cruisinon2

Could be any number of things... you've had it for several years, with no firmware updates. You may be running an ancient version. I'd start there, see if updating gets it working.

Never seen a Standard in person, so I couldn't really say.... but it's essentially a Yamaha Pacifica with Variax guts. If you put pics of the two side by side, they're nearly indistinguishable, save for the extra knobs on the Standard. You do the math...

If you aren't hampered by the 6 block limit, or the loss of a bunch of footswitches, then have at it. If it works, it works...

The US version is nearly $4K, made to order, and is manufactured (or at least assembled) here in the states, whereas the rest are made in Korea. Modeling is all the same. Pricetag is absurd, imho...ymmv

This would make a great punk band album title...;)

That's my guess... if memory serves, the last time there was anything genuinely "new" in a Variax firmware release, was nearly 5 years ago. I think it's safe to say that they're done developing the platform as it currently exists. What's next and when is anybody's guess. The focus for the last couple of years has clearly been the various Helix iterations.

Well the tech hasn't changed since the JTV's were introduced, pushing 9 years ago now....the bottom line is that the issue of "piezo plink" is highly variable. Some guitars suffer from it, some don't, and I don't think anyone has come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why that's the case....L6 included, as they officially stopped devoting resources to a diagnosis and/or cure some time ago. An official "we're not pursuing this anymore" was posted in some long dead thread on a subject a while back. From reading numerous discussions about it over the years, the only thing that's obvious is that there are multiple factors involved. What you play and how you play it being at the top of the list... with most of the complaints coming from the high-gain "chugga-chugga" demographic. In the end, you'll either have the problem or you won't. It's the luck of the draw, and there's only one way to find out. You might want to hold off on buying anything at this point. There hasn't been a meaningful Variax firmware update since 2014... when development is stagnant for that long, it usually means that the platform is pretty much dead, and resources are going into whatever the next generation of Variax is gonna be. Wouldn't surprise me if it shows up in the not too distant future.

My apologies... For the record, I don't want, or not want L6 to do anything in particular... aside from bug fixes for things that don't work as advertised, I don't dwell on what the updates may or may not contain. Gear purchases aren't speculative for me. If I wanted to do that, I'd have been a day-trader. I bought what I bought, and I use what's in front of me. If they want to add to it, great... but I honestly don't care one way or the other.

If I offended you, I apologize... but I honestly don't know why you seem to be taking this so personally. Nobody has said you have a "character flaw"... that would be insane. All this is, is a difference of opinion. Those who don't want to sift through a million options will never "understand" why some do. The converse is equally true... if nothing but limitless options will make you happy, you'll be forever mystified by those of us who think it's a waste, and can be just as thrilled with much less...but at the end of the day, who cares? Nobody's gonna change their mind anyway.

Conditioning. A disposable economy is only sustainable if the average consumer is chronically dissatisfied with the things they own...

Yup... those who want to spend all day measuring $hit with an oscilloscope, and making graphs and pie charts to categorize minute qualitative differences (which are wholly subjective anyway), are free to tweak to their heart's content. Just don't be surprised if this great quest keeps leading to the "Land Of Meh"...;)

IR's are just WAV file captures of a particular cabinet/mic combinations. You're looking for an amp model... that's a whole different ballgame.

I don't. If you're happy, that's swell. Regardless, I won't ever be any less perplexed about some folks' relentless appetite for more. If 40 amp's isn't enough, what's the magic number? And 200 or more, imho, is serious overkill. How long before there ceases to be any discernable difference from one to the next? Doesn't much matter... this discussion is starting to be as much of a waste as time as sifting through 200 amp models to find "the one". Agree to disagree?

Try and buy a Fractal product. You have to get on a waiting list... eventually, one fine day, your "invitation" (their term, not mine) to purchase arrives. Whoopy! At least that's the way it used to be... perhaps they've since dispensed with that nonsense, fine. But if not, I'll pass on the pomp and circumstance....I don't need to feel "special" when buying gear.

The frequency response is really all that matters, and is independent of the power source. If a speaker is FRFR, then it's FRFR...doesn't much matter where the juice is coming from.

