700/705 failure rate?

[sornord]

It is with great sadness and frustration that I recently read from a Line 6 support person that the Variax line is discontinued.  Just about 13 months ago I bought a 700 bass and a JTV-59 to prepare for an overseas move in summer 2024.  We were planning on a trial year before we cut our US-ties permanently.  Those two were supposed to be my hand-carry guitars until we determined if it was advisable/cost-effective to ship my other guitars.  The thought was between the two Variaxes I could cover the bases (no pun intended) on instruments until my others were shipped (perhaps) in a year or two after we got there.  Their being discontinued changes all that. 

 

To help with our shipment reorganization, it would be helpful to know the failure rate of the Variax electronics, particularly for the bass.  The JTV-59 is still usable with its magnetic PUs should the Variax gadgetry fail but the bass will be unusable since it has no external PUs.  The 700 is really a good bass with great feel and tones but if it craps out I'd be stuck without easy, or timely, access to my others.  Not good since I'm primarily a bassist. 

 

Advice, pls.

[magnusf27]

I see it's a rather old post, but I'll answer anyhow. I have never had any issues with my Variax basses apart from now when I tried to update the firmware on my 3rd Variax bass (please don't ask about the other 2 lol and I fixed the firmware issue by using the USB interface instead of the Helix). They are rock solid imo and the other small issue I have had was when I was drunk and I didn't see I plugged the TRS cable in the output rather than the input on the DI and hence thought it was broken (blush). I tried it the day after and then it worked and the I concluded that must have been the case.