cruisinon2

No you don't. You want to pontificate, criticize, and condescend...and if history is anything to go by, you'll do so no matter what anyone offers up. See above. Because you are insufferable.

Everyone who has ever played Yes...everyone who has ever played guitar through any rig, for a long as electric guitars and amps have existed. Be it an analog or digital setup, higher gain = higher noise floor. There's no escaping it... that's why noise gates exist. When used properly, they will mitigate the problem, but with higher gain tones you'll never eliminate it competely. Your other option is to get used to using a volume pedal... particularly when soloing. Roll the volume back in between phrases when the buzz jumps out... takes some getting used to, but in the end it's no more difficult than using a wah, and after a while you won't even know you're doing it anymore.

No. You couldn't pay me to use such a feature...a 2 to 3 second delay in switching between sounds is an eternity in a live situation. Hell, for years before snapshots came along we were all griping about the milliseconds of delay between preset changes and the audible dropout that came with it, and now you want to make the delay worse by orders of magnitude? Hard pass... Depending on a song's tempo, you'd be in a constant state of trying to guess how many beats have to go by to cover your 2 or 3 seconds delay window... it would be disastrous. You'll never get it right, every change will end up being too early or too late, and you'll only have succeeded in trading one problem for another. Switching between sounds needs to be instantaneous... you need it when you need it, not 3 seconds in the future.

It's not brain surgery, and you can order a replacement piezo from www.fullcompass.com. It really just depends on how handy you are, and whether or not you're confident enough that you won't destroy something else in the process. The piezo element and the wire that connects it to the board are somewhat delicate. Not if the piezo itself is dead, no.

You're never gonna get an answer...

Put this in the Helix forum... it's not gonna get noticed in here.

That guy chimes in once in a blue moon, whenever he feels the need to demonstrate that he's the smartest guy in the room. In his black and white universe everything is reduced to a series of "right" and "wrong" absolutes, which he obsessively quantifies (to whatever extent possible depending on the issue) in a futile attempt to "disprove" the subjective opinions of others. By now I'm sure you can guess who's always "right". Ignore him.

I just don't get this degree of the "gotta have it's". There is no "perfect rig", or any one piece of gear so fabulously "ideal" that it can make one's every want and need come true. No matter what you buy, there gonna be something that you wished it did or didn't do. But if I approached every purchase with a window of acceptability this narrow, I'd never buy anything.

Well since Phil Collen clearly doesn't own any shirts, I'd be very surprised if he wears any drawers at all under those snazzy leather trousers....

I base all my decision making on what famous people do. The only thing I can't figure out is why I haven't been on the Tonight Show yet... anybody know what kind of underwear Steve Vai buys? Maybe that's the answer...;)

Don't think I've ever needed that many words to convince myself that my money was well spent, lol...hope that took some of the sting out of the Fractal price tag for ya... Ladies and gentlemen, the FACT bus has left the building. Bon voyáge!

Because there's nothing worse than when everything sags the same...;)

If you don't hear anything weird, then there is no problem. Not much point in searching for a gremlin that ain't there....

Studio monitors... can't mix on the Powercab.

I hate to break it to ya, but we're basically already there for the current Variax generation. Yes, the Standard is a slightly younger, but it's sporting the exact same firmware as the JTV's, which are already right around the ten year old mark... the first ones started shipping in 2011, if I'm not mistaken. And they haven't seen an update in 5 or 6 years.

To what end, though? I'm genuinely curious... since it isn't gonna change anything, what's the point? The gear is what it is, and those who find the latency intolerable already know that they don't like it. What purpose does assigning a number to an unfavorable opinion, serve? I already know that I don't like lima beans... quantifying that dislike, were it possible, won't change that.

I have a question... beyond satisfying curiosity, what does one actually do with this information?

So here's the thing with Warmoth... if you buy one of the "in-stock" necks, you'll save a considerable chunk of change, but most of those will already be pre- drilled for a Strat. If you have them build you one from scratch, you can opt to not pre-drill for the mounting bolts, but not only is there an up-charge for not drilling the holes, the whole thing will probably end up costing ~25% more than one they've already built, and it's a much longer wait. Fortunately, it doesn't really matter. You can buy a neck that's already been pre-drilled for Strat mounting bolts. Only one hole is offset on the Variax body... the other three will line up just fine. So that one hole will have to be doweled and re-drilled (it's too close to just drill a new hole and leave the existing one) but this quite simple to do, and even if you don't trust yourself to do it, any competent local tech/ luthier can do it in their sleep, and it's not expensive... you'll spend less money doing this than the extra $ it'll cost you to build one from the ground up. Either way you choose to go, Warmoth makes great stuff. I'm not affiliated with them in any way...but I've had probably 5 or 6 of their necks on various guitars over the years. I've also built both Strat and Tele "parts-casters" from Warmoth necks and bodies, and they're two of my favorite guitars. As far as I'm concerned, they do Fender better and prettier than Fender does, and for 30-50% less money depending on how figured/ exotic the piece wood, the finish you choose, etc etc.

