Leftzilla

Great sound and playing, would you mind sharing your patch from the HD500?

It works very well and I also use it to switch/blend the sitar and position 4 Magnetics. I am going to play around with the 12 string and mags to see what type of custom sound I can get. The key to making it work is obviously the dual amp/mixer capability within the HD500X

You may want to try lowering the string volume a bit or globally. I used to have some pretty bad clipping and plinking with my g-string that was very noticeable in the acoustic emulations. I lowered globally to about 85% and it cleared the problem up very nicely.

I personally like the Elixir Series http://www.elixirstrings.com/guitar-strings.html and like the nano web. I would stick to the 10-46 as Charlie Watt recommended

I have an Original Prog Band called Elephants of Scotland who are based out of Vermont (Total Null prog scene here) and I use a JTV89F into and HD500X with this band. Another thing I have seen gigging is a lot more sound guys are recognizing the guitar and asking or making comments to me about the acoustic emulation out of the guitar. They especially like the smooth transition I get from acoustic to distorted. (Most of my acoustic patches use the volume pedal to pan between the acoustic Variax emulation and the magnetic pickups). At this point I cannot see gigging for either my 80's cover band (Hot Neon Magic-JTV 59 believe it!) or EOS without a JTV

DI with HD500 is not necessary at all between the XLR and the Quarter Inch outputs. For the instances when I use our bands PA at gigs I run Quarter inch direct since I am close to the board. In all other cases where I have played through a house PA the sound man has used XLR outs. The one time a sound guy thought he would need to use a DI for my output changed his mind when he saw the XLRs out.

If there is a sound system 9 times out of 10 there is a sound man present. In my experience if he takes two feeds off of the board he will know to run it stereo. If he wants a mono signal he will only take one and will ask you which one you want Left or Right. Left should be mono.

Glad it worked out!

I would say the difference is the 59 tobacco and cherry sunbursts have a lot nicer "knurled" face. I own both and would say the builds are the same but just a little more time put into the "burst" finish on the 59. The guitars do play differently as you would expect with the different scale lengths but I really do not think it is a build quality issue. The mags on the 89F are definitely hotter and actually will go into single coil mode on the 2nd and 4th 5 Blade pick up selector.

This may seem a stupid question but are you using the vdi cable interface only? I don't know if the guitar powers up fully using a vdi and the USB interface to computer, while if you did run the vdi through an HD500 or 500X it would power the guitar up. If you are using a vdi cable with the USB interface try plugging in a quarter inch cable to force the battery to power the guitar. I have an 89F and I love it.

I personally use the Elixirs on Both my JTV89F and 59. Very good sound all the way around modeling and mags, Acoustics sound realistic.

Very Nice!

Very nice to hear. You will find the HD500 stock sounds are pretty much designed to show off the effects and placement capabilities. I found very few useful but grabbed some great stuff off of custom tone to tweak to my desire and am very Happy. I have a 59 and an 89F and the 89F is one of my favorite guitars ever. I also have a VAX 700 and VAC700 all of these work flawlessly. My VAX 700 was purchased from a local store and every other Variax I have owned came from Musicians Friend (VAC 700) or Sweetwaters (both JTV's). So for anyone else deciding about buying a Variax based on the forums let me go on record that I have purchased 4 Variax's that work and continue to work flawlessly.

Actually both Variax's I lowered the Acoustic levels.

I found around 85% worked for me. And oddly enough the patches that created the most havoc or seemed to clip were the acoustics. Nice playi9ng and great sound by the way.

You misunderstand, I use the "sag" control to get the sound I want, not to tweak it for PA use. I would also check out the custom tones if you haven't already. I guess I don't notice any shift in sound between my recorded and headphones and going to and through the PA. I always run my personal PA flat and tell any sound guy to run my input eq flat because of the changes between distorted and acoustic guitars (I ran in to that problem with one very experienced sound guy who decided to eq my distorted sound to his preference and thus killed my acoustic sound). I hope you find a solution!

gunpointmetal: Ah I originally misread that and didn't see your point. I fully agree. The thing that really helped me was the "sag" control, now based on other posts I want to start playing with the cab parameters.

You wouldn't have before and after recordings per chance? I have both and 59 and 89F with the graphtechs in the 89F and to be honest I can't find any truly discernible difference between the two that could not be attributed to the guitar body itself (That's not saying you didn't) But if you are happy well done!

I have been using POD products directly to a PA for years, even the AX212 direct out. (Which was the last guitar amp I used. I currently have an Amplifi 75 that I use as a stage monitor when needed) I have always gotten good sound and based all of my sound off of headphones or recordings directly out of the POD. I currently have a POD HD500X which I run straight to the board on the Bands PA (JXR100s powered by Behringer NU3000 power amp) multiple house systems including RosFest, Dover Brickhouse, New Jersey Prog House, Rusty Nail, etc etc etc. These systems go from Theaters, to medium to small bars. I have a progressive band with very aggressive overdriven sounds, acoustics, sitars etc with a JTV89F to an 80s cover band using a JTV59. All of this uses the Studio Direct output. I have received many compliments on my sound. So I disagree with your statement that the POD sound unusable by default I have tried reading through your replies to see if something jumped out at me that you may be doing wrong but I couldn't find anything that would stand out as an "aha" moment. Hopefully something will work for you or you will find what is making this so frustrating for you.

Exactly What Rewolf said. Set one input for Variax and the Other for JTV Mags. I use this setup with both 6 and 12 string acoustics in the Variax Modeling and use the number 4 position on the Mags for a good "Spank" distorted sound.

Well it looks like you will have to experiment a bit. I pulled in my presets off of the 89F and found all of my string volumes set to 100% (I was updating my 59 to 2.1) I haven't had a chance to sit down with it to verify my sound but initial test through my amplify show I will need some tweaking.

An live example of the acoustic tone out of the Variax direct to board via HD500X. Obviously eq may not be to everybody's taste but you get the idea of the sound and attack. Acoustic Example Amber.mp3

Yes when I lowered the string volume it definitely helped as I was getting an overload distortion via the acoustics. You are exactly right that the acoustics really seem to need a light touch when playing. However since dropping the strings volumes I find myself laying into the guitar more without getting the distortion I did prior I will see if I can post a live example.

I have been successful in updating my Amplifi 75 using a Windows 7 64 bit laptop with the Android App. Sorry it took so long to get back to this I have been on vacation.

I was able to update with the new Android app and much of the issues went away. Also a fully chared battery on the phone helped imeensely.