I was told in a support ticket that there are no replacement parts (ie. mainboard, other major components) for the legacy Variax guitars. My Variax 500 failed a firmware flash update midway through which bricked it. And after months of waiting and bitching on the old forums, was told basically I'm screwed. They recommended I take it to a local Authorized repair shop - they wanted $45 just to look at it, and $65/hr to do repairs. Since L6 told me there are no replacement parts, why spend money on nothing?
I did buy the replacement input jack assembly from FullCompass only to find it is for a 300/500/600. The internals of my 500 won't let it just "plug-n-play" - without major parts being moved or removed. That didn't work either (plugging it all up but not seating the new assembly. In the end, I ended up accidentally RIPPING off the piezo flat cable from the mainboard in trying to just reassemble the old parts again after countless hours troubleshooting and trying firmware updates from 5 different computers, 3 different operating systems, 2 different HD500s (with and without the usb interface)......
I now am the unhappy owner of an acoustic only Variax 500 with non-functioning internals and the only thing I can do is:
1) Sell for parts
2) Keep and buy another cheap 300/500/etc for donor parts
3) Rip out all digital components and install normal pickups/pots/wiring....
