Line 6 Shuriken Variax Pinched Harmonics and Palm Muting Demo and Discussion
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2017
- Line 6 Shuriken Variax Pinched Harmonics and Palm Muting Demo and Discussion
Pick up a Shuriken amzn.to/3bVx5YD
Here in this video we discuss palm muting and pinched harmonics on a variax guitar, specifically the Line 6 Shruiken.
GearZombie.com
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good vid and analysis of the issues. Like many guitars, you often have to modify certain sound techniques to the physical characteristics of each guitar. thanks for posting this.
I kind of like the digital granularity of the pitched down harmonics to be honest. It's a different kind of sound. Could be really exciting to experiment with the new sonic possibilities of this technology, especially with genres like industrial metal, electrogrind, digital hardcore and who knows what else!
Great video please keep them coming, I just bought my Shuriken and I'm learning the technology too, thanks
Thanks for watching!!!
Art Sal how did you like yours?
really great video!! im gonna try to pick up a variax in the future!!
Do it!!!!!!!!!! They're a ton of fun!
5 years later in 2023, My Shuriken is arriving today. I already own the Variax standard which I love with my Helix. It's time to triple the threat with the Shuriken. I love Stevic's tunings in 12 foot Ninja. Incorporating the Shuriken into my music is all I've been waiting for. 🎸🎸🎛️🎚️🎧🔥
FINE I’ll subscribe. You seem like sound is important, as well and presentation and context. I dig it.
Thanks for Subscribing!!! Hopefully I won't disappoint!
Well...was considering this...after this video, not anymore. Thanks for saving me the trouble!!
First off thanks for doing the video definitely appreciate the honesty modeled sounds like its on a neck pickup IMO cheers
Thanks for watching!! Good description! I wish I would have thought of that analogy when I filmed!!!
I think the reason why it comes down to personal taste so much is the fact that when you throw this guitar to a person who wants high gain metal, they want that really crunchy high treble noise when you pluck a palm mute, and the Variax's issue kind of takes away from that, makes palm mutes sound more smooth and boomy. It becomes more apparent the more treble based their tone is.
For some people it's a make or break situation.
Like I said before, since they have software helping out the palm muting, they could probably 99% fix this by also adding a filter to boost high end and cut back on the bass a little bit.
I have a Line 6 Vetta II HD Amp head, will this Variax guitar work, or does this only work with the Line 6 Helix.... Correct me if I'm wrong but this should work with all Line 6 modeling amps. The only thing I would miss out on is the snapshot feature build into the Helix.
I found this exact "digital wobbliness" on low string pinch harmonics on the variax standard I recently tested.
Would be nice if Line6 could fix that with a software update sometime, but I think I won't mind in a mix.
Unfortunately, the Shuriken isn't out in Germany yet, but I'll probably get one as soon as it's out
awesome review..kindly demo Roland g5 guitar about the pinch harmonics n palm muting plzzz.thank u
Can you share the patches you were using? my palm mutes always sound soo flubby :(
So can you get away with doing Fear Factory syncopated type riffs on drop A ?
Also I don't know if I said this before, but I believe the whole reason they use piezos instead of something like a Roland pickup, is because piezos have a better frequency response than a magnetic pickup.
It's why the Variax has much more convincing modeling than any other guitar because piezos bring a cleaner slate to carve in the frequency response of the pickups and bodies it's modeling.
They should do another generation mixing both technologies, increasing processor power (not sure if it needs a quad core or not). I would stick with the standard and shuriken models. With the standard offer a thin and thick neck model. If I buy a current standard, I will probably change the neck eventually.
You have been busy haven't you!! ;)
Fuckin hell mate!!! I have been busy!!!!
rpainting he's a busy little beaver!
Thats quite busy isn't it?!
Busier than a cat burying shit
HKS Atlanticore naap. naap. naap. You haven't been busy. You haven't been bloody busy at all.
Interesting , thanks.
