Line6 variax 300 guitar

Line6 variax 300 guitar

The ultimate guitarists toy!! What is it? Its the line 6 variax 300 guitar. Its the closest thing to a midi guitar without being a midi guitar. It models/emulates 25 vintage guitars from the fender stratorcaster,les pauls, semi hollowbody guitars and acoustic guitars. Throw in a banjo and sitar for good measure. PRice paid $250 used +$40 s/h=$290.00 . About the price of a decent acoustic guitar. Now the fun of this guitar is that you can instantly switch to an acoustic guitar sound to a fender strat sound. Perfect for my live recordings andI have played this type of guitar before on my 97th album as I recall.


It has no pickups to speak of, instead the "pickups" for each string are under the saddles. My guitar came in good condition ,but the setup was complete crap. The frets wouldn't fret and so on. well, I adjusted the trussrod and voila, every fret sounded great and if I can remember where I put the tiny tool I need to adjust the top string it will be a good guitar setup.In any case, I am very pleased that it does work. the hex pikcups under the saddles are delicate and usually on used variax the pickups can be damaged. so only 5 strings work;here all 6 worked great.

Ok, now ,I would not trade this for my main guitar,but in addition to usual recordings this is a great instrument. $250 is a great price for it, as new they were about $500 and in fact even when closed out they were $399 or so. In fact, in a marketing ploy, line 6 discontinued the variax 300 and instead put the variax technology in higher end guitars like the variax 500,700 and so on, problem is they are $1000.00 or so?!!?!?! Now I am sorry but Its not worth that. No way!!! At $250.00 its good deal because it can emulate an acoustic guitar really well and much more and a cheap acoustic with pickup is abut 250 or less.

Interestingly, they have software where you can design your own guitar and do weird tunings too. In fact on mine, I have a preset where the 6th string is automatically tuned to a d and at a flick of a switch it can be changed to an open G tuning and so on. The possibilities are interesting. The banjo sound is must have;it seriously sounds like a banjo too the point of being silly. Oh, the semihollowbodies are great too. ok, the twelve string guitars stink, they sound stupid. overall, I am thrilled with this purchase and the price was right and they are a blast to play and I didn't have to spend $1000.00 for a variax 500,700 etc...very cool indeed!!! The variax 500,700 are more expensive because of the wood and components used but the variax technology is the same and if it were your main guitar I could justify the cost otherwise ,I just cant see the cost being worthwhile. .

I would hate to guess how much the guitars they modeled cost, I am sure its a fortune. Ar they exact? no, are they close to the real thing sound wise, definitely. One recommendation, if you get a variax ,spend the thrity bucks for the digital cable and it works great with the pdo xt live which allows the guitar amp preset and the guitar varia preset to both be switched at one time. Sweet!!! With a littl setup time, the variax 300 becomes much more than a toy and becomes a real useful addition to recording. no guitarist or studio should be without one . ok, well, at least its just very cool to be abel to have an acoutic guitar sound and then in a moment have a distorted fender strat sound.

Electro hamronix 2880 looper and foot controller review

demanding the most out of your gear

Perhaps I expect too much out of my gear. Especially consumer semi pro gear. not realizing that a true pro studio may pay a quarter of a million dollars or more for their gear and I expect the same audio quality out of gear costing a tiny fraction of that haha.Perhaps I have been spoiled by the sound quality of my Roland Digital recorders which are outstanding and can be had for a couple of hundred dollars these days. Maybe so, but any gear that is not performing well or does not do what it should , I have to dispose of.

Electro Harmonix 2880 Looping pedal and foot controller
Gone, sorry Charlie, while I hoped that this would be the holy grail of looping pedals that would actually sync to midi flawlessly.I was mistaken!! The pedal has been a nightmare since I foolishly handed over $500 bucks or so. Granted, The company thought i may have received a faulty unit as it would lock up after trying to sync to midi and would lose the midi sync for no apparent reason. I would have to pull the power adapter regularly for it to function. Also, it seemed very straight forward but not intuitive. In other words to get the right timing for the pedal without quantitzing, was very difficult and just not practical. Also, the foot controller pedal was the worst idiots delight i had ever witnessed.Each switch had to be pressed 2-3 times to engage the record function and each switch was loud as hell!!! I mean really loud and sure to ruin any recording I would try to make. It seems that the midi sync function was based on the infamous boss rc-50 in its approach to do midi sync, which , as the rc-50 has shown just doesn't work very well at all.

