Design shortfalls

[philhitchman]

Before I start, I have to say I love Line 6 gear, and I've got lots of it. So this rant is not meant to dissuade people from buying the products. Just to point out a few obvious  and simple to fix design flaws from a working musician of 40-odd years.

 

I am now on my 3rd Line-6 guitar wireless. A G70. I love it, but... why do I have to fix the belt clips in place with resin on every single remote I buy from you? I've had 3 different models and the clips have all either broken or constantly come off whilst I'm playing. I paid a small fortune for this stuff and its supposed to be top line professional gear. How come I've managed to sort every single one of them out permanently with a bit of resin when your design department can't?

 

And why have I had to replace every single patch cable that goes from the remote to my guitar? The supplied cables are too thin and too short, and the jack plugs are cheap and nasty. A bit of Van Damme cable and a couple of Neutrik jack plugs is all that's needed. Surely that's within budget?

 

And why can I never screw your units into my pedal board when they are specifically designed to go in a pedal board? (e.g. the G70 receiver). No, sticky-back velcro is not sufficient! A simple bracket allowing me to screw the pedal in place is all that's required. And the same goes for my Firehawk - yes I've got it in a flight case/pedal board! I had to screw brackets to it in order to fix it to the pedal case.

And why don't the Line-6 multi-effects support wireless connections?

 

And why can't I back up my tone patches in one go via the Bluetooth or USB ports? It's such an obvious thing to me, but no, I have to save each and every one of the 128 patches one at a time, which takes roughly an hour!

 

As I say, I love the gear, but I sometimes think that a bit more testing (maybe asking working musicians for feedback) would make great products into unbeatable products.

 

Thanks for listening!

Edited July 25, 2020 by philhitchman
Spelling mistake

[phil_m]

As far as the clips on the G70 transmitters, I think they're OK if you don't move around a lot. I think you're much better off getting a neoprene pouch for the transmitter and securing it to your strap in the long run. I have three G70 transmitters, and I bought one of these pouches for each one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P4D8G4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

As far as the cables, I think that's just a downfall of 1/4" cables in general. After awhile, the solder joints fail even in the most expensive cables. The nice thing about the G70 transmitters is they just use a standard 1/4" cable rather than a special connector.

 

As far as the velcro thing, I don't really agree with you there. No pedal manufacturers really make the sort of screw-based connector you're talking about. Velcro or Dual-Lok have become the industry standard for adhering pedals to boards, for better or worse.

 

As far as backing up tones, the Firehawk and the AMPLIFi are kind of unique in Line 6's catalog in that everything is done through the app. There's not really a bulk backup feature as there is with other units. You can backup tones to "My Tones" in the app, and once they're there, they're stored in the cloud. Pretty much all of the other Line 6 multi-FX have computer editors that let you create full backups.

[philhitchman]

Have you ever tried attaching a Firehawk to a pedal board with Velcro?! :D 

 

But seriously, I do understand where you're coming from and I understand it's an industry wide issue, but there are lots of problems with Velcro. Not least, when the fight case is being thrown around in the back of a van, the pedals keep coming off.  And when you want to pull them off and move them around you can guarantee it messes up the cloth liner on the pedal board or yanks the Velcro off the back of the pedal. It's always been a stupid way of doing it in my opinion. 

 

Many musicians (me included) attach pedals to their boards by removing two of the screws that hold the back on the pedal and inserting bits of bicycle chain link. You can even buy them on eBay for that purpose. It means the pedal is very firmly fixed in place and is very easy to move around. It's not always possible to do it that way, but every pedal in every one of my boards is screwed down solidly in some way or another. I've done it this way for decades. But there's a video on it on YouTube if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw9wU1bZj84

 

And I do realise that you can back up the tones, but one at a time?! There are 128 tones in there. As a software developer going back to 1978 I can tell you that this is just lazy design and programming. They simply haven't thought about the functionality.

 

As for the transmitter - I put a little line of resin along both sides of the clip and it has never come off since. I did look at the pouches but most of them seem to have a loop whereby you feed your strap or trouser belt through it, which isn't ideal for me (I have dozens of guitars).  As for the cables. It's not the solder joint, the tip fell right off the jack plug after about a year's use. It's just poor quality. I made my own patch cables, probably 20 years ago after I had a similar problem with another wireless. I used Neutrik heavy duty plugs and heavy duty cable from an old Whirlwind guitar lead and they have not failed yet. 

 

Like I say, I love the gear, but for the money I really do wish they'd sort out these silly little quality issues. And it annoys me that they are still selling the Firehawk but haven't been supporting it or updating the software for years.

[phil_m]

I don't disagree with you regarding the lack of a bulk backup procedure with the Firehawk. I'm kind of surprised they didn't add it to the app.

 

All I can say is I think Line 6 has historically shown willingness to learn from mistakes and they're very open to customer feedback. There are sometime other factors that prevent them from going back and revisiting older projects. I don't know how much longer the Firehawk FX will be sold now that POD Go has been released.

 

Regarding velcro, yeah, it's always been tricky with the larger pedals. With my Helix Floor, I used a combination of Velcro and Dual-Lok to attach it my Pedaltrain board. I've seen a few people do the bicycle chain thing you're talking about, too. I've always liked that the fact there's such a large DIY ethos among guitarists. It's borne out of necessity, no doubt.