Thanks for the tip! I'll mess around with that preset and see if I can figure out how it works . . .

I recently bought the Firehawk FX as a way to get around buying a bazillion pedals (which starts to get expensive). 

For the last month and a half since I bought it, any sound I might need a pedal for seems to be creatable within the Firehawk and so I've been able to avoid it buying any more pedals. It's been great!

However, none of my guitars have a whammy bar, and there are a lot of pedals out there that simulate this very well. For example, the Digitech Whammy Pedal, but that sucker is expensive.

I got really excited when I noticed that the bender pedal in the Firehawk FX clearly looks like it was a riff on the Digitech pedal, BUT when I tried to use it it sounds really synthetic and fake. Basically like a synthesizer which is what most of the pedals in that section sound like.

Does anyone know if there is a way to imitate a whammy pedal in the firehawk? I tried researching myself but couldn't find much that helped. Am I doing something wrong?

At the end of the day the Firehawk allows you to connect external pedals so I suppose it's not the end of the world, but a way to do it would be preferable.

Thanks for any input!

Thank you for the sympathy Guitarkyller and the offer and information psarkissian.  I opened a ticket and I'll see where that goes.  I'm also watching youtube videos on soldering on a new pizeo.  It looks possible - but my bad luck says I'll frack it up. Or worse, that's not the real problem (though it sure seems like it is).

I'm a hobbyist who enjoys sound.  I'll never have the money to buy 3 billion guitars, and a lot of my fave artists use alternate tunings and/or have a wide range of kit that they play with.  I bought the Variax and the Pod HD500x precisely to spend a ton (for my relatively tame budget) so that I wouldn't have to spend a TON in the future. 

When you first use the Variax, combined with the pod, honestly, it's amazing how powerful it feels. It really does wow with its sense of possibilities. I have to say that's been awesome.  However, the fear is obvious, the failure rates. The more complex something is, the more likely it gums up.  I've bought a few traditional guitars and they never need much of anything (I know some people tweak their rigs endlessly - that's just not my gig) which is a HUGE plus for a traditional guitar.

If the long term failure rate of my Variax is high that will definitely bring down the joy I can get from it. If this is the only time it ever borks, hopefully I'll be loving it again real soon.  Fingers crossed it's a one and done repair. We'll see!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. If you don't live anywhere near a Line 6 service center (I'm Midwestern US - out in the sticks - I believe the closest one is a 14 hour drive) is the best option to ship it back to Line 6?

Do they have some sort of repair program like that?

Sounds like a pretty penny, just to find a box safe enough to ship it in. 

Blast.

Anyone ever ran into this problem?  My high E string won't make a noise in modeling mode.  It seems to play totally fine if I'm just running a regular amp setup except for some background feedback that is slightly irritating. As a way of background:

A little over a year ago I bought a JTV-59P Variax and really liked it.  I also bought the HD500X and the special cord to connect the two.  I played on it for a few months.  Keep in mind, I'm just play at home so none of this equipment went through any harsh anythings.

Then I had to put it all on hold for a while due to school and work (while = 8 months) at which point this sucker was just in storage. 

Today I excitedly whipped it out. I had purchased the vintage HD download and so I connected everything, made sure it was all up to date, and started to play.

Quickly I realized that the high E might as well not be on there in modeling modes.  I checked the HD workbench and none of the string volume settings helped.  I also turned off the modeling effects and it played with plenty of volume, but the moment I turn on modelling - NOTHING.

Any ideas?