Search the Community

Hi, I’ve been a Variax owner and line 6 Variax pods and amp owner for a couple decades now. Sometimes I’m amazed at the comments of dissatisfied customers. (I in no way am part of line 6 nor do I speak for them) . Line 6 didn’t start as a guitar company, rather synth centered stuff. But they had some great ideas. I know line 6 advertises instead of bringing multiple guitars, just bring a Variax. Well I’ve been a luthier for years and when the Variax came out I purchased a 300, 500, 600 which is a 300 with tremolo, and the 500 and 700 are similar. ALL the models back then used the same firmware the same sounds and were interchangeable where hardware was allowed. Number 1. I have never believed one amplifier would service this guitar correctly. Especially if you’re trying to play a classic sound of any type then try to play an acoustic guitar through the same rig. If you can only have one rig let it be sent to a high quality pa and use a line pod. Usually when you plug a Variax into a pod, and turn the model non either on the guitar or the pod line six has some pretty good presets to start with, then you can tweak from there. I’m semi retired now on a fixed income and can’t afford the latest in the pod family but I’ve listened to many they are awsome. My BEST Variax rig was 2- 4x12 marshal cabinets . I accidentally came across a vintage Acoustic speaker cabinet. It had 4 vintage celestion green backs 25 watt, and Jimmy Hendrix favorite the 55hz version instead of the 75hz that almost everybody uses. I also use a line 6 short board floor pedal and a line 6 - x3 pro rack unit. For power I used the Mesa bogie Stereo 4 6L6 GC 50/50 stereo power amp. Nice tube compression. So I used my edited tones from the X3 and it sounded fabulous. I also used their Variax editing software. I grew up playing during the mid 60s through early eighties. So I created a bass guitar model that sounds similar when played through my bass amp rig which I’ll talk about some other time. I made a patch where one was a Gibson Les Paul and the bottom one was the precision bass. You know how bass guitarists sometimes followed the lead player in some funky stuff or blues. What an incredible sound and with the foot switch I can turn the bass off and on by copying a patch calling it b instead of a so when I did chords I most often would switch the bass off. what I’m getting at, and especially fir guys like me who no longer has a band but still love recording in my home studio with my Logic x. before line 6 was putting mag pickups in Variax I was doing it. Only problem I know nothing about the software part of this so my guitars had way too many knobs and switches. I saw the JT stuff. It was starting to het too expensive to buy one to canabalize and hope to get your money back with a sale. Then the standard came out. Like I said I started a strat body design with all the contours and that big battery pack is in the way. One of my Variax conversions I still have is a GIBSON Les Paul Double cut. I decided to leave the tone control out because that can all be adjusted with the pod x3 and easily edited and saved . Pluse I never moved the tone control that much . I don’t miss it. I also left the battery cavity out of that one. Anyway it’s clean. Not as clean switch wise as the jt, but it’s not bad. having a Variax is a commitment. If you don’t put much time into this platform, well your sound will give you what you give it. But put some real time in what she’ll do you’ll be a pleased player. Anyway not trying to be know it a;l. I was so impressed with the potential of this system I really got into them. I think I’ve purchased 50 different Variax guitars and bass. Sold most but the favorites/ if you ever have a question with builds or what ever, I don’t know everything like the designers but certain ally have spent the time to get what I want out of it. If you are ready to dump your Variax standard contact me.. I think they are great

Hello All Sorry to bring this up if its already been discussed in detail. Helix, AXE FX II, do you hear a big difference? The reason i ask this recently I was playing listening to Helix while another person was playing AXE FX II and while both sound great, the AXE FX II seemed to have a sonic quality that I was not hearing in Helix. I thought well maybe its the pre amps I am using (focusrite and prosonos) but still its really on the high end and depth the AXE FX seems to be far more clear over the helix which seemed far more harsh, No I am not using global eq although I tried that too. Helix at its base patches seems thinner...custom patches Helix on its own sounds great until AXE FX playing in the same mix. Dunno, I might be crazy would be interested in your thoughts. NOTE This is not to bash Helix or Line 6, I have been Line 6 customer for many many years

I never seem to find time to write reviews, although I gain lots of knowledge from those that do and I thank you very much. Something so amazing happened this last weekend involving my Helix I just had to write this one in. Now you have to understand I baby my Helix, it's expensive, I love it and so I make every effort to protect it. This past weekend my Helix suffered a gut-wrenching 30"-36" drop FACE DOWN onto a concrete floor. I was in the other room and heard a loud crash - so loud it set my glass break detectors off in my house. I arrived to find my beloved Helix face down on the fore-mentioned concrete floor. Needless to say I am sure I stopped breathing and my gut seemed to turn inside out. With a heavy heart I looked the unit over - not a scratch on it. I plugged it in and it worked perfectly. Now I do NOT suggest trying this yourselves; however, I have to give a big HOOAH to the folks at Line 6. THANK YOU for building a piece of kit with this kind of impeccable strength and quality! Best, James

