In Praise of the Virtual Capo ***FW 5.02b1***

[Ugly Bunny]

Go get yourself a variax haha. Variax + FM9 is a killer combo. Variax + Helix is insanely customizable. You could have so much fun

That was my suggestion to him over at TGP

I LOVE my Variax. My 90's cover band plays around 200 songs in standard, half-step down, drop D, capo'd, half-step down Drop D, etc., acoustic, electric... I used to have to tune/retune regularly and bring 3 guitars to the gig. Not any more. One guitar (my JTV-59) in a gig bag and I'm set

 

[Jipps0525]

That was my suggestion to him over at TGP

I LOVE my Variax. My 90's cover band plays around 200 songs in standard, half-step down, drop D, capo'd, half-step down Drop D, etc., acoustic, electric... I used to have to tune/retune regularly and bring 3 guitars to the gig. Not any more. One guitar (my JTV-59) in a gig bag and I'm set

thats alot of tunings. I played in a busy cover band and we went between E standard, E flat and some Drop D. Shuriken never let me down.

 

[Ugly Bunny]

thats alot of tunings. I played in a busy cover band and we went between E standard, E flat and some Drop D. Shuriken never let me down.

I might have bought Shuriken if it had a neck pup. I actually use the mag pups frequently with my JTV-59. They sound great; the Les Paul model has a little more bite, but the mag pups have a little more bottom. I only use the LP model when I need to change tuning and still have that LP dual HB sound. I'm not a fan of the piezo "chirp" when you try to 'chug' so I try to stay on the mag pups when I need to play Metallica or Alice in Chains or whatever. Luckily the Virtual Capo is so good now that I more or less just use the pitch shifting on the Variax to do drop D.

 

[Thirtyandseven]

"I didn’t buy the FM3 expecting it would be capable of replacing a drop pedal or using a capo" -- I "partially" did this time around
But honestly, what I need to do for my new band is cover a LOT and alt tunings is just a piece of the puzzle. I had rehearsal last night and brought two guitar, E standard and Eb standard and I could have EASILY handled the Eb with a Drop pedal (which I have incoming for my traditional board OR the FM3 which is also incoming.
I mean, I'm testing Poly Capo from Helix Native at low volume where I can still absolutely hear my guitar strings and the flat tone coming out of the speakers, once I play along with songs I need to learn with the band I'm perfectly fine. This includes latency from the Poly Capo AND from my audio interface / DAW. I really feel like I'm going to be fine going this route. I wonder if many people have completely unrealistic expectations?
I mean, we are already booked solid for the year in this new project.
If someone comes online and says the FM9 virtual capo completely and utterly spanks the FM3 in version 5.x beta then I guess I would consider.

As someone who has owned not one but two drop pedals, has a helix floor and now the FM3. I would say, with the current beta, the virtual capo is great and on par with the helix poly pitch. I don't think either are as good as the drop pedal in the terms of artifacts and excellent latency(not by much tho). With the FM3's and helix's poly pitch, you will pay for less artifacts with more latency. The FM3 with the tracking set to 10 has zero artifacts and in my experience is still very useable. I don't think the helix poly capo set to the extreme end of the tracking parameter is as usable.

However, in the context of a band, I don't believe artifacts are really a problem. Maybe on a clean section, you'd have to try it out. I never notice artifacts with gain applied on any of the units. I also think any of them is good enough to gig with and doesn't warrant the purchase of the drop.

Oh and BTW the drop pedal is useless on bass, the tracking is terrible. The poly capo on the helix is also really bad, so bad that I just used the mono. The FM3 is good with the occasional artifact with the tracking at 5.

With all that said, I don't have much experience with the virtual capo on the Axe fx III or FM9 but I wouldn't venture to say that's it's the deciding factor between these units. That would be (IMO): how much reverb and delay you want to use, dual amps, and in general CPU per preset. Of course the amount of foot switches too lol.

 

[la szum]

Go get yourself a variax haha. Variax + FM9 is a killer combo. Variax + Helix is insanely customizable. You could have so much fun

Definitely more versatile. If not for that dreaded piezo pinginess of the Variax. I have been listening to it
from the other guitarist in the band I play in for 5 years now. He hates it, too. But it is a trade-off for the
ability to go from Drop C# in one song to an acoustic tuned to DADGAD in the next.

