Charlie_Watt

No. Look for something else to distinguish them like which one feels better when you play it.

The plastic should come off without removing anything. Just pull it from around the pots.

I have a 500 and a JTV69S. The 69S sounds better to me and it's a much nicer guitar.

Load Monkey and connect. It will tell you what FW version you have and you use that to load new FW when it is available. You can find out from the Line6 website what FW is available for your Variax STD. Not sure if there has been any FW update since the standard came out so there may not be any.

I do not think that you get any preset bundle with Workbench HD. What you get is what is in your guitar.

Nope. Won't work. They were able to make their battery unique with a third wire that identifies the battery.

One last thing to make sure you do. Turn the Volume Knob up! If it's all they down, the guitar is in sleep mode and it won't talk.

The JTV battery is well within the range to work on an older Variax.

Probably true but they don't have to be in California to write SW for Line6 products. I work for a company that is part in California, part in Colorado, and part in Japan. We all work on common products and firmware.

Yes you could do that but the battery box on the JTV is an important piece of electronics that protects the battery from being discharged too far. I have run my 500 from a 2 cell lithium battery meant for RC airplanes and it works just fine but there is no protection from over discharge. Lithium batteries will die if you ever discharge them too far. All things that are designed to use them have protection circuits in them to shut off the load if the battery gets too low. That stuff is in the JTV battery case with the 4 LED's that tell you the battery level. I have also run my 500 off of rechargeable NIMh batteries which only put out around 7.5V when they are nearly discharged. I have two sets of 6 of those that I swap in. I get a good 4-6 hours of playing time on a set. They are 2200MaH batteries. The 500 draws about 500mA when it's on. The circuits run on 5Volts - there is a regulator that drops the battery down so 7 - 9 Volts works just fine. It stops working when you go much below 7 though. The regulator needs almost 2 volts above 5 to work.

Nope. I leave mine in. When the VDI supplies power, the battery isn't doing anything.

The Variax should sound great through the VDI. It does with my HD500x. I would expect at least as much from Helix at 3x the price! Yes - patches must be tweaked for your particular variables (speaker system, tone you want, etc). Since the signal path is different with VDI vs 1/4 inch, I would expect to have to do some tweaking but not major tweaking.

When using a mono cable, the +Vdc internal to the Variax should be isolated from ground by a diode so connecting them together should not stress anything. Only when using an external power supply is the power supplied on that line through the diode.

Depends on what is loose. If it's the pot then you need to get at and tighten the nut that holds it in place. If it's internal to the pot, you need to replace it.

I agree that it's not that interesting to do this but it should not hurt the electronics. If it does, it is a very poor design. Also there is no reason to use a TRS cable for the 1/4 inch unless you are using the remote power supply that requires it.

I'm sorry but I find it very hard to believe that using the 1/4 inch with the VDI stresses anything. It is a very low level signal. 99% of the power is going to run the DSP which could care less if there are two outputs.

Only time to use TRS with Variax is if you are using the power supply box that used to come with it.

Workbench HD only works with JTV Variax.

No license needed for WB HD. You just download it.

Around 7V

That is not unsoldered! The switch came apart. Cheapo switch. That is why they did not put a power switch on the HD500x.

Use the USB interface that came with the guitar. It is designed to connect your guitar to a PC to run Workbench or do an update.

HD500 yes HD500x no. The HD500x only works with the HD workbench.

I do not think the 700 and 300 have the same board. The 700 board is much like the 500. You can get yours fixed. Try a Variax repair center.

New guitar - send it back. Line6 isn't going to respond here. You should know that by now.