I use my POD HD500X for recording guitar However, the quality of what i get doesn't seem the best: it sounds always too distorted/gainy compared to what I hear when I play on my amp (Line 6 Spider IV 15). I really don't know if it is really just too distorted or is it because the built in audio interface quality that it's just not very good I use a Epiphone Les Paul Custom Pro, connected (with jack cable) to the POD, and the directly via USB to my laptop. I use Audacity and Audition for Recording (I have ASIO installed too) Don't know why it doesn't sound good... please help, thanks in advance!

I just spent almost a month troubleshooting my problem with recording from my POD UX2 onto my hard drive. My problem was that the recording sounded nothing like what was coming out of the monitors -- the monitors were nice and crisp and heavy and sounded good enough to be presentable, but the recording kep coming out fuzzy, muted, tinny, and overall just total lollipop in general. So here's how I got around this issue. 1. I got some advice to record only the DRY INPUT from POD Farm. To do this, you have to go to your mixer on the standalone software (open it on its own on your computer) and set it to record dry input only. 2. use your DAW to IMPORT POD Farm so that you can run it INSIDE the DAW itself. What this means is that you'll be recording a plain signal with no amps or effects, then ADDING the effect on top of that plain signal. Don't worry -- you can still MONITOR how it will sound by keeping the standalone software open. If you're like me and you're too stupid to figure this out on your own, you usually have to find something in an effects or preferences menu in your DAW or a menu item called "plug-in manager" or something else with the word "plug-in" in it. That will lead you to a window where you can go to your C drive, find your Program Files folder, and open the line6 folder inside that and import all the effects in there into your DAW. I had to have someone hold my hand through that. There is just too much to understand about this stuff. 3. Don't use lollipop software. I tried using POD Farm running inside of a few programs before I tried Adobe Audition, and that was the first one to actually sound good. In Cakewalk Music Creator LE5 and the Reason software that came packaged with my POD, the POD effects always turned my signal to mud. In Audition, it's nice and clean and it actually sounds good. I can't recommend anything other than Audition for this since I haven't tried anything else. So, there you have it. If you are having a hard time getting your POD UX2 to not sound like your guitar is plugged into a rusty old car muffler, try recording a dry signal into good software and then adding the effects you want after the recording is done.

I've been trying for 2 weeks now, since I bought my Pod Studio UX1, and I didn't manage to get any good metal sounds. I tried with reaper, cubase, but still my recordings are just worthless. Compared to others, like this guy ( ), their recordings are awsome.. Even trying other's presets didn't work for me!(I have an LTD H-1001 with active EMG's if that helps)

Im rewriting this post because im still having problems with my tone. I've gone through all the suggestions and nothings changed. The outputs is Studio/Direct and im using a low gain yet im still getting horrible fuzz over the top, ruining any clarity that was there. Here's a raw clip of the tone im getting: This particular clip was recorded with a cheap guitar but i have the same problem with any guitar i use! https://soundcloud.com/dan-kav/lollipop-tone If anyone can tell me why my tone is coming out at such bad quality i'd be extremely grateful!

This is my first time on any forum so i have no idea what im doing so dont be patronising... I have the Pod HD Pro in my studio but it sounds terrible? I can make a nice tone that im happy with but it has a horrible fuzz, clipping/distorted sound on top of it, which is completely ruining the tone! Imagine listen to a song that would sound great as WAV or 320kbs... but is coming out sounding like 128kbs. (that horrid, weak quailty) The tone has lost all depth and clarity and its really starting to annoy me as my band are mid way through recording our EP but the more we focus on the guitar the more the bad quality stands out! Nothing is actually clipping though, like the gain on the amp is pretty low, low master volume, its not clipping in the compressor or the DAW? Seriously need help to find out whats wrong. Its been like this since i got it and im losing faith in line 6. If anyone has experienced this and overcome it please tell me how? x

Hi! I've been thinking for some time on buying the FM4, but there's no room in my case. Fortunally, there's the M5, but does anyone know whether it sounds just as good as the FM4 or is there any degrade due to the shorter size? Is the circuit the same? And also, just to know if I must buy it or think some more, would I be able to mix effects? (from what I read no, but couldn't I - since it's all digital - mix 2 fx in some Pc/Mac console into a new preset and then upload it to the M5? This would be amazing, an editor like Eventide and Tc electonic are now providing) Thanks a lot for the attention!