sdunmire

Some, to be sure. But I still love my analog board and wouldn't dream of parting with it. Helix has closed the gap considerably, but there's just something about analog pedals. I use Helix when I don't wish to haul and amp or need to go FOH direct. If I can play through an amp, I love my pedals. Maybe it's placebo effect, but it's MY placebo effect and you can't take it away from me! <temper tantrum voice>

I purchased a JTV-59 a few years ago and a 69 a year later. So both are a few years old. My issue is BOTH gig bags have become basically unusable as the handles have torn off on both of them. Both of them have working shoulder straps, but each of them are showing similar strain that I expect at some point to give way as well. I'm not putting rocks in the pocket or any other excessive weight. I play for my church, so the thing leaves home once or twice per week at most. I guess if it were only one of them, I would've written it off as "I guess I've been hard on it or I got a bad case." But both? Any others run into this?

Searched on this a bit and didn't find anything. Apologize in advance if it's been discussed already. I'm looking to add modulation to one of the reverbs for some wide open lead parts, a la the Strymon Big Sky. I didn't see a mod control in any of the reverbs I looked at. Guessing there is a way to modulate a reverb using a chorus or phaser? S.

I happened across this old thread on a search for something else--but, my $0.02, I can read Helix from where I stand, at 6' 2", but I wear progressive lenses and looking down--well, let's just say "not a chance" on reading that without looking under my glasses or taking them off. S.

Anything?

Man, I was too slow! Dang.

Yeah, I just paid almost $4 for a drip coffee today. Nuts. Lots of trees is area-specific, but we do have them where I am (out of the city a bit) and it's quite beautiful. I used to live in LA and miss the weather but if I moved back I would miss the green of here. So maybe the grass is greener at home? :) I worried that I was misquoting you and forgot to go back and check prior to clicking "post." Oops. My bad.

Me too, actually. Wine is easier on the waistline and pretty tasty. Plus I'm in Oregon and we're known for our yummy Pinots so I guess I'm a victim of my environment. :) Send me a note if you're ever in Portland. Peace.

Agree that saying that you "operate from a number of incorrect assumptions" was derisory. At minimum, it's annoyingly condescending. I am always irritated at people that use such language on forums (the anonymous factor, I suppose) and what do I do but go ahead and do the same thing! Lame me. Sorry. IIRC, the comment where I used the term "quite sure" was in reference to your comment about them losing money if they sold it for $20. The truth of the matter is I *am* quite sure. Naturally, as you point out, this is my opinion but I sorta thought that we were all giving opinions. Like what is stating that they should go to a more "reasonable markup" but an opinion? So I typed this whole explanation of the cost basis that I had in my head, verified the numbers against my own company's metrics and came up with about a $19 cost per unit. I deleted it because it was too boring for even me to read... :) So maybe they make a little bit at $20. But not enough to pay for setting up the program in the first place unless they sell 10-20,000 units of the replacement battery. Which I would doubt, but I don't have market sizing numbers for the Variax to consider so I'll just have to wonder on that. Sure, replacement battery sales will increase as time goes on, but to what degree is anyone's guess. As to whether they should sell it for $50 or not, well, that's not my call. I don't like paying vast markups any more than anyone else. But there are ALWAYS costs that don't pop out in these sorts of online discussions where most people prefer to judge for themselves what a "reasonable markup" should be. (not picking on you--just attempting to make a point) I actually had an employee once who chafed at the idea of paying a markup of this sort on another item he was buying and i found myself laughing. You see, I had justified the creation of that headcount a year earlier based partially on the need for someone to set up and run the accessory sales program that would support one of our core product lines. What he saw was that we were making a ton of profit, but the $60,000 per year that he was making along with the $8K that it cost to provide medical, dental and life insurance for him and his family was still a sea of red ink that he never thought about. Irony.

I'm going to respond and see if we can keep this breezy and fun. That being said... :) You operate from a handful of incorrect assumptions: 1. "...similar batteries" Naturally, this is debatable. There is a VERY wide range of quality in cells. 2. "Obviously they're making a profit, or they wouldn't do it." a. I think they *are* making a profit. At $50. I was speaking to them quite possibly losing money at $20 b. You assume a profit motive. I assume a support motive. They are not an accessories company. They don't need to make money on this. 3. "Line 6 has no brick-and-mortar costs for their online..." It's complicated, but they need to compete with their own channel partners "fairly." Meaning they can't ask Sweetwater to stock the battery and then undercut them. Sweetwater probably buys the battery from L6 for around $25 and expects to make their margins. As I've pointed out elsewhere, my comments are not driven by ego or "blow-hardness" but by real-world experience. I run product marketing for a company (known brand) that sells devices that run off similar batteries. I probably am personally responsible for a couple of miliion batteries out there in the world. (ouch) If you were local, I'd buy you a beer and proceed to bore you with tales about things that might surprise you--like how expensive an accessories business is to run, etc. Again, just providing a friendly voice of insider knowledge, not trying to be rude or a know-it-all. Hope that's helpful. If not--well, click "thumbs down" and move on. ;) S.

