kenmac1

Ok, I spent a few hours literally dissecting the tones you guys uploaded, until I understood how they worked, and eventually came up with a couple of cool working versions, so thanks for the help folks. I have an awesome balanced 12 string acoustic and Mags into the PHD amp with an optional tube Driver, wah, and phaser. I found by placing a studio eq with some tinkering in the acoustic track I was able to sweeten it up nicely, and also added a digital delay with modulation to each channel. I'll probably play with it a bit more tomorrow, but as they came out tonight, I can't complain as I was jamming with them for about three hours until I busted a string.

Cheers guys, I'll have a play with these tomorrow morning, as it is nearly midnight here now. Neighbours might not approve. As for running the acoustic through a full range PA instead of amp, there are a couple problems with that. (Although I could try it through my 500 Eon I guess.) Firstly I don't only use the acoustic sound, so I do switch back and forth between various stereo electric and even sitar sounds. I need to be able to use the same amp to get the thick lush crunch tones… when needed, and running into a Full range PA while it may sound better for the acoustic tones (possibly) it definitely will not sound as good for the electric sounds live. The valve amps definitely add that little something that is missing from the tones of the digital gear, more sparkle and harmonically alive. Second the amps I am using are set to pristine clean anyhow, a pair of Roland Bolt amps, a 100w and a 60w, both set to cleaner than clean tones, with all the knobs at 5 so all the tonality is controlled inside the Pod by making the amps literally just neutral valve drivers. If you know how clean the Jazz Chorus amps are, the bolts are much the same only Valve driven, so they add warmth without distorting. I'll be running the acoustic side via the 100w amp as it has a much higher grade EV speaker in it to begin with, and I know that it handles the acoustic sounds pretty well perfectly, as I have often used it for doing acoustic songs at gigs and rehearsals, with both the JTVs and also standard acoustic instruments, with very little degradation of the acoustic tonality. That amp also has a Presence control for the upper range which the 60w does not offer, so it can add those shimmering highs acoustics produce superbly. The suggestion that I am running the compressor at the start as the cause of the problem, may well be right. I had not thought of that, as I am so used to the old fashioned stomp boxes in line with a valve amp and just changing guitars as needed, so even though I have been experimenting and gigging for about a year or so with this stuff, I never actually considered that as the problem, purely due to the fact I never thought about it from that perspective. Previously, A lot of the time I simply had my acoustic DI-d into the desk, and would just grab that and play without thinking about the stompers as they were not inline anyhow. However as I said above, I have also done many gigs with the acoustic directly into the Roland amp, and it sounds incredibly useable, or with just a little compression to add some punch or a touch of chorus and reverb to sweeten it up. I appreciate you guys doing this, and I will let you know how it pans out, as I assume you are far more clued up on this stuff than I ever will be.

Ok first up I am not sure if I am better off posting this here or in the JTV forum as it relates to both. I'll be as specific as I possibly can, because maybe one of you programmer geniuses already has something like this sorted. My rig, I am using a pair of JTV69 and JTV89F model guitars (obviously not simultaneously) into my HD500X, which then runs into a matched pair of clean valve amps live on stage, so it is a true stereo rig. (I actually own two of the HD500X rigs as well, as I do not trust them after the issues I had early on, so having a spare is my safety net.) All reverbs are created via the actual valve amps, as that saves processor power and gives me a legitimate spring reverb sound instead of a digital simulation. What I am trying to achieve, and I remember someone mentioning it can be done is... I want to create a balanced stereo patch with a good clean acoustic (and also one with a good clean 12 string acoustic tone) on one side and a standard old school crunch electric amp setting on the other. I'd like to be able to kick in a Jake E Lee style phaser over the electric channel as needed, and also have the option of adding in a Tube screamer or Tube driver for a touch more edge and a wah on the electric channel, and possibly a mild chorus for the acoustic or 12 string channel via the spare switches. Compressor will be permanently on at the front of the patch. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only guy who would use a mixed electric and acoustic tone, and there is probably already a hundred of them out there to download, but descriptions on the download page leave a lot to be desired. I have one song in particular where having the ability to keep the acoustic rhythm happening while rocking the wah on the electric side would be fantastic if it can be worked in. I wasted hours yesterday (yet again) trying to achieve this, and failed miserably. It keeps giving me a mixed signal, so both the acoustic and electric tones are coming out of both sides together instead of separated. I can get it to give me a basic electric mag with different amp sounds easily, and alternate fx on each side, but I can't work out how to get the acoustic variax patch on one side clean with the electric mags happening through say a Gibtone, or Marshall (even a driven Fender or Vox type amp) on the other. Can this be done, has anyone done it, is there a patch like this or close enough that I can simply swap some fx around on to achieve my goal please? These rigs sound amazing, but they are a mongrel to tweak and create sounds in.