That is a way better sound when palm muting than the first JTV guitars
Well, you gottq tqke some anomaly into consideration with this tech. Its virtually limitless so its hard to judge...
Would you normally be able to pinch harmonic a banjo thats tuned to drop A 7 string that has a humbucker in it throught a diezel vh4?
Still sounds cool lol.
The thing about the pinch harmonics is something I don’t honestly care about. I never use pinch harmonics, so it doesn’t bother me
The palm muting sounds fine to me, honestly! I quite like it, I hear nothing wrong with it
Great video dude... so I’m in a dilemma... I am torn between a handmade guitar a shuriken and one of ola England’s solar 1.6 series... so my question... if you had the choice would you choose a shuriken??
Drop G String I have actually ended up going with a custom guitar by a small company called Aunger guitars... they have such good quality and are only small so it’s such a personal experience.
Good stuff,thanks for doing it! I plan to get a Variax guitar and palm muting WAS a concern.Your demonstration reassured me somehow.I will probably settle on Standard, any info of Standard being much different from Shuriken?
Honestly, I don't have a ton to tell you about the standard. Biggest thing would be scale length. The Shruiken has a 27" scale so if the added length is uncomfortable for you that may be something to consider. Sometimes I struggly with the extra size. Feel like I'm playing the big kids guitar! I think the standards have similar sounds available.
thanks!
Lucky Spook I had a JTV89 and hated the palm muting. I have a super picky ear and I had to sell it. You get bleed over between strings. If I was palm muting the E you would get a slight float over and the A string would come through. You hand would slightly bridge the piezo saddles. Like I said I have a super picky ear and if you were using it in a cover band to switch tuning and stuff you would never notice. If you are just wanting a guitar to drop tune just get a Drop pedal or Whammy Drop.
I found some of the same bleed with the shuriken. But not terrible. My final thought was this, I play a original and covers, but our covers I remake to be in the same vein as our originals. If I was constructing tunes where I could avoid any pitfalls I may find with this, then no problem. But trying to plug and play our set and just start using this guitar across our tunings and just playing it like I play a normal guitar caused problems. But for most players, they're around standard tuning and want to just jump to drop d or maybe an open tuning, or drop everything a half step. And it works incredibly if you're not traveling much past the physical tuning of the guitar. For me with the guitar a half step below standard with the rest of my set living in drop Ab, Small issues here and there could nag at you, especially if you have a sensitive ear!
Are you running through a helix, just wondering if the anomaly your hearing would be there running through the Variax plug in on back of the Helix rack, oh now I see your Helix rack
Yep, that was through the helix.
Stevic from 12' ninja uses the nut muffler hair tie dealy around the top nut and even on dropped tunings live it's nearly impossible to hear anomaly I can clearly hear on your set up. I'm considering getting the Shuriken 270 but I use a lot of dynamic palm muting in my playing style and it's kinda a big deal. Pinched harmonics might be another issue the hair tie thing might resolve,hoping so, glad I came across your video thanks!
Actually, if you look I have electrical tape across the strings behind the nut. I think I even mention that I have that on there rather than a fretwrap. The electrical tape does the same thing as fretwrap and actually a bit better just not so attractive. I have fretwraps since this video and there is no difference. The anomalies are digital and not from past the nut string ring. If you play this without anything past the nut the ring is much different, more like the if you ever played with a floating trem and the springs resonate.
Would you hear it live? Meh, I doubt it.
GearZombie I see now,didn't notice,I wish I didn't live in the Styx I'd run down to a guitar center and try one out. I hope it isn't a deal breaker because what I've heard I like. Hope line 6 can address this in up coming firmware updates, don't want to have to readjust my playing style to have the extra features. Thanks for your time man appreciate it.
