Vintage Variax 300 Solid Body with Ring Modulation Sound Artifacts

[phoo]

I pulled out my old First Edition Variax 300 and got it working yesterday. It had been in its case for a couple of years because I moved. When put in the case it was working well. I had set of replacement piezos, and had replaced one before the move. Found another dead yesterday and replaced it. All six strings are working as expected...sort of.

 

The sound, of all strings, sound like there is some ring modulation happening. It's much more noticeable with the higher notes, especially the high E and B strings. These are bad even when played open. This makes the guitar unusable.

 

It does not sound like a grounding issue, as there is no hum. It's an artifact of the electronics as far as I can tell. This ring mod sound is not audible when listening to the un-amplified strings. Also, the many different models all sound fine.

 

It will work off of a new battery for about 10 seconds then cut out (bad battery bunch? maybe), but does fine with the power supply and no battery. There are artifacts on both battery and PS so this does not appear to be a PS filtering issue.

 

Any ideas?

 

I will get an audio clip later if needed.  I'm not a drummer and not a guitar player so my playing is...uh....it sucks....but I have done guitar repair for years so I'm OK with all that....just can't play well. (grin)

 

THANKS!!!

[psarkissian]

Loose ground lead, dual tone artifact because of intonation or some other aspect of

the guitar set-up. Should be troubleshooted by an Line 6 authorized tech who knows

the insides. Too many variables and reasons for it to fail that way.