I have tried repeatedly to log in to the Monkey Variax USB system, and it keeps telling me it is unable to log in, to disable popup blockers, antivirus software.... I don't have any of those things engaged anyhow. I use a Mac and never get issues with pop-ups or virus problems. I am using a Macbook with OSX.6.8 The problem I need to rectify is that a couple of sounds on my 89F sound very weird, so I want to do a factory reset / flash restore, or something along those lines to make it go back to original settings. Have any of you encountered this problem? How do I get around it? If I am unable to log in, is there another way to force it to restore? I can't use the 12 string acoustic sounds as they sound all echoey, and there are a couple of others, that sound horrid compared with my 69, all of which are sounds I need for my band. Cheers folks.

Lefty, that combining acoustic and Mags sounds interesting. I have a couple country / crossover tunes that would sound pretty cool on. MIght be my next project, working out how to get that working. But it is after midnight now, and since I didn't have a gig tonight, there is no reason for me to still be sitting here. Thanks for the advice rockers.

I tried this on my other HD500X, and it worked, so I did a system reset on the first one, and now it is working the way it is meant to. Now I know why I bought a second JTV and a second HD. They do silly things at times, and if this happened at a gig, I would now waste 10 hours trying to work it out, I'd just switch guitars / HDs and keep going.

I am using a VDI. I have tried all of the above, but for some reason it will not go back and forth patch by patch from mags / crunch guitar tones, to say an acoustic clean tone. Can't find any demo videos about it on youtube, and I was sure there would be some up. I might have to drive up the the city next week and see if one of the guitar stores has any clue, although I doubt it. Just hope I am not in for another drama where either my guitar is not working right with the amp, or the amp is not working right with the guitar. I seem to have constant dramas with Line 6 gear, so this is just parre for the course.

I meant without me me physically toggling knobs as well as footswitches. Can patches definitely store mag settings and then by changing to another patch go automatically to an emulated sound? I seem to be stuck with one or the other.

that is what I have already done, but it will not switch in patches between mags on one patch to emulated acoustic or 12 strings on another with me physically toggling the guitar as well.

I had no problem getting the original Variax to work with the HD500x. However it is not working the same way with my JTVs. First problem, how do I set a patch so that instead of using the Emulated sounds via the piezos, it will automatically switch to the mag pickups? I still use the emulations for acoustic, sitar and 12 string stuff, but on standard electric guitar stuff I would prefer to use real pickups, and I can't see those in the drop-down menu inside the mixer of the HD interface program. Next I have changed all the settings in my patches to (supposedly) recognise my 69 + 89 JTVs, however while the amp / fx settings do change, the guitar sounds (ie 12 string, Acoustic...) remain the same. What am I missing here? Cheers guys.

Sorry I thought it was the HD forum.

NO this is the right forum. I'm using it with a HD500X, so the settings need to be done in the HD not the guitar itself. You create the patches in the HD, and part of that process if using a variax is to set which guitar sounds you want selected. None of that (as far as I am aware) is done on the actual guitar as the patch on the HD is what stores all that information, not the guitar. With my old original Variax models it was easy, there were no mag pickups, so every sound was emulated, but the newer JTVs allow you to use Mags, so there must be a setting inside the HD to make the JTV Mags select on patches instead of the emulations.

