cruisinon2

Cable is only a couple of months old and in good shape. This time I was using the longer 30' one from L6. In the past I had always used the shorter one that came with the guitar and designed specifically for connecting to the uber-silly USB dongle, and it didn't work any better or worse with that one. Success/failure rates are pretty much the same for either one, so at least in my case, I don't think the cables have much to do with it...either that or they are both equally crappy, lol. :P

I hate to be the one to break it to you...but virtually nothing in this thread is serious. :D The guys with the endorsements have their pictures on the home page in all their swashbuckling, rock star glory...

Sorry...you did say you have the older Variax...my bad, I ran right past that.

I sympathize...the only thing I can offer as a suggestion is to check and see if perhaps the mags somehow got blended with the models accidentally in Workbench. I suspect that those who have this problem, even if Workbench indicates that no blending is going on, I think that's what's happening in the bowels of the electronics anyway. Obviously this is not the user's fault, but it's the only explanation that makes any sense to me. With alt. tunings I absolutely hear my strings ringing acoustically, even with headphones, esp. with a clean tone (I have open back cans, which let a lot of ambient sound in...you could easily have a conversation with them on your head when nothing's playing) If I blast myself into next week with the volume, then it will drown it out...JTVs really ring like a bell. I've also recorded in the alt tunings, and there's never any obnoxious dissonance in the playback, so what I'm hearing is definitely the gutiar itself. Would be nice if this got sorted out somehow...but I'm not entirely sure anybody really knows what's causing it.

They could give those away...and people would complain about the color. ;)

lmao... :lol:

Well as long as you've got is straight now...can't have a bunch of uneducated clods roaming the interwebs freely, now can we? :P

There was a time when companies needed freebie giveaways for promotion and advertising. Now they have the internet, where hardly a belch or fart goes unnoticed by the masses (Tweet, Tweet...ugh), if only for a fleeting moment...but just long enough to imprint logos and slogans in the minds of the consumer. So the freebies have largely gone the way of the Dodo...might as well be asking for a private jet.

Are you using the 500X only for effects, with no amp model in the signal chain? If so, then this set-up should work. However with the "3cm" set-up you describe, and an amp model running from the POD, you would be daisy chaining the pre-amp from your head into an amp model in the POD, then back into the power section of the head. Not sure why you'd want to do that. Seems to me that this is very likely to result in a seriously muddy tone.

What you smell is insecurity...

I meant as a result of my musical prowess...or lack there of, depending on the night, lol. And I checked the contact page...can't seem to find the "I want an endorsement deal" link. :lol:

I'm not complaining about the final results...only the circuitous path that always seems to be required to get there. Now that it's in there, everything works as it should.

Well, I've had it fail with both connections, a fairly equal number of times, lol...so your guess is as good as mine. So far, I've been able to eventually get it to work. But I fear the day that the guitar gets bricked, cause this time lights started changing color...that was a new one for me.

OK, I decided to throw caution to the wind... Ultimately the update worked, but not without one rather scary hiccup. First time through, connected through the 500X, it failed with the familiar MIDI error message, which I've seen before with other updates. However, this one was also accompanied by the entire alt. tuning knob lighting up royal blue. Multiple attempts would not clear the error, so I unplugged and powered off everything. Oddly enough, when I reconnected to Monkey, the JTV registered as having 2.1 installed, despite the fact that it never finished the update. Also, I had elected not to keep the JTV models I had on the guitar, but when I connected to Workbench after the failed attempt, the models I had previously created were still on there, so the process obviously hadn't completed. Attempt number 2 after powering everything off worked as advertised, and connecting to Workbench through the 500X works fine. So what went on the first time, I have no idea...I remain very puzzled as to why flashing firmware is still so hit or miss...but I've had that repeatedly that since the beginning, so it's certainly not peculiar to 2.1. I still find, as have some others, that the Strat models need string volume adjustment...the low E, A, and D strings jump up and smack you in the face, especially in positions 4 and 5. But this is easily fixable, and also not a new issue for me. I suspect that string gauge may contribute to this...I play 11's....so perhaps the increased tension on the piezos is the culprit...just guessing. At the end of the day I don't care though...that's what Workbench is there for. Popping sound when switching patches seems to have gone bye-bye...or at least significantly diminished, although I have not really experimented with it much yet. Still futzing with string volumes right now. All in all, it seems to be a big improvement, so I gotta give credit where credit is due. All except for the update process itself, which frankly sucks, and is still relentlessly annoying. Of all the flipping back and forth with firmware that I've done, it's more or less 50/50. It has failed on me multiple times (both thru the 500X and with the goofy USB dongle), but never with the entire alt. tuning knob turning a different color...no idea what that means, if anything. So at the moment it's working...and I'm not gonna poke at it anymore unless something craps out....probably won't go near it again until the next update. Still way to buggy a process...batting .500 will get you to Yankee Stadium, but it's not an impressive stat for a firmware install.

