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variax standard sound issues


bluerover1959
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hi anyone experiencing bad sound with the standard mine has been replaced and same fault is still there it sounds great clean but when using gain or distortion all hell breaks loose around the 10th fret and upwards it sounds like a very fast tremlo tried adjusting pickups for magnetic pull but still same also happens on all models but seems worse and its mainly on d g and b strings but all way up and down on g could this be a setup issue any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Since part of this is associated with how far up the neck you're going,

then it sounds like the set-up (relief, action, intonation and such) needs

to be fine adjusted and dialed-in.

 

Warbling occurs when you are in Model mode and the pick-ups are too

close to the strings, and the magnet field pull on the strings. And that goes

to dialing in the set-up as well.

 

The climate between the distribution point and your location is probably

enough to have an affect on the set-up. Take it to the nearest authorized

service center, the adjustments.

 

Set-up on a guitar with both magnetics and piezos has a couple of extra

things to be aware of, and the authorized service center will have the access

to the info to deal with that.

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  • 1 month later...

I am very worried about this guitar. This is my second one since October. The first one just stopped working (The electrics) after 4 days. Line 6 have replaced it. However the new guitar's battery and charger is faulty. I'm getting about fifteen minutes use on a 12 hour charge. Then it goes from 4 bars to dead flat. I have not had the issue above, however it has not been in use enough to even test it. :(

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I got a refund after second guitar was faulty and bought an epiphone les paul tribute plus and I could not be happier I will never buy line 6 products again the sounds were not spectacular and the Rickenbacker sounded awful batteries and computer chips just don't do it for me get a refund and buy a real guitar.

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I am very worried about this guitar. This is my second one since October. The first one just stopped working (The electrics) after 4 days. Line 6 have replaced it. However the new guitar's battery and charger is faulty. I'm getting about fifteen minutes use on a 12 hour charge. Then it goes from 4 bars to dead flat. I have not had the issue above, however it has not been in use enough to even test it. :(

First generation anything is a crap shoot. The early JTVs had issues too...even some of the later production runs are not immune. Keep sending them back til you get one that works.

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  • 1 year later...

I just got a Standard and am horrified at how bad the models sound. Even more horrified to learn that backwards install to earlier firmware (with usable model sounds) isn't possible. Continually amazed at how good the factory IT side of things is in contrast to how bad the factory sounds continue to be from Line 6. Who ever set up these models is clearly the wrong person or team to be doing this type of work. The "Semi" sounds don't even resemble a 335 and the acoustic sounds resemble an acoustic guitar with a magnetic sound hole pickup, very "lo-fi", rather than a nice mic in front of an acoustic guitar, extremely bottom heavy and distorted. Unfortunately trying to get usable intel from them only garners the stock response "have you done the most recent update"? I have a USA JTV69 and stopped updating past 1.81 as each subsequent update moved further and further away from the guitar sounds they were supposed to be modeling. Doing an A/B comparison of my JTV with 1.81 against the Standard through my Helix was comical.  Used the HD Workbench to try to improve the models in the Standard to absolutely no avail. I was really excited about the Standard because of it's traditional tailpiece with the strings through the block, giving it more throw and SIGNIFICANTLY easier to restring. At this point I'm going to return the Standard and watch the boards to see if they get it together sometime down the road.   

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If you are getting Alt Tunes going backwards from the selector knob labels,

then that's a part of the program I will have to deal with. Re-Flash of the firmware

won't deal with that, I will have to. Thanks for the heads up.

 

It should be sent to me. You could log a support ticket and have it sent to me.

 

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I spent some time with the latest HD Workbench and installed the latest firmware in the Variax standard. I was able to get some reasonable sounds out of the electric models that were the most challenging initially. Mainly the "SEMI" block. The solution was to ignore the body and pickup types by name and just play "go fish" with different combinations. Bottom line is if you're willing to spend the time to find useful pickup/body/string level/potentiometer combinations you can get useful sounds with it. Avoid the red 335 body altogether. It has an overpowering midrange that can't be dialed out no matter what pickup combination or string mix or potentiometer selection. You simply can't get a neck position on that model to sound like a neck position of any kind. I was able to get the jumbo acoustic guitar model to be pretty decent by doing some pretty extreme string (re) mixing. Couldn't really do anything with the other two 6 string acoustic models due to the over powering midrange in those models. One decent acoustic is enough though. This will serve as a good, less expensive alternative to the USA JTV69s on gigs that I'm not comfortable taking an expensive guitar. The tailpiece on the Standard is a HUGE improvement over the 69. That alone provided incentive to spend some time with it trying to make the Standard more musical.    

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  • 3 weeks later...

@jeffsguitars ---

 

Are you willing to share your Workbench files with us other V-Standard owners so we can see what kind of results we can get? Especially the electric models (I personally don't use the acoustics). Workbench has so many variables and is quite deep, so it would be helpful, I think.

 

It would be nice also if Line 6 would share a basic step-by-step (possibly including new firmware and Workbench files) to optimize the V-Standard, especially given how negative many reviews have been. I've spent a lot of time tweaking the physical setup on mine, but the mag pickups still sound a lot better, so I usually only use it for alt tunings.

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I picked up a Variax Standard a few weeks ago, after using an old, bought-used, Chinese Variax for about a year. The old one was an experiment, to see if I would use it from among a dozen other guitars in my home studio. I found it did provide some useful tones, but suffered from all kinds of noise, from AM radio/thunderstorm pops and sizzle to dirty pot crackles and plain old noise floor. I used it, but often had to wait for just the right, random, quiet moment to record. So, I bought a new one.

