KVR Audio

bluesdues · Post by **bluesdues** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:02 am

I play a lot of blues, with finger mutes and palming etc. and I have have been looking at these. Am I understanding right, that these guitars don't handle that type of stuff very well. Or is it just a matter of handling it differently?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 12:56 pm

Oh, BTW if you've got the Workbench software, do not update to Java1.6. It'll break it. It currently needs JVM1.5. Hopefully the next version of workbench will allow the use of JM1.6

pwdm · Post by **pwdm** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:01 pm

I,ve had one for 6 months now and its the best guitar i have.

Never heard about any latency problems thought.

gnjp · Post by **gnjp** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:29 pm

i had a variax 500, i couldnt stand it once the novelty
wore off after a day or two, it just doesnt respond or feel
like a real guitar, because it isnt - the sound is synthesised
from the piezo transducers in the bridge, it had the horrible
piezo "cluck" that cheap electro-acoustics have, if player
dynamics are at all important to you i wouldnt bother, like
nearly everything line6 makes, ok for demoing they'll get you
80% of the way there, but the real magic's in the other 20%.

Hewitt Huntwork · Post by **Hewitt Huntwork** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 1:57 pm

I have a 500 and the bass. They are indespensible to me. The sound is not "synthesised", it's modeled. Imagine a stomp box that, instead of chorusing or flanging, makes your guitar sound like a different guitar. Now imagine that the stomp box is inside the guitar itself. It's just an advanced form of signal processing. All your finger squeaks and scrapes are faithfully preserved.

If you want to sound like someone else, you have to use what they use and play like they play. If you want to sound like yourself, you can use anything.

Hewitt Huntwork · Post by **Hewitt Huntwork** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:01 pm

aMUSEd wrote:Anyone tried using an eBow with a Variax? Would it work?

I've been having a lot of fun with my ebow and the Variax.

dragonsoul · Post by **dragonsoul** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:05 pm

Besides from the thrills of plaing around with it...i finds it sounds horrible.
Piezo everywhere...
but the guitars feel good and are very playable.
I heard it live and in the studio...piezo.

gnjp · Post by **gnjp** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:08 pm

Hewitt Huntwork wrote:The sound is not "synthesised", it's modeled.

iether way it didnt play or sound like a real guitar to me, glad you like yours, i part-ex'd mine for a Gibson SG, one killer sound per guitar will do me, just make sure you play a variax before buying, unlike me.

Dominus · Post by **Dominus** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:10 pm

Started building my "own" guitars with the Workbench software. Didn't get too much done because I was sick yesterday, but it looks like I've got the hang of the Workbench software just by fiddling with it and not reading the manual.

Still trying to find the right "attack" to get palm muting down.. I think I found if a few times by accident, once I've got it down I think it'll work well. Chords still work fine, and tremolo picking works pretty well also. Matching the Lester body/pickups with my favorite amp (Spinal Puppet) gets me about 90% of the heaviness I like. Once I delve into Gearbox and add a booster pedal in I think I'll have all the distortion I need.

For the custom 1 guitar settings, I've built the same guitar and saved it under 5 different tunings. (Standard, D, C, B, and A) That's f'n brilliant.

Dominus · Post by **Dominus** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:13 pm

Oh yeah, I would like the ability to tweak the pickups a little more.. you can boost the volume on them, but not much else. If you could program them better so you can try matching the output of your favorite namebrand pickups in your guitar, that'd be the icing on the cake. My motherbucker equipped guitar still crushes this for distortion.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 2:42 pm

gnjp wrote:i had a variax 500, i couldnt stand it once the novelty
wore off after a day or two, it just doesnt respond or feel
like a real guitar, because it isnt - the sound is synthesised
from the piezo transducers in the bridge, it had the horrible
piezo "cluck" that cheap electro-acoustics have, if player
dynamics are at all important to you i wouldnt bother, like
nearly everything line6 makes, ok for demoing they'll get you
80% of the way there, but the real magic's in the other 20%.

I agree with you on the variax...but I think your blanketed statement about line six in general is a joke...c'mon now please...if yu can't get good sounds out of line 6 products chances are you couldn't out of any amp...how's this sound...line six is 20% of the way there...but the real magic is in the other 80%, which comes from my heart, my soul and my ten fingers...

