Am I missing something about Variax?

[sully]

Oh ..... that's Bob Mould .....

pick up his later work; bob's a great fucking songwriter. albums like black sheets of rain, workbook, and the sugar albums are all really fucking good.

[hippietim]

i've owned 4 of them - two 500's, a 700, and a 600. They are fine for the most part. The 300's are total crap guitars - only buy if you plan to transplant. The 500's were good enough to use on gigs. I took my first 500 out the night after I got it and played out. It was perfect for that - a bunch of truly random covers and old standards. I got another 500 to use as a project that never panned out. I dumped them when the 700 came out - MUCH better instrument. I was not doing anything resembling cover tunes so I dumped it. Then they came out with the update that let you do the alternate tunings and custom guitar models so I snagged a 600. The guitar itself was fine. I had no problems playing it.

The alternate tuning stuff really blew chunks. It had all sorts of "warble". The custom models were amusing but not inspiring. This time I traded it away.

Fundamentally the guitar sounds very good. Sure, that Variax is not as good as having the actual 20+ expensive guitars it is trying to emulate. Duh. But it is a damn useful instrument - particularly for a cover band.

One word of caution - the 12-strings are truly awful.

[CharvelRocker]

Fundamentally the guitar sounds very good. Sure, that Variax is not as good as having the actual 20+ expensive guitars it is trying to emulate. Duh. But it is a damn useful instrument - particularly for a cover band.

Like a modeling amplifier

[hippietim]

Like a modeling amplifier

exactly.

[Newc]

I had mine programmed (using the Workbench program) for Sabbath models and it did a pretty good job. I could switch to 3 different tunings (E, D, C#) with the flick of a switch. I liked it for that.

As Tim said, the alternate tunings had lots of warble, but it could still go from Traveling Riverside Blues to In My Time Of Dying to She Talks To Angels easily and convincingly. As long as you didn't try to get too fast on it, it was ok.

The acoustic models were ok IMO, but again, as long as you didn't get too fast.

I spent a lot of time in the Workbench program combining various pickup tones (single+HB+Filtertron) as well as pickup positions. That's where you really start to shape the tones. As well, since you could program Tone knob settings and output characteristics for each pickup, that opened up more tonal possibilities.

[charvelguy]

I'm suprised he stopped playing the Ibby V.. man he's used that for like 20+ years if I'm not mistaken.
He's well known around here being he's from the TC.

pick up his later work; bob's a great fucking songwriter. albums like black sheets of rain, workbook, and the sugar albums are all really fucking good.

[omwdc]

they are useful, like an optek, but they lack emotional content

[quiksilver]

Fender's new VG Strat looks like a much better option to me:
http://fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0117502700

[Trypp Powell]

I was excited about the VG Strat until I read it had a $2400.00 list price, had to run on batteries, and does not have a seperate output for routing the acoustic sounds to a suitable amp.