I think they should offer individualized firmware, catering specifically to every mad raving and peculiar desire. I want mine to smell like bubble gum. YA HEAR THAT IN THERE?!?!?!!?!?....BUBBLE GUM!!!!!!!!! :lol:

It's not a buffet. You're never going to be able to choose functionality a la carte, from across multiple firmware releases.

I love this place....lmao NOTHING will ever be perfect. One man's perfection is another's gross miscarriage of justice. You got 2 choices.... 1) Accept that as fact and move on. or 2) Have a stroke over it.

I think this is probably a lot harder than it seems, for whatever reason. Patches that I really like with one particular guitar, sound horrendous with others, and thats only switching one variable. And from my experience with customtone, I don't think there's any way to really tell what a patch is gonna sound like with anything but the rig in front of you. I DLed dozens of things when I first got it, and had no better luck than with the factory presets. Some of them sounded so far removed from what they were supposed to be emulating, that I found myself wondering what could possibly have been going through the head of whomever posted it...I think this unit, more so than any other piece of gear I've owned, is very dependent on the other components in the rig, and whoever is behind the wheel.

Don't feel bad...I've got a ton of L6 gear, and they've never heard of me either. :P

And 98% of the people in the room won't be in the right spot...on the bright side, most of the clientele down at Billy Bob's Tavern on the Dirt will be pig drunk and processing everything with a Jack Daniel's delay anyway...so it might even out in the end, lol. But I agree...sometimes less is more. At home stereo is fun to screw around with, but rapidly looses its luster anywhere else.

That's cool...now I'm one step closer to taking the plunge.

Never mind. You win. I gotta go buy a spectrum analyzer...keyboard player said he heard some substandard resolution lurking somewhere in my rig last night, and I will conquer it if it takes all the calculus in the cosmos. :P

I understand that resolution can be measured...along with just about everything else under the sun. We're obsessed with quantifying practically everything today, as if some universal objective truth on every topic known to man can somehow be determined, and cataloged into the Big Book of Right Answers. Much of the time, this is a pointless exercise, especially when the end result is totally a matter of individual perception...magic numbers therefore rendered meaningless unless you're authoring a textbook. If I prefer the way the tone with the "worse" resolution sounds, then why on earth would I care what the numbers are in the first place?

"you have to agree that perhaps cabs native into the pod are probably not the best" is an entirely subjective statment. "better resolution" is an entirely subjective statment....better than what? I don't need a spectrum analyzer to tell me if I like the way something sounds, nor will my opinion change about how something sounds because I look at a god-damned graph or something flashing across a p-scope. This is not a course in calculus, differential equations, or the physics of sound. All that matters is whether my rig sounds good to me or not. Tone A is not "better" than Tone B because a friggin' equation says it is. And we are talking about feel...that's what 99.97% of every discussion on here is about...what your axe sounds like, and how that makes you and the audience (maybe...) feel. That's what music is...reduce it to cold, hard numbers if that's your thing, but I fail to see where the joy is in that.

No I don't.