Line 6 Variax

This is the guitar that models strats, teles,Les Pauls,Ricky's 6 & 12 Semis and several acoustics.
No Pickups just modelling technology.
replacable neck(a Strat neck will retro-fit)
five way selector. volume and tone, model selector.
Made in korea but you wouldn't think it when playing it, honest!
really good quality Gig Bag( and that's all we want lets be honest)

All the soounds are spot-on. for instance when you select Strat(Spank) positions 2, you are Knopfler. all the other sounds are just great!!(Nuff said)
Tone controls, everything is great, you can't go wrong.

Action a bit high, but playabilty is great. This guitar feels lovely to gig, it really rocks.one problem with emergency re-stringing is tha the Bottom E string saddle had to be retracted a bit to allow the Broken string to be removed and the new string to be put in. this is no fun during a half time break at a gig!!!!!

THis seems like a solid guitar. My only criticism is that I have over the last two years got used to the tuning stability of the parker Fly Deluxe.My other guitars(Les paul and Ibanez Blazer, share the same tuning failings as the Variax so I have been forced to buy a stage tuner!
It is always at the back of my mind that the batteries will not last long on this guitar. The foot pedal is very nice in providing power for the guitar electrics but who wants the bother of running mains power to the front of the stage?

uuuhh...pass....

As a guitar player I love this guitar, it is a guitar player's guitar.This guitar really feels great and comfortable to play.When you switch to Les Paul it really rocks when you switch to Tele/Strat sounds it's great, the acoustic sounds are spot on. In fact there isn't a sound on the guitar that isn't great and usable.
Playing live is a completely different storey. My three issues with the guitar is 1, when you switch from les paul to strat,or any of the other sound for that matter, the difference in volume is massive.In the studio this won't be a problem but live it renders the other sounds vitually useless because nobody has time to run over to their amp and change gain settings during a gig. 2,the switching between electric and acoustic sounds requires not only switching by hand but also switching on the foot pedal to select the DI path. In the studio you have all the time in the world, but on stage you have nano seconds to get it right for the next change. 3, the batteries which run the on-board modelling system don't last that long and have let people(not me yet) down. Pro players don't want to have to run out mains to the switching unit just to power the guitar.Line6 really need to put their R&D people out on high pressure fast moving gigs which is where us pros live, because it is live musicians that get noticed for what gear they use and influence other players whether they be bedroom heroes or live gig adrenaline junkies.

I wish I could change the models e.g. the output level and so on (maybe with a special PC-Editor) but it's not possible (yet ?)

I play guitar for years (mainly blues stuff). My main guitar setting is a fender custom shop strat (with two texas special puckups and a jeff beck humbucker) and a fender tube amp (DeVelle 4*10").

Beside of this I use other guitars and some virtual amps (Yamaha DG-Stomp, VAmp).

I liked to buy a LesPauls and found the variax which claimed to model the LesPauls and other guitars too.

I checked the Variax in a shop with both an fender tube amp (clean channel) and a Marshall combo (drive settings):
First I checked the fender (clean channel):
The clean sound where very good and all sound different (more or less).
The acoustic sounds sounded bad and the 12 string very bad.

Than I use the Marshall:
Both Strat and LesPauls settings sounded nice. I thought of selling my strat.

Than me and another customer compared the variax with a 'real' Les Pauls (the sound I am interested mostly).
Both instruments sounded almost the same !

After about 2 hours of testing I bought the variax.

At home I switched on my fender amp and compared the variax (strat setting) with my 'real' strat: If my strat is a 10 the variax is a 5 or 6. I dislike the sound of the variax strat compared to my strat. But I have to say the my strat is a special model 'Ritchie Sambora' Custom Shop with some pickup replacements and other modifications.
I was very disappointed of the sound of this guitar all pickup positions of my real strat sounded much better.
Maybe the variax sounded as a 'normal' old strat - Maybe I can compare it later.

Then I connected the variax to my virtual stuff (VAmp) and again everything sounded not very nice - I was short for returning the guitar - and went to bet very disapointed.

The next day I tryed the acoustic sounds and again it sounded not very nice thru my amp. I connected the variax directly to a mixer and a PA and now the sun rises ! The acoustic sounds are very good but you need a special acoustic amp or go directly into a PA. (The 12 strings are still bad !)

After some tweaking on the VAmp I got a lot of nice sounds out of the box and am happy with the guitar now. I use the VAmp for the E-Git sounds and the mixer for the A-Git sounds and it works and sound nice.

The problem with the strat sound is, that the variax output level of the strat models is very low compared with the pickups of my real strat. Thats why the guitar sounded so poor compared to the 'real' thing.