 

[la szum]

That was my suggestion to him over at TGP

I LOVE my Variax. My 90's cover band plays around 200 songs in standard, half-step down, drop D, capo'd, half-step down Drop D, etc., acoustic, electric... I used to have to tune/retune regularly and bring 3 guitars to the gig. Not any more. One guitar (my JTV-59) in a gig bag and I'm set

If you do all that with the Variax why were you initially so bent about the VC in the FM3?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[la szum]

I might have bought Shuriken if it had a neck pup. I actually use the mag pups frequently with my JTV-59. They sound great; the Les Paul model has a little more bite, but the mag pups have a little more bottom. I only use the LP model when I need to change tuning and still have that LP dual HB sound. I'm not a fan of the piezo "chirp" when you try to 'chug' so I try to stay on the mag pups when I need to play Metallica or Alice in Chains or whatever. Luckily the Virtual Capo is so good now that I more or less just use the pitch shifting on the Variax to do drop D.

Haha! We have taken to calling it a "ping" but "chirp" works, too. It sure is noticeable. Kind of crazy that
both you and my buddy, Keith, resort to the mag pups as much as possible when playing anything remotely
heavy or chuggy. Sadly, since we do so many tunes where he has to alt-tune using the Variax he only uses
the mag pups in standard tuning.

I almost had him going Fractal. I loaned him my FM3 and he believes it is a superior unit EXCEPT for the
versatility you get when you pair the Helix with the Variax. Not really something you can even approach
with just a Fractal alone.

He covers the acoustic stuff and anything DADGAD (or open tuning related). I just put a Whammy DT in
front of the FM3. I need to not be lazy and find out how to assign a modifier to/from the VC block so I
can ditch the DT.

 

[OasisNinjaBat]

I have a SY-1000 & a GK pickup i use for all poly phonic changes. Does drop and alternate tunings really well. It's a pain to make new patches but it's great for cover band stuff.

 

[Petrocelli]

I wonder that i dont read a line about The Gibson G-Force System in this thread.
I bought mine in 2015, but not why i need this specs but why i like the feal and sound of the Guitar. It Is a Les Paul Classic with splittable Humbuckers and an active switchable Boost. With this Guitar, there is no latency or the thin sounding bass strings of the variax models or the piezo pling! Its just pure analog. Surely, its not as fast as flipping the rotary switch in the Variax, but you can store different open tunings as well.
I dont have a big usage of the features, we mostly play the songs in normal tuning, but its nice to have!

 

[Ugly Bunny]

If you do all that with the Variax why were you initially so bent about the VC in the FM3?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Because I use MIDI to automate all my preset/scene/block/pitch-shifting; so while I COULD just use the Variax for half-step down tuning, it wouldn't be automatic when I flip to that song in OnSong (which sends MIDI via Bluetooth, yadda yadda yadda).

Haha! We have taken to calling it a "ping" but "chirp" works, too. It sure is noticeable. Kind of crazy that
both you and my buddy, Keith, resort to the mag pups as much as possible when playing anything remotely
heavy or chuggy. Sadly, since we do so many tunes where he has to alt-tune using the Variax he only uses
the mag pups in standard tuning.

I almost had him going Fractal. I loaned him my FM3 and he believes it is a superior unit EXCEPT for the
versatility you get when you pair the Helix with the Variax. Not really something you can even approach
with just a Fractal alone.

He covers the acoustic stuff and anything DADGAD (or open tuning related). I just put a Whammy DT in
front of the FM3. I need to not be lazy and find out how to assign a modifier to/from the VC block so I
can ditch the DT.

I think maybe I named it myself before I read what others were calling it... but I guess whatever onomatopoeia works, eh? lol

But yeah, I wouldn't manually retune to DADGAD or anything too extreme, but I wouldn't mind dropping the D. I haven't tied it yet, since it's so easy to just flip the knob, but I think I could live with that. Most of the time in this band I've played my PRS John Mayer, so switching tunings like that is not feasible on a guitar with a floating trem, so I haven't really broken out of that mindset even though I now have a fixed-bridge guitar.

