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Hi there, I have always wanted a Variax, but because I am left handed I could never get the newer ones. I see the older Variax 500 was in lefty, but they are pretty rare and go for high prices. So I decided to buy a brand new one and do it myself. It's not that hard, I promise and I am no luthier. You will probably void your warranty so do this at your own risk! 1. Remove all the strings. 2. Remove old nut by using a small block of square wood and gently tap (and I mean gently) the block of wood with a mallet. Tap in the direction of the bridge or neck to loosen the glue. And then tap it on the side to slide with a blunt screwdriver, out of the slot. Mine came out really easy and only had a drop of glue in two spots. 3. Replace old nut with the Graphtech TUSQ-XL nut, PQL-5000-L0. This is a lefty nut and is pretty close to the original. Graphtech actually supply the nut for the JTV-69 as standard, but they don't have an exact lefty copy. I sanded mine for about 10 seconds with fine paper to reduce the thickness ever so slightly and then pressed in the new nut. Sand a little, then test. It was a snug fit and didn't bother glueing. 4. Measure the saddles on the bridge (from the rear most straight edge of the bridge to the leading edge of the saddle) and write down each length according to the right handed string setup. You will then reverse all the saddle lengths by screwing them in or out according to what you have written down, with the left handed string layout. 5. Remove the cover on the back of the JTV-69 closest to the bottom. This houses the Variax motherboard. Locate the two grey wires with single white connector attached. This goes back to the bridge piezo pickups. Remove the connector. You will now need to flip the connector around so as to flip the piezos for the lefty string layout. When you plug it back you will notice that the connector doesnt quite align and fit. You will need to cut off a bit of the plastic on the motherboard part of the connector to make it fit. Its not as bad as it sounds. I then secured the plug with a bit of tape. 6. Restring the guitar as lefty, adjust the saddle heights if necessary and re-intonate. But you should be pretty close with the saddle lengths from the previous measurement. 7. Profit $$$! Only downside to this is that its a "Jimi'd" guitar and a bit difficult to reach past the 20th fret. But it plays just like a normal guitar. I dont use a tremelo so have tightened up the springs to make it as hard tail as possible.

We guitarists have grown up with stomp boxes and FX of various types. The oldest among us remember the day when reverb and tremolo were the only thing available. The idea of overdriving an amp was not even dreamed of (I'm admitting my age). When Electric Ladyland came out people had simply never heard sounds like that. Period. No modulation or time distortion. We had absolutely no concept of how they heck they did this. Frankly, for rock musicians at the time the world stopped on a dime. Holy ___! What was that? One can't describe the experience of turning out the lights, stretching out between the stereo speakers and listening for the very first time to And the Gods Made Love - the manual flanging and the Echoplex - nobody had any idea how they did this. After Woodstock I heard about the UniVibe and got one, repairing it over and over until it died. Later, when the very first Tascam Portastudio came out (another stunning advance) I figured out how to gently tweak the speed up and down when recording a second track to achieve the flanging and it was mind-blowing (manually hitting the phase right on a cymbal hit was like a drug). I recorded a track with a plastic recorder (flute), manually bending notes by rolling the finger tips. Flanging that track beat the pants off of the flute part on If Six Was Nine (young musicians need to hear that song). No stomp box could duplicate that. But now with modern gear such as Helix you can time-mod a loop and play on top of it to get the effect live without a stomp box simulation. As for overdrive, in the early 80's I had my 50W Marshall half-stack modded with a master in order to create overdrive at club volumes and when I received my Boogie MkII it was truly fantastic. Today we are used to all this stuff and I would imagine that there are around 500 stomp boxes to choose from. Helix, its predecessors, and its competitors can offer a ton of stomp FX in a single package, plus modeling, which has redefined the world of live and recorded music. Frankly, the idea of paying $1,500 for such a great device is a bargain. A few years back I saw a posting looking for a guitarist that stated that the applicant "must have a real amp". It sounded funny at the time, but that was when I thought that making two trips to haul my gear to a rehearsal was normal. Now, as long as you have a Helix and a FRFR that can push some air, that's all that really matters. It makes me think that I could make a mint by creating a fake Marshall half-stack that weighs 20 pounds and has a shelf for mounting a FRFR inside. I apologize for using a forum for airing such thoughts, but young musicians are used to being in a world of great FX and in which guitarists didn't grow up learning the licks from Gimme Shelter and thinking they were guitar heroes, but learning the licks of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. (There are way too many gunslingers these days and too few artists.) Perhaps the budding guitar gods of today might not realize that musicians born before 1957 were here when there was not anything whatsoever orbiting the earth but the moon, when the coolest gizmo in town was a 2.5 inch square portable AM radio with a wrist strap, and where the only sound you could get from an amp was a clean one with no breakup whatsoever. The Helix, along with its competitors, is a godsend and it's nice to be living in a world where older musicians do not have to retire simply because their backs are shot from years of loading and unloading a a couple of hundred pounds of gear three to five times a week. (The Boogie combo was heavy enough, not to mention the Marshall, plus my rack, Strat and Paul.) A Helix, a L3t and a guitar case will do it for me, all on one lightweight hand truck – plus it keeps me in the game.

Working up an instrumental version of Little Wing to perform for an upcoming open mic night. Thought I'd lay down a version for practice and see how it's coming along. First few sections I play like the SRV version and then deviate. A lot of improv so I never play a "perfect" version, but it is what it is :) Signal chain was JTV Variax Strat neck position pickup into Line 6 Helix recorded directly over USB into Ableton Live. No processing done in Ableton whatsoever. I'd love to hear any feedback. https://soundcloud.com/chuskey/little-wing-with-line-6-helix

i'm an pedal and amp guy all the way but when i heard the demos on line of the helix i decided to give it a shot and buy one. i recorded a quick audio track using the plexi patch with just a touch of room reverb and delay with no drive pedals. i gotta say i was pretty impressed with the tone of the plexi model. i think the greenbacks in the cab sound pretty legit too. this thing is a no brainer for recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULvbZMC13w0