cruisinon2

If its only the one patch that's misbehaving, it's likely that it just got corrupted. It happens...particularly if it's one you've had for a while that's been edited and saved a million times, and/or copied and pasted into other slots, which seems to cause problems sometimes. Less likely but still possible, is that you've discovered a bug... that some chance combination of settings you stumbled upon is causing the output block to $hit the bed. In that case, there would be little to nothing you can do about it. Either way, you basically have two choices... 1) Restore a backup and see if an older saved version exhibits the same behavior, or 2) Just rebuild it block by block in an empty slot... don't copy and paste the blocks, as you don't really know what's causing it. In my experience this is the path of least resistance... annoying and time consuming, but it generally solves the problem.

Unless a product has the date of manufacture baked into the serial number with an acknowledged and decipherable formula known to Joe Average, it's impossible to tell how old it actually is just from the date of purchase. There are a million middle men between factory and consumer. Stuff sits in shipping containers, customs facilities, warehouses, and retail stock rooms for indeterminate periods of time before you open the box... in other words if all you have to go on is a sales receipt, then you can guess when it was made until the cows come home and there's no way to ever know if you're right or wrong...so obsessing over it is utterly pointless. As long as it's in working order, just crank it up and play. If it breaks, then deal with it... until then you're just driving yourself nuts for no reason.

Well until he reappears to clarify we'll never know, but I seriously doubt that's what he's talking about. I had thought "cap" was a typo,and he meant "cab"...capo is not really a word that needs abbreviating, so I'm not sure why he'd bother, lol...but who knows? Everything else in his post seems to indicate that he's talking about comparing the basic tones of the two devices, rather than focusing narrowly on pitch shifting abilities. Either way, I'm done guessing...it's pointless until he resurfaces.

I dunno, we'll need clarification... but this is what he said, and there's no mention of an actual physical cabinet. Who knows?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're not using any cabinet sims, and running straight to the PA? Normally that would result in a horrifying sound, reminiscent of a rusty chainsaw at a tire burnout contest... but if you like what you hear, then so be it... it is very odd however, and not at all what one would expect.

Stretch them... that's New Strings 101. Waiting for them to stretch themselves is silly. Tune each string to pitch and then pull on it, firmly but not so much that you snap them, and retune to pitch. Do that until no matter how much you yank on it, they don't go flat anymore. Takes 5 minutes, and then you won't have tuning stability problems anymore.

No... truss rod adjustments and neck relief have nothing to do with intonation...well infinitesimally small, anyway. Regardless, truss rod adjustments are not how you fix intonation problems, as it's a string by string issue, typically requiring a different degree of adjustment for each string, if any is needed at all. It's also not a warranty issue...it's setup/periodic maintenence that every electric guitar on earth needs occasionally. Intonation is adjusted by either lengthening or shortening the vibrating length of each string. You do it by moving the bridge saddles either forward or back. If the fretted note is flat compared to the harmonic, then the bridge saddle needs to be shifted forward slightly (towards the headstock), making the length of the string shorter. If the fretted note is sharp, then shift the saddle back the other way, making the vibrating length of the string slightly longer. It's trial and error, and you don't need to move the saddle very far... do it in small increments until the fretted note matches the harmonic.

There are also folks who claim they've seen Sasquatch...;)

The position would need a catchy title... something like "Chief Entitled Sad-Sack". ;)

Actually he's been doing an excellent job of spreading the torture around... after all, what does misery love? ;)

Lol...I love it when retailers do that. The truly funny part is that people take it as gospel. Nevermind the fact that half the time they can't tell you if 'Item X' is already in the building or not, nevermind when something might theoretically show up weeks or months down the road..."It'll be here a week from next Tuesday" is just designed to get you off the phone and/or out of their inbox...

