Line 6 Variax Bass Reliability and Lack of Replacement Parts

[fdr1031]

Bought a Line 6 Variax Bass (4 string) a few years ago. Used it only a handful of times, never gigged with it. After taking it out the other day, the Green Power light came on, but no sound. Tried another TRS cable, with/without batteries. Nothing. In reading older threads here on TB, apparently, I'm not the first to have this problem.

Here's the rub. Although Line 6 customer support couldn't be more pleasant on the phone, since it is a "Legacy" instrument, I was told there is only a 50/50 chance at best that they will have the necessary part after their diagnosis. So an option they gave me was ship at my expense the Bass to them, incur the $90/hr bench fee [billed in 15-minute increments] with no promises they have the parts.

I mention this as I'm nervous now about any Line 6 products with circuit boards and extensive electronics. They update and discontinue their products constantly, so most everything becomes a "Legacy" product with a rapidly shrinking inventory of replacement parts. Can't imagine gigging with many of their products and wondering about the long-term viability of my backup bass head, Low Down 750HD head; and going to trade in my seldom used Bass POD XT Live for something else at GC. Sad.

 

[Ghastly]

Yes, it is sad, and upsetting. I see this trending in other areas (phones, etc.) too. Makes me very mad and I feel your pain. I have the Line 6 Bass Pod and love it. So far no issues, but a buddy of mine bought a new Line 6 guitar amp (don't remember the model) last year and it started smoking as soon as he turned it on. Oy.

 

[SteveC]

I wanted to love Line6 stuff, I really did. I tried. The Variax Bass was a great idea. The intention was good. There will always be those who say a modeled instrument or amp or effect will never be the same as the real thing, and that's probably true. But boy, there are some really good things you can do these days that live, you probably wouldn't be able to tell....maybe even in the studio.

A while back there was a thread somewhere of a step by step that someone did where they took the electronics out of the Line6 ugly bass and put it in a really nice one. I can't remember but it looked like a Roscoe or Modulus or something like that. Really nice. I think if Line6 would have made it a "kit" that you could put in any bass that may have helped.

I thought they sounded pretty good. For a guy playing live in a cover band, it was pretty cool to think you could have a P with flats tone for one tune and a Rickenbacker with rounds for the next by a turn of the dial.

Also, it seems that bass stuff never get supported very well. We are a small part of the market so there's a smaller return on investment, at least for a company like Line6 where its just part of the overall picture.

My 2 cents anyway.

 

[Nephilymbass]

I wanted to love Line6 stuff, I really did. I tried. The Variax Bass was a great idea. The intention was good. There will always be those who say a modeled instrument or amp or effect will never be the same as the real thing, and that's probably true. But boy, there are some really good things you can do these days that live, you probably wouldn't be able to tell....maybe even in the studio.

A while back there was a thread somewhere of a step by step that someone did where they took the electronics out of the Line6 ugly bass and put it in a really nice one. I can't remember but it looked like a Roscoe or Modulus or something like that. Really nice. I think if Line6 would have made it a "kit" that you could put in any bass that may have helped.

I thought they sounded pretty good. For a guy playing live in a cover band, it was pretty cool to think you could have a P with flats tone for one tune and a Rickenbacker with rounds for the next by a turn of the dial.

Also, it seems that bass stuff never get supported very well. We are a small part of the market so there's a smaller return on investment, at least for a company like Line6 where its just part of the overall picture.

My 2 cents anyway.

Yeah I wish they’d have stuck with it on the variax bass. I think the signature variax Guitar that 12 foot ninja uses is pretty narly the way they change sounds, tunings, and even mute some of the strings on the fly to make parts easier to play live.

Bought a Line 6 Variax Bass (4 string) a few years ago. Used it only a handful of times, never gigged with it. After taking it out the other day, the Green Power light came on, but no sound. Tried another TRS cable, with/without batteries. Nothing. In reading older threads here on TB, apparently, I'm not the first to have this problem.

Here's the rub. Although Line 6 customer support couldn't be more pleasant on the phone, since it is a "Legacy" instrument, I was told there is only a 50/50 chance at best that they will have the necessary part after their diagnosis. So an option they gave me was ship at my expense the Bass to them, incur the $90/hr bench fee [billed in 15-minute increments] with no promises they have the parts.

I mention this as I'm nervous now about any Line 6 products with circuit boards and extensive electronics. They update and discontinue their