cruisinon2

You're thinking too much. "Upgrade" is a subjective term. If you think the cab with the vintage 30s sounds better than the other one, then its an upgrade. If you hate it, not really an upgrade no matter how much "better" it looks on paper. Years ago I bought a Rectifier cab, based on little more than Boogie's reputation, and a couple of friends who liked them. Hated the thing...couldn't get a decent tone out of it no matter what I did...and it cost twice as much as my old Marshall 4x12 that is now 30+ years old and still sounds great. Play it first...with YOUR guitar. If you like it, you've got a new toy.

Yup, love the overdrive for leads...it sings.

Don't beat on it, but it does take a little pressure to engage/disengage that knob. If its working as it should (deep breath everyone...its the knob again...sigh...), the knob should depress slightly, then return to neutral position, and the light should turn off.

Doesn't sound to me like you're on the fence at all...I've really wanted to like stuff before too. If you have to talk yourself into liking it...then it's not really your cup of tea.

Its all a matter of taste. What "sounds best" for your amp might sound like baked a$$ on mine, or vice versa. Forget the "correct" way to set things up. All the different output options are doing is applying different EQ curves to the signal...no way it will work universally for every amp out there...especially when you are going straight into the front of a combo, becuase you are then running the patch through the combo's preamp, whcih will further color your sound. There are a number of options, none of which are "wrong". Pre-amps only or full models...doesn't matter. With or without cab models...doesn't matter. You'll probably find that you'll use various combinations, depending on which amp model ur using, and the sounds you're looking for...clean vs. dirty. Just trust your ears...if it sounds good, who cares how you got there?

The question really is, did they fix it at all? Acknowledging an issue and fixing it are two different things. Problems are still being reported...are they all older guitars? Maybe, maybe not...

You can do that, but then you are stuck with having all your fx before the pre-amp in your head. Many fx, especially delay and reverb are best placed after the pre-amp. Exceptions being thins like a wah, or volume pedal. If the amp has an effects loop, you're gonna be better putting the POD in there, and plugging straight into your amp...get your basic tone first, then mess with effects. Just my $0.02.

If that's what you've got in the living room, I'm coming over, lol. I'll bring the beer...

Its been said like 4 times already, but its worth repeating. Just order yourself any of the VDI cables suggested above now...I've worked with drywall thats more flexable than the stock cable.

Never used one, but if I had to guess, I'd think you'd want it first thing in the chain right after the guitar. Given its function, seems like it would need a clean, dry signal to work with.

The fx loop is definitely noisy...how noisy will depend on what you're sticking in there, and whether or not you are placing it before or after the amp model. Some pedals are worse than others...not familar with that one specifically. And the gate will definitely eat your sustain. You could drop some coin on a Variax and forget that pedal entirely. It'll do your tuning for you, and there's zero hum from piezos...most of the time you don't even need a gate...

The 1.9 models are quite good. I have flipped back and forth a few times, and honestly can't decide which I like better. Why not try that for now and then see if you can convince Line 6 to send u a working USB dongle? Then just cross your fingers with the rest of us, and hope that 2.1 doesn't suck. I get your frustration tho...many of these problems should not exist at this point. Doesn't bode well...but at the same time, there are so many models in there, there's gotta be some you'll like even without building custom ones.

True...but the final link in the chain, what we're all listening with...is a brain. And seriously, how many quality brains do you run across in your daily travels? The answer to that question makes me shudder...which is why a product like this will never catch on with the masses. There will always be shiny expensive stuff for the rich folks, and the handful of others who know what good is, and who are willing to pay for it. But Joe Average consumer wants things cheap, fast, and big (big in the 'more bang for your buck' sense...not necessarliy physical size). For this reason, whatever the next phase in music storage media turns out to be, it will likely be even sh*ttier in quality than MP3's. The next thing that comes along that allows the storage of twice as much music in half the space, and at half the cost, is what people will gravitate towards. Most people don't want, or care about quality. They want something that gets the job done at a price they can afford...there will alwaye be more beat up Chevys than Ferraris.

Doesn't surprise me. Plenty of people have had issues with that ridiculous USB dongle.

Unfortunately, 2.0 seems unstable on certain guitars. Lots of weird things reported if you read thru the forums, and hardly ever the same problem twice. The only "fix" that seems to work is repeatedly reflashing the firmware, hoping that it will eventually "take". Some have reported success after several attempts...nobody knows why this works, but sometimes it apparently does. You can also try rolling back to 1.9, then create your custom models and see if you can save them to the guitar. If it works, then thats a pretty good indication that 2.0 is the problem, rather than the guitar. If it still won't load the models, might be the JTV.

There's nothing 'simulated' about the fx loop. Its the same as any other amp...only difference is you can choose where it sits in the signal chain. Generally speaking, a delay would go after the amp model and mixer, yes. Placement depends on the effect.