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:27 pm

i tried a variax guitar in a shop a few weeks ago, it was one of the cheaper 300 series and i plugged it into a fender twin. since im very familiar with the clean tone of that amp, thats how i tested it. i didnt try it distorted.

admittedly the strings were dead on the guitar, but my general impression was...

pros:
- great variety of tones, especially for the price
- they did a surprisingly good job at capturing the general characteristics of various guitars and pickups

con:
- while it captured the general character of all those guitars, some more successfully than others, it didnt succeed in sounding like really good versions of any of them. for example, i thought that the strat model sounded like a generic korean strat copy with stock pickups.

neither here nor there:
- the fingerboard on that particular guitar shrank and the fret edges could saw a tree in half. but i only tried one and more than likely it was just a bad piece of wood, or a questionable day at the mill where the wood was kiln dried. (btw, on a side note, i remember seeing that happen a hell of a lot on conklin the korean conklin groovetools basses. if you buy one of those conklins, be sure to oil that fingerboard every now and then.)

i tried the variax bass a few years ago and my impression was pretty much the same (minus the fret issue, no problems there.) it had a huge range of tones, the fender and warwick models were particularly good, but none struck me as sounding like really nice versions of the instruments. (btw, stingray model didnt sound anything like a stingray to me.) for $1200, i didnt really see the bass as being worth it. it offered a lot of tones, but none were worthy of a $1200 bass and the bass itself didnt feel as nice as a $700 ibanez. but at the $500 price its going for now, its a great deal for anyone wanting a whole lot of tonal variety from a single bass, and doesnt require all the sounds to be really top notch. incidentially, a few months before i tried the variax bass i tested out a roland v-bass and i thought the variax sounded much better. but its a damn shame that line 6 crapped out yet again on their bass customers and didnt have a bass version of the workbench.

as far as their amp models go, i was always impressed by the tone of my friend's old ax212 and especially impressed by the vetta combo. i bought their bass pod XT and guitar pod XT. i think the guitar pod is better than the bass one.

the guitar pod sounds nothing like a tube amp, but it does sound like quite a good solid state amp. it sits very well in my mixes, and the interface is wonderfully easy to adjust. on a side note: the pod XT is definitely nicer than my old johnson J station, but if you're strapped for cash and are between an original pod and a J, definitely check out the J. i thought it was much better at the time. also, one of these days i'd still like to pick up roger linn's adrenalinn. some of the amp models in there i thought were much more lively, dynamic, and textured than line 6's.

i used the bass pod xt for a while and was quite happy with how much easier it was for me at the time to get a recorded bass tone that would fit in a mix. the accuracy of the amp models was sometimes questionable...their eden model sounds exactly zero% like my real eden (not even remotely close)....but overall, the pod did its basic job well. however, i found that it completely sucked all the life and character out of my basses. all the textural nuances were wiped out. it made the bartolini electronics in my modulus sound more like emg select's from the late 80's, the growl almost completely disappeared from my maple fingerboard stingray 5, etc. still though, it quickly and easily helped create bass recordings that fit well in a mix and it offers a hell of a lot of tonal variety. ...but line 6 gets a few points deducted from them for the fact that the bass pod costs the same as the guitar pod, but has less space for presets and has seen far fewer improvements/updates. (btw, these days i get much better results sending the DI out of my eden head into a presonus firebox, then through vintage warmer and spinEQ.)

the one thing that i find a bit weird about line 6's stuff is that it often feels like im playing a sound that someone else recorded...and in a way i kind of am. so i think the closer your tonal preferences are to those of the people who created the models, the more at home you will feel using them. but the more your preferences stray from theirs, the less likely you are to be able to tweak out a sound that really floats your proverbial boat.

but anyway, i think to sum up my opinion of line 6's greatest attributes...they deliver outrageous tonal variety for the money and tonal quality that, while not always spectacular, is always good enough to get the job done...and often does that job very well.

(ps: i thought their filter modeler sucked though.)

[/my_$0.02]

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sun Jun 10, 2007 9:31 pm

I played a Variax in the shop some days ago and have been sort of dissapointed. Not exactly by the sound of it, not exactly by the build quality or so either. It was just not "clicking" with me. Something that some other guitars do. I wish they offered their bridge and engine as a replacement, though, probably embedded in some GraphTech saddles (which is what I'm using on 3 guitars anyways). That way I could add it to some of my axes without losing their original character.

gnjp · Post by **gnjp** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 3:23 am

.but I think your blanketed statement about line six in general is a joke...c'mon now please...

sorry, just my opinion after having used pods and a variax for some time, i find the whole modelling thing a la line6 to be slightly cheesy shall we say, along with the marketing, if your on a really limited budget or unless your intentionally after that "modelled effect" fair enough, just dont kid yourself that it sounds like a nicely mic'ed up 'real' guitar into a tube amp.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 3:37 am

gnjp wrote:
.but I think your blanketed statement about line six in general is a joke...c'mon now please...
sorry, just my opinion after having used pods and a variax for some time, i find the whole modelling thing a la line6 to be slightly cheesy shall we say, along with the marketing, if your on a really limited budget or unless your intentionally after that "modelled effect" fair enough, just dont kid yourself that it sounds like a nicely mic'ed up 'real' guitar into a tube amp.

I don't have to kid myself, I know...

Line 6 Variax F'n rules!