would happen: 1) I'd get a migraine. 2) 99.97% of those guesses would probably turn out to be wrong. So I'm not gonna bother...;)

If you're buzzing at just one particular note at a certain fret and the rest of the neck plays fine, then raising the action is not the solution... it might diminish or get rid of the buzz, but it will also give you uncomfortably high action and make the entire instrument more difficult to play. The symptom you're describing indicates that you have a high fret... and 99% of the time it's the next fret above the note that's buzzing. You need a set-up, and at the very least to address what's going on at and around the 16th fret... and if you've had the guitar a while and the frets are sufficiently beaten up, then there are probably issues elsewhere that you might not have noticed yet. You may need to level and re-crown the whole neck. On a long enough timeline, it's inevitable. Frets are like brake pads... they're a consumable part, and eventually they gotta go. Take it to any competent local tech, and don't let anybody tell you that it has to be some officially anointed Variax "expert"... this is a problem that eventually plagues every guitar on earth (unless you've got stainless frets, in which case it's much less likely but still possible), and it can be solved by anyone who knows what they're doing.

Well if you leave the transmitter plugged in while the amp is off for any length of time, you can expect a dead battery the next time you go to use it. Plugging it in depresses the small detent beside the 1/4" plug... that detent is the transmitter's "power button" for lack of a better term. So by doing that, you're just leaving it turned on for hours on end. However, if it's also discharging just sitting there not plugged in, then you've got a defective battery... it should hold a charge for quite a while when not in use. There's nothing odd about this...the juice has to come from somewhere. If the amp is off, it's off... the battery can't pull charge from nothing.

Yes, it's always been the case. Any sort of physical barrier could potentially be an issue. Most likely, but drop-outs may or may not happen occasionally...depends on the barrier in question, and there's only one way to find out. I've gone into the next room on the other side of a wall with my G10S just for giggles, and for the most part it maintains the connection, but it's not 100%. For small stages and the kind of gigs that most of us are likely playing, it works perfectly fine. Never had an issue with a clear line of sight. However, if you're meandering across a 200 foot stage in an arena, this is not the device you want. The battery life on the other hand is a whole other can of worms... if it's the same transmitter as the G10S, then the advertised battery life is likely to be grossly overestimated. Check out some of the threads on the Relay forum...

Never heard of that one... and this ain't my first rodeo. A quick glance reveals a grand total of 2 reviews on Amazon... in today's world, that speaks volumes, lol. Personally, I'd look for something with a bit more of a pedigree. If you want cheap, small, and portable, the EHX 44 Magnum is a stomp box-sized power amp. It's only rated at 44W, but I've played through it before, and it'll get stupid loud for that power rating. Plus, you're only driving one speaker, so it should be plenty. You might have trouble being heard over a really loud drummer, but that's always gonna be the case with only a 1x12 cabinet, no matter what's driving it.

7+ year old zombie thread... this one's gotta be a record. ;)

Dogs barking can't fly without umbrella!

Feature requests need to go in Ideascale... nobody in a position to do anything about it will see it in here.

Being a regular occurrence, I'd open service ticket and see what they tell you. Whatever the cause, it ain't normal...

You can try and "pre-quantify" anything you like, but you're just burning empty calories. At best you're dealing with approximations, and it will always be Helix that is the final arbiter as to what you can or can't place in a given signal chain, no matter what your numbers have told you. You'll either hit the DSP limit based on what you've selected, or you won't. Any prognostications you've attempted beforehand may or may not prove to be accurate... but either way, who cares? Whether you guessed right or not, the outcome is predetermined. The box is the only one with the answer, and it ain't talking until you actually do something. In the end, there's exactly one way to find out if a given combination of blocks is DSP-friendly or not. And if your calculations are off, you'll be preemptively dismissing combinations that would have worked just fine had you actually tried it out. Just put whatever you want in your signal chain... if you hit the DSP wall, you'll know and adjust accordingly.

Is it possible? Perhaps... with sufficient modification you could conceivably brute force the floor unit into a rack case. However, I suspect that the odds of stumbling upon someone here on the forum who has even tried, is near zero. It's also the only way you'd get a definitive answer... everybody else can only guess and toss out hypotheticals. Either way, hanging on for a reply from someone who's actually made the attempt to carve up a rack case to accommodate a floor unit is likely to be an extended wait, whether it worked or not. If you really want to make this happen, you're gonna have to give it a go... or find someone handy who's used to modifying things for tasks outside their intended use.