Mine is very well build - I like the guitar and can play very fast and easy.

I found that if you play a string and increase from very soft to hart the sound is very low at the beginning, gets louder and suddenly much louder, after this step is reached the volume gets louder as expected.

This is a little strange but all this happend only by vers soft playing - the advantage is you have some kind of inbuild noisegate.

You need a special cabel and a special footswitch with included power supply. Or a normal cable and 6 AA's (for 12 hours of playing)

You name them!

If you are into clean, non-damped stuff or stick with the acoustic and reso-sounds the axe sounds quite nice if not great. One thing that really pisses me off is the balance of the string-volumes. It can really be a pain in the ...e to play a clean solo without any compression added. Some strings are always louder than others... Especially on the acoustics this is driving me mad.
As is the damping on the electrics! Try to play the intro of "Summer of 69" (Yeah, I hate that song too..) and tell me how that sounds. The pickup is just not in the right place for damping behind your palm. What can it pick up there when damping? Not much, as you can guess. Also you always hear something like a clicking when muting the strings and playing through an overdriven amp, and although the undamped sounds are pretty good, they really suck when you are damping the strings, this is a fact! (I cannot write this often enough!) I want Line 6 to please put (almost) linear-sounding magnetic pickups (3 of them!) into this axe for the electric sounds, that would be ...king perfect!

It was perfect set-up, finish is great, everything was in the right place, better made than most of the most newer Gibsons that ran through my hands.

I will only use it as an acoustic-guitar substitute and for its special reso-sounds which are great, I will definitely not use it for Rock, Blues or Metal.

Overall I#m looking forward for the next step in guitarmodeling!

2003 Sunburst... Very cool look, nice balance, and solid feel! I noticed on the reviews that the Variax gets much better reviews from those who have been playing a long time. I have been playing since 1980 (23 years)... This guitar is fantastical! I'm giving this awesome baby a 10 because she deserves it and because some weenies rated her way too low!

This is the most important quality. I have a Fender Acoustasonic amp for my acoustic guitars and I am very pleased with the precise quality of the sounds. They exceed or perfectly match the Martins, Gibson, and the old Guild 12 string. The Guild 12 string is dog nuts, and since it is played on 6 strings, you can play barre chords all the way up the frets! How cool is that!!! The only beef I have is that you have to adjust the volume from one axe to another.

The action from the factory was right on. The natural wood is nice but could have been a more attractive wood type. Still she looks sweet. The neck is "no frills" and would be faster with maple fret board, but still very nice.

I have played this axe inside and outside, hot & cold temperatures, ballads and rockers all in the same week without any problem. It stays in tune so faithfully, I don't feel the need to change strings as much as I do on my Les Paul... I always have a back-up guitar in case a string breaks, but that's not happened yet with this Variax.

I have dealt with Line 6, and they fixed a glitch on this guitar and had it back to me in 7 days from the time I sent it back. No problem since then. (By the way, they were kind and paid the postage both ways, and patiently answered lots of questions).

I've been playing for 23+ years. Those who say the sounds do not match or surpass their favorite guitars are either sentimental, have spent alot of time with their gear, or are just plain dolts who do not know much Clapton, Page, Santana, or Schon. A tremolo bar and steady volume on all guitars would have made this perfect... If stolen I would buy another ASAP.

The features are great on this guitar. Although, we're not all the way there yet, it shows us that physics, mathematics, and computers can come really close to the real thing.

I love the sounds of most of the electrics, eps. the Tele and the LPs, but the acoustics still need a little work. There are about 2 or 3 that need to be fixed.

Although the sleek metal finish is attractive, there's no body to it. I would still much prefer a carved body LP.

This guitar is very solid. I like it a lot. It seems to hold itself real well.

They will be offering updates on the different models here in the future and that's a plus. You don't have to go buy the newest version of it everytime!

I've been playing for over 2 years but I've been around guitars for A LOT longer (maybe 5 more?), it just took me a while to pick it up after a friend told me to. I'm more of the singer, but I love guitars. I've studied physics, construction, and method about them.

I really like this guitar. Just some minor things that need to be fixed. Like adding an XLR out, body design, and the acoustic models.

Easy to use, plays well, many guitars and other stringed instruments to play with.

There are one or two models that need improvement, but due to the foolish reviews some others have posted my 9 will become a 10.

This is a solid instrument. Althought it doesn't match up with the best (most Gibsons, American Fender, Paul Reed Smith, Gretch), it is better than say a Mexican Strat and most other Korean guitars.

Very solid.

A little slow with updates on their products, but overall a good company to work with.