 

Now I find the noise is just inherent in the design and seems to all be from the power supplies and power delivery. I have the nicer floor box with power and switching but the stereo 1/4" female is weird. If you fully seat the cable, you get random thunderstorm noises. So, I switched to (presumably) clean battery power, but a fully charged, new, battery lasts about one to two hours. As it gets low, the noises, especially white noise, creep in.

 

Any tips form the community on keeping these guitars quiet and reliable?

 

I can't use USB power, since in my current set up the only front mounted USB are used by iLok and WiFi dongle.

 

Man, what I wouldn't give for a Quiet, Hardtail, Line6 modeling "studio" guitar with an XLR out, powered by phantom power.

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Are you plugging into the 1/4" jack with a standard guitar cable with a TS tip or a TRS guitar cable?

 

XLR at the guitar is not always as clean as you would think. And a guitar with active electronics just

complicates it. And XLR would make it worse under the right conditions, given what an electronically

floating source-to-ground an active electronic guitar is.

 

I'll leave it there, since it would be way too involved to get into here, would take half a semester

course on audio electronics to get into it.

 

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I picked up a Variax Standard a few weeks ago, after using an old, bought-used, Chinese Variax for about a year. The old one was an experiment, to see if I would use it from among a dozen other guitars in my home studio. I found it did provide some useful tones, but suffered from all kinds of noise, from AM radio/thunderstorm pops and sizzle to dirty pot crackles and plain old noise floor. I used it, but often had to wait for just the right, random, quiet moment to record. So, I bought a new one.

 

Now I find the noise is just inherent in the design and seems to all be from the power supplies and power delivery. I have the nicer floor box with power and switching but the stereo 1/4" female is weird. If you fully seat the cable, you get random thunderstorm noises. So, I switched to (presumably) clean battery power, but a fully charged, new, battery lasts about one to two hours. As it gets low, the noises, especially white noise, creep in.

 

Any tips form the community on keeping these guitars quiet and reliable?

 

I can't use USB power, since in my current set up the only front mounted USB are used by iLok and WiFi dongle.

 

Man, what I wouldn't give for a Quiet, Hardtail, Line6 modeling "studio" guitar with an XLR out, powered by phantom power.

IMHO you should test with a fully charged battery and a standard guitar cable. The guitar should be dead silent.

 

I have a 6-7 months old Variax Standard and the battery gives the advertised run time, ~10-15 hours IIRC.

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Are you plugging into the 1/4" jack with a standard guitar cable with a TS tip or a TRS guitar cable?

 

XLR at the guitar is not always as clean as you would think. And a guitar with active electronics just

complicates it. And XLR would make it worse under the right conditions, given what an electronically

floating source-to-ground an active electronic guitar is.

 

I'll leave it there, since it would be way too involved to get into here, would take half a semester

course on audio electronics to get into it.

 

Well, yesterday it was a regular TS cable. Battery powered guitar > 1/4" guitar cable > Focusrite interface. I started using the XPS-AB with the supplied wall wart and TRS 1/4" (stereo) cable. Guitar > TRS cable to XPS-AB > TS 1/4" cable > interface.

 

Yesterday's configuration suffered more from constant white, well, pink noise. I had to use heavy gating and the Chime 12 string model had unusual intermodulation distortion. It seemed to be related to battery charge level. I went through 2 batteries in 4 hours of recording. Each battery announced it was nearing its end by increased noise.

 

The previous configuration has, with both Line6 guitars, the classic thunderstorm on AM radio effect, dynamic, random pops, crackles, electrical discharge noises, waves of pure noise and then a period of quiet. It is unpredictable and ruins takes.

 

Feel free to use a technical answer, without simplified explanation. I am fine with that. I had those courses.

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IMHO you should test with a fully charged battery and a standard guitar cable. The guitar should be dead silent.

 

I have a 6-7 months old Variax Standard and the battery gives the advertised run time, ~10-15 hours IIRC.

 

I am envious. These batteries, charged until the red indicator flashes, are only good for 2 or 3 hours. The guitar is not dead silent, by any measure.

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That would be excellent.

 

I just tried it with a freshly charged battery and a known-good cable. With the level set for the guitar to peak at -4, the noise was audible but did not trigger the lowest segment of the LED VU meter on the interface, labeled -42db. (using RBilly and Chime models again)

 

In Win10/Sonar Pro, assigning the input from the Focusrite to a track, set to unity gain, shows a constant noise floor at -54db, on the bigger VU meter.

 

Adding any compressor or similar effect to the FX buss brings the noise up substantially, requiring gating.

 

Passive pickups are quieter, but being single coils, they have a different kind of noise - a little digital crosstalk, depending on orientation. Not bad or constant. The room is pretty quiet, electrically.

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  • 1 year later...
On 1/17/2018 at 1:51 PM, alnelson1 said:

Man, what I wouldn't give for a Quiet, Hardtail, Line6 modeling "studio" guitar with an XLR out, powered by phantom power.

 

 

Oh boy, even just phantom powered XLR to the stereo Variax input jack would be great. I hate messing around with all of these darned Variax A/B power supplies and batteries and stuff. What a pain. For now, I use the A/B power XLR out to my Apollo audio interface and its acceptably quiet.

 

Also am using this Variax bundle, which is a joy. And just finished hard tailing my Standard, which works great for me because I often swap out heavy strings for doing slide work via Variax alternate tunings....

 

While I'm on the subject, what a pain to use Workbench HD to change a few settings in the studio:

 

Variax --> ethernet cable --> USB dongle ---> computer

                     AND

wall wart --> Line 6 A/B supply --> XLR out --> audio interface --> computer --> monitors

                     AND

Variax stereo 1/4" jack --> stereo cable --> Line 6 A/B supply

                    AND

Workbench HD all up to date and working. And don't forget that Line 6 Monkey software if needed.

 

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