I do give the 2880 points for an excellent sound quality, not musical ,but just straight forward good sound quality. (Musical as in a boomerang pedalboard that just has a very intuitive musical sound). Also, the physical box and paint are really cheap and scratch super easy. I cold only recommend this pedal to someone who wants to fart around on it in the studio, but for any serious live looping forget it.

I finally decided enough is enough. I promptly arranged full refunds form the 2 companies I bought the pedal from and the foot controller from. Was I sent a bad unit out of the box? maybe,maybe not, maybe its a design flaw. The company itself wanted to send it in to be repaired?! Wait I just got this thing. Ok, so how long would I be without it?! Also, The pedal seemed fine of the most part except the sync issue and like the boss rc-50 it just failed int hat respect. I boxed both up and mad3 arrangements to return them for a full refund!! Note: it costs me $25 to send both units back. I wont mention the companies as they may be great companies and will give me back a 100% refund or they may be really shady companies who charge restocking fee's and take away shipping fee's etc....time will tell. If a company sends a defective unit and then wont take it back for a full refund that does reflect poorly on the company.

In any case, we will see what kind of companies I was dealing with and the end result. Anyway, nice to get the 2880 looper out of my studio and guitar setup for ever. It just didn't work for me at all. I really hope the company I bought the actual pedal from comes through an does issue a 100% refund and doesn't slap me with all kinds of restocking fee's shipping fee's,etc...as they seem to be a decent company and in fact got the pedal to me in two days and it seemed to be in good shape and midi sync is quite a specific function that not everyone uses; so its easy to not see a flaw or problem in that area. Ok well, I will post the results of my returns here!!

Mackie 32x8 8bus mixing console
It's up for sale ($650+$150s/h with power supply email denis@dtguitar.com if you want to buy it). Ok,this is a love hate relationship. I love the mackie board's routing and the sound quality. However, for me, Ineed otbe able to record quickly, sometimes I only have an hour and getting board prepared eats way too much time and also for one person ,32 ch's is overkill. Also, if the board were brand new, that would help a lot too because with older boards some things are a little glitchy here and there. I mean it works, but the slightest touch of a cable ,etc...can create a drop out etc...also, and this is the big one, I need room in my studio room!~!@!!! I mean I am tripping over stuff and am lucky nothing has broken. It's just too big a board for my needs. though , I will misss its great sound and I recorded few albums with it.

What do you do if your sound is getting bad in the studio?

Visit http://www.dtguitar.com, Denis's guitar website


rewire

Ok, after a couple of albums ,ok 4 albums, my studio sound was kind of dying on me. It was getting me way down.It really bothered me. maybe I just couldn't record anymore, maybe 135 albums was it. I was just not pleased with my recordings or sounds in the studio. so much so, I was going to sell my mackie 32x8. I still might ,but for different reasons such as going with different mic pre's,except its working so well. anyway, here is what I did and it was a cure all!!!

Ok, first I unplugged it all and that was a big job. Turns out, the cables I was using were cheapo test cables, some were ten years old. Ok, next I did some reading and experimenting to hook up the mackie board. Rather than going direct though, I actually utilized the 8 buses. This allows me to mix some guitar sounds together before going to the recorder. Ok, the I also set the levels to unity gain. Also, and this was the big culprit, I had to reset my emu emulatorx sound card!!!

Ok, it turns out that the emu was causing a loop causing feedback. It was driving me crazy and the sound just sucked big time. Finally, I wised up and it turns out that the software mixer of the card was "hiding" the wav out fader" so I could not mute it when using the digital i/o. Anyway, after that my sound was back. That great sound that seemed to be disappearing. I thought maybe it was my playing, yet I thought I was improving. Well, I am and it was this card problem and rehooking up the mackie that did the trick. I did a short recording and it was just a fantastic sound, warm,crystal clear and clean.

