ShortScale.org

Picked up a Line 6 Variax Standard in burst locally for £360, no battery, charger or VDI cable (lost in a house move). The seller, nice enough guy, had a Spark to test it through and had it on a fairly gainy setting. I should have asked him to put it on a clean setting as I've got it home and the piezo pickup on the D string is low output and fizzy - sounds like a bad contact somewhere. I hope it's not a bad sensor. The TRS cable and the power supply I built for the Variax 300 worked fine, though.
There have been better deals but too faraway (Doncaster, Newport, Essex).

This is quite a cool, very niche, interest you're developing here!

Funnily enough I found a Youtube video of someone replacing exactly that piezo saddle for a similar reason..
In before Nick says Fretboard needs a good scrub, too.

Looking to investigate the low output/fuzziness of the "D" string I took the bridge off the Variax Standard. There's a PCB attached to it and a wire runs from each bridge saddle to a spot (or "land") on the PCB. Earthing/grounding is through the case of the piezo element, the bridge saddle and screws to the metalwork of the bridge. Loadsa pics: The PCB does also have individual earths/grounds for each piezo element which makes it easier to replace the saddles with Graphtec Ghost piezo saddles if you want (£106 a set at today's prices). At the bridge end the cable that connects it to the main logic board is attached soldered connector, with a plug and socket connector at the and I should have taken a picture of exactly how the cable routes behind the bridge.

Anyway, I was a little suspicious about the soldering of the "D" wire but I decided that while I was ripping it all apart I'd swap the piezo element between the D and the low E saddles. So I did that and now it seems fine on both strings.

Nice job, Nick!

Something about that PCB being bolted to the block like that makes me uncomfortable. I'm not sure why. I suppose it's a sensible way to minimise mechanical wear on the wires going to the saddles.

Well, while I'm largely happy with the guitar modelling I'm not quite so happy with some other aspects.
- I'm not a pickup snob but I'm not that keen on the Yamaha pickups in the Variax Standard and got feedback (not in a good way) when I turned up the gain; they may need wax potting.
- The alternate tunings/virtual capo show that Line 6's pitch shifting is not up to the standard of Digitech's. There can be strange, almost tremolo-like effects on certain notes.
- The modelled guitars seem to have a strange attack that sounds a bit compressed, which maybe a side effect of using piezo pickups. I didn't notice that on the Variax 300 co I'll check that out. There's also talk of an effect described as "plinking" that may be related to piezo as well.
- The models seem to need a bit of finessing to get the balance right - there's a chap who'll sell you a bundle of tweaked models for a consideration...

The guitar was allegedly set up at Anderton's for the previous user, but the action's too high for my taste and I think the neck may need a bit of shimming and/o truss rod adjustment to sort this out. All in all, I haven't exactly fallen completely in love with the Variax Standard, but we'll see what a bit of TLC can do. In the meantime I think I may build a second phantom power box so I can sell one or other or both the Variaxes with power, and see if I can build a MIDI adapter that will substitute for the no-longer-sold Variax USB interface.

damn, those saddles are caked-up

Ain't even Thursday yet