cruisinon2

1) Nobody "official" ever frequents this forum... especially not here in the lounge. Feature requests go in IdeaScale. 2) Ask them for anything you want, but in all the years I've been hanging around here, I've never seen anybody request an integrated drum machine in any L6 product...I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

Oh, what's the matter, not content with "eventually" as the official ETA? Hurry up and wait! LOL. Welcome to 2022: when all else fails, blame COVID. Like the virus itself, the excuse will be with us forever, lmao... We now return you to your regularly scheduled "new normal"...(insert vomit emoji here).

"Official" proclamations notwithstanding, there is absolutely nothing mysterious about setting up a Variax... been doing it myself for a dozen years, and I've never made a dime servicing guitars... just been dying out myself forever. Fancy electronics aside, it's still a guitar...not the Webb Space Telescope... and in terms of setup adjustments, it's no different than any other solid body electric guitar on earth. It's also worth noting that the Variax guitars are far from being the only fiddles out there with piezo pickups...any luthier worth his salt will have seen them before, and will be able to set it up just fine.

A company man till the end, lol...

I always go for the path of least resistance... in this case, that would be a $12 clip on tuner, roll off the guitar's volume, and chat up the audience to your heart's content... problem solved.

Scanning through all of this, I find it hard to believe that it has anything to do with the Helix at all, but rather it would seem to be a setup issue with the guitars. Super low action can make notes die the way you describe. You may simply need to adjust the neck relief, and/ or action a bit. Does the same thing occur with these instruments if you play through some other amp, taking the Helix out of the equation entirely? You can also just test it plugged into nothing, in a nice quiet room. If the notes aren't ringing out acoustically for any normal length of time, then what you're playing through is irrelevant. You seem to have ruled out most issues with the Helix itself... that being the case, the guitars are the only other place to look.

Rules for Modelers: 1) All presets suck. 2) See rule #1. Beyond that, without knowing what you're listening through, offering anything constructive is close to impossible. Are you monitoring with headphones? Plugging into the front end of a traditional guitar amp, or using the 4 cable method? Are you using studio monitors? The volume at which you're listening to any of the above, versus the volume at which a preset was created (which is an unknown, of course) can also have a huge impact on tone... these are but a few things on a list of variables of Biblical length that will affect tone. What else in your rig, and how is it all connected?

Hey! I resemble that remark... lol

Well that escalated quickly, lol... And none of them care that you don't care that they don't care... seeing the pattern yet? But far be it from me to interfere in a good old fashioned rumble. Let the games begin! "Are you not entertained?!?!?!!" lmao...

Well, like it or not, when you stuff them full of fancy tech that will inevitably no longer be supported as it gradually becomes incompatible with more up to date ancillary devices/computers that you need to keep them functioning as intended, disposable is exactly what they are. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth... besides, I'll start needing to have my parts replaced before most of my traditional guitars will, lol. This is largely the reason I drifted back to my other guitars. Plus, after going wireless with everything else, being tethered with the Variax started to drive me nuts. Oh well.. life goes on.

And I don't understand why brain dead middle managers are always wildly inept, and dumber than the people they manage... but yet there they are, dumbing their way through life, thoroughly convinced that they're geniuses. But who cares? Knowing the answer won't change anything. Fortunately a $12 clip-on tuner renders all the "why" discussions moot, anyway. Next.... lol

I didn't say anything about Line 6...I said "if the world ever gets it's $h*t together". And frankly, everybody and their dear old mother constantly using the catch-all COVID excuse to justify why nothing can be accomplished within a normal time frame anymore, is getting old quick. We're nearly 3 years in... we've all had plenty of time to adapt to our glorious "new normal", yet the blame game continues... but I digress. Regardless, since the virus will be with us forever, so will the excuses, I suspect. Sorry Teach, COVID ate my homework...

1) Nobody who can do anything about feature requests will ever see this in here. Requests need to go in Ideascale. 2) Don't bother putting it in Ideascale, as there are probably a dozen or more requests for the same thing in there already. Folks have been asking for this since day one... and that was back in 2015. If the powers that be haven't seen fit to do it by now, 7+ years into the product's life cycle, don't hold your breath....

