MrFlibble

I tried one out for myself, once. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with it, but to my ears, most of the tones sounded more or less the same, e.g. Strat bridge pickup and Tele bridge pickup, Thinline Tele and regular Tele, Casino and ES-335, etc. That's aside from it feeling like a very cheap, poorly made guitar in the first place.

The new ones are such a vast improvement that I don't think you can actually compare the old and new Variax guitars at all. It's like putting a 15w Spider combo against a Vetta II head. The old guitars, at least going by my experience with them, were not worth bothering with even for pub giggers and bedroom heroes. The new JTV ones should be in every serious player's rack.

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Clay-man

Well my 600 just came in today. I was skeptical about the old models too, but they're honestly not that bad.
I've heard that dialing in the tone knob to 8 instead of 10 gets a better tone, and I agree.

I've messed with workbench and being able to build any combination of pickups with any guitar body really helped distinguished sounds, especially since most of the telecaster models are mixed bridge and neck pickups in the other Telecaster models.

I agree that the JTV seems a lot more professional, and basically gives the guitar players a reason not to just pass it by, especially when you can use it as a COMPLETE normal guitar in the first place, so why not get one with good quality modeling?

Either way, I can vouch that the old models are nice guitars, not perfect, but they're really neat imo.
I was pissed at line 6 for a good time, but they definitely have some serious innovative guitars, and I can say they know what they're doing with them.

PS: To the people that keep referencing them as MIDI guitars, they're not.
MIDI = digital data to trigger synthetic sound
Variax = Modeling, as in the piezo signal is processed to sound like the guitar models, ergo it's the actual sound from the strings, just altered.

trashedlostfdup

HNGD. i don't think i have ever played one, but again HNGD.

if you ever need a neck, let me know, i have had a brand new factory variax neck for a while and have no use for it. however as far as i can speak for quality (of my neck), it certainly does not have bad fretwork.

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MrFlibble

If you can get it to sound good, fair enough. As I said, I will happily admit I only used the previous Variax once and that I didn't get to really mess with it in any depth, just flicked through the stock sounds. I do know from my experience dialing in tones on my Line 6 amp that hooking them up to a computer and using the in-depth editing software opens up a whole world of much better tones that they, for whatever reason, don't bother to include by default. That's usually my only complaint with Line 6 stuff, the potential is there but the presets are always terrible and that's all anybody ever hears.

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Clay-man

Yeah, I just went in and tweaked the tele models and they sound even more appropriate now. They're a lot more twangier. I also made the strats just a tad bit mellower. They sound more varying, and appropriate to their models now.

Clay-man

Thanks a bunch, but I don't think I'll need one, or rather can afford one. I am used to rosewood, but I gotta say that the maple neck on my 600 is actually refreshing and really nice, and I kinda love it.

Though it would be nice to have another neck to switch out if I wanted, I don't have any cash for it now, so I'll have to pass, but thanks for the info and kind words!

Clay-man

Hi guys. Apparently the JTVs are getting a complete redo in all their guitar models.
MrFlibble, you might be interested in this.

It's dubbed JTV HD/Workbench HD, which will completely replace all models as well as add complete new ones with "HD" quality versions.

http://line6.com/news/general/1387

So I guess if any of you are still iffy about the current JTVs, you can check this out. Let's see how close these will get.

MrFlibble

Yeah, Line 6 do this every 18 months or so. They've always provided free updates to all their software for all their products.

Problem is, there's usually no way to roll back the update or choose which parts to update, and sometimes the new versions don't actually sound better than older tones. Case in point would be the Spinal Puppet sound on the old HD147 and POD rack units; one of the best tones Line 6 has ever made and used by many bands both for touring and recording, then Line 6 ''updated'' it to have more gain and it became a fizzy mess that nobody liked, and since these companies can't admit to making mistakes like that, they silently dropped the tone and it's never been seen since.

So, good news if the new sounds are good, but wait for demos and other people to do the update before you go ahead yourself.

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Clay-man

My old Variax can't update to JTV firmware. I'm pretty sure that the V1 Variaxes can't handle JTV firmware because the JTV firmware was designed for the JTV's more powerful hardware, not to mention that they'd lose money if they did that.

I heard people say they like the older acoustic models than the new ones that come with 1.8. I can kind of see what they mean. While the 1.8 firmware acoustics sounded more like a mic'd acoustic, with a more realistic tone, I think it sounds too muddy, and the highend is rolled off too hard. Maybe that's fixable with EQing, but I think it should sound a lot brighter than that.

Either way, I'll definitely look at demos. Though I did want a JTV, I'll stick to my Variax 600 for the meantime, but that doesn't mean I won't check stuff out.

Blompcube

i have an original variax 500, from before they made the 500 an exclusively lefty model - it was one of my first guitars, i thought it would satisfy my need to experiment with tones. approximately 30 new guitars later and i realised i may have been wrong

Aside from mine being terribly set up (and i didn't know how set up a guitar at the time), the only issue i ever had with it is that worn strings tend to kill the tone a lot more than they would on a normal guitar. But that's what elixir nanowebs are for, i guess. Other than that it's a pretty useful guitar, even if it doesn't really sound or feel very organic to play. It's the only thing i have that can create an electric sitar sound, for a start

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Clay-man

I think the workbench software is really great to use with the Variax. If you're having trouble with certain models, you can tweak them up in Workbench.
If string response is off you can edit string volume and even volume for the pickups and models.

It's very easy to get what you want with it.