You'll have to stop now... His Excellency has demanded that he not be "pricked" anymore... and I'm not touching that one with a ten foot pole. ;)

And what about you? I could easily say the exact same thing about your behavior, so don't try and rewrite history by pretending that you were trying to "help beginners". Read your own original post. You showed up to complain about a device that you don't like, offering absolutely nothing constructive... just a list of grievances and pointless comparisons to something else which you've decided is superior... just as countless others have before you. What does this accomplish? It's a rant motivated by buyer's remorse, not a tutorial or even an honest review, and the only person you've helped is yourself...to vent frustration. So if that's your definition of how someone of "high development" behaves, then enjoy your ivory tower. I'll gladly stay down here on the wrong side of the moat with the rest of the filthy rabble. We've all purchased gear that we ended up disliking for one reason or another, but not once has it ever occurred to me to show up on a forum to $hit all over a product that plenty of others are perfectly happy with and use successfully. Why would I do that? Because I didn't like it, or it didn't suit my needs as I thought it would... who cares? How would that serve the "greater good"? Never mind... rhetorical questions, all. I neither need nor want answers. I'd sell it and move on with life, because that's what "highly developed" adults do. Best of luck in the Fractalverse!

Waa, waa... FRACTAL!... blah blah sucks... FRACTAL!... sounds $hitty... FRACTAL! I think you've already decided what's gonna make you happy... so spare yourself the ulcer (and the rest of us the whining) and go shopping. But just for my own morbid curiosity, what the f*%$ is a "cabinet pulse"? On second thought never mind...I don't care. Bon voyáge! p.s....FRACTAL!!!

Lol... option paralysis, anyone?

Rather than waiting around for a feature that may never arrive, there are innumerable 3rd party IR's that blend more than one mic together. Yes, you'll have to spend a few bucks, but what you're asking for exists if you want it.

Yes, but if you read the post that he was responding to, that was already mentioned and acknowledged. The "wish list" item in question was the ability to have Helix pitch shift one or more individual strings, while leaving the others alone with any old regular guitar... and that ain't happening anytime soon.

Nah... too much potential liability. After all they didn't even trust us not to burn our houses down charging our G10's, they had to hobble the product instead...;) The first time you boot up the Helix right out of the box it should just administer an IQ test. If you score within 10% of Forrest Gump, it bricks itself 'Mission Impossible' style... it'll be a huge time saver. ;)

Well here's what he asked: And after each response, he kept coming back with "what about a Satriani, a PRS, a Variax?". Now perhaps I'm mistaken, and if so, so be it. But to me this implies two things: 1) For reasons unknown, he's really hell bent on having just one instrument. 2) He wants this one unicorn of a guitar to fulfill all his wants and needs, to the point where he'll never be jonesing for something else. Having been at this a good while now, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that such a thoroughly unrealistic expectation, coupled with a self-imposed one guitar limit, is almost certain to end in disappointment. Because no matter what he picks, it'll be better at some things than others...c'mon, there's a reason you'll never see James Hetfield on stage weilding a vintage Tele, and it's not just because it would be a weird aesthetic, lol. That's all I was trying to convey... that, and the fact that using the right tool for the right job just makes life a whole lot easier. Then you don't have to settle for "close enough". Plus, how would you not get bored to death playing the same guitar all the time? I'd pull what's left of my hair out if I had only one option at my disposal...;)

You really haven't provided much info to work with here... what exactly do you have? Two Standards? JTV's? One of each? And describing a neck as "unacceptable" could mean just about anything. Does it smell funny? Are the frets poorly dressed/leveled, is the nut incorrectly slotted, etc etc... what's wrong with it? Regardless, as far as I know the JTV's are the only ones that have the month and year of manufacture baked into the serial number... so if they're both Standards, then you can only guess if one is from a significantly older production run than the other.

This is true...Yngwie has been playing Strats forever, and it's glaringly obvious... you only need about 2 seconds of listening to tell that it's a Strat, and that was my whole point. Each style of instrument has a tonal character that you couldn't remove with a wizard hat and magic wand. You can try to mimic other guitars by swapping pickups or coil-tapping existing ones, etc... but the results are hit and miss. In my experience, mostly "miss". My most recent acquisition is an Epi LP that's coil-tapped. It's a perfectly usable single coil tone, but you'll never wring those really glassy, clean Strat sounds out of it. It's just not there, and that's OK. And it's equally true that you can play any genre of music on any guitar and get by... but the OP seems convinced that somewhere in the wild there's one magical instrument that will enable him to convincingly recreate a wide variety of very specific tones with pinpoint accuracy, and he'll never want for anything else.... and that's a totally unrealistic expectation, and a loooooooong wait for a train that ain't coming.