I have an '81 Les Paul Standard. I like the Les Paul sound on the Variax better, believe it or not. But I like the feel of the Gibson better. It is nice to be able to switch guitars instantly in the middle of a song.

There are obviously some trolls and tone deaf individuals posting reviews on this product, so I must counter them...my 9 is now a 10.

Great idea. My dream guitar. I wish it worked. Maybe the next generation will have a different pick-up and better quality.

I?ve played several Variax guitars and this is the prognosis. The variax does not accurately reproduce mute techniques. For example: (not that you would necessarily want to play these songs). The intro to The Clash ?Should I stay or should I go??. The muted rake will sound like a regular open strum. You cannot reproduce the muted no-cord sections similar to Rage Against the Machine, ?Killing in the name of?. You cannot get the semi-muted+chord strums that you may want to use for ska or funk. This guitar is also useless for heavily and semi-muted individual plucked note runs that you may find in country music as well. And forget about heavy metal or nu-metal played by someone over 13 years old. The piezo transducer is a bad choice of pickup for standard electric guitar picking dynamics. It just will not reproduce the strum+mute semi-mute or the pick+mute correctly. It doesn?t glitch, it just doesn?t mute right. I can?t believe that serious guitar players aren?t sickened by this guitar. This is only useful for guitarists that use an on/off mute techniques (1st year beginners?). It does sound like a decent guitar in straight strumming situations. Incidentally the quality and construction are a joke. Most $100 import strat copies are built much better. Some of the variax?s that I played had the truss rod cover cut to the wrong size so it was not flush to the head stock, touching the strings at the nut with the screws in crooked.

The quality and construction are a joke. Most $100 import strat copies are built much better (squire, etc). Some of the variax?s that I played had the truss rod cover cut to the wrong size so it was not flush to the head stock, touching the strings at the nut with the screws in crooked (on a $1000 guitar?!?!). The action and amount of fret buzz varied dramatically from one to the next. This is NOT even close to the quality of a 300 dollar guitar (Hamer import, Fender-Squire, OLP, JB Somebody etc).

Good Luck on this. If the construction is so poor, I would worry about the electronics.

Don't know.

See above text.

Anyone who has read the other reviews doesn't need me to say this thing has a 5 way switch, vol, tone and bank control. The guitar itself other than that isn't exceptional, but it is obviously unusual to have 30 odd different sounds in one guitar

Can people please wake up here? This is NOT the same as owning a dobro/sitar/etc. It is like a guitar with an effects processor, which you could buy externally for a lot less than #750

It's not so bad, but it isn't comparable to other guitars at 750 (eg Fender/Gibson)

Not that I've had any opportunity to break the thing, but just imagine if you do: who can fix it? How long will this gimmick be in production? Compare this to a 1950s telecaster: no one's going to be fixing this in 50 years' time, in the same way no one is fixing the 1980's computers in cars: when they go wrong, they're cheaper to scrap. There's no investment value here: in 2 years time these guitars are going to be half the price and twice as good, and your guitar is going to be worth half that if you're lucky. You're buying a computer!

n/a

I've been playing for a long time, but I'm not such a great guitarist. What I can say is that I've played lots of different types and this doesn't fool anyone. Buy a cheap guitar and cheap effects pedal (like the zoom or toneworks ones), and you'll get better vfm. Better still, you can keep updating your effects pedal, which will be obsolete after 5 minutes (like this guitar will be)

Lots of different guitars...of course, nothing else comes close.

I do miss tremolo arm (for strat and gretsch) and nylon string model.

I also think there should be a heavy metal model (maybe Ibanez JEM), then tremolo arm would be even more missed of course.

I like that you can easily create your own 'custom guitar' (Custom I and II)

I like almost all sounds. I've played 3/4 of the modeled guitars in real life and they all sound very source characteristic.

To mention some Favourites:
56 LP Junior with P90 - great rock'n roll position, more transparent than LP with humbucker, more drive and mids than tele. Very authentic.

Rickenbacker neck - very smooth but clear sound. Usable alternative to the Strat neck. Never played a Rbacker, but this sounds good.

Gibson Super 400 - fat, smooth, short sound. You get the feel of an old jazzbox.

Acoustics - sounds great (would be greater if you could use acoustic (XLR to PA) and electric (line to amp) at the same time and mix acc/elec sounds, like a Parker)


Not so good:
Tele Custom neck, positon 4 - no tone control, dark and muddy. I suppose the original sounded like that. Unnecessary.

The 12-strings are OK but not great. Works well in a context.

Sunburst, nice finish. Poorly setup from factory, but nothing the guitar dealer couldn't fix. Remains a slight buzz on E1 string (on both guitars I tried), especially when bent.