Lesson learned: when your sound seems to be degrading, take a 1/2 hour and go through your setup as it was initially. I discovered that after a album or so, it is surprising how many settings need to be reset to their initial values. I will sleep well tonight to be sure!! I had forgotten that I had never swapped out my test cables, as I was eager to get to recording. Anyway, I did a quick test recording to be sure I had it right.

ok, you can hear an mp3 of the test recording which is made up of sony drum samples, bass emulation on guitar looped from one of my rack units & synced to midi and then a stereo clean guitar loopped via one of my pedalboards .Now I can assign any of the 32 tracks to one of 8 buses. This allowed me to test bus 1-2 to my gtr rack unit and direct digitally to inputs 7-8 of my digital recorder.Then I used bus 3-4 for the mic's (the clean stereo guitar loop) which went to track 3-4 of my recorder. Then I used bus 7-8 to track 1 of my digital recorder for the looped bass emulation. Cool beans, that leaves me bus 5-6 free which I will assign to tracks 5-6 for vocals, samples, extra guits whatever. Also, I can use bus 8 if using bus 7 only to do mono bass which I often do. I only use an 8 rack recorder as All of my recordings are performed and recorded live with overdubs.

Hear the test sample here: http://www.dtguitar.com/rewiretest.mp3

Now the p3 will degrade the sound a bit as it is only 128k,but anyway, I hope you can hear that the sound is clear. Its not mixed well and the bass emulation was done 1/2 assed really as here is a glitch in the bass sound where I had not done a clean loop,but it ok for the test; it served my purposes. Anyway, this was a really big lesson as I was getting really down about my sound!!

electro harmonix 2880 !! AMAZING

electro harmonix 2880 !! AMAZING
Its simply amazing, it does everything it says it does, it syncs to midi and the sound is incredible!!!Through the boss rc-50 in the trash at this point, I just tried it for the fist time and it was very straight forward to operate and the sound is simply great!!! someone should send one of these to boss/roland so they can figure out how to do it right, if your looking for alooping pedal this is it!! It is so clean and what you put in you get out, not as musical as the boomerang pedalbaord which has a mind of its own, but this is just the pristine looping machine!!!

Modern Rock guitar vol 134 "Guitar Shrimp"

Visit http://www.dtguitar.com, Denis's official music website!!!

Modern Rock guitar vol 134 "Guitar Shrimp"
Ok, I am pleased to announce that I completed and released my 134th modern rock guitar album. This was not my usual style, but rather was a traditionally recorded album that I was inspired after hearing some modern heavy metal albums or whatever you call 2000-2008 metal guitar, detuned 7 string, death metal, etc... I had a lot of fun with this album, and there were some tracks I really liked as they really hit the spot of what I had intended. This album is not fo the fint of heart though haha. Still very musical, but geez it is heavy!! Oh thats a hale shark on the cover and there are little guitars (guitarshrimp) swimming around it .....cool!!
Ok for the metal guitar sounds, I used the Crate v33 tube amp $xxx new and the digitech rp-50 multif/x pedal ($59 new at the time, now can be had for $30-40 if not less?!?!). The rp-50 is one of my favorite pedals!! Cheap and does so much and soudn is of really good quality. Ok, I came up with some crazy guitar sounds, some really are pretty unique and I think I did nail the typical modern metal guitar sounds, even down to detuning my guitar low e string to a B to imitate the seven string stuff on two tracks. My cat tiny even makes a vocal appearance as he meowed into the microphone. Anyway, I just did this album for fun and its not my normal style or gear at the moment

the crate v33 tube amp and rp-50 make a potent combination of guitar sounds..wow!! Though the crate is inherently noisy when on idle, so a noise gate or a rocktron hush unit would have been nice. Still that simple setup gave me the guitar sounds I was looking for. Granted a couple are over the top bordering on sheer controlled harmonic musical noise.