Note: I haven't done it yet, but you can make a MIDI cable that can connect to the Variax and make it just as versatile as using it with the Helix, albeit a little more setup up front. This is on my to-do-list

I wonder that i dont read a line about The Gibson G-Force System in this thread.
I bought mine in 2015, but not why i need this specs but why i like the feal and sound of the Guitar. It Is a Les Paul Classic with splittable Humbuckers and an active switchable Boost. With this Guitar, there is no latency or the thin sounding bass strings of the variax models or the piezo pling! Its just pure analog. Surely, its not as fast as flipping the rotary switch in the Variax, but you can store different open tunings as well.
I dont have a big usage of the features, we mostly play the songs in normal tuning, but its nice to have!

I remember when those came out; I actually tried them out at the Gibson room at NAMM in 2015. I was impressed by the concept, but the actual result left a little to be desired. I felt like it still needed some fine-tuning after the robo tuners did their job. It got you close, but not perfect.

 

[Gasp100]

I had the JT69 Variax (twice!) years ago when I played in a Top 40 pop/rock coverband. I did a pretty cool tones video (at home) of the JTV and my AxeFX II at that time, I'll see if I can find it. But when it came time to gig I still felt it was too complex to be using knobs/swtiches on guitar, etc. to make changes at gigs and very difficult to get levels and patches sorted between something like a clean acoustic patch and rock gain. I was the only guitarist in that band and we also always shot for zero dead air between songs, tons of medley's. We also tuned and stayed in E standard.
This gig is traditional and modern country and I play Telecasters 100% of the time.
We will have more leeway between songs, but it's a LOT of new material and there is a LOT of arrangements that I need to do because of all the layers on recordings and once again, I'm the sole electric guitarist (lead singer plays acoustic which is great). We will do primarily E standard 50% (including some Drop D trad country), Eb standard 40% (including drop C#/Db), F standard 9% (I'll use a CAPO when using my traditional board) and one song where I tune E standard and Drop C to mimic a baritone.
And that's just the "common ground" list LOL.
I have a Digitech Drop coming tomorrow to add to my traditional pedalboard that has a Strymon Iridium if I choose to go DI. So that will cover E standard and Eb standard and be a great comparison to virtual capo.
I have the FM3 that should arrive this afternoon. I used to go kitchen sync but now I will have at least 3 kitchen sync presets: E standard, Eb standard and F standard -- NO CAPO YEAH! But I also need an array of FX -- Trem is extremely important, decent verbs, cloud verbs for ethereal stuff to fill out some modern country, chorus, phaser, delay of course.
One tact I'm trying with the FM3 this time is ONE AMP / IR. The idea is to build my traditional board inside the FM3 (with virtual capo as listed above). But way more seemless control using scenes etc. and compare workflow with my traditional board. I'm going to start with a Browne Protein up front to knock down the digital edge of the input and to offload some processing and less scenes by only using maybe one virtual drive. The virtual amp just needs to be sweet and clean/cleanish. Basically a perfect virtual image of my Fender Princeton FSR or Dr. Z MAZ 18 mkII that will be sent output 1 (maybe in stereo) to FOH.
I expect over time getting more comfortable with using FM3 scenes, channels and drives and the Protein will probably go.
But for this project I'm quite adamant about a REAL tube amp backline for the first phase.
This is actually one of the hardest things for the FM3 to pull off. It absolutely introduces some extraneous line noise in front of a real amp and does not feel as good under the fingers even compared to a traditional board, even if that board has some digital like H9, Strymon. I'm hoping my Protein or Source Audio ZIO helps with that, but the virtual capo is going to be really important and the scenes/channels as well.
We may end up playing some big stages where it's just simpler and more effective to go totally DI (no amp backline) as well. FM3 is perfect fit for that.
So I guess in the beginning I'll be using the FM3 as FX processor only for the most part.

 

[Jipps0525]

With regards to the “plink” or “chirp” from palm mutes, I don’t really get that sound anymore. I bought the Chad husky mega bundle and he custom made a whole bunch of solid presets that are all well leveled volume wise. I generally only used one guitar preset with my hot humbucker in the bridge and then strat sounds positions 1-4. And I usually only had to go between E, Eb and drop D. But I was starting to experiment with some drop Djent stuff to try some new sounds within pop tunes. But yeah idk. The plink was never a big issue for me. The convenience is def the trade off for sure because the crowd is never gonna know. I started with a love hate relationship with my shuriken but def grew to love it for a Top 40 cover band. However, if the fm9 firmware updates virtual capo is indeed better, I would
Be open minded to using a non variax guitar and just dropping the string to D. But doubtful, I’d rather just get a backup variax. I think they’re so cool now. I love being able
To go from a smooth clean strat to a gnarly humbucker haha

