How do you like the Variax standard with the Fractal modeler? I bought one so I can gig lightly and not carry 5 guitars. I am hoping it does a decent job as a tradeoff for convenience. Cheers
Mmm.. For gigging, it will - for the most part, work well. ..Mine needed some serious setup out of the box though. I have never played a crap Yamaha, but this one was a little disappointing out of the box. Needed real amounts of work to get the tuning stable and action set-up nicely - even then, I’m fixing to pull the strings and beam-level and re-dress the frets as I have some annoying buzz.
We’ll assume I got a slightly lemony one. But I rebuild guitars as a hobby, so, no big deal! :0)
I got the Variax more for the programmable tunings and the acoustic models than anything else. The tunings? Man, it works great for that! ..So nice just to switch between tunings.
As for the modeling, well, some of the models are okay, others meh, the rest.. Mmmmm. The acoustic models - to me - sound more like an electric piezo pickup setup with varying amounts of chorus and whatnot - they just sound inorganic and unconvincing to my ears. I wouldn’t feel comfortable recording with it. I much prefer my Godin (for a comparison) in regards to it’s piezo/acoustic sound.
The electric models are better. but nothing I would rave about. Having said that, as an all-in-one general solution for live work? Yeah, you can make it work for most live work as the tones don’t need to be so precise, so it does have its place for that.
It’s basic sound. Modeling bypassed.. Yeah, it’s not bad. But again, not great either. The alternative tunings work great! ..worth repeating :0)
The software (they say), is what you need to dig into to get the guitar to sound good, and that out of the box it sounds “not insanely good”, but I found it limited for tweaking the actual models themselves. Pickup type and placement is gimmicky, when all you really need is a decent set of fundamental EQ, timbre and tone type effects to wrassle with.
But it has its place.
For live work. Yep! ..especially if you couple it with a Helix, as you can control models and tunings with a stomp of the foot. With a Fractal product, that will work too, but it isn’t as synergistic. For recording..mmmm..no ..not really.
... Having said all that: I’m Picky! ...aaaaand I blame Fractal for this! - as they done spoiled me rotten with their insane options and tweakabilty!