I also used a fender mexican strat with a crazy humbucking pickup seymour duncan sh-8 invader pickup which has a super high output and makes notes feedback and easy to get that zakk wylde harmonics. The guitar I had bought used for $xxx which was a good deal as the invader pickup is $80 by itself. If you look in the picture, you can see the invader pickup (the other pikups are white, the invader is black). I have no regrets buying this guitar and when I need a rock guitar sound or a feedbacking guitar, this is it!! The mexican strat has a fender type neck rather than a fast ibanez type neck and in fact this one has a weird setup for now, where the bridge comes forward against the body of the guitar to make it almost like a guitar with a locking nut. I plan on changing it back to a standard setup eventually.

Overall, I like this album, however, I found it tedious, to record track by track, I am so used to improvising and looping that this was a bit like pulling teeth, I am pleased with the results but it is no where near as fun as how I normally record. Less stressful because you can go back and fix mistakes, but geez. especially the bass. My hats off to all those bassists out there who have the patience to play bass. It is quite a repetitive task. Anyway I am really pleased with this album and it made me really appreciate my normal approach to recording which I took for granted after all these years.

ART x-15 ultrafoot & Electro Harmonix 2880

ART x-15 ultrafoot Pedalboard

ok, it took a lot longer than it should have to arrive , but i finally received my ART x-15 ultrafoot pedal board. This is the companion pedalboard to the ART SGX express 2000 guitar preamp and f/x unit. Ok, initial impressions was that well-packed, this thing was filthy dirty, with a layer of crust dirt on it, no power supply (how do i turn it on?!) and the red led cover seemed broken off. Ok, fearing the worst, I took the pedal board and with my fingers I moved the red led cover back in place and it tuns out that it is a piece of red plastic that covers the actual led lights on the circuit board. Ok, cobwebs under one of the pedals was pretty weak as well. Now, I paid $59.99 + $35.00 s/h=$94.99.

Ok so, initially I was a bit worried, but lucky for me, I use a one spot which has a bunch of connectors to power pedals. So I hooked up th x-15 and it came right up and the led lights were intact and it seemed to function well. So I needed to just clean this pedalboard and suddenly it went from pawn shop quality to a really nice pedalboard. Ok, this pedalboard is huge with a big wah pedal and a volume pedal as well. All metal construction. The 80's,early 90's paint really makes it look a little flimsier than it really is. I also cleaned under the 2 pedals. This thing is a monster, each pedal has 2 large bolts (mine have a tiny tinge of rust,not bad). Also I found Little circuit boards right under the pedals which seems a little strange but they are bolted down as well. Ok, the pedal connectors are simple though 3 midi jacks, a pedal bypass jack for an optional footswitch and a power jack .

Ok cleaned up and powered up, I tried the actual buttons on the x-15 and they ware working properly. I like large pedalboards and this one does not disappoint, in fact, it is the largest individual board I have seen other than perhaps a custom bradshaw board. Ok, well, it seems fine, I wonder when it was made, I would guess pretty early on, maybe 1990 or 1992,I say that because I recognize some of the numbers on the serial number. Anyway, its an oldy but goody. all in all it has 14 footswitches and 2 pedals. I download instructions for it and also a firmware upgrade which i may attempt and also a factory reset.This will get this "vintage" pedalboard in shape.

Ok, so overall, the art sgx express 2000 and the matching x-15 ultrafoot make quite a semi "vintage setup". Now I need to hooked it all up and get the sgx 2space rack unit in my rack and gett he pedalboard upgraded and hooked up; then before recording is choosing some preset sounds to use and then record!!!! that would be great!!! The art sgx 2000 was in truly excellent condition like new, while the x-15 was in good shape (not very good or excellent), on the other hand it is old and was really cheap and it works and a pedalboard gets stomped on, so I guess year after year it does take a beating, but I have to say the art x-15 seems to be built like a tank.