How can you set a HD500X to not select modelled guitars on patches, but to go to the actual Mag pickups? When I am looking through the options I do not see that offered, and it is not in the big manual I downloaded as far as I can see either.

G'day Mark, Let me tell you there are a lot of us with the same problem, not necessarily to patch A... but the same thing. Yes it does appear to be the switches causing the issues looking at a lot of the posts. One guy Pascal in the forums, had half of the buttons on his unit replaced because of this fault. Another in onto his third replacement unit and now has this problem on that unit. Mine is under three months old and is unusable. I have been into three other threads on here with the same symptoms, and there are a myriad of other linked problems, which will materialise in time, all related. For example you try to switch to a different patch, or kick in a basic stomp effect over the top, and it will revert back to the patch (in your case and mine the clean rhythm patch). So for example on a lead part I was activating the Harmony preset to give me a 5th harmony above my solo pitch, (Twin guitar lead from one guitar) and instead of the harmony kicking in, I also get thrown back to a lower volume clean rhythm patch. The switches get to the stage where they will not lock in or release, so you try to activate the tuner for example, and it simply will not stay on, or trying to use the expression pedal for volume, wah or whammy makes it go back to the clean patch. I put a short 20 second video up on facebook.com/kenmcmahonsx where it did this over and over. I also put it onto Line 6 facebook page, but whether they left it there I can't say. Bill above is on a few of those threads as he has linked you into, so you can see you are not alone, there are many of us, and really I think Line 6 needs to do a product recall and just replace all the switches since it is clearly a batch of nasty switches that have been used. Line 6 can't leave professional musicians looking like gooses because their products are not working as they are designed to do. That sort of thing will come back to bite them in forums, reviews, even general conversation between musicians at venues, and it will harm the company's reputation and therefore sales in the long run. Strangely they have remained silent in each of these threads so far, so that is a worry, as they either do not care, or are burying their heads in the sand hoping it will just go away. It won't! Lodge a ticket to get the problem escalated so they know the issue is happening again, and hopefully you get more help from them than I have. Even link in these various forum threads so they can see "Hey this is ridiculous, lots of us are out in the cold with the same problem." It is unacceptable and needs to be addressed quickly.

Hey Pascal, Mine is set as guitar / variax so I obviously understood that part when I read it in a manual. Didn't get any response last night my time, or yesterday US time, but Rome wasn't built in a day, although Nero burnt it down fairly quickly. To me personally, warranties are something you should never have to invoke, there should never be any reason to use them, products should be built well enough to not fail in a reasonable time frame well exceeding the warranty periods. The fact that so many people apparently have similar or identical issues time and again, this fault, the failure to allow the expression pedal to calibrate, getting stuck in the start up blue screen, tuner deciding not to work, not being able to swap between user banks on the unit itself... (Some I have experienced so far), tells me that there are some obvious inherent characteristic faults in this system, that really should have been worked out during the development and testing phases, prior to unleashing the products on an unsuspecting client base largely comprising of professional or semi professional musicians, who need these things to just work reliably. If an automotive company released a model with even a small portion of the market experiencing a fault, (even a minor fault) there would without a doubt be a product recall, bring them to your nearest servicing centre, and have the offending or defective parts swapped out, regardless of whether that part was faulty on your own vehicle or not. Line 6 clearly took some shortcuts, to save dollars producing these units, and nobody can blame any company for trying to cut production costs, but when as in your case Pascal, half of the switches are not up to scratch, the manufacturers need to reassess that situation and act to eliminate that problem immediately, so maybe a product recall is in order. This product is viewed largely as the number two guitar fx product on the market behind the Axe Fx system. If the Axe Fx system could interface with and control the variax, I may well have gone down that path considering I had already experienced a few issues with Line 6 reliability in the past, and the Axe Fx was readily available. My needs however dictated the need to use a Line 6 product to work with the other Line 6 products.

