cruisinon2

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...

I heard that the next generation of modelers is being developed at CERN, in Geneva. Two things: wormholes, and time travel... you're gonna get to be your own delay...stay tuned ;).

Yes...any power amp will do that. Many options...plenty out there that are specifically designed for guitar rigs, others that are more geared towards PA systems, but in the end they are all doing the same thing as the power section in your head...they take the signal you feed it and drive speakers. You'll probably be better off if you look towards the ones designed for a guitar rig, as they are tailored to the task. Either way it's another piece of gear to lug around, but depending on what you choose, you might save a little weight and/or space compared to your head. Tube power amps will take up at least 2 rack spaces, and they're heavy. A Marshall 9100 for example, is 3 rack spaces and weighs 50 or 60 lbs...ditched mine years ago in the interest of remaining vertical, and staying off of an operating table. Or you can get a single rack space, solid state power amp from Rocktron that doesn't weigh any more than the 500...but power ratings will hardly be comparable to the tube units. What's the "better" or "worse" choice will be debated until the end of time.

Like I said...no right or wrong here. But if you like the Vox that much and want to use it's pre-amp for your basic tone, then you are really only using the 500X for fx, and you're missing out on much of what this unit can do. It is after all, an amp modeler. There are a couple of dozen options in there, and you might find one that you like 10x more than your Vox. If not, there are a bunch of other multi-fx units out there that are a lot less complicated to use than the Pods.

Nothing wrong with going that route...just know that you will end up with 3 or more sets of patches: headphones, amp at bedroom volume, and gig volume. Everything will need to be dialed in, and they likely won't be interchangable.

There are no magic bullets for tone matching on this, or any other amp in the universe. Someone else's settings will never sound the same in your hands. The guitar, the pickups, the player, and to a great extent the volume you're playing at will all contribute to the tone. Trial and error is the only way to get even half way to what you're looking for.

Doesn't matter how you're listening...you'll always have to push buttons and turn knobs till it sounds good. But you'll want to use a quality pair of studio monitor headphones...preferably open, or semi-open back. Closed back cans will give you an artificially pronounced low end, and you'll find yourself rolling off the bass to the point where it's at or near zero, and depending on the amp model and guitar you're using, it might still be too much.

You're not alone with the output settings...combo/front, stack/front, etc are all just different EQ curves being applied to approximate what you'd want for a given set-up, but its never gonna work for every amp out there. You can also experiment with using full amps vs. pre-amp only models, as well as changing cabinet models, or turning cab sims off altogether. Many ways to set things up, and none of them are 'right' or 'wrong'. The deep edit parameters (sag, bias, early relflection, etc) will also color your tone significantly. Tends to be a learning curve for the 500x...mess around with everything. As far as amp choices, as was already said above, it won't matter what you get, you will have to tweak things all over again regardless of what you choose. The simplest choice, in terms of maintaining consistency with your tones from headphones, to recording direct, to playing live, will be an FRFR set-up. Lots of options for that too, depending on how much $$ you want to spend. Happy hunting!

Not sure what you mean by 'artificially'... fx send/return, and "pre-amp out/ power amp in" are really the same thing. Either way you're bypassing the head's preamp and slaving the power section to drive a cabinet. But despite the name, don't plug an external power amp's speakers outs into the 'amp in' jack...its looking for a line level signal, and you'll fry both amps.

2.0 seems to be a bit flakey. Rolling back to 1.9 is worth trying too, as some have reported night and day differences. Why is anybody's guess.

The Black Knight always triumphs!

It's an eternity, really...unless you're the Lord of the Dance... :P

This might be stupid...but you're not in an alt. tuning right? Check everything with the mags to be sure there's not some funky JTV/DSP weirdness going on.

Also, when in doubt, reflash the firmware. It seems to be the magic fairy dust in many cases.

Relative prices of the other guitars have nothing to do with it. If you had three different Strats in front of you, they will not all sound identicle. Ditto for any other kind of guitar...so don't waste any more time comparing it to other guitars. If you already know the ins and outs of the 500, then you're probably not doing anything wrong...the JTV is just a different guitar, actually a very different guitar. Let the tweaking being...Right out of the box, mine sounded much like what a boiled landfill would smell like. You'll need to spend some time with it to get it to sound the way you want.

If only you had taken it to an authorized service center... ;) It's odd that it's off by an entire 1/2 step, and that's gonna be a pretty big saddle adjustment, but it should be fixable. If I understand you correctly, the fretted E at the 12th fret is flat compared to the 12th fret harmonic? That being the case, the vibrating length of the string needs to be shortened, so you would adjust the saddle by moving it towards the nut. Do it incrementally, and check the fretted note against the harmonic after each adjustment until he tones match.

"We want another shrubbery! And place it beside the first one, so we shall have a path..."

I believe "rubbish" is the term our friends across the pond would use in a situation such as this. If you're actually playing mid-patch change, it's as clear as day. If you mute the strings, then switch, it's less obvious, but still there. I suppose it depends on exactly how they're "testing" it...

You'll hear that if you're listening/tweaking while connected to Workbench. Don't know why.