So, it totally depends on how you play. What I was finding is it did take some adjustment. Not massive but some adaptation. Some things that I am completely comfortable doing were, while doable, different or more challenging. Sometimes requiring a slight technique adjustment. But I think the benefits far outweigh the shortcomings. It's a very good physical instrument and the electronic element is very very cool and functional. What I would say is just don't expect to throw this in digital mode and have it be exactly 100% like playing a guitar in that tuning. The difference is more noticeable in big increments rather than small. When dropping it a step or so, it's hardly noticeable, when dropping from say E to Bb any issue the guitar may have is magnified a bit due to the pitch gap. While very very close and workable, it is just a different animal. But I would in no way discourage someone from purchasing one. And keep in mind that my opinion is kind of from a microscope perspective. See if anyone near you has any kind of variax if you're interested so you can at least try the tech.
Your addressing of the Variax is pretty spot on. Your definition of why palm muting sounds a bit different is exactly what I've told people. The vibrations hit your hand before it hits the piezos, opposed to a normal mag that reads the string part that is actually in front of your hand.
It mostly just sucks out a bit of presence, which can bother some metal players because a lot of people want a super tight chuggy palm mute. I run my guitar into guitar rig 5 so I usually address this by throwing it through a treble booster like: treble booster>tube screamer>amp and it gets it to sounds a little tighter.
I do think Line 6 could perfect this problem if they had some sort of palm muting check to boost the high end when you're palm muting strings. There's been times when I messed with a custom, really treble-heavy model patch on Variax and the palm muting sounds stellar but the open playing sounds too tinny, so basically the treble booster is a compromising point.
I never had too much of a problem with pinch harmonics, but the Variax can have warble problems if the setup isn't nice and clean. Sadly the Variax relies a lot on tracking to get a clean pitch shift result, but it sounds great. It's probably the best sounding pitch shifter on a guitar I've heard. It sounds like it has formant/timbre preserve to a point, but it does start to get muddy when you hit at least 7 halfsteps and below, but still a lot better than a usual pitch shifter pedal.
Also, latency will ALWAYS be an attribute to pitch shifting, because even if a pitch shifter is virtually warbleless, it still needs headroom to read and reconstruct the signal it's altering. It's what makes it able to make pitch shifting sound smooth and not distorted.
It's kind of like a word predictor on your phone, it needs a few letters before it can predict the word you're typing.
All in all, it does pretty good. Of all the issues I ran across the one I wish they would focus on would be the inconsistencies in the tracking. Plenty of times you get that "Warble" in just normal playing if you stray down too far in the pitch shifting. I also noticed if you sustained a note as it decayed the pitch shifting would freak out and start flipping between physical pitch and digital pitch like it couldn't hear it any more. This happened more I noticed when I was doing clean or acoustic things with odd tuning.
I will 100% agree with you however that the pitch shifting sounds better than any others at the moment. And i'm certain that it's because they do it on a string by string basis rather than dropping the entire signal. But again, whatever issues I discovered in the end the tech is capabilities we're greater than it's shortcomings. In all seriousness for every note it blundered I probably blundered 3 or 4 ;)
Yeah I have warble problems on mine, especially with hammer ons and pull offs that are done loud enough for it to recognize what to pitch shift.
It's not as bad as my Variax 600 I got a few years earlier to my JTV Variax though.
Yes there is different
Palm muting still sounds like mud.
Can't wait till they get that right. Only a matter of time I think.
Line 6 fan here by the way. Love my helix native and previous pod HD. Just not sold on the variax....yet.
Dont hold your breath waiting. Its not gonna happen, EVER! The variax has been around for a long time now, and they still dont have it right. Palm muting will ALWAYS suck with this guitar. Thats the main reason my JTV69 is collecting dust now.
cast390 I’ll send you my address and I’ll dust it off brother!
@@cast390 u can use it with the magnetic pickups when palm muting is that important , also u can replace the pickups to whatever u want
Hey GearZombie! I'm thinking about getting this here soon. What is by far the worst problem you've ran into?