Electro Harmonix 2880 Looping unit
Ok, so I was checking out some youtube gear video reviews and run across a review for a not so well known looping unit, I almost lost control of my bowels and frantically searched the internet to see if I could find one. Bellame music in Georgia had an electro harmonix looping unit ready to send me for $408.00 with free shipping. I noticed that I could not fidn this unit at zzounds or american musical supply. Ok, this was a big purchase, but after getting burned on the BOSS RC-50 looping pedalboard that is full of glitches and doesn't sync to midi at all, I had to take a chance. So I ordered it and it was here in 2 days!!! Ok, its about the size of a big electro harmonix pedal and is like a 4 track multitrack recorder and each track loops and it claims to sync to midi. They call it a desktop unit and you have to order the optional pedal to control it.

So I ordered the optional foot pedal from another vendor, big mistake so far, instead of getting it in two days, I get an email saying sorry but the last unit we had isn't working , so we will be getting one in a couple of days to ship to you..I am sorry but that really sucks. there are plenty of vendors who have that pedal in stock and you should know this when you order ,not after they have your money,but stuff happens as they say. Anyway the price for the pedal to control the 2880 is about $111.00 which is inexpensive compared to the 2880. So, I said fine jut get it tome as quick as you can. However, if it has not at least shipped by Friday I will cancel my order and order elsewhere. In any case, the only way this vendor can redeem himself is he gets me the pedal by Friday. Won't happen though I suspect. But we will see. If anything it gives me time to work with the 2880 itself and go though the manual. If it does what it says it does, it would be perfect, everything that the boss rc-50 claimed to be but wasn't. I mean the 2880 seems straight forward, has an octave and reverse function, 4 tracks and can be mixed down to do 4 more tracks and with the footswitch live!!! It also claims to have midi clock sync capabilities and if it does then this could be the holy grail of loopers.

The rc-50 was a dud and I got taken for $500.00 only to discover that the midi jacks were for looks only for one and the software glitches are unforgivable. I guess I have kept it because it can function nicely on its own/by itself, but not incorporated into my usual system. This gave some nice tracks for my albums;a break form my usual setup. but Roland really screwed the pooch on the rc-50. I don't recommend that turd to anyone. I saw the you tube video demo of the 2880 and have read the manual and it really seems like a dream come true. But if the 2880 really functions as advertised, then the rc-50 will go on the auction block and join the shitheap of useless gear. I have only run into a couple of shitheap units, the rc-50 is one, most of the cheapo dod pedals, and many of the practice amp distortion ch's come to mind and other crap I ordered and then returned the same day because it was so weak.

Ok, the electro harmonix unit is metal and the buttons feel ok, not terribly sturdy but not flimsy, it hard to believe they got a looping unit and 4 track recorder and everything in this little unit. amazing. I have yet to try it out, but I will shortly and am hoping for the best. After my rc-50 fiasco, it is hard to believe that this little known looping unit can do what the big corporate mass market boss/roland could not accomplish with the rc-50. we will see....If so, then I am sold!!!! I would even get another one as a back up as these kinds of pedals seem to go out production quickly.

ART SGX 2000 Express arrives!!!

visit http://www.dtguitar.com ,Denis's official website!!!

ART SGX 2000 Express arrives!!!
Ok, As I was driving home from work, I looked and sure enough there was a box waiting for me!! Allright!! on a friday too , that leaves me a little time to check it out!! Ok, I get the box and open it up (I still dont see how this cost $50 to ship, but I digress......) SO it was $127.00 for the sgx2000 express 2 raqckspace rack unit plus $50s/h=$177.00 . By the way, I am still waiting on the x-15 ultrafot pedalboard which I understand is on its way.

First impressions
upon opening the box was that I did get the expresss version (not the non express version which is not as good,noiser and less presets and missing some f/x's). Ok, mine actually looks like the one in the picture. I was immediately taken by how it was all metal consturcion,not cheap plastic, all the knob were tight and it looked like new!! Mine was the latest ver 1.10 of the software and was built in 1994, the year they discontinued the art sgx 2000 express. Also, The pink versions really looked like a toy and this has a little pink lettering but th face is black and it looks very professional, so no scratches, its jsut a great looking unit, even for being 15 years old.