 

[Ugly Bunny]

With regards to the “plink” or “chirp” from palm mutes, I don’t really get that sound anymore. I bought the Chad husky mega bundle and he custom made a whole bunch of solid presets that are all well leveled volume wise. I generally only used one guitar preset with my hot humbucker in the bridge and then strat sounds positions 1-4. And I usually only had to go between E, Eb and drop D. But I was starting to experiment with some drop Djent stuff to try some new sounds within pop tunes. But yeah idk. The plink was never a big issue for me. The convenience is def the trade off for sure because the crowd is never gonna know. I started with a love hate relationship with my shuriken but def grew to love it for a Top 40 cover band. However, if the fm9 firmware updates virtual capo is indeed better, I would
Be open minded to using a non variax guitar and just dropping the string to D. But doubtful, I’d rather just get a backup variax. I think they’re so cool now. I love being able
To go from a smooth clean strat to a gnarly humbucker haha

Yeah, I can live with the plink/chirp/gerbils/etc lol! I mean, in a band context, the audience is never going to hear it, notice, or care. I have the Husky pack as well.

I'm tempted also to get a second Variax. My guitarists (lead guitarist) uses the JTV-89F. I like the idea of having a 24-fret model, dual HB, with FR tremolo. I'm not crazy about spending $1200 right now, though lol.

 

[dantahoua]

I'm on the reverse here, I have to try it with my baritone guitar when I want to play regular tuning songs... Will see if it works! (My baritone is in B-E-A-D-F#-B...)

 

[Ugly Bunny]

I'm on the reverse here, I have to try it with my baritone guitar when I want to play regular tuning songs... Will see if it works! (My baritone is in B-E-A-D-F#-B...)

Ooh! Please do report back. I'm curious. I've never really used it to tune up!

 

[dantahoua]

Ooh! Please do report back. I'm curious. I've never really used it to tune up!

Ok, I just tested it finally. Work great, perfectly usable! Was able to play Still of the Night with the record playing with my baritone. Only problem was my baritone is a semi-hollow and has a lot of acoustic volume! But it's not a Fm3 problem here!

 

[Gasp100]

Ok FM3 arrived and so did the Digitech Drop. I have to say, it's extremely close between just the FM3 with virtual capo for Eb (running 5.01b) and the Drop. The Drop may have the slightest edge, but certainly not a reason to have a drop integrated with FM3.
And the FM3 virtual capo set to F standard will be perfectly acceptable.
I'm using a nearly dead clean patch so I can hear all artifacts, latency, etc. and I'm playing solo right in front of studio monitors and can still hear very slight originally pitched strings.
I need to dial my grit and rock tones to really get going, but that plus playing along to tracks (learning a ton for this band) will be stellar.
And actually playing with the band I really think there is no way I'll have any issues at all.
Like I said, the Drop is dedicated to a traditional board, but it is nice to do a quick head to head!

 

[scott.frank.b]

I had not yet used the Virtual Capo because I had heard so many people gripe about it on here. Well I decided to update my country patch with a pitch block and a virtual capo for a half step up, since that's what I actually use my capo for gigging. It sounds perfect with no artifacts!! I would say I'm shocked but it's just more fuel to convince people to switch to Fractal.

 

[Ugly Bunny]

I had not yet used the Virtual Capo because I had heard so many people gripe about it on here. Well I decided to update my country patch with a pitch block and a virtual capo for a half step up, since that's what I actually use my capo for gigging. It sounds perfect with no artifacts!! I would say I'm shocked but it's just more fuel to convince people to switch to Fractal.

Nice! Completely agree. My final goal is to get my second guitarist to switch. I’ve already brainwashed my bassist

 

[Will Schut]

When I use the VC (-5) I put a compressor just before it, max out the detection in the Pitch block and add a PEQ after to get the sound as close to my "uncapoed sound" as possible (taking out some lows, adding some 2K). The difference between my uncapoed low E and the VC A (-5) is really, really small. You can get great results if you're not just depending on the Pitch block to take care of business, but compensate in other blocks to. Use (multiband)compression, eq, change cabs, raise input trim in the Amp block, there are no rules!