Pitch Tracking if I had to pick one thing. It can be quite unpredictable at times. For the most part it tracks very reliably and then there are times when it goes into what some have called the dial up modem effect where it's jockeying to find it's pitch. People also reference the plunk when in modeling mode which is there but by altering how you play you can minimize it. But all in all many of the issues I described can be minimized or eliminated by adjusting how you play the instrument.
As just a physical instrument, It's a very solid instrument, the design is comfortable. If you've never played a 27" scale that can be a bit of a stretch on your fingers but not unmanageable.
I wouldn't in any way discourage anyone from purchasing it however. even if you didn't use the electronics, it's a great guitar.
GearZombie I think in Stevic's video. Titled "Alternate tunings on the fly!" (Going off memory) he had a part where he tuned the E and A string an octave lower and kept the rest of the strings regular standard pitch. When he went to play the low E (E1) it actually wasn't (E1) he said "Sounds a bit Dodgey" and he quickly went into manual tuning mode and came back out and it fixed it. Is that what you mean by the technology not grabbing the right and/or desired pitch?
Yep. There will be times it just loses track maybe not right during a tuning change but just in general play. Maybe in a lead line where you're letting a note ring out and mid note it goes into a bit of a frenzy. Which in my time with it I did notice happened more frequently the further away you took it from the physical tuning. You could sometimes find the same with the 12 string effect as well as with the 12 string effect it's just doubling the high octave on the 3rd - 6th strings. That sometimes got a bit wonky. But, again it's whatever your personal threshold is. None of it was bad enough that I felt it was crippling and certainly if you're playing a ton of tunings live this makes life way easier!
GearZombie Hopefully it's a good Christmas gift, thank you!
Ohh Man!! Can't go wrong as a Christmas gift! I spent 2 weeks just making stupid sounds with it before I got any real work done!!
It’s funny, but even if I could tell that there were some anomalies in the modeling system, they do not stand out for enough for me not to like the technology. It still sounds pretty believable.
But then again, I also play piano and synthesizer and own both digital and analog models. I’ve gotten very used to aliasing in the digital domain. It almost becomes a matter of how you use it to your advantage.
I believe I said somewhere in this video that I felt this would probably be a non issue in the mix. And I still think it would. I think one thing that is different about guitar players vs synth type players is the stigma about things sounding digital. You see with all the comments in modeler demos. "Sounds too digital" Well, in the end run it in a little bar with a cruddy PA and dude that's mixing 3 bands for $100 and well.. that pinch of digital becomes a non issue pretty fast.
For me the trick would be trying to mask the difference between the magnetic PU's and the digital model sounds. It would take a bit of dialing in but in the end... Small venue... cruddy PA.. nobody is gonna notice.
Thanks Matt.
One would hope that if using heavy drive, those differences would not be as easy to notice. I’m experimenting with a Boss ME-80 myself, trying to use the Metal Zone feature at a reduced gain to loosely simulate both the Brian May, Terry Kath (Chicago) and Tom Scholz (Boston) distortion sounds. Something like that would probably work synonymously with both the hardware pick ups and the modeled sounds.
What kind of rig are you playing through? Sounds pretty damn mean.
That's the helix rack.
gearzombiee sounds mean dude. I'm selling my axe fx as I wait for my helix pedal to arrive. Hopefully I can get mine to sound similar. Great video btw. I'm also waiting for a jtv-69s to arrive. Will be my first variax.
I took the same route. I used the axe fx for years. Started with the ultra and moved on to the II. I bought the helix on a whim just to try it out and found it very comparable. Not as many models available but they're adding models all the time with FW updates.
gearzombiee axe def has more does more but at this point I just play at home or at a friends house. Helix has plenty but more importantly to me is that it's just easier to navigate among other things. Looking forward to getting it.
Matt would you consider sharing the patch from this video or what amps/cab/effects you used to get this tone?
what's the difference between the Variax SR250 and the SR270?
Scale length I believe.
@@ffcwoods ah ok, baritone I'm assuming.