Amen.

If it were my only option, then I'd bite the bullet and figure out how to use the available options to my satisfaction... otherwise, I have no intention of paying the exorbitant prices they demand. I also find their whole "invitation" to purchase rather off-putting. If I have money, and you have a product....we swap. The end. Being told "you can have one when we deem you worthy" is a bit elitist for my taste. I'm buying toy...it's a not a kidney transplant. Well L6 seems to be doing OK with the "limited" number of amp models currently offered in Helix. If 5x as many options are truly necessary to remain competitive in the marketplace, then the company is doomed, because they obviously have no intention of catching up to that number.

Numbers 1 or 3 are your best options. In order for Helix to do what it does best... mimic real-world amps... your output needs to be a clean slate, which means some sort of FRFR speaker(s). As for running it into an actual guitar amp, while it can certainly be done and the are plenty who do just that, personally, I don't get it. Pump Helix through a Boogie, it'll sound a whole lot like a Boogie, regardless of your chosen amp model. For me, that defeats the whole purpose of having a modeler in the first place. Ymmv...

See my post above, lol. I simply don't have that kind of time... and even if I did, I wouldn't waste it wading through and auditioning 13,000 of anything. I'd drop dead long before I finished a project, or learned anything new. My occasional experimentation with Customtone has proven to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that 98% of what one encounters out there will be unusable crap anyway. Endless tone-searching through thousands of profiles to find 40 that I'd like enough to use, has all the appeal of getting stabbed in the eye with a pencil. That's a 0.3% return... even a crappy bank pays better interest than that, lol. But as always, ymmv...

Me neither. I'm a rock guy... if I had nothing but the Plexi Bright, 2204, and Derailed Ingrid for dirt, and the US Double Norm for sparkly cleans... I'd be perfectly content. I also have absolutely no desire to be in a constant state of reinventing the wheel. If I were to try and spend the time that would be required to audition and and thoroughly fine-tune every amp in there, I'd never play any actual music. There's little enough time as it is, with the rest of life's responsibilities.

I dunno...seems we're all conditioned to want more of everything, all the time. But what's enough? I know a guy who owns more than 50 guitars. Most of them don't see daylight.... and I'm not taking about priceless vintage collector's items. They're mostly middle of the road, everyday instruments. There's only so many hours in the day... what's the point? I've got what, 40+ amps to choose from already? On a good day, I might use 4 or 5. What the hell would I do with 200 Fractal amps? Maybe it's me...

Then you're not doing it right...;)

Yes, there are always factory specs...but getting anyone official to divulge them has proven futile over the years. The oft- provided (yet thoroughly absurd) reasoning is that no one but officially anointed service techs could possibly do it correctly, and providing that info to the unwashed somehow encourages the inept among us to damage their instruments. I maintain that morons will succeed in doing that regardless, whether specs are made available or not...but I digress. Bottom line is, they steadfastly refuse to publish factory setup specs...so our only option is common sense and personal preference.

How long it'll take to get a tone you like is almost entirely dependent on one's familiarity with the unit, and with modeling in general...the chosen output is nearly irrelevant. Just keep in mind that it's not a guitar amp, and it won't be as simple as putting all your tone controls at 12 o'clock, and setting an appropriate volume. You're dealing with the virtual equivalent of a mic-ed amp/cab in a studio, and monitoring from the control room. If you're at all familiar with that scenario, then you've got a head start on many who make the switch from amps to modeling. If not, expect a bit of a learning curve.

Yes. As an apartment dweller, a roaring tube amp is not an option for me. 95% of my home playing is in the wee hours through headphones, and I get very satisfying tones that way. What you cannot expect however, is for tones dialed in with headphones to sound the same through a PA at vastly increased volumes... but that doesn't mean you need to buy an entire PA system either. One sufficiently powered monitor will do. If your intent is to run straight to the PA live, you will need to dial in those patches through something similar, i.e. some sort of FRFR speaker(s), at the volume you intend to use them. I can't stress that last part enough. Our perception of tone varies drastically with volume... there's no way around that. I have been using an L2T as a stage monitor for years now... with Helix, and previously my 500X.