Charlie_Watt

I am new to my JTV but I have a 500 to compare to. The Acoustics are far better on my JTV with 2.0. I am not crazy about the 12 string models but they too are improved over the older stuff. I am sure that we all agree that there is room for improvement and the more flexibility they give us with Workbench the better.

Most will but some will fail. That's the way it is with complex electronics. My 500 is 8 years old now and it works flawlessly. I don't gig so it doesn't leave my house. Connectors and switches are high failure rate items in consumer electronics.

I was not being a jerk I was just saying that all of our fun gadgets are designed to work a long time but not designed to be repaired. (only replaced) Many things electronic will cost as much to repair as to replace. After the warranty expires it's on us.

Early Adopter? These guitars have been out for years! Bad luck yes.

You are far more likely to find an alternate source than to have Line 6 drop the battery price.

I recommend that you get a copy of the latest "Pilot's Guide" for the X3/X3 live. It explains how to use the dual tone and lots of other stuff. I have to refer to it often when using my X3Live because I don't use it that often and I forget which knob does what.

Such is life for any modern electronic products. They are not designed to be repaired. If you have a couple of year old TV that craps out on you , it will be cheaper to buy a new one than have it fixed. That is the down side to a Variax. It's got very complex electronic components and it's not designed to be repaired. You could replace the whole board but you will pay through the nose for it.

I would try it if I had one (very carefully). It's only a battery - same voltage looks like same connections on the end. If it mates up it will work. If not, I would rig it up to work in my old 500 instead of my 6 cell NIMH pack. (It would get same run time as my 6 cell NIMH pack which is also 2500mAH and approximately 7.2V) By the way, most of these are made in China anyway now.

Then that's plain old bad design. Downloads through any kind of interface are subject to errors. The Download process should check and make sure that everything gets downloaded without error before updating the flash. Everything I have worked on does this.

The thing I really did not like about the original Variax Piezo's was that they relied on contacting the strings for their grounding. Every once and a while I would get a bad connection with associated hum. The Ghost piezo's have a ground wire on each one which I connected to the flex ground in the Variax 500 bridge. No hum and far more output. I had to turn the string volumes down to about 50%. I have not looked at the JTV piezo connections to see if they are grounded individually the way they should be.

That's the wonder of workbench! You can significantly affect the tone of the models and balance the string volumes to your own taste. If you don't like the 2.0 Strat then change it! My guess is that the default models sound very much like the guitars that Line 6 used to generate them.

I do code for a living and I have never seen a system where reflashing changes anything. It either works or it doesn't. Any decent system does at least a checksum of the downloaded code before burning it to the flash. I would be very surprised if two downloads of 2.0 yield different results if they complete successfully.

That's a good idea - could be done I am sure. But the cost of a JTV battery is as much as a couple sets of rechargables. I always like using batteries because it is always going to be quieter than a power supply. I always found that supply to be a hassle to use. I only used it a few times when I first got my Variax.

That looks like someting I would do. :) Not cool! They probably damaged the cable and did not have a replacement on hand so they tried to patch it up.

Crossover cable flips transmit and receive pair. It probably would not damage your guitar but it sure wouldn't work.

Lithium batteries are more expensive than most. I agree that $50 is a little much but the price quoted in that EBay is way under cost. My guess is that they obtained a bunch of batteries on the cheap and that they are unloading them also on the cheap. They should be a good deal and I would be surprised if they did not work fine in a JTV. The JTV battery life is pretty good but I would like to have a spare. My old 500 battery life isn't all that good and I always keep a spare battery pack charged up and ready to go. I use 2500mAH NIMH rechargables in that.

I agree that the battery on the original wasn't as nice as the JTV but it works fine for me. I have two sets of NIMH rechargables. I don't like the power supply. Adds noise. I never use mine and I have had my 500 since they came out.

Sure looks like the right battery. Not sure why it's so cheap.

I always run mine on the battery. Dead quiet.

You can get about the same result with the old Variax by saving a custom model with the tuning you want to switch to. Move the 5 way and you have the alternate tuned version.

Blinking when almost complete is what the instructions say. Leave it on for a while after it starts blinking to get a full charge. Solid red during most of the charge cycle.

You should be able to change tunings on the fly if you save the tunings to the custom positoins. You can change the Variax model selections with the X3L. You just can't have alternate tunings and 12 String at the same time with anything but the JTV Variax. That's because the JTV has enough processor power to do alternate tunings and 12 string at the same time and the earlier versions do not.

Please clarify "Went Out". Does it do nothing at all? I would check the power connections. Make triple sure you install the battery with the right polarity. You can blow the diode on the board if you even momentarily touch the battery to the connector backwards. That has killed many old Variax's. Inspecting the board is very easy - just remove the back plate. The battery plugs in with a two pin connector. I recently had mine all apart to install Ghost pickups from Graphtech. Sounds MUCH better with these. I have had my 500 since they first came out and it's been perfectly reliable.

Big difference in the modeling and flexibility. Now you can do alternate tunings and 12 string at the same time. Can't do that on any of the earlier Variax models (Pre JTV)

One real nice feature (that was not available on my 500) is the string balance for each model. It used to be that you could only balance the strings globally. I do agree that many of the 2.0 models need a boost on the first and second string to sound the way I want them to. Maybe the guitars they modeled had the pickups set up that way.