@@NinjaDefiler the 270 is a 27" baritone and the 250 is 25.5"
@@ffcwoods gotcha
Is it possible to change the Pickup on this thing?
The magnetic??? Sure. The piezos? I've seen youtube videos of people doing it. But it looks quite delicate.
Do you notice the noise of the pick hitting the string ?? I hear it's called the peizo plink? I get that extra tink sound durring palm mutes. Have you hurd it or know how to get rid of it ? Maybe it's a active pickup thing . My passive ones you cant really hear it but on my shuriken I can and my other guitars with emgs. Now that I notice it it stands out big time
Yep, that is piezo plink. You won't hear it with the magnetic or active pickups but you will in modeling mode. I've had several guitars with EMG's and have never heard it. My experience was the further you digitally tuned down from the physical tuning the more pronounced the plink seemed to be. I was able to take some of it away buy adjusting things in workbench. But for me anyway it was usually at the expense of something else. I would do things like adjust the virtual pickup forward but that would take attack away. But long story short it is a thing, experiment with workbench to minimize it.
I've tried all that. Even the mag pick up it does it. And on my other guitars with emg I hear it also.. I wonder . I know u should keep it standard but i wonder if i tune to c and do my settings to drop a.
I don't hear in with my guitar with passive pickups. I got it use. Might return it . Also not sure if you had this problem. I'll set my settings but after a few plays the high strings will go low in volume. On clean channel .. pshh.. unreal !!!
@@hotboxking420 I've never had that experience with anything other than the piezos is in the variax. As far as tuning goes, no need to keep it standard. I think the general theory was for lower tuning the higher tension on the strings from the 27" scale length was supposed to track better in digital mode. That being said lower tuning heavier gauge of string should accomplish the same thing. A lot of people tune low on 25.5 scale guitars. The guitar doesn't care if it's standard tuned or not it simply is just shifting the pitch of the string. When I had mine I was generally drop tuned.
@@hotboxking420 I didn't experience that specifically but I had 4 in total all with various issues before I punted and I've never really discussed that. I did have one that the first and second piezo didn't work. The first two I got I preordered and when they arrived I wrote it off as new model first release bugs. So I sent them back and waited a few months and ordered another pair from different vendors. One didn't work in digital mode at all, when engaged it was just static. I firmware updated it and that didn't change it and the second one of batch 2 was the one that piezo 1-2 didn't work.
Do more shurikan videos!!
I would love to, but after several attempts I am currently without a Shuriken.
GearZombie oh damn, that sucks
Agreed!!!
I was very interested in getting a variax but it doesn't sounds any good to be honest, those harmonics are terrible and the muting sounds odd
Keep in mind I didn’t record the audio in the best of circumstances.
to be honest. i like the sound of the palm muting with the piezo more.
Since your tone has barely any bottom end the palm muting issue is not as apparent. Artifacts do exist with the pinch harmonics the lower the tuning.The Roland GK3 is much better at palm muting heavy distorted tones than line6's piezo built into the saddle approach.But by comparison, Line6's models sound light years ahead of Roland's cosm modeled tones.Especially the acoustic models.
Since traditionally guitar is a mid-range instrument I generally leave the bottom end for the bottom end instruments. That being said, you're correct the biggest hang up with the roland is having to use the roland processors. The helix sonically is just a far superior unit.
Well - this guitar basically pitch-shifts every string, so that's gotta add some artifacts and latency. I think that it's still impressive, how they're doing that (and much more). The amazing flexibility has some trade-offs and it's good that we can now hear that :)
Also a note: pitch shifting is a very difficult thing to do well, and to do it well, you need to have the most information about the sound you're processing that you can get - that means high latency. It's still very impressive how the guitar sounds perfectly fine with nearly zero latency with most playing techniques. I also think that Line6 might be able to tune this processing and slowly improve it to reduce artifacts. But that's already state-of-the-art.
I had a Variax JTV89F until last year and I'm really happy to have sold it ...... seems that this one has nothing really improved in comparison.
