ozbadman

FWIW, at this stage, the poll is coming down overwhelmingly on keep v2.0 and add new models. I guess that makes them the silent majority.

I think you're missing the point here jd. Johnny has started a poll to determine what people's priorities are. It's like when people say you can have french fries or a hotdog, but not both. Whatever you answer tells us which one is more important to you at the time. The world, and Line 6, has limited resources, so by starting a poll where you are forced to choose, we get an idea of what is most important to people. FWIW, this has nothing to do with Line 6, and they probably won't see the result, or be swayed by it. Presumably, Johnyy just wanted to get a feel for what people were really thinking through the noise of "do this, no do that".

I don't know if this helps Hey_Joe, but basically, the difference between the sound of pickup A vs pickup B is determined by two factors. 1) the resonant frequency and 2) the height of the peak at the resonant frequency (also called the Q factor). So, to emulate a different pickup, we need to change the resonant frequency and/or the height of the peak. 1) Changing the resonant frequency using Workbench Using Workbench, we can change the resonant frequency by stacking pickups (this changes the inductance). If we stack pickups in series (like a humbucker), we reduce the resonant frequency (e.g.: from 4KHz to 2.8KHz). If we stack them in parallel (like a strat in positions 2 and 4) we increase the resonant frequency (e.g.: from 4KHz to 5.6KHz). This stacking also affects the output volume, so adjustments need to be made to the level to compensate if you want your pickups to be at a certain level. 2) Changing the height of the resonant frequency using Workbench Changing the height of the peak is not so easy but some amount of control is available with the tone and volume pot values. Note: these will only affect the tone/peak height when these pots are not at 100%.

You forgot to include nylon acoustic in your list. :) Personally, I'd prefer they spent their resources changing the EQ % to real values on the HD500 series (plus perhaps some updates to the HD500), coming out with a JTV acoustic and JTV bass, and building a JTV-69 that was prettier so I could buy one. But that's just me.

Thanks for the update Chuckle. My JTV is in Australia so it's good to know what the cause of your bricking was. That being said, I will be a little nervous when I do go to do the update (athough I've used the interface before and it was fine, so I don't expect any problems).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaYGYtJW5g For me, I don't notice too much difference at 1:42. At 2:08-2:16, there is significantly more treble in the HD model than the magnetics. That being said, we're comparing a Tyler guitar with Tyler magnetic pickups to a Strat model so I wouldn't necessarily expect them to sound too similar. We'd really have to compare the Strat model to the original Strat guitar to see how well Line 6 has done, or otherwise.

Chuckle, just so you know the Expert tag is assigned by Line 6. The UberGuru title occurs automatically to anyone who gets assigned the Expert tag. It is given to a select number of users/customers who have spent a lot of time on these forums helping people out and are deeply knowledgeable about the products. They often get asked to be Beta testers and have inside access to Line 6 information and employees, hence the NDAs. But, at the end of the day, they are mostly users like the rest of us. They are providing whatever help they do for free. They are also human. They have good and bad days like the rest of us. Was Zap's initial response a touch aggressive? In my opinion, probably. But the follow on responses from others have been much more so, probably due to the "expert tag" curse. The fact is, the experts do have better access to information than the average user, and they don't have to pass any of that information on to us. I'm glad that we have at least some information coming to us from them so that we get an idea of where Line 6 is heading. Now, you might not like the answer, but it's better to at least know that the models are likely to stay as they are now for the foreseeable future (barring obvious bugfixes of course) So the way I see it, we can harangue them in these forums, at which point they'll respond like a human and stop passing on information to us. If we see something aggressive, we can ask them politely to back off, or we can retaliate and ramp up the war of words.

Yes. It's fine.

I'm just trying to separate the two concepts. Charlie said you need a sample of the "pitch" so I was clarifying that. To re-iterate, 1) you can pitch shift without determining the frequencies being played as described above. In fact, it's very easy, but doesn't necessarily sound very good. 2) to compensate for the artifacts that are created if you do the most basic pitch-shifting, which has essentially 0 latency, you need to introduce computing to try to determine how to minimize those artifacts. Even then, you're probably not looking at the freqeuncies of the notes being played. More like the general shape of the nearby samples to try to work out how to adjust for the dropped samples with minimal artifacts. Now, that data does include the shaping caused by the frequencies being generated, but you're not inherently looking at the frequencies themselves.

No, that's my point, it doesn't need a sample of the "pitch". It just needs to sample the amplitude at twice the highest frequency it wants to reproduce, e.g. 44.1KHz, then play it back at 44.1KHz - 6%, dropping every 17th sample. The delay is effectively 0. The overtones and warbling is caused by the dropping of the samples, so you need to do some nice stuff for that, but changing the frequency by itself doesn't inherently require "sampling the pitch". It can be done without any knowledge whatsoever of what notes are being played.

