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Overlooked Variax advantage


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While creating the Variax sample reference, I was reminded of a major, and often overlooked advantage of the Variax. My house suffers from a lot of electrical noise and the use of single coil pickups is a no go for me. Having the option to coil tap humbuckers is a complete waste of time for me. The answer is the Variax. Now I can get the tones I want with no noise. Yes, I can use filters to remove most of the noise, but at the cost of the tone. I can use a noise gate, but that only gets rid of the noise between notes and does nothing to remove the noise that overlays the guitar’s sound. The answer is the Variax. What would be great is if the Variax technology was licensed to manufacturers, to model the coil tapped sound of particular pickups and have that switched in when coil tapped.

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15 hours ago, thecameralens said:

While creating the Variax sample reference, I was reminded of a major, and often overlooked advantage of the Variax. My house suffers from a lot of electrical noise and the use of single coil pickups is a no go for me.

 

This is not limited to "home use" ....

 

I play many clubs full of neon and fluorescent lighting, air conditioners and coolers.... noise can be a nightmare. The Variax saves my a@$ on those gigs. Not to mention... I never have to worry about grounding issues with the FOH (PA). 

 

BTW: You want to look into "noise suppression" rather than "noise gates". There is a different, and suppression is much more natural for guitar. Although even then - it's not perfect :) 

 

 

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8 hours ago, codamedia said:

 

BTW: You want to look into "noise suppression" rather than "noise gates". There is a different, and suppression is much more natural for guitar. Although even then - it's not perfect :) 

 

 

I use a noise suppressor plugin in my DAW and it definitely helps, but it changes the tone a lot in the process. I also have a DI box and have tried the ground lift on it to no avail. The noise I suffer from is more interference than hum.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

I've bought a variax ONLY FOR THIS REASON.  I have excessive ambient Gauss levels in my house (power transmission lines very close to my STEEL ROOF!) and the resulting hum completely overpowers all my humbuckers, even the EMGs. The Variax (just arrived today) is COMPLETELY HUM FREE. Now if only I could get the A string to stop cutting out...

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