Probably not be the answer you're looking for, and obviously it'll cost you a few bucks, but with the world being in the state that it's in, you'd probably have more luck buying a used Variax and cannibalizing it for the volume pot than waiting around for some service center to finally get it back in stock. If it's already been 3 months, I'll bet hard cash that you'll wait another 3, if not longer. It's an ultra-specific part for a very niche product... and a rapidly aging niche product at that...I guarantee the producing/ distributing Variax-specific volume pots is not high on anybody's to-do list. At least then you'd have one working guitar... then if the rest of the planet ever gets it's $h*t together again, you'll eventually get your part, and then you'd have your guitar, and a functioning spare for the next time something craps outs. Just my 2 cents...

Every market gets saturated at some point... and the inevitable self-correction follows. Doesn't much matter what kind of product it is. Even if the economy was robust and booming, there are only so many guitar players out there in the wild. Whenever you have ever-increasing competition for what is basically a fixed pile of money, sooner or later something has to give. Hence the demise of Fulltone and Digitech. Plus, a good percentage of guitarists are stubborn as mules and resistant to changing anything in their rig, and/or they're dirt poor... either way, they're sticking with the same gear for years on end, lol...

Yes. Trial and error with the closest model available... and you've already noted which one that is.

The whole world is out of everything, from computer chips to shoelaces. "Supply chain problems" are the new go-to excuse for the lack of pretty much anything. It's a great answer, too... possibly the best bull$h*t excuse ever devised, because as long as the item you're looking for materializes before the end of time, then whomever fed you that answer was "right". Good luck getting a response that isn't vague, unactionable nonsense... We now return you to your regularly scheduled "new normal". Enjoy!

I think we all would like to see it evolve... but given the years-long plateau, I'd say that one, or perhaps both of the following factors are at work here: 1) They haven't seen enough progress with any technical hurdles that have contributed to the various issues that have plagued these guitars over the years, and they don't want to market another iteration that has some/ many/ all of the same problems. 2) The dollar signs just aren't there. It was always a niche product, and I suspect that their market research is telling them that there just isn't enough interest out there to bother. My guess is it's a little of each...I was totally enthralled with mine initially. But the fascination waned after a while, as the limitations became more apparent. They're not "bad" guitars... but they're not great either. They do some things well, but others not so much. Mine mostly collects dust, now.

The JTV's debuted more than a decade ago, and the Standards share the same modeling engine. In tech terms, anything that's 10+ years old is ancient. The last update of any significance that actually contained anything "new" (besides bug fixes and/or behind the scenes processing that no one would notice anyway) was in 2014... cross your fingers if you like, but the currently available models ain't getting a face lift....

Ok, I bite... what does that mean?

I've been hanging around this forum for many moons, and I've never heard of an Mk1 Variax model... doesn't mean they don't exist, but I'd make sure they're not offering you some other product entirely. One never knows anymore, and they wouldn't be the first retailer to try and pull a fast one...

There's really no answer to this question, as it's entirely subjective and dependent solely on what you're trying to achieve, tone-wise. If you want a SRV-style Texas blues tone, then choosing a Les Paul and a Marshall wouldn't help you... you'd go with a Strat and a Fender amp. But that doesn't imply that one combination is any "better" or "worse" than another... they'll just yield different results. If you genuinely don't know what your looking for, then trial and error is really your only recourse, until you find a combo you like.

Locking up is never normal...If it's only happening with one specific patch, then I'd say that the patch itself is likely corrupted. But if it happens on multiple patches, then it's If it's the latter, you might as well bite the bullet and open a service ticket, as it's not likely to be something you can deal with yourself.

Uh...the term is "zwiggabibble"... who the hell is gonna know what "squank" means?

You can poke around in there until the end of time and you're not likely to figure it out. These guitars are touchy, and can easily go haywire if everything isn't "just right"...generally speaking, they work fine until one day they don't. As for getting an answer to any technical questions regarding the inner workings of the electronics... don't hold your breath. Everything under the hood is proprietary, and the Mothership isn't gonna tell you anything beyond, "If it's broken open a service ticket, or take it to an authorized service center".