Download the advanced guide...its all in there. There's a whole chart for each effect...explains all the parameters. The stereo and dynamic (diff. delay times for L and R channels) delays won't do u any good unless you're running more than one cabinet, or if you run both L/R outs to a PA.

It's the one with the built-in Fetzer valve...

Personally, I don't wish to be reminded of any notes I played in 1987...I was dreadful then, lol. Of course that didn't stop me and my buddies from butchering 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' at the 8th grade dance...ugh, thanks for the flashback!!! LMAO...

I've never played a rectifier, but it wouldn't matter if I had. There's no way to predict what will work for you and your gear, based on somebody else's experience with this amp or that amp. There's only one way to find out if you're gonna like a piece of gear or not. Sometimes that means gambling on something, and dumping it later if it doesn't work out...its like a cheaper version of marriage, lol. As for tubes vs solid state...that argument will go on until the sun snuffs itself out. And at the end of the day, you either like it or you don't, so who cares what's in it? Purist tone-snobs will pontificate loudly and at length about how nothing but a 'vintage' tube amp will do, and that modeling amps are soul-less, tone sucking instruments of the devil. I've even heard people go on about being able to tell the difference between what kind of power tubes are in a given amp...EL34's vs 6L6's vs 5881's....blah, blah, blah. With some rare exceptions...most of these people are lying, but I digress. Over time, tube amps are more work, and more expensive to maintain. Retubing an amp is not cheap, and as the replacements are now entirely made overseas, consistency can be an issue. They are also prone to more problems, tubes becoming microphonic, etc...and too much jostling around and something is gonna break. Also, they have a nasty way of sounding great one day and absolute crap the next. By comparison, a solid state amp will sound the same every time you turn it on, and you can throw it down a flight of stairs, and 9/10 times, it'll still work. And even if it doesn't, whatever you broke will cost pennies on the dollar to fix, compared to its tube counterpart. I've had the Carvin for years....I like it, and I still gig with it. But my backup is the Spider IV HD150, and before that it was an ADA Microtube 200...single rack space, solid state power amp (they stuck a pair of 12ax7's in it somewhere, hence 'microtube', but its really a solid state amp). Because those things will always turn on, and always work. But soon, I'll be going FRFR. Smaller package, and I will be able to really get the most out of the 500X and my JTV that way...just haven't decided if I wanna go with the Stagesource stuff, or something else. The price is a little steep...

On, then off. on then off. on, then off. on, then off..... I know it's intensely mesmerizing, but you could just quit looking at it...I don't care if it's blinking out "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in Morse code. :P

I wasn't trying to steer you one way or the other, and as nice as that Marshall is, you'll be tired of lugging it around after the first gig. Those things sounds great, but you could anchor a small yacht with it. They should be put in a studio rack and never moved, lol. Take a look at Rocktron's website, they have several options (all solid state I believe), some of which you can pick up used on eBay for less than $200...just beware, 100 solid state watts is NOT the same as 100 tube watts. 100 tube watts can usually melt concrete...solid state, not so much. I've got a Carvin TS100 tube power amp I've been using for a number of years now. 2 channels, 50W a side, or 100W bridged mono. It drives a Marshall 4x12...always been loud enough.

Well if switching amp channels on the Boogie changes your sound, then it sounds like the Boogie's pre-amp is still contributing to your tone, which is odd. The fx return should be bypassing it. Can't say I'm positive about exactly what's going on with the signal chain either...but hey, if you like it and it's not setting anything on fire, who cares what it's doing? EVH claimed to have wired his guitar to the dimmer switch from a ceiling fan...why? Who knows...I suspect it involved large quantities of Heineken :P ...but people have been trying to reproduce his "brown" sound for going on 40 years.

http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109.abstract quoted from the link above: "Abstract Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri “del Gesu†are tonally superior to other violins—and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated. Player's judgments about a Stradivari's sound may be biased by the violin's extraordinary monetary value and historical importance, but no studies designed to preclude such biasing factors have yet been published. We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments. The resulting preferences were based on the violinists’ individual experiences of playing the instruments under double-blind conditions in a room with relatively dry acoustics. We found that (i) the most-preferred violin was new; (ii) the least-preferred was by Stradivari; (iii) there was scant correlation between an instrument's age and monetary value and its perceived quality; and (iv) most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old. These results present a striking challenge to conventional wisdom. Differences in taste among individual players, along with differences in playing qualities among individual instruments, appear more important than any general differences between new and old violins. Rather than searching for the “secret†of Stradivari, future research might best focused on how violinists evaluate instruments, on which specific playing qualities are most important to them, and on how these qualities relate to measurable attributes of the instruments, whether old or new." So I wonder how all the firmly entrenched "traditionalist" guitar players would fare in the same experiment?

Yup...and his noise went platinum. Don't know whether to laugh or cry...