sparkyERTW

I've been looking into a replacement as well, as the health of mine is waning. And as much as the "contact your local retailer" sounds good... I'm in Canada. We have one retailer replacement batteries seemed to have been available through, which is Long & McQuade. And if I track down that page on their site, I'm greeted with nothing but the following message on that page: "This product is no longer available." Which is L&M's standard line when they're not carrying something anymore. So as a Canadian Line 6 customer, I'm not just facing a long wait until it comes back in stock; I'm facing what Line 6 considers my official source for parts signaling that I'm S.O.L. for getting the components I need to keep my Variax working.

Thanks for posting that, Steve, it's nice to get confirmation (even if it's that it doesn't work).

I'm going to take it to mean they have such grand plans for the next release they're leaving themselves space for plenty of awesome new presets without having to retire any.

Hey Tom, Like you, I have to watch my back and have fought sciatica in the past (luckily beaten for now), and am most often playing in a small pub sharing the stage with 5 other musicians, so space is a premium. My solution has been a Helix, run direct to front of house, with an Alto TS210 for some stage volume. Like Eschworld said, if you have an excellent stage monitoring solution, a separate PA isn't necessarily, but the monitoring setup at our haunt is fairly limited, and I find I can't hear myself due to their position and the bodies between me and them. My choice of the TS210 came down to one big factor that might also appeal to you: weight. Alto's T-series seem to weigh much less than other comparable PA speakers. The TS210, for example, is only 22 lbs, while many other 10-inch PAs of similar wattage are closer to or even over 30 lbs, and its handles make it very easy to carry. Is it mind-blowing in terms of sound? Probably not. But it is a back-pleasing option, and it's not a huge hit to the wallet if you later decide it's not quite good enough sound-wise. My two cents. For something even lighter... it also might be worth considering an HX Stomp. I haven't used one (wasn't around when I bought the Helix) so I can't say how intuitive it is compared to a Helix (which is really damn intuitive), but you can't get much lighter and smaller than an HX Stomp and 10-inch PA (if necessary).

He was definitely BS-ing, although it was pretty funny. I almost wanted to see how far he'd go with it. "I run my cowbell into the Helix. I have a shaker, I run that into the Helix. I have a set of bongos..."

Rhett Shull has gone Helix + PowerCab on his latest tour with Noah Gutherie. Sounds like he's digging it.

I have my TS210 behind me, on it's side and angled up a bit. However, my scenario is that I don't have IEMs and we have a limited monitoring setup due to the amount of space in the snug that we play in at the pub. It's pretty much just two Yorkville NX10Cs; one sitting in a window sill directed at our drummer and fiddle player, and one sitting on a table directed at our bass player and two front men. Me, being on the other side of the stage, gets almost none of that given the distance and bodies they have to go through. So having the TS210 behind me is pretty much the only way I'd hear myself. When we do bring out our "A" rig for our bigger gigs (which honestly, for a bar band, would probably be seen as an "A+++" rig), I still like having the TS210 behind me so I can get a little bit less/more of myself without having to bug our bass player/sound man.

I realize it's a fair ways off to start nitpicking... but pick I shall! When I saw the LaGrange was based on a Tweed Deluxe, I started doing some poking around as to how the LaGrange might differ from the Tweed Deluxe in this patch. While researching, I realized that the notes seem to refer to something that doesn't exist. The 5C3 circuit was used until sometime in 1954, and in 1958 the circuit being used was the 5E3. While there are some that would argue, "C'mon... it's a tweed deluxe... C, E, K, Z, it's going to be pretty much the same", it sounds like there's a noticeable difference between them - more low end, additional gain stage - which is why the 5E3 is so coveted.

Directed at those in the know, obviously, but with the upcoming L6 Link integration with PowerCab+ and the DT25/50, I'm curious as to whether we'll be able to mix the two? i.e. DT25 gets left signal, PowerCab+ gets right signal? I suspect the answer is probably yes considering that I believe something similar was possible back in the HD500/DT/StageSource era, but a definitive answer would be awesome.

FYI, the reason re-naming the .hir to .wav didn't work is because .hir is likely an encrypted copy of the WAV (maybe with some extra information). Once imported and decrypted by authorized software (Edit), it would then be possible to freely export as a proper WAV.

Ivan, do you have the source in some place like Github? I can have a look and see if there's anywhere I can give you some help.

Of course; I wouldn't condescend and suggest that "it's easy", as I know as a software engineer how much it irritates me when someone who has no understanding of the complexities of producing and releasing software makes that claim. But if the team does look into it and discovers it wouldn't be too much trouble, there's clearly a few users of DAWs for Linux and Android (which it may also solve) who would be grateful.

Absolutely, Partev; I am in no way suggesting hardware modification (or software modification for that matter), and I do appreciate that use cases like communicating via USB through a virtualized hardware layer does add an extra layer of risk. So perhaps I should have prefaced my suggestion with, "while fairly safe, don't expect Line 6 to come running if things go wrong", which is a completely understandable position, as per my comments in previous posts. That said, as per the previous couple posts, there's no harm in letting you guys know that the firmware might be short a function or two in the class-compliant spec. If the knowledge base and documentation indicate it's class-compliant, it's not unreasonable to ask your team if they would be able to find time to make it meet the spec in a future firmware update, time permitting.