The guitar itself feels like it should cost half the price, the rest you pay for is the electronics. Solid feeling though.

Stayed in tune on the premier gig.

The instrument seems pretty solid, shouldn't be any problems. You never know about the electronics though.

I've played for 25 years, I use a Flextone II, my other guitars are Guild BM Red Special, Gibson LP, Strat and Guild Starfire III. These guitars are premium quality guitars, Variax does not come up to that quality. But it's still priceworthy, lots of sounds with decent build quality. It looks nice, classic electric guitar looks.

I guess they will eventually release a tremolo version, with the extra features that the first customers miss (nylon, hevy metal...). A bit annoying, you will propably want to upgrade, that's the price you pay for being a pioneer.

The electric guitar is a 50 year old invention, about time something new happens! Would given it a 10, but I miss tremolo and nylon. You can always discuss the choice of models of course.

I tried this one in the shop. It's the 4th one I tried, and although not obviously noticeable, there is some quality variation. The last one I tried was spanking new and it was the best I tried.
Colour is important, I don't really like the red one, black is classy I think. I thought the sunburst was a little 'obvious' considering the vintage models, but I think it does look best.

Models are good. But what about a nice SG or a Fender Jaguar? Perhaps a few modern guitars such as a PRS or Zemaitis would be nice. Again, a nylon would be nices and I could do without the sitar and banjo (Line6 showing off their technology).

Always plug a Variax into a tube amp when you try it, makes a big difference. Since most models are from a tube-era this works best comparison-wise. I have also tried it on a new Marshall TSL but was disappointed, it's too high-gain maybe.

Best models:
Les Paul, I think it sounds incredible. Very smooth, very deep and the tone and volume controls seem to work accurately. A week ago I tried 2 Les Pauls in the same store and sound-wise, the Variax was better than the Epiphone and just as good/more vintage than the Gibson LP Studio. Zeppelin, Bluesbreakers, Gary Moore, it was all there.
Tele: This is where the Variax truly shines. It's a very pointy sound, trebly, but not piercing. I found it good for country and the spontaneous Zeppelin solo.
Les Paul Custom: Brilliant sound, very wide and spanky at the same time.
Epiphone Casino: instant Beatles, nice round short-springed sound. Good with a little overdrive.
Gibson Super 400: very warm and honky. It seems like there's a delay of some kind when you attack the string. The tone comes out a fraction late and you really get the feeling you're playing this massive jazz-guitar. It had so much bass I had to reign in on the tone control. Very nice for jazz leads and subtle phrasing.

I like a lot of other models too such as the Firebird (Roxy Music anyone?) and the Bob Marley Special (conving for - indeed - reggae).

Not convinced with the Strat though, the lack of hum maybe. Each time I play the Variax I want to like the Strat but it doesn't play like one. The tone seems a bit solid and sterile to me, whereas my own strat is lively and frayed. If Line6 had a button to include hum I'd use it.

The acoustics aren't bad. I read some bad stuff on the 12 strings but if you spend a while with these models they are very usable. Besides, who can switch to a 12 string that quick?

You could have guessed I'm a Zeppelin fan. I was finally able to play Stairway to Heaven with one guitar. Start with a 6 string acoustic, go to a 12 string electric, perhaps a Les Paul for the heavy part and then a Tele for the solo!! Just some level differences that interferred with the fun.

I also have the idea the sounds are all slightly hotter than the real thing. This is a good thing for the sound to noise ratio but it does make your amp overdrive more. Depends on what you want.

On higher drive settings and death metal antics, the Variax is not a good choice. It sounds restrained and sterile and emphasizes treble/mid tones. Then again you wouldn't use these models for this kind of music.

It's worthwile waiting a bit until Line6 has a good grip on its quality. The first models I tried felt cheap, mainly due to the fret edges. The whole look of the neck and headstock is a bit of a letdown if you are used to quality guitars. I didn't care anymore when I felt like Clapton in '66 however.

The guitar sounds better with thicker strings (from 010 upwards). Setup is too low however, take it up with a bit of slack in the neck and it would be perfect for bends.

You can see the body laminates on the sunburst only. Will Line6 ever bring out a top-quality version?

No doubts about reliability. I would always use the pedal for power though, no batteries please..

No contact yet.

No competition for Line 6 at this point. A hands-down winner. YOu must praise Line 6 for putting this much effort into a guitar that monopolizes the market. That's encouraging to buyers. I suppose they'll come up with a Variax Bass soon and then high end Variaxes and new downloadable models (1962 SG Standard please!).
I'm saving up for it now, I'll be happy to use it soon.