line 6 variax workbench, what is it

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minofifa

minofifa

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i got an email from line 6 about their variax workbench. it basicallly looks like you set all of the perameters of a virtual guiar on your computer. what is it exactly? a vsti? i'm leary of amp modeling from line 6. To be fair i only have experience with their POD technology, if that is what their flextone guitar amps are based on. For the most part they sound like junk but i have gotten some decent results.
 
Well you gotta have a Variax first. I have a Variax 500 and a Pod XT that are the whores of my studio. Almost everyone that records end up using one or both of these on some part of theie recordings.

I've done actual comparisions on recorded sound with my Variax and the actual guitars it is modeled after and I am hardpressed to find the difference. I think the tele's are dead on and the Les pauls are as good as gold in my book.

The Workbench is a stand alone program that attaches to your guitar through a provided cat 5 interface that lets you edit the internal guitar sounds of your variax in real time and save those patches to your guitar as well if you so wish. The advantage is you can build you're own guitar....if you want a les paul body with fender lipstick pickups you can have it....it is pretty damn cool. There are a multitude of bodies/pickups/switch options to build a custom guitar. The best part for me was alternative tunings. you can set up alternative tunings and save that tuning as a patch on your guitar. One flick of a switch and you're now alternatley tuned.

If you have a Variax you gotta get the Workbench to use your guitar to its fullest.
 
thanks for the clarification.

the alternate tunings sounds pretty cool. How does that work? does it change the physical pitch of strings? and you say that you cannot tell the difference between modeled / processed sounds and physically mic'd/recorded ones? that's pretty incredable. i guess the variax has come a long way.

the tuning thng boggles me.
 
I was skeptical myself when I bought the variax. I went into the music store to buy an american standard strat and when I was looking around I saw the variax guitars being unpacked. I asked about them and i was convinced to help the store in a sound test and next thing you know I'm walking out with one.

I honestly don't know how the pickups work as i can not see any. I'm sure they're there somewhere. But no magnetic pick-ups means NO HUMM!!!! I can stand in front of the TV under a bank of flourescent lights while leaning againts a neon beer sign and I get no interference at all.

as for the alternative tuning it does some special algorythmic crap on your normal tuned strings...only weird thing is if you're recording and don't have your monitors up much you can hear the actual sounds of the strings which are out of tune with your alternately tuned guitar. I just record guitar with cans.....or just turn up your monitors.

The Variax is definatley not a end-all beat-all but for the price, it is indespensable considereng how versatile it is. You still have to do some tweaking and the workbench is perfect for that. I thought the les pauls were great sounding but once I started tweaking with the pickup placement I found the exact sound I wanted that i actually couldn't get from a store bought les paul.
 
as for the alternative tuning it does some special algorythmic crap on your normal tuned strings...only weird thing is if you're recording and don't have your monitors up much you can hear the actual sounds of the strings which are out of tune with your alternately tuned guitar. I just record guitar with cans.....or just turn up your monitors.
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ok that was what was confusing me
 
I'd love to get a used Variax off of Ebay, and get a Warmoth guitar built to accept the electronics, which they do.

Then I could have a guitar with a Wizard profiled neck, nicer (IMO) look to it, and still have all the unbelievably cool abilities of the Variax.
 
My (limited) understanding is that they use a piezo bridge that picks up a separate signal from each string, at that point, all they have to do is do a pitch shift on each signal to get the alternate tunings. Not sure if anyone didn't get that.
 
So hoganshiro seems it the variax runs completely digital how do you go about adding fx with your pod xt?

Does the workbench work as a vsti or something like that and you just run a signal out to you pod and back into your pc?

Or can it tie in with something like guitar rig vst or something along those lines?

I watched the video on the line6 website and it looks like a great piece of work.

Thanks
 
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