Charlie_Watt

No that is not normal at all. Sounds like crap.

You could do that. The Acoustic 700 was a great guitar. You could save yourself a bunch of trouble and get one of those. Remember that all of the modeling guitars are based on a solid body - for a good reason.

That side view looks much better now. The string angles are much better. Should work great. The bridge does not move much when you use the trem but it as something has to give or the strings will drag over the piezos. That will make noise and it won't return completely to tune either. Sounds like you have it knocked!

Hiss is not a grounding issue. It should be very quiet unless you are running very high gain and lots of treble.

This bridge is not designed to rock. You may have to mod something since once the studs are screwed down to the proper height, they are not going to move. Since the strings are normally attached to the back of the bridge, they did not want to have any play. With the Bigsby, the strings are no longer attached to the bridge so you could let it rock but you may have to modify the studs so that they don't lock to the bridge so tightly.

What is the frequency content of the noise? That looks like digital noise to me. It has a very structured pattern.

You said you were connected to your laptop.

XLR is the best way to connect your pod to PA. It works well with long cables.

No. The HD500X is not an amplifier at all. It plugs into the front of an amp or into a PA but not directly into a speaker cab. It will not drive a speaker directly.

Crosstalk between strings is going to degrade alternate tunings no matter how it happens and it makes sense that palm muting can be a source of crosstalk.

I would stick with 10-46 since that is what it was set up with. How long have those strings been on there????? I like Elixir strings for Variax guitars. The coating reduces the squeak you get when you move your fingers along the wound strings. The D'Addario strings that come with it are fine though. (and quite a bit cheaper then Elixir)

I think the controls are not connected to the board. I think they have wires that go to a connector. They could be relocated without changing the board. Many lefties just replace the nut and restring. (Intonation needs to be adjusted too of course) The body is then just upside down which isn't ideal but it works.

I would bet that the LED isn't quite placed properly. That might not be that hard to fix but you also could just live with it if you can tell which model / tuning is selected. I don't have a 59 so I don't know how those knobs work. I know that the ones on my 69S light up quite brightly. The Alt tuning on mine only lights up when you move it.

Only thing that has to change in electronics is to flip the piezo connections so that they go to the same string in lefty as they did in righty.

Buzz that gets less when you touch the strings is noise getting into your guitar's pickups. When you touch the strings, your body is acting like an RF shield and that reduces the pickup. Try moving around the room and twisting slowly without touching the strings. The amount of noise will vary. This is why they invented Humbucker pickups. The other solution - active pickups. I replaced the pickups in my Strat with EMG active pickups and the noise went way down. You will also notice much less noise in positions 2 and 4 on the Strat selector switch. This is because it is selecting two pickups that tend to cancel each other's noise. (Humbucker) Unfortunately, this is a fact of life with single coil guitars. By the way, my Variax is dead silent except when using it's Mag pickups.

Fret Buzz is a disaster with alternate tunings and artifacts in the modeling. I had to raise my Low E and A saddles on my JTV 69S when I got it to eliminate a slight fret buzz. Once I did that I it still plays nicely and it has virtually no fret buzz unless you hit the strings way too hard. Relief was decent on mine and I have not fooled with it.

I would try to replace it myself but I trust my disassembly / assembly skills. If you don't you may want to pay to have it done. It won't be cheap because labor is expensive.

Yes you need a hexaphonic pickup. Variax processing is all on a per string basis. Only way it can do alternate tunings.

The Variax Acoustic used a 6 piezo custom bridge with the same piezo's that are in the current variax. The electronics were different than current Variax though. It was a solid body and the bridge was glued on the front like most Acoustics. Solid Body is the key I think.

Only acoustic bridge I have seen that would work is the one on the Variax Acoustic. That was a very successful Variax and I am sort of surprised that they have not continued with some sort version of it. I do not think that a transplant into an Acoustic is going to be a very good idea. Way too difficult to mod a real acoustic guitar bridge. The variax electronics don't work with all of the normal acoustic guitar vibrations. They rely on the 6 pickups being as isolated as possible. That ain't going to happen on a real acoustic guitar. The whole bridge vibrates quite a lot on an acoustic.

The sound I don't like is the sound you get when you let a note die out with the 12 string acoustic models. Sort of a buzz. It's like when the amplitude gets too low the modeling can't lock on to it.

I have huge noise generators in my house that seem to couple into my passive guitar pickups. I have a Strat with EMG's and it's nice and quiet. My Variax's with Piezo pickups are dead quiet. Everything else picks up EMI in my room and it varies as I move around. If you have hum that changes with location, it's getting into your pickup coils directly.

We are all going to crap out someday too. :-( I have probably recycled a half dozen PC's that were no longer useful. Way more $$ than I have invested in guitars.

I think you are making the right decision. Some of the alt tunings seem to work well. I have used the Open G and it sounds good. Other than that, I do not really use the alt tunings all that much. I do wish the 12 string stuff sounded a bit more real. I don't think it sounds any more real with my JTV than it does on my old 500. I have a real 12 string electric (Vox from the mid 60's) that was given to me recently and it sounds great but it's hard to play cleanly. I think you will like your JTV more and more as you get used to playing it.

It should work with it. Give it a try and see how you like it.