Leftzilla

And again Jandrio nails it. I personally use the volume pedal to pan between the two channels

I would imagine that they would keep the capabilities that the HD500 had at a minimum, though I can't see how much more control you could have over that. But thats just me.

I am not sure what you are saying in this post, but I certainly meant no offense in mine if you took it that way. I meant rejected guitars. It does seem strange that you would receive so many unacceptable guitars in a row.

Hey if you are not satisfied or the product does not perform as advertised, then you have every right to return it for a replacement. I don't know if for some reason Europe is getting all of the rejects or if some central clearing house is just running these out to find them a home. Somebody is obviously not paying attention. On the other hand, both of my JTV's arrived and worked flawlessly from Sweetwater. I will say I am surprised you stuck with it, given the several disappointing, and ultimately unsatisfying replacement guitars. It may be time if you haven't done so already to contact Line 6 customer support direct and see if you can get outside of the European supply chain or at least away from this population of guitars.

Everybody posting has good points and in the long run it will take you and your band to decide what is the best for you. For me I have one band that is completely into the in ear monitors (Elephants of Scotland- Original Prog 4 piece) but the other 80's cover band, the keyboard player is more old school, he wants the monitor. However we have come up with a compromise where we will be getting him a powered frfr monitor. I do want both bands to migrate to a digital mixer (we are looking XR16) as it has 4 aux buses with individual mix capability. I run sound for both bands and in the case of the cover band we run the house mono and foldback the house mix to the monitors. This allows me to run sound from the stage, with waltizing out on the wirless to check house mix. Great in small venues but you can easily get fooled in larger. The way I was able to get the kybd player to compromise is I told him he would have control of his monitor mix and be able to customize it via his cell phone.

I think that Jandrio has the solution, use the expression pedal to change the intervals

I respectfully disagree about the in ear monitors as I have found them quite useful and in fact one of my bands rehearses with them in place. That doesn't mean you don't have a very good reason for not liking them, but they literally have saved my hearing. To the original poster, a lot of this has to do with personal comfort, and as many others have pointed out, the onstage perception of the band sound. Since most dedicated guitar amplifiers are extremely directional I would have to question what the rest of the band actually thinks they are hearing since most of them will not be in the full frequency feed of the amp itself. I have not been playing through a dedicated guitar amplifier onstage for over 10 years. Depending on the venue I will bring either a small FR FR keyboard amp or an Amplifi 75 as a backup depending on the venue's monitors, but the band specifically invested in the in ear monitors due to very poor onstage monitor systems we have run into. Originally my Bass player kept trying to pressure me into getting a large guitar amp for onstage because this is what he was used to. However since introducing the in ear monitors where he can hear the signal of the entire band as I it is sent to the front of the house he now understands and prefers our current monitoring system. And in the end run it will be a balance between the comfort level of the band and the quality of the sound going to the front of the house.

chuskey, nicely done video with great points, playing, and sound. I think you and I are on the exact same page where I would be perfectly happy staying with my HD500X I am definitely going for the Helix. To napynap, I do appreciate your point about the Variax, but there are a lot of HD500X and Helix demos that are not demoed with Variax. And there a lot of guitars out there more and less expensive than Variax. I personally own 4 Variax's VAX700 and VAC 700 and JTV 59 and 89f along with a handful of other guitars and for my particular situation are perfect for me and have the added capaibility of interfacing with HD500X and soon (hopefully) the Helix. As for the budget end of things I have seen people get incredible sounds out of Roland cube and also sound like a Norelco razor out of a Mesa Boogie.

I gotta agree with radatats. A new 100w Marshall Head with Cabinet will cost about the same without the FX or signal processing. No offense but all the people talking about what price they would pay even before finding out the full capabilities or trying the unit out seems a little putting the cart in front of the horse. While not fully familiar with AXE-FX or Klemper it would seem that these very well respected pieces of equipment sit in the relatively same price bracket for their capabilities for which people are willing to pay the asking price. For me personally the Helix seems to fit exactly what I am looking for for my situation. A lot of this opinion is based on my past experience with Line 6 equipment which has been excellent.

And route the magnetic pickups and variax modeling through two different amp paths at the same time with the VDI but do not think this is possible with the 1/4 inch cable. If I am wrong please correct me.

Great thank you guys!

Hey, one too many beers spilled on the hd500x. What would recommend for an electronic wash to spray the board and switches with?

Great thank you very much!

Also with the HELIX unit about to drop you might see a lot more HD500Xs on the market (or both) so if I were you I would wait a little bit.

Let us know if that solved your problem.

"A toupe with a chin strap" thanks for frying my keyboard with nose filtered coffee cruisinon2!

rino2 pretty much hit it on the head. Obviously Helix is a better modeler which is the whole point of upgrading to it. But having the capability of pulling in a patch that I am already familiar with and the effect chains would give me a good reference point to start from. I have two albums out with my prog band which in some songs includes up to 4 patch changes with the same amount of Variax model changes that i have to be able to recreate live along with maintaining a sonic balance with the rest of the band but mainly the keyboard player. I know that a lot of effort went into Helix to make it very easy to work with, so it may end up being a moot point in the end.

Use Monkey to reflash. I purchased one of the heavy duty VDI cables with the solid interfaces on both ends. I have not run into the problem the OP and you have had. Don't know if that is the issue but the heavy duty VDI is very worth it especially if you doing a lot of live work and want to have the patch changes change Variax patches.

Out of curiosity will there be a way to import or load HD500 or HD500x patches? Just curious if I am going to have to rebuild my HD500 patches if/when I purchase the unit. Just wishful thinking on my part.

I think ColonelForbin might be on to something there especially if your are going through with the Variax setlist that was added to the last HD500x update. If thats not the problem I would at least try reflashing your Variax.

From what I remember (And this is from memory so I may be wrong in certain areas, please feel free to correct me in these instances). The high gain JTV 89 models you are talking about was variax modeling of the actual magnetic pickups in the JTV 89. These originally were only available in the 89 probably due to the assumption that the 59 and 69 players would not have much interest in the high gain pickups on the 89 itself. When the update came out these models were not part of that update but a special note was released to tell the 89 owners where to find and download the high gain models. So the download capability has been there for a while its just the timing of when you started looking for it made it more complicated.

Thats the first thing i would check also. Failing that I would run a stereo Y from the headphone out to the mixer.

I have owned and still do a VAX700 and VAC 700, a JTV 59 and a JTV 89F and have loved all of these guitars specifically due to the tuning capability at first with the 700s and then really fell in love with my 89F. I have never run in to the cross talk problem you seem to be having and have recorded two albums with both the JTVs and in case of one song drop the guitar and entire step and it worked great for what I was doing.

I do a lot of tapping and I have never had that problem on either of my variax's (59 and 89F), Heavier guage should interface with the piezo's a little better but I use 10s on mine with no issues.

I would have to agree with Charlie Watt on this one. While the acoustic emulations in the VAC 700 were far superior to the VAX 700 and the feel of the instrument is great I felt the two 12 string emulations left a little to be desired. However my kybd player is working with it for some recording and we will see what he has to say.