Charlie_Watt

Global = all patches. Yes.

The weakness in the USB jack is the plastic center insert. It can break off easily and then you end up shorting out the connection and damaging the USB chip.

It is unfortunate but a standard USB port connection was not designed to be a robust connection that will withstand the kind of use we give it with a Pod. It was designed to be on the back of a computer and not to be plugged and unplugged many times. Line6 does not design and make USB jacks. They are somewhat at the mercy of what is available in the type to attach to their board.

Most of our stuff costs way more in other countries. It's not our fault. It's import duties and taxes. Blaming Lne6 for this is foolish! (and ignorant)

The Ghost saddles are plastic and they were originally designed to reduce string breakage I believe. Should be a nice upgrade on your 600.

You really will need to tweak your patches to get great tone out of different amps.

I tried my 500 first without turning them down and it did not sound right. Way louder. The string volume adjustment is a nice one to have though. I think the ghosts have less of the normal piezo plinky sound. They are potted into the plastic saddles so they can't move like the standard ones can.

You need to reduce your string volume when you install these. They are way hotter than the standard Variax piezos. You may be overdriving the modeling FW. I brought mine down to 50% on my Variax 500.

Sure sounds like an authorization problem still. Make sure that there are no things running that are preventing your access and make sure you have admin rights. I have had trouble with Monkey in this way and it took me a while to figure out how to get my system to allow it to run. It does things that trigger all of the protective software to step in and stop it.

I'm not sure you can change the volume of the Mags but you can adjust the individual sting levels for the modeled output. My 69S has very good balance between mags and piezos. Some models are louder than the mags and some are quieter than the mags.

Thanks! Very nice plots!

I never noticed but it makes sense that it might do that.

The OP claimed that it happened after a FW upgrade. All I suggested was to revert back to prove that it was or wasn't that. I agree that it is almost certainly a HW problem, either the cable or one of the connectors. If it was flawed FW, we would all be having this problem.

The amp models that come with the HD are great - it's the presets that were not. Way over done in my opinion. Best thing is to start with the amp model only and work from there. (or download some of the patches from custom tone that suit your taste)

I was using XP for all of my Line6 updates until very recently when my old laptop took a dump. I'm now using Win7. I don't notice a difference in the way any of the Line6 stuff works.

Riffstation looks pretty cool! I will have to try that!

Matching tones is different than modeling different amps. Amplifi is actually a step back in modeling technology IMO.

If you think it's the new FW then by all means revert. I bet it's not the FW since nobody else is complaining about any problems with the VDI interface.

I would have a little sympathy if he had asked for help rather than just ranting about lack of support.

You have to realize that these updates work 99.9% of the time correctly and that is not what you see here. You see here folks that are experiencing problems. It's a very skewed sample of the user community. I think you are also being very unfair when you suggest that Line6 does this on purpose to make $$. I can assure you that they do not! They do not like unhappy customers! No successful company does. Revert your FW and see if the problem goes away. You may have something going bad either in your pod or your power supply.

Sorry but I have not read anything here that ever suggested that anyone but you have this problem with the Variax VDI interface.

These old amps were like guitars - every one sounded different. Old components had large tolerances so the combination of them created slightly different tones. Unfortunately, when old amps age, they don't always get better (or stay the same). I'm sure that Line6 had a good amp tech go through these amps to make sure they were in as good condition as possible.

You need a white or pink noise generator. You may be able to find an ap for that!

I never unplug my JTV and I have never had a power problem with my HD500x. I don't think this is a design issue. Maybe you have a defective unit???

That is nothing like how Line6 did their characterization. There was some stuff about how they did it in some of the pod literature. They measured everything to build the models so the models are based on a specific amp.