Variax guitars

[rogb]

Hi anybody with experience O line 6 variax guitars(600 moel in particular)
I am considering getting one to use in my covers band, in particular for the acoustic & 12 st sounds
Cheers
Rog

[dave robinson]

I bought the very expensive acoustic version of the Variax back in 2004 and took it back after a few days for a refund - it sounded nothing like the guitars that is claimed to 'clone'. Very disappointing.

If you want the sound of a Gibson SJ-200 or an acoustic twelve string, my advice is by the real thing. I have these guitars and discovered that the Variax comes nowhere near.

[BrianD]

Totally agree with Dave's comments. I tried a Variax on a gig and was underwhelmed. I now use Patrick Eggle acoustics, 6 and 12.

Brian

[RUSSET]

If you have the need for an electric that does acoustic tones too, check out the review in 'Guitarist' mag this month for the new Fender Acoustasonic Tele. It has a chambered Tele Ash body, a Piezo acoustic pickup & a Tele magnetic neck pickup. It gets five stars out of five in every review category, which is rare, & the mag is over the moon about it's sound & perfomance. It's not cheap at about £900, but they say it is definately a real value guitar.
I play mainly Rhythm guitar in my band, & use my Strat through a Zoom G2 pedal mostly on the Acoustic simulation model, which I have tweaked to my satisfaction. This works great for me, & I only have to pedal to another patch to change the tone to another sound .
Tony.

[noelford]

I have no experience of the acoustic but I've had the solid 700 Variax for a number of years and my experience is totally different to Dave's. My Variax is brilliant, the majority of the tones very authentic and a beautiful guitar to play with a lovely neck, a great action and a trem that doesn't put the guitar out of tune. I have a nice collection of genuine vintage guitars, but the Variax stands up extremely well against them. I've never regretted buying the Variax.

[JimN]

I've had the solid 700 Variax for a number of years and my experience is totally different to Dave's. My Variax is brilliant, the majority of the tones very authentic and a beautiful guitar to play with a lovely neck, a great action and a trem that doesn't put the guitar out of tune. I have a nice collection of genuine vintage guitars, but the Variax stands up extremely well against them. I've never regretted buying the Variax.

I tend to agree. My son has a Variax (the no-trem model, unfortunately), which I have used on one gig. All the six-string guitar sounds were usable and reasonably authentic, even the acoustic settings (bearing in mind that even a J200 doesn't sound quite itself when amplified on a built-in Fishman or similar). The definite weak points are the 12 string sounds (completely unconvincing!) and the banjo setting. The sitar is so-so - quite like the Coral Sitar, but again, that doesn't really sound like a real sitar anyway.

JN

[cockroach]

I tried a Variax when they first came out a few years ago.

Very impressive and very clever...but to my ears, there seemed to be a very slight delay between the note played and the sound from the amp - although this was nowhere near as bad as the tracking problems on early synthesiser guitars..

Also there seemed to be a wide variation in volume levels when switching between the different guitar model sound settings, and the separate power supply sytem, either using batteries or that mains cable(?) thing seemed to be another potential extra source of trouble on a gig...

Obviously there's no way that the individual sounds are ALL going to be spot on...and we can't all afford a bunch of genuine Strats, Les Pauls, J-200;s etc - whether genuine vintage or re-issues etc - perhaps just for a local club or pub gig...!

So the idea of having one instrument at a reasonable price that is ultra-versatile and 'does it all' is very interesting for many regular gig players.

I had a hybrid guitar some years ago when my group were doing a very wide variety of music styles to get gig!s- it was a Godin LGX solidbody- with both acoustic and electric pickups..but although a great guitar, it was very difficult to cope with on stage, especially whilst singing and playing- so many knobs, switches, settings, options and so hard to quickly change sounds and then capture the previous settings etc. For the same reason, I have never used a multi-effects pedal board type unit on stage either.

So I guess you pay your money and make your choice!!

[David Martin]

I think the amp you use it with has a lot of bearing on how good the acoustic Variax sounds. I use mine with a Roland AC60 and to my ears sounds fine...

(I don't like guitars with holes in them - whatever will they think of next?)

Where are you Roger? You could always try mine...

[noelford]

I tried a Variax when they first came out a few years ago.

Very impressive and very clever...but to my ears, there seemed to be a very slight delay between the note played and the sound from the amp - although this was nowhere near as bad as the tracking problems on early synthesiser guitars..

I can honestly say there is absolutely no delay/latency with my Variax.

[ecca]

I had a Roland VG which was, in the main, a very workable emulation of a lot of guitars. ( You're right Jim, 12 string, banjo and sitar were crap )
The principle was the same, the guitars etc were modelled and not sampled and there is no delay, at all.