I'm quite sure that they would be losing money if they sold a battery for $20.

I suppose we can agree to disagree. I just was pointing out that it was a highly biased sample. Not that it lacked worth.

This is far too minor a point to debate with you. You are quibbling about terminology when I had pretty much agreed with you previously and was just pointing out that idea scale is inherently biased by power users and so couldn't be looked at as anything more than a single data point with a whole lot of caveats. If you disagree with this, I suppose you can reply here, but I'm guessing the other people reading this thread would rather we took this offline. :)

Right, that's why I said "and their ilk." I would paint this group with the same brush as beta testers in terms of their biases. Point of my statement was you have to ask all customers, not just the ones that went to the trouble to seek you out. The kind of people that participate in online bulletin boards aren't indicative of the broader market--they are "power users." Their opinions are great, but they can't tell you what the market as a whole will do so you have to make sure you're looking at a sample that covers more than just these types of customers.

Nice. Though we should keep in mind that things like IdeaScale represent a REALLY skewed perception of reality. Beta testers and their ilk are great for identifying new opportunities, but downright dismal for determining priorities.

The other thing I failed to mention is there is a pretty wide range of quality standards for rechargeable battery cells. Most higher-grade electronics ship with Japanese made cells, while lower-priced products ship with the far cheaper Chinese-made cells. It would be a bit of an unfair generalization to say that Chinese cells are the ones that cause fires, but I wouldn't be the first to make this correlation. (Disclosure: I buy rechargeable batteries buy the hundreds of thousands every month in my line of work) S.

I wouldn't. Sure, it *might* work, but it might not. And the "not" might cause issues with a thousand dollar guitar. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're going to feel pretty sheepish if the unthinkable happens. (and there would certainly be ethical issues raised by attempting to engage warranty service on your JTV after such an action. There are also considerations other than voltage, current and chemistry. Lots of cell phones have chips in the battery cells that the device needs to "see" in order to start drawing power from the battery. I don't see this as being likely, it's just more my way of saying that I wouldn't bother. That being said, I would make sure the voltage is a match and chemistry is a match and the battery is capable of the same or higher current draw. Also, don't forget to buy a charger... S.

Things like this should never be considered in a vacuum. Engineering resources are never limited and we can't possibly even conjecture on how much might be involved. Sure, it might be a simple engineering/product development change, but it could feasibly add substantial support headaches. Calls equals tech support headcount and tech support headcount equals added cost. This must be paid for somehow, you can't just make that money appear out of thin air! Since they've already sold the product, the only way to cover this expense would be to either charge for the feature as a software upgrade, or burden future customers by increasing the cost (albeit slightly) of all Variax models. (Thankfully Line 6 isn't publicly traded as you wouldn't be able to do this without invoking the holy names of Sarbanes and Oxley...) Both of these would solve the basic problem, but I would have to ask "why." Which leads me to the following... Although I appreciate the intent of the poll, as someone who does this for a living I would point out that you can't just "rate," you also have to "rank." Because we need to know something this poll doesn't tell us. We don't need to know WHETHER people want this feature (as a product guy, I almost always intuitively know what features people want and which they don't.) What I don't know, and what this poll doesn't tell me is HOW MUCH do they want it? Which is to say, the respondent must be forced to decide which thing s/he wants more between multiple scenarios. If I were setting up this question, I would ask the user something along the lines of the original question, and then ask other questions to those that rated their answer "very" or "somewhat" to the effect of: "In this next series of questions, we are going to ask you to rank the following features that might be available in the future" Following, would be a list of choices that would include having access to non-HD models, but would also include other features that were being considered. My hunch from reading this board would be that there are at least a dozen features that would rank ahead of non-HD model access. Just my $0.02.

Sounds like bad tubes, so I guess in a twisted sort of way, your GC guy was right. Except that it should NEVER happen on a brand new unit. I'm guessing they just left the power turned on all day for months and the tubes started wearing down. I run mine very hard and it does make that noise when the tubes start failing. Glad they fixed it. Sometimes individual GC guys can be a problem, but I've always found them to do the right thing when it came down to brass tacks. S.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think the 2.0 Strat sounds more realistic. I always liked the 1.9, but it's a bit of a caricature. As a result, I only used it when I REALLY wanted that quack tone. Now, I imagine that I'll use it more like I would use a real Strat. Is that a bad thing?

I ordered one of these and it's GREAT. Way better than the VDI you can get from L6 and others. Highly recommend!

I, too, had my JTV-59 plek'd. Unbelievable. It's since settled out a bit so I need to have the action raised ever so slightly, but the neck and frets are perfect. Highly recommend it.

I have two. JTV-69: I'll give it a 4 initially (I had the original neck before they changed the specs/tolerances for fret filing at the factory but I put a new neck on it so now it's better than a 5) JTV-59: 5, maybe 5+.

R3FX (you'll have to google for his site) does a mod to the HD500 that puts on an extra switch that does exactly that. It's called the "double preset mod" which is a confusing name, but is (I think) what you want. I was going to ask him if he could repurpose the looper switch on mine as it's a waste of a button for me.