G'day Bill, now that I uploaded the video to the L6 facebook page they are apparently looking into it. Why I had to go to those measures in the first place is well beyond me. Their words in a fb message this morning is that wheels are now turning, and they are communicating with Oz about it. I'm still not holding my breath, but I'll see how that goes. Either way it won't be working for this weekend's gigs, so I am now reassembling my old pedal board and playing with my amps to get some sounds sorted that way. As for the "Guru's" daft response above about saving $$$, why should we pay more in Australia in any case? The item is made in China (Now that instills a lot of faith in the QC doesn't it?) and China is closer to Oz than it is to the USA. It could come straight here from China cheaper than it is sent to the USA. We do generally pay substantially more for gear in Oz than the US does, (in some cases over four times the price, I can give plenty of examples) even though these days a lot of it comes out of Indonesia, (four hours flying time from here), and similar areas. But in this case after I paid import freight to buy the pedal, and would have got at least 20% bare minimum discount from a local store... I would have been lucky to save $20 in all seriousness, in fact I probably would have been financially worse off as I'll now explain. We are not talking about thousands or even hundreds of dollars saved. With postage it cost me $699 US, (I can upload the receipt to prove that.) That converts to around $800 AU or so. They retail here for around $850, less the minimum 20% for cash, yeah I saved heaps, might go buy myself a new car with that... so I may well have saved money buying it here when that is taken into consideration, but it would have meant waiting several weeks for them to become available in Oz, then another week usually for them to trickle over to this side of the country... I live in Perth WA, which statistically is the most remote or isolated Westernised city in the world. Everything musical comes into Oz via either Sydney or Melbourne, and those cities get first dibs on deliveries... Hence when I was told at least three weeks before new stock arrives in Australia, I know all too well that means a month or more by the time they get to Perth. So under those circumstances, I ordered it from the USA, did I save dollars? I doubt it. Did I save time? Absolutely. Did I get what I expected and was promised? Well i would not call this value for money by any stretch of the imagination. Peace Ken

Hopefully it is visible now. I set everything to public, so it should be up where you can see it. If not msg me there and I'll forward it to you. :)

No by the time I paid postage to get it here all I saved was time. I did not have to wait several weeks for new stock to arrive in Oz. At the end of the day you always get 20% minimum off a store price, so it would have pretty well been the same with freight taken into account.

I echo every single one of these faults (HD500X), and Shadowchild, at least you got three - four months, mine was screwing up within a week or so, one thing after another, by about a month in, this fault started rearing it's ugly head. I tried nutting it out myself initially, then reading forums, contacting the L6 facebook page (Who incidentally recommending I buy this to use with my variaxes in the first place, not at all impressed with that recommendation I can tell you!) Now just under three months since purchase, it is unusable. Brief rundown. I've used a lot of Line 6 gear over the years, and to be honest it is probably the least reliable stuff I have ever owned. I have two of the original series Variax guitars, Both of which I have had to get fixed. The old Bogner Spider, ditto, now this. In fact only my little 30w series iv spider is not playing up so far, but it is only a couple months old, so give it time. I'm going back to using my valve amps, stomp boxes and old school guitars for my gig Friday, and may well be back on that path from then on. If only Fender and Roland could get their VG5 system to interface with a foot controller and change guitar models as well as amp, pedal settings from a floorboard, I know what I'd be jumping into. Hell then I'd also have access to a pretty decent nylon string tone as well as all the standards. I agree a lawsuit may well be justified. If a supposedly professional item like this is making us all look like amateurs on stage, night after night, that ruins our livelihood, it costs us gigs, it pisses us off, as well as our bands, the venues, the punters.... I also agree it looks like faulty switches, either sticking on or not locking in. I can not use the tuner, that began tonight, it changes by itself, that also started tonight, any button I stomp makes it revert to patch two of whichever bank I am using. Even using the volume pedal makes it revert to patch two. I'm posting footage on facebook.com/kenmcmahonsx from my phone tonight. At least tonight was rehearsal, not a gig, but either way this thing can not be used ever again. Still in the less than 20 seconds I filmed, it did it's own thing over and over and over again... So that is not footage I think Line 6 would appreciate having on the web. Still if they do not want to help me, I may well start putting it on every guitar forum I can find. Line 6 refuse to authorise me to take it to a local repairer, because I bought it from the USA, even though there were none available in Australia at the time (They were on backorder, and at least three weeks delivery time expected, so I jumped online and bought one...) Pascal, the fact that they replaced half of your switches over this fault speaks volumes for how terrible the switches are, although I think if they found half them on their way out, they should have upgraded the lot. Thanks again Pascal for showing me the links to the other two similar threads. Prior to you pointing them out, I thought I was the lone wolf, the only poor sod experiencing this nightmare.