Me neither, but I simply cannot fathom paying nearly $4K for a guitar with a bolt-on neck...that's just insane. I don't care who's building it, unless it's got diamonds embedded in it, there's nothing they can do to make that level of construction worth 4 grand. I have an SE Custom 24 that's twice the guitar the JTV is, as far as build-quality is concerned. Already told the wife I want a Core model when I hit 50 in another couple years...we'll see, lol. Yup... the path of least resistance is to keep cramming the guts into Pacifica bodies. No argument there, lol. Totally agree... putting a Warmoth neck on my 69 improved it considerably, but it never became a workhorse. I always gravitate towards other instruments first. Curious to see what the next generation Variax has under the hood... one would assume that something is on the horizon. They haven't updated the current products in years, now.

Gibson and Fender are already comically overpriced for what they are... I can only imagine what exorbitant prices they'd demand with Variax guts on board. Maybe they'd have half a chance of working something out with some of the less expensive Epiphones or import Fenders... but then again, that's basically what the JTV's are... the only tangible difference would be the logo on the headstock. Though now that I think about it, anything would be better than having "James Tyler" emblazoned on it 43 times...;)

"The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain" - Capt. Montgomery Scott. ;) You can try it, but piggybacking pitch shifting effects probably won't end well. The algorithms are imperfect as it is, and now you're gonna shift an already altered signal even further... you're practically begging for wierd artifacts. Besides, the Variax can do what you want all by itself anyway... why complicate matters?

It's your time, so do as you like... but given that this thread is nearly 2 years old, by the time you get this all sorted out (which remains an "if") you'll be gumming down pudding in the old folk's home...;) You might want to start thinking about an upgrade because I honestly think you hit the point of diminishing returns some time ago...don't be your own speed bump. The current generation of modelers are stealth fighters, and you're piloting a biplane... nothing lasts forever.

It can seem that way, but you've already ruled that out on your own with the headphones. If you don't hear both pitches coming through the cans, then you can't possibly be hearing both pitches coming through other outputs either... the signal is what it is, it doesn't change just because you took your headphones off, lol. Bottom line is, all pitch shifting algorithms are imperfect solutions. Guitars will always generate their own acoustic sound... you can drown out it, but you can't shut them up. Under certain conditions these effects are quite good and perfectly usable, but in others they leave a great deal to be desired. Life's rough...;)

Don't obsess over any particular setting(s)... no matter what the defaults are, you're still going to have to turn knobs until it sounds good. And once it sounds good, the final resting place for all those knobs is irrelevant... no matter what you'd expect a given model's real world counterpart to sound like with those same settings... modeling is it's own weird little world.

Theres nothing to buy or "fix", because nothing's "broken". Your only problem is volume...and you've basically answered your own question. The problem goes away with headphones because you are no longer hearing the guitar acoustically... the cans are blocking enough ambient sound so you can't hear the guitar itself anymore. If you're playing through some other output (studio monitors, etc etc), your only recourse is to be turned up loud enough to completely drown out the acoustic sound of the instrument... and you'll probably find that you have to turn up louder than you'd think to accomplish that. Solid body guitars ring out louder than most realize... we're just used to ignoring it. But when the pitches coming out of the speaker are not the same as those which the guitar is physically producing, it becomes impossible to ignore. Dissonance is inevitable unless you eliminate the guitar itself as a direct sound source going straight to your ears. And the closer the pitch shifted intervals are to the original pitch, the worse it gets. The strings are inches from your head... it's impossible to not hear them unless some other source is considerably louder. And yes, you will notice the treble strings more readily than the lower registers, as they are producing midrange frequencies to which we are all naturally more sensitive at lower volumes. And fwiw, none of this is peculiar to your Variax. Go ahead and fire up the new poly pitch shifter in Helix with a normal guitar, drop yourself down 1/2 step and play without headphones... if you're not cranked up loud enough, I guarantee it will be completely unlistenable.