Palm Muting was ok on the 89F (except some high pitched plink noise) , Pinch Harmonics were warbling like in the video here..... and the more you were tuning it down, the more latency you were adding up to "unplayable" (at least for some fast rhythms etc. )
OK so l look at the anomalies with the pinch harmonics on the Variax, one can look at it this way, if you record a great song and you are like "whoa, that's it, that recording is just awesome" and the recording has that anomaly that just happens to sound cool, you are not going to replicate that deal with any other guitar. I'll give an old school comparison that some may hate, but it's like playing Sweet Home Alabama intro with a Les Paul, just not the same as doing it on a Strat in the middle/bridge pickup position that only a strat style pickup configuration can get. Or if it is just a little too much to where you don't like it on the recording, then record mechanically tuned down and just use the Variax tech live, because if you don't have a tech to throw a different guitar on you every other song, at least for me playing live, guitar modeling has been awesome to get from song to song super quick. I can wear the same guitar all night long (I play cover tunes in a couple of bands), and I can go from strat tone, to LP tone, to acoustic, to Rickenbacker, to p90's, in the country band I play in, I can go from an electric guitar to a cameo banjo part (songs like Better Dig Two from The Band Perry, International Harvester from Craig Morgan, Dirt Road Anthem from Jason Aldean). Now if you are a Djent purist, I mean Kiesel it up, but just one of those new, whew, and if you do multiple songs in different tunings, man that adds up fast, and in a video I watched with Stevic Mackay talking about how he uses his Variax, he switches tunings on the fly right in the middle of songs and riffs at the push of a foot button; how do you do that with any other guitar set up and get Helix amp tone with it?
Short answer is you don't with any other setup. And I think for what you're doing Variax is the absolute perfect solution. That being said, there is quite a jump from Dirt Road Anthem to Born of Osiris. If i'm doing country/classic rock covers where i'm close to mechanical tuning and mainly just leaning on the modeling, it works dandy.
Now the pinched harmonics IMO are a non issue. However, people are always discussing palm muting and it was one question I had when I first saw Stevic at Namm. When I asked about palm muting his response was more it just does what it's supposed to type of response. And he's not wrong, but the feel is not the same as magnetic pickups and neither is the tone. It does take some adjustment and if you're tuning from standard down to drop Ab you can certainly find yourself having to adjust. In no way do I think the tech is bad, but in my case, I looked at this as a "this could replace my rig" sort of thing but with a bunch of open ended questions about how it feels and sounds. With the price points to walk into these instruments it's super helpful to know what you're up against. If this was just a $1500 ibanez, well I know pretty much exactly what i'm getting. For the time being, i'm still taking 3 guitars to a hour set of originals.
Just got myself a Variax Standard. The changing tunings mid song was one of the first things I thought of :) I've got an acoustic song that's mostly in Am and Em, so I play that in standard. The bridge goes to a Dm, so quickly switch it to drop D for the bridge then back to standard again. Sounds 10x bigger. Also, the acoustic models legit sound nicer than my real acoustic. Gotta love that J-200 sound
Good ear
These are notoriously problematic. I know people that have sent back multiples each one coming back with it's own set of issues. I see you have another behind you, do you still use it?
There IS another guitar you can compare it to.
........... the other Shuriken, that is.
According to the guy that helped Line 6 design the Shuriken, there's no need to 'Drop D' the string tuning. The Modeling is supposed to do that for you. That was the whole point of the Modeling - no need to re-tune the guitar for different genres of music.
Stevic "The Guy" also drop's the 6th string physically. Many people do, you're not restricted to digital mode all the time.
physically tune to C#0, like 2 octaves below normal drop C, with 210-49 gauge strings and use a capo. its obvious! lol.
Well yeah!!! ;)
The harmonics remind me of those 1980s sound effect toys. Not like a guitar to me. At all.
Jitter jitter jitter.... No thank you