thanks mate. Good to see I am not going f---g crazy for no reason, or at least not alone in this. I'm uploading phone video of the problem to facebook.com/kenmcmahonsx for anyone else here who does not follow from our descriptions what is occurring. How hard could it possibly be to authorise a local repair agent to service this thing? Line 6 have licenced repairers over here, I know of two within two hours of my place. But no, they say I have to pay to post it back to the USA, and then return cost to myself. If the F--g thing worked properly, how it is supposed to, none of my frustration would be necessary. To me their actions are akin to saying, we will not cover the repairs, because they know full well it will cost a couple hundred bucks at least in courier / postage costs to send it back. Disgusting. If this is USA customer service, no wonder the USA is financially going down the drain.

I have the same issues. I videoed it with my phone tonight, but there is no way to upload it here as far as I can see. Line 6 in the USA are being painful. I bought it from the USA, as there were none available in Australia, they were on back order and were a few more weeks away from arriving. Line 6 are saying I have to pay both to send it to the USA and return it to myself. Every problem listed above here started happening right from the get go out of the box. Now it is to the point I have to go back to using ordinary guitars, stomp boxes and a valve amp for gigs, because this piece of Shyte is unworkable. I will upload the footage onto my facebook page, so have a looksey facebook.com/kenmcmahonsx

Hey Bill, Ever heard the old saying "You'd have more luck beating your head against a brick wall"? That brick wall is looking more like the Great Wall of China. Support ticket opened... The response now is, I must pay to send to item back to the USA, and return costs to myself in order to get the problem sorted. That will cost a couple hundred bucks at least in freight, for a unit which has been faulty since the day I first unpacked it and plugged it in. Maybe they can be pretty cool to buyers in the states, but they are playing the card, "Our warranty conditions state...." and regardless of the fact the unit is obviously plagued with more problems than the Titanic had when it was going under, it looks like I have hit that proverbial wall, (Maybe it is that Ice wall from Game of Thrones?) and nothing will be done now until at least Monday night my time, meaning a whole week of back and forth replies with no solution in sight. A whole week of not being able to use a brand new unit with a recurring fault they seem unable to tell me how to rectify over the net. I've asked for them to authorise me to take it to a local service centre, as I know of two in the Perth metro area who are authorised Line 6 repairers, but that seems to have fallen upon deaf ears, although I finally got a message last night my time that the guy will speak to his Service Manager. I'm not holding my breath.

I run through a portable RCD, surge arrester. I have had gear (An old Digitech RP1) fry at a gig many years ago, so since then my stage rig is always protected.

No mate it is disgusting. Being forced to play hard rock in a three piece with a single clean guitar sound. Yeah that sound is awesome for a couple parts of a couple of our songs, but not for an entire set.

Got a reply to the support ticket. Their suggestions eventually worked, but lasted only half a set, and went back to the same problem. Sent another message to the support guy "Jon", in fact I even opened a second support ticket before I realised I could go back into the original one. That was late last night my time, so day time over in the USA. No response to that ticket as yet. Bill- Date posted from the USA is June 12, arrived here about a week or so later. So that makes it about three months old now.