I play a JTV 59 with a Helix and it seems that if you use the "multi' input as suggested in the manual, you have the sound of the Variax and the magnetic pickups at the same time. Please correct me if this is not the case. It seemed a little weird when I was playing a 12 string model through a clean setting and not getting a 12 string sound that I was used to through the 500x. After setting the input to just Variax all was well.