Actually Charlie, it doesn't necessarily have to measure the frequency of the note before shifting. Fortunately, frequencies are geometric. Therefore, you just sample the note at one frequency, and play the samples back at a different frequency. As long as your sample rate is high enough, the pitch is magically shifted by that %. Approximately 6% per semi-tone. But, you have to drop the same percentage of the samples, and this introduces artifacts. This is when you might want to get some sort of feel for the surrounding samples in order to reduce the artifacts.

I have never noticed any latency with alt tuning, even on my Variax 700. That being said, (1) I don't doubt what you're hearing and (2) I gather the 12-string modelling requires significantly more processing than the 6-string modelling. Hence, alt-tuning of 12 strings models in the 700 were not available from what I recall. So, if you're going to have latency issues, they're going to be most apparent in the 12-string models. I don't tend to use alternate tunings on my 12-strings so have never noticed it. My guitars are overseas at the moment, so I can't test it. Hopefully it's not that big an issue it throws out people's timing. I'd like to know how many ms delay from picking to hearing makes it noticeable. I'd be guessing somewhere around 25ms from my audio days.

I do, yes. One of the problems in the guitar world is people get hung-up on latency. Then they start hearing things that aren't there (I'm not saying this is you at all. Merely that people hear the word latency and immediately they can't play anymore). So, I'm just making the point that everything has latency, and it's only an issue if it truly becomes audible.

Waddap Clay-man, By almost 0 latency, I meant so small you can't possibly hear it. Nothing has 0 latency. Even a 1 inch wire. That's why I didn't say 0 latency. No-one should ever say 0 latency, as there's no such thing. As an example, moving the speaker closer to my ear reduces latency too. I guess I'm not seeing where the complexity lies. The only complexity I can thing of is trying to smooth out the overtones/warble. That could introduce additional latency while waiting for samples, as well as latency due to processing time. In any case, whatever Line 6 does in the Variax, they do it well and I've never heard any latency when using alternate tunings (i.e.: it's so small, you can't hear it).

You can achieve output parity between presets using the Mixer tab in HD500 Edit.It works like the master volume controls on a PA mixer. It has a control for Path A and Path B, and goes from +12dB to -infinite (i.e.: no sound). This is the control you should be using to balance patch volumes. See attached.

It shouldn't need to read a bit of the input wave in terms of general pitch shifting. I would imagine all you need to do is adjust by 12th root of 2 (approximately 6%) for each semi-tone. Sample at 44.1KHz, play back at 41.6kHz. Almost 0 latency. The only additional processing would be that you'd need to skip a sample 6% of the time, so you might want to blend that with the samples around it. That could introduce some overall latency, but it should be tiny and in no way audible (although it would produce overtones). Unless I'm missing something?

Totally different results. The Variax has a separate pickup for each string, while the Axe can only process the overall sound. Variax does a very good job at pitch shifting each string.

I think your poll is somewhat biased. There's a difference between does Line 6 monitor this forum, and does Line 6 monitor the concerns of this forum. Yes they monitor the forum. No, they don't worry about every issue that's raised here, since a lot of it is subjective.

Thanks for the info toaster. I'll have to take my 59 apart again and look at the connections to the motherboard.

Of course Fender would say it already exists with the Roland G-5/5a, but they're smokin' crack.

Oh, sweet. Thanks for that. I don't know why I thought it had a 3-way. The humbuckers I guess. So it sounds like if I can pick up one of those $700 JTV89's, all I need is a new whammy bridge, and of course, a Strat.

I haven't looked into it, but I would expect the electronics of the 59, 69 and 89 to be the same. At least on the motherboard. Given the 59 requires a 3-way and a separate switch to change models, it's obviously different connections. Ideally, the motherboard would have a seperate connection place for a 5-way. Your best bet is probably to see if someone can take a photo of their 69 5-way and see if there's anything special, and where it connects on the motherboard. I have a 59 unfortunately so can't help you on this one.

Ahhh. Good to know. Thanks Steve.

Thanks Johnny, I like having the latest electronics from Line 6, but I don't like the look of the 69, especially the alt-tuning wheel. The 89 looks OK, but I want a 5-way switch. I have the 59, which I love, but it's a little on the heavy side. I'm more of a strat guy in terms of feel. So, I'm trying to work out what my options are for using a standard strat, but with Line 6 electronics on top.

Hi all, Does anyone know if I wanted to replace the bridge of a JTV, or use the electronics in a different guitar entirely, can I use something like a Graphtech Ghost instead of the JTV piezos? Is the output compatible with JTV or older Variax electronics? Is there a better way to do this? Thanks for any advice.