phil_m

The battery will drain anytime the 1/4" cable is connected. The rate at which it drains will change depending on whether or not you're using the modeling or not, but even in sleep mode, it will still drain. If you leave it plugged in overnight, for instance, in sleep mode, it will most like be completely drained the next day, or close to it. The sleep mode is more of a temporary thing, like during the middle of a gig. I think of it as akin to the standby switch on an amp. It's just something you can use between sets if you want to conserve a bit more battery life. Personally, I usually just unplug the guitar when I'm not using it, even during a gig.

I understand your frustration, to a degree. I would only push back a little and say that a lot of Line 6's competitors are still using MIDI for updates. TC Electronic and Strymon to name a couple, and I'm sure there's some more. Going the USB route is generally more convenient, I agree. It would be nice to have that on the M9. It's no guarantee for a frustration-free update experience, though. Looking at the forums for the products that use USB will show you that pretty quickly. The one thing that's nice with MIDI is that it's an established robust protocol in the musical equipment world that works across a large variety of equipment.

I've not really heard of anyone having this particular issue before. I know that some people have had issues with the tempo drifting after a while on the M9, but this sounds different than that. Are you running the latest firmware on the M9?

I'm using the Pedaltrain Pro board.

Does the timing on the M9 actually sync to the MIDI clock, though? What I mean is it just the BPM display that's fighting or is the M9's actual tempo being erratic?

I had the M13 on my pedalboard for quite a while - since it came out in 2008, really. I recently switched out to an M9 so I could fit a MIDI controller on my board, but, yeah, I think the M13 works great on a board.

Nothing stopping you from saving as many tones as you want under My Tones, so you could easily make tones that served as templates for you.

No, it doesn't work that way. The FBV controllers are the only way to control the Spider Valve.

If you're switching from one topology to another or switching class - anything where one of the relays is firing - there can be some noise. Also, though, if you're changing presets when connected to HD Edit, that could be making things worse, too. Does it make a difference if you're connected to Edit or not?

I also am interested as to why the shop said it was impossible to set up. Are they saying the neck is warped or frets severely out of whack?

I don't imagine this will be changed in a firmware update. This is how the delay time works on the M-series effects. I think the idea is that if you want to control a delay time, you can either set in milliseconds or give it a note value that's tied to the BPM which is tied to the tap tempo. It also affect the way the expression pedal interacts with the delay time. If you have a note value set, it can't be changed by the expression pedal. If you have a millisecond value, you can tie it to the expression pedal. One thing to consider is that you can still save your preset with a specific delay time with a note value. As long as you the tap tempo set to preset instead of global, you can save a specific BPM with the preset so that when you bring the preset up, the timing will be saved to whatever you want it. Then it will change once you tap in a time. Personally, I like this way a lot better than the XT. It makes it more flexible overall.

I'd ask for exchange. You have enough reason based on the condition of the bag alone. Beyond that, I think the least a dealer can do is to make sure a guitar is playable before the sell it. Of course, the least they can do is nothing, I suppose...

No, unfortunately, there's no way to do it.

Could you provide a little more detail as to what you mean by "the sound changes"?

I wonder if there was some sort of compression applied to the individual strings in the prior firmware version that even out the volume before the signal went through the modeling. Perhaps the issue actually is different levels coming from the piezos, but now they aren't masking it. I do think that the 2.0 models feel more dynamic and responsive overall, so if there was a layer of compression/normalization that was removed, I could see that causing some of these issues. This, of course, is pure speculation on my part.

I do recall people having this issue, now that I think about it. It seems that the BPM doesn't stick when entered in Edit.

How's that workin' out for ya? :ph34r:

Well, there's a Tube Screamer model under the drives and dynamics section of the effects. You have to go into the Editor, tap the effect block you want to put it in, hit the little effect icon, and select it from there.

Well, if you're connected to HD Edit, all bets are off. The tempo can drift. But it should be consistent when you're not attached. Are you hitting the tap tempo button at anytime? Even if you set the BPM, the timing will still be affected by the tap tempo switch. And if you happen to have the tempo set to global, it will change even if you're not in that patch.

Sure it does. If you put an amp block before the effect, that's a dual mono block. That means that it's summing the two mono signals coming into and outputting two identical mono signals. So if you have wet and dry going in, there will be a wet/dry mix coming out. I actually don't quite understand why the Analog Delay model behaves this way. The Boss DM-2, which that effect is modeled after doesn't have a separate dry out. The DM-3 does. This is just one of the little oddities that appears because of the way Line 6 handles the stereo signal paths through these effects.

There are some effects where the wet and dry signal are split left and right. I know Analog Chorus is like that for sure. I suppose the ones listed above behave like that as well.

In ABCD mode, only the top four switches will send MIDI commands that you have programmed to them.

There have been some long threads regarding this here, but the way I see it is this. In full power mode, the signal going to the XLR out is being tapped from the output transformer so that the tube power amp affects the signal. In standby, the power tubes aren't operating, so this is why there's no signal. In low volume mode, the signal going to the XLR out is simply the signal from the preamp section with cab and mic modeling applied. The power amp interaction is modeled rather than real. It still works in standby in LVM because the signal isn't dependent on the actual power tubes in any way.

I haven't really touched my X3L in quite a while, but if I remember correctly, I do believe that turn the reverb mix all the way up is 100% wet.

Yes, you can do that very easily. In HD500 Edit, under the controller tab, you can assign MIDI messages to switches FS 1-8 however you want in the preset. The footswitch will still toggle whatever effect(s) is assigned to it.