Perhaps I'm mistaken; I'll try to remember to try it on my own machine and see if the results are the same. Except that it's not written in Sanskrit. It's stating in plain English that the driver is having trouble retrieving the sample rate from the device, information that could passed on to Line 6's development staff that might indicate there's a bug in their class-compliant implementation (which the link in zolko60's post actually confirms) - which IS something they might actually be willing and have time to fix. The vast majority of contributors to this post has been civil, thoughtful, and respectful during this post, and if anything has potentially uncovered something that could legitimately improve Line 6's product and help it fulfill some people's needs. I would suggest that if that's not of interest to you, please leave it to the people that do want to continue that discussion. (though admittedly zolko60's cheekiness actually provided us with ammo as a result :) )

Okay, moving past the OS fights and getting back to the OP's point... No, Line 6 will almost certainly not be supporting Linux. Things like desktop apps, games, etc., have enough cross-platform libraries and frameworks to allow developers to "write once, run anywhere", for the most part. But when you're talking hardware that needs drivers, those layers are so drastically different that it doubles the work. Yes, companies like Intel, NVidia, etc., do make that effort, but Line 6 doesn't have that level of resources. One could argue that they could let the open source community handle it, but the legal work and supplying technical details would be almost as much work. As someone who enjoys using Linux OSes at home, I do feel your frustration. What I can tell you - though not ideal - is that the USB extensions for VirtualBox work well enough that having Helix connect to HX Edit running in a Windows virtual machine has posed no problem. Pretty sure I ran the last firmware update through that as well and had no issue. Likewise, Workbench works fine through the USB extensions, and I would suspect Powercab's editor as well. Yes, it does mean you'd still have to run Windows, but you would have the benefit of Ubuntu for your day-to-day use and only use Windows for HX Edit. As far as audio interfacing goes, if I recall correctly, Helix is a class-compliant USB audio device. Because there are class-compliant USB audio drivers in Linux, that means its ins and outs should be recognized if you plug it in. Windows in VirtualBox for patch editing/updating on your PC, native audio device in LInux for recording. Not perfect, but it could be worse.

Someone recently posted on the Facebook group - and I confirmed it via other sites/sources - that Lovelytheband's guitar tech Alex Strabala shared that both guitarists and the bass player are running Helix units to FOH, with amps just for stage volume.

His request definitely has use cases. For example, let's say I have 4 snaps: Clean, Crunch, Lead, and... some other one I'm not going to bother thinking of. After switching to my Clean snapshot, I'd want my stomps for effects I'd usually use to enhance my clean sound, such as a compressor, chorus, tremolo, and maybe a phaser. Switching to Crunch, I'd maybe want stomps for a boost, layering a fuzz, perhaps a flanger. Moving to Lead, I'd maybe look for a delay, a pitch shifter or harmonizer, octave fuzz, treble booster, etc. You could argue that if I need that level of granularity a preset would be better suited, or that a preset as overloaded as that would be pushing the limits of the DSP, or that if you need the speed of snapshots to make more than 8 tonal shifts mid-song you're insane,... Actually, those are decent arguments. Carry on. :D

I think where they figured there might be controversy was: People complaining "Hey! This update is nothing but a bunch of outdated, last generation effects, many of which we already had in Helix! What a rip off!" People complaining "Hey! All the reverbs I use just got thrown under the 'Legacy' category! I want them under Reverbs where I've always had them! What a pain!" Myself... it's not the most exciting update, but it looks okay to me. Some of those M-series effects that had no HX equivalents might come in handy. And I guess we'll see how those HX 'verbs sound.

Both great amps. I'm not sure I could tell you which had better cleans; I didn't A/B them side-by-side or anything. You could probably get more clean headroom out of the Tweaker at 15W vs. 5W, but if you don't need loud cleans the HT5 would probably work fine (speaking of which, remember that wattage is not analogous to volume output; speaker efficiency and pre-/power-amp design factor in a lot). The Tweaker doesn't have any sort of direct/emulated output, so given that it's important to you the HT5 might be the better option for you.

Good tube amp for bedroom playing with a JTV... well, as you have a guitar that has all different types of guitars, you'd probably want an amp that can do variety of amp tones for some suitable pairings (or off-the-wall pairings, if you want to have some fun). I've got an Egnater Tweaker that does alright at bedroom levels; maybe still a tad loud for that (the G12H30 is an incredibly efficient speaker), but it's a great little amp and very versatile. I've also played through my wife's uncle's Blackstar HT-5, and that's a killer small, versatile, budget amp as well. I haven't tried a Fender Greta (though I have been curious) or the Crate V58. I'm sure they're fine little amps, but I'd say start yourself off with a 1x8/1x10/1x12 combo or head/cab pair for a good introduction to tube amps.

I purchased a Mogami 3080-based cable over eBay from Rainwater Sound. It was 20' for about $25, and I'm pretty sure they had shorter length ones as well (I just checked; they have a 6' for $15.75). Works great for L6 Link on my DT25.

Yeah, it's funny, they never seemed worried about having the Variax be part of Custom Tone; I don't know why given the Workbench capabilities. I guess Workbench was originally an purchasable add-on in the first series of Variaxes, but with it becoming part of the base package I'm surprised they haven't added it. Fine! I'll go build my own Custom Tone website... with black jack... and hookers! in fact, forget the website.

There has to be some fundamental difference between the two patches that's not being captured. Try this: make a duplicate of the clean patch in HD Edit, disable the amp in the new patch (just disable, not remove), rename and save the new patch. That should give you the same thing you've figured out how to do now, only as two separate patches.

I hate the two of you so much... so very, very much

In case anyone hasn't noticed, Future Shop has a DT50 head listed under 'Clearance'. $699. Last one. Somebody do me a favour and snap it up before I somehow convince myself I need a second DT head (because I really, truly don't).