Nerdy Guitar Rig, Part 1
The Variax is an elegant, functional guitar, whose look is lent a great dignity by its lack of pickups.
To play in my wife's Nerd Band, the Captains of the Chess Team, I took a perfectly good, new Variax and taped a pickup to it. I also run three wires (Well, four if you count the one I added last night) between it and the pedalboard. Why, you ask? Read on.
At 10:52 AM 8/18/2007, Ed wrote:
Why does your Variax use 3 cables?
I'm up to 4 now!!! But let's start with the first three:
1. The Variax(R) power/signal cable goes from Variax out to Variax power supply. From there, one would normally just patch from the power supply to the amp and be done with it, happy to be able to sound like any guitar. But not me. Oh, No. Not me. Well, not in _this_ band.
1.5 Optional. If I have a tuner or the Vocalist Live or anything else that wants to "hear" the guitar when maybe the audience doesn't need to hear it, I pop it into the circuit here.
2. The Variax guitar signal now comes out of the power supply (Or "Step 1.5″ gizmo) and _back up_ to the guitar, plugging in to the "normal" input on the Roland GK-3 MIDI pickup. If a person only had a guitar and a Roland GK-3, then instead of steps 1 and 2, they'd just run a little 3-inch cable from their guitar's jack to the GK-3, and they'd be all caught up to where I am now. But _they_ wouldn't have nice AC power to their Variax, nor would they have the ability to play guitar into the Vocalist Live and mute the sound of the guitar at the guitar end.
3. The GK-3 now sends the combined Variax/GK-3 signal down its special 312-pin cable, or whatever that is, to the GR-20 guitar synth, and from there we go to the amplifier. There's a little switch on the GK-3 that lets me select between guitar, synth, or both.
So, in short, I've got two advantages over a normal one-cable setup:
-I still have a useful guitar signal down at the effects pedals, even if it's not coming out the amp, which is WAY cool for the Vocalist Live 2.
-Even ignoring the above, a 1-cable setup would either get me normal guitar with a GK-3, or Variax on battery (Only 4 Hours???No WAY) with a GK-3, or a Variax on A/C with no GK-3, or a normal guitar with no GK-3.
-And let's not forget that the Captain who uses a Variax power supply also gets an extra XLR output he can switch to, so that clean sounds (say, 12-string) can route straight to the PA. I'm all about that noise.
Thanks for asking!!!!
Love,
Capt. FAT
Next Week: What's the fourth wire for? And all those LAN cables?????
Coming: OK OK, so now explain why there are five wires from the pedals to the amp?
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Sorry, Doug, I called my buddies and the official answer is, "no, we don't sell Variax guts to customers. These are only available for service centers that do repairs."
Seems like going back to eBay is your best bet...OR, if you're feeling froggy, build your own Custom Variax Guts--or something better!
If the pickup is still in there, you've got a lot of possibilities.
I bet you could hack a connection to a Roland VG-99--which is sort of the same as Variax guts plus Pod in a nice box. Go that way, and you'd still have that nice "I have no pickups" look on your guitar.
On that topic, my Nerdy Guitar Rig has changed dramatically, largely in the direction I just described. I should do an update blog.
Thanks, and good luck!
-fat
Would you possibly be able to help me find a phone number or corporate address where I might be able to inquire about the possibility of buying the internal electronics for a Variax Line 6 Acoustic 700 model guitar. I purchased one of these guitars from some one on E-bay that had acquired the guitar body minus all the electronics from a former employee and he no longer has any contact information. I would appreciate any help or words of wisdom you might be able to offer...Thank you...Doug Pogue...Huntsville,Alabama