Opinions about the Variax are all over the map. It does some things well, and others leave much to be desired. Obviously it's a tech-dependent product which relies heavily everything working "just so". They are prone to strange quirks (search "piezo quack") that some players experience and some don't...imho, one's individual playing technique and pick attack are a huge part of whether or not not you'll have issues. In short, some guys take to them and think they're wonderful, and others just don't bond with them at all, and they end up on Reverb or eBay. I was quite enamored with mine initially, but as I put more and more time in with it, it's limitations became more obvious, and I seldom play it now. They're not "bad" instruments, but due to the technology's inherent limitations, they tend to require a great deal of tweaking with the edit software to get whatever sound(s) you're after. The odds of being thrilled with it right out of the box are slim to none...took me quite a while to dial it in before I was happy. It's also worth considering that the current Variax generation is more than 10 years old at this point, there have been no firmware updates in at least 5 or 6 years, and some guys are starting to report that the edit software is not working on some newer operating systems. The smart money says that whatever the next Variax iteration will be is probably not far off, though exactly when is anybody's guess. Bottom line is you have to look at it as a product with a finite lifespan (which has essential already been reached as far as I'm concerned), because sooner or later the tech side of it won't be supported or developed anymore...that's just the reality of the marketplace. There's also the very real possibility that you'll pick it up one day and something will have stopped working on the modeling side, and you might not be able to fix it yourself. Mine still works after nearly 8 years, but the hardware and/or software can and does fail sometimes. But any other guitar you fall in love with you can take to the grave, and any problems it might develop along the way will be much more readily solved. Here's what it boils down to: I've never met a serious guitar player...working pro, or passionate hobbyist who never plays outside his bedroom...who owned just one guitar. I honestly don't think that guy exists. Hell, my 74 year old classical guitar playing mother owns four instruments. You're not gonna find one be-all, end-all axe that will do everything you want in spectacular fashion...nothing in life is that versatile. A Prius and a Lamborghini will both get you to work, but only one can do it at 200 mph... similarly, you can't take the twang out of a Tele or put a Les Paul's bite into a Strat. There just ain't no "one size fits all", no matter what the brochure says. Go shopping...new guitars are fun, and the economy needs all the help it can get. And don't sell off what you've got before you figure out if you like the new one, or you'll be back to square one.

There is no magic bullet, no. And when you're trying to emulate a specific sound, invariably there's always a right tool for the job, and others that just aren't gonna cut it. You could try and plant tulips with payloader... but it won't end well. Like I said above... if there was one guitar that you could buy that would cover every tone and genre there is equally well, we'd all know what it is, and everybody would own it. You're looking for an all-in-one solution that doesn't exist. Currently I own 11 guitars, and it's not because I'm filthy rich or I wanted one in every color of the rainbow... they all serve a purpose. And that number is relatively modest compared to some guys I've played with over the years. Some see more playing time than others, but they all get used. It's not just an enormous coincidence that country guys are all playing Teles, that the Texas blues players gravitate towards Strats, and the hard rock and metal players are shredding on something with a pair of humbuckers. The only thing that will reliably sound like a Strat, is a Strat...

Well from what I can see from 3 seconds of googling, that fiddle is basically a LP design with what I imagine are fairly high output humbuckers... trying to get a convincing Texas blues Strat tone from it will be difficult, if not impossible. Does that make it "rubbish"? No. There's nothing "wrong" with the instrument, per se... it's just geared towards a different sound, for different genres of music. The various styles of electric guitars exist for a reason... they don't all sound alike. If you could get every conceivable tone from any guitar on earth, then we'd all own one instrument, you'd never have to hide the latest acquisition from your wife, and the Variax wouldn't exist because there would be no need for it. Want to sound like SRV? Get yourself a nice Strat...

I get it... I've been at this for decades. Nothing I said was motivated by confusion, nor was I seeking an explanation for anything. And the only thing I don't "understand" for lack of a better term, is why anyone obsesses over charting the numbers that some meter spits out when trying to level volume from patch to patch, and considers the job "done" because everything reads "X" dB... perceived loudness is what matters, and if the that's all over the map, then I could care less that some meter is telling me that everything is the same. But that's just me, and if it makes me "wrong", then so be it... but in 30+years, it hasn't failed me yet. I've yet to be told that my levels are all over the place, even by the crankiest/pickiest guys I've played with over the years, who could hear a mouse fart at 50 yards. But as always, ymmv... what do I know?