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HD500 silent on *some* patches


Evil_Patrick
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Greetings,

 

I have an HD500 that I purchased in 2012. I also have a Variax. I use the two together, with the Variax Ethernet cable.

 

At the end of 2015 I updated the firmware on both the Variax and the HD500 to the latest and greatest at that time.

 

I have most of my patches set to also select specific Variax models, including custom tuned models that I created.

 

Everything was working GREAT until yesterday. As a fully immersed computer scientist with an electrical engineering degree as well, it would be strange to hear anyone suggest upgrading the firmware yet again from a configuration that was working fine for over a year. Hopefully, someone has knowledge of the root cause of the following problem, and we won’t need to travel the path of “spray and prayâ€.

 

At this time, I have about 40 patches that work flawlessly. But 3 patches have begun some odd behavior.

 

All three are basic, clean sounds; a noise gate, a red comp, a clean amp with maybe a slight bit of modulation and reverb on the back end. Each patch selects either the Variax banjo, sitar, or a custom tuning.

 

The problem now is that all three of these patches (and only these specific three out of the 40 patches I have programmed) are now dead silent when foot selected. They were working fine a week ago. Since that time, I only made some output balance adjustments between some of the other 40 patches, and not these.

 

If I’m in the POD HD500 Edit app on my desktop, with the HD500 connected via USB, I can load these dead-silent patches to the HD500 from the app and they come alive and sound fine. I can do a “save†on the HD500, and they still play. But as soon as I select another footswitch patch, and try to come back to these problematic patches, they are once again silent. I can even “push†the sound from the POD HD500 Edit, have it come alive and be playing, hit save on the HD500, push the same footswitch assigned to that patch, and it goes dead silent.

 

I have tried a “restore†of sorts by loading saved bundles from 3 and 4 weeks ago. Same problem. I have tried rebooting the 500 (power cycling) --- same problem.

 

I can bring up any working patch, and manually select (on the variax) the banjo, sitar, and custom tuning, and they play fine. Those settings on the Variax are alive and well.

 

 

WTF, BBQ?!?

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Silent on some patches is typically one of two thing --- 

1. Input source - a guitar jack isn't going to sound when it is sourced for mic

2. fx loop - such as the loop being active in the patch but is not being used, therefore the signal is floating in space somewhere. 

 

Even though that doesn't sound like what you have, start there.

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Hmmm I know about flash memory but I don't "know" flash memory that's why I asked. I was wondering if a certain address was knackered (if possible), I don't think its firmware either then. No Variax here btw just the HD.

 

Is there any commonality those 3 patches have?  

 

Hitting "Save" on the unit itself will save the settings - we know that.

 

Maybe someone with a Variax will try those 3 offenders out for you and report back.

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Greetings,

 

I have an HD500 that I purchased in 2012. I also have a Variax. I use the two together, with the Variax Ethernet cable.

 

At the end of 2015 I updated the firmware on both the Variax and the HD500 to the latest and greatest at that time.

 

I have most of my patches set to also select specific Variax models, including custom tuned models that I created.

 

Everything was working GREAT until yesterday. As a fully immersed computer scientist with an electrical engineering degree as well, it would be strange to hear anyone suggest upgrading the firmware yet again from a configuration that was working fine for over a year. Hopefully, someone has knowledge of the root cause of the following problem, and we won’t need to travel the path of “spray and prayâ€.

 

At this time, I have about 40 patches that work flawlessly. But 3 patches have begun some odd behavior.

 

All three are basic, clean sounds; a noise gate, a red comp, a clean amp with maybe a slight bit of modulation and reverb on the back end. Each patch selects either the Variax banjo, sitar, or a custom tuning.

 

The problem now is that all three of these patches (and only these specific three out of the 40 patches I have programmed) are now dead silent when foot selected. They were working fine a week ago. Since that time, I only made some output balance adjustments between some of the other 40 patches, and not these.

 

If I’m in the POD HD500 Edit app on my desktop, with the HD500 connected via USB, I can load these dead-silent patches to the HD500 from the app and they come alive and sound fine. I can do a “save†on the HD500, and they still play. But as soon as I select another footswitch patch, and try to come back to these problematic patches, they are once again silent. I can even “push†the sound from the POD HD500 Edit, have it come alive and be playing, hit save on the HD500, push the same footswitch assigned to that patch, and it goes dead silent.

 

I have tried a “restore†of sorts by loading saved bundles from 3 and 4 weeks ago. Same problem. I have tried rebooting the 500 (power cycling) --- same problem.

 

I can bring up any working patch, and manually select (on the variax) the banjo, sitar, and custom tuning, and they play fine. Those settings on the Variax are alive and well.

 

 

WTF, BBQ?!?

 

One possibility is that those patches have accidentally been saved with the Variax Volume knob position at zero, and the Varaix Control setting on Page 7 of the Setup menu is set to "Preset". So in that case, when you load those presets, the Variax model is being called up, but the volume is going to zero.

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One possibility is that those patches have accidentally been saved with the Variax Volume knob position at zero, and the Varaix Control setting on Page 7 of the Setup menu is set to "Preset". So in that case, when you load those presets, the Variax model is being called up, but the volume is going to zero.

 

Good guess, but pretty much impossible in my case. My variax CPU is not actually in my guitars. It's rack-mounted and all of my electrics are Ghost Loaded Floyds that connect to the rack. The volume and tone are in the rack as well, and always cranked to the max. I never touch those knobs.

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Good guess, but pretty much impossible in my case. My variax CPU is not actually in my guitars. It's rack-mounted and all of my electrics are Ghost Loaded Floyds that connect to the rack. The volume and tone are in the rack as well, and always cranked to the max. I never touch those knobs.

 

Well, those levels can be changed on the HD500 (or in HD500 Edit) itself, too. So it's at least a possibility that they somehow got moved. Other than that, I couldn't say.

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Well, those levels can be changed on the HD500 (or in HD500 Edit) itself, too. So it's at least a possibility that they somehow got moved. Other than that, I couldn't say.

 

Great point! I will check that.

 

I'll also try simply reconstructing the patch from ground zero -- taking a blank slot and starting over. Since I can see all of the settings on the amp and effects (even though no sound comes out), it shouldn't be too hard to give that a shot as well.

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Problem solved. User error. I feel like I owe it to the community to share what I had done wrong even though it really makes me look like the fool! :-)

 

Be sure to know every place where you have assigned an expression pedal to some functionality. It may be that your minimum and maximum values are not what you thought you had set.

 

My sincerest thanks to all of the users who responded so quickly with ideas about what possibly could be wrong.

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