Variax Bass 700

Doctor J

http://www.line6.com/variaxBass/demo.html

Who do you want to sound like today? :rolleyes:

feylya

I'd love to get a Variax to mess around with. I'd put it in a better guitar though.

Doctor J

Yeah, don't understand why they go for such ugly body shapes.

feylya

It's not even the body shape. The guitar is supposed to feel horrible to play, even if it does sound good.

Doctor J

Warmoth do a replacement body for the Variax now, add a top Warmoth neck and off ye go

http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/line6/line6.cfm

feylya

Hmmm, that strat body shape, birdseye maple neck, ebony board, mmm...

Doctor J

They've started doing a load more body shapes

http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/bodies/bodies.cfm

feylya

Still no double neck explorers.

And I really don't like heels

Doctor J

feylya wrote:

Still no double neck explorers.

That's a bad thing?

feylya

Yeah.

I want to make one.

Doctor J

Meh, that's just going to be horribly awkward :eek:

Dunno, I just don't like this Variax thing, the presets seems to be based around players, like the fretless jazz bass one (big time Jaco), which synthesizes the fretless bass sound onto a fretted bass, so even **** players are in tune. That's just wrong. It's 'who do you want to sound like'?

I watched their little movie too, the acoustic bass setting is soft poo

feylya

By all accounts, the guitar is damn fine though. Sounds like it should. But then again, as someone on these boards said, would you rather play a strat and make your own strat sounds or sound like someone else thinks a strat player should sound.

Doctor J

That was me I think the feel of a guitar has a big influence on how you play. A Strat feels different to a Les Paul and has an influence on how you play it. I dunno, the guitar got very good reviews but the whole thing just seems a bit sterile, lacking character.

feylya

Yeah, I want to feel a Gibson neck while getting Gibson tones, not an approximation.

Doctor J

Indeed. Your shoulder should suffer to get Les Paul tones. That's just the way it is and always has been baby

feylya

My shoulder suffers to get EMG tones

Doctor J

Bah humbug to EMG. Les Paul pickups should be left alone. The Gibson pickups are sweet.

feylya

Aye, that they are.

Doctor J

I wouldn't mind hearing that Tony Iommi Gibson humbucker

http://www.gibsonstrings.com/pickups/iommi.shtml



Bling

feylya

Indeed, bling.

Shame you can't get those Silver EMGs any more.

Doctor J

Tony Iommi is a man I'd trust when it comes to tone. Gibson's first signature pickup, apparently.

feylya

True.

But still...

http://guitarpartsdepot.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?LNG=en-US&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=EMG-81-7&Category_Code=EMGCS

Doctor J

Naaaaaahhhhhh

feylya

YES!!! €75 plus shipping. I think yes.

Doctor J

Fugly.

feylya

Fuggit.

Doctor J

Looks like a chunk of the dashboard from a VW Polo...

feylya

I like the Polo.

Doctor J

Tony Iommi pickup in JS chrome guitar?

feylya

Na, that'd just be wrong!!!

Maybe in Bad Horsie.

Doctor J

Nah, total chrome. Blingarrific

feylya

Na. Gold Top Les Paul, Real Diamond inlays.

BLING!

Doctor J

Or are we all heading towards piezo to all men?

feylya

Mmm, piezo...

John

Hate to drag you both back on topic but that variax sounds ****. All the audio demos sounded like a guide of what to avoid in bass tone...

It wasn't me!

The Variax's will nail tones, but they're horrible to play. They don't feel natural, the way a guitar should. They're very artificial, robotic almost.

Doctor J

John2 wrote:

Hate to drag you both back on topic but that variax sounds ****. All the audio demos sounded like a guide of what to avoid in bass tone...

They were a bit over trebley alright, it's a workable system but there's just a part of me that is really quite suspicious of them

feylya

The more I hear Line 6's stuff, the less I like it.

John

Never really liked line6. Played through one of their amps with all the effects bundled in, seemed a bit jack of all trades but master of none

eoin5

It says that if you change strings on the variax it has the same effect as changing them on a normal bass, then it has different settings to model both normal and flatwound strings? So what will the bass strung with flatwounds set to be modeled on normal strings sound like, whatever about tension and feel.

Doctor J

It says it'll do fretless Jaco tone and it has frets. It seems versatile enough, just seems to be the musical equivalent of a knock of pair of runners, it's pretending to be something it ain't.

It's a shame they can't creat a bass with a great voice of it's own, like the P, the J, the Stingray and the L2000

Giblet

Doctor J wrote:

It seems versatile enough, just seems to be the musical equivalent of a knock of pair of runners, it's pretending to be something it ain't.

That's exactly it. The fretless tone sound like muck on a variax, just a kind of phasing, delay effect.

You can still hear the fret, eh, bumpage