I also noticed that on the back of the unit were 2 f/x loops, line and isntrument level outs, midi inout and thru and 2 XLR outs as well. WOw, this was no toy!! My fear was that I didnt get a unit with the 475 presets and extra features (art claims they improved it 400% compared to the older sgx's)). Yet I did have the latest firmware. Also, the front of the unit was well laid out and upon plugging it in, I was overcome by the number of red led's, geez, at least 20 or so, flashing and so on. Wow!! So I tried some knobs and hooked up some headphones to the headphone out jsut to try it out. WEll, some of the pots were scratchy which concerned me. But, after giving thm a few twsits they cleaned right up. This is common among old gear that hasnt been used in a while,I would guess this is one of those units.

Art turns to a F art.....?
So I plug in my guitar and get this squealing into the headphones and hardly any sound. I try the pots and I get this scratchy sound. TERRIBLE, this was no ART it was a F ART!!! I suddenly had buyers remorse. I fiddled with the knobs and suddenly there came this tone, that sounded pretty good. I then tried another preset, memories of the 80's and early 90's filled my headphones.Still , where are the 475 presets? Instead I get about 16 presets from some schmo user who preferred the sound I dislike, its the distortion after the delay and reverb type sound, man, every preset, yuk!!! I was becoming discouraged, now I was thinking they should have called it the the F ART 2000 express, like a bad joke, add an F and that's what it sounds like.

F art clears the air and the ART surfaces
So I went to the internet and decided to do a reset back to factory specs!! Voila!!!!! AWESOME!! The F ART was gone and now only the ART remained. suddenly , I had all 475 presets, 4 banks->classic, performance,production and contribution. AMAZING SOUNDS!!! I had presets emulating amps ,fantastic f/x and great sound quality. The ART had surfaced. I was really taken a back. The presets were really fun to play with , it had 20 or so fender twin simulations, marshall amps, VOX and so on and it had artist presets as well. Some were really fun and telling of the times, zztop presets, SRV,nirvana, pink floyd ,eagles, eric johnson and 1 joe satriani patch haha some metal patches. Loved em all!!

Ok the sounds thus far, amazing for just presets, I mean the clean sounds were really nice, and the distortions ranged from classic rock to 80 n 90's rock /metal. IT just has that old tone even on f/x, I just dont hear that older tone from my modern f/x units at all. IT had black sabbath patches and they really do sound authentic haha. Anyway, just a lot of fun tones and they sound great. I would not recommend this to a beginner as far as editing patches as there is just too much there to really make a mushy sound, but if you tweak the presets a bit it certainly shines and gives this sound that you just cant get with modern pre's and f/x.

I had a blast with some of the jimi hendrix patches, they sounded just right, not crazily distorted and with that hendrix type sound. Anyway, it is easy to overdo the f/x such as reverb in particular as it has reverb and also an acoustic environment simulator. It even has a sampler which I tried. It seemed kind of short. Bu th e ping pond delays and panning effects were great and the pitch shifter/octaver was fun to.Also, it has Extensive EQ I mean bass lowmid etc...and presence.Anyway, I just scratched the surface but after the reset I immediately heard quality sounds worthy of using this unit to record tracks for an album.

OVERALL
This is great piece of semi-vintage gear and will certainly eventually be true vintage gear. It has truly old "80's " sounding f/x and preamp as well. so much so, I had forgotten what I liked and disliked about that sound. I mean it also had the Van Halen presets. Ok, dont try to find 7 string death metal sounds here but the distortion can really deliver a good metal sound. The f/x can be overdone on the presets,but with some tweaking they can be just right too. It also has a production patches which can be used for vocals and drum machines, bass and so on. When I compare it to the line 6 pod xt live, it actually holds its own, though the line 6 pod xt can get a ton of hi gain which the at cant, but they have diffrerent sounds, I think the line 6 would have a tough time recreating that old 80's soundf/x wise especially. So, the art is not a replacement for the line 6 but is a breath of fresh air with its retro sounds. It is everything I hoped it to be. Ok, will posts some tracks and some mp3's of some sounds I get with it. VERY COOl and worth every penny of the $177.00 I paid for it, maybe even cooler with the $94 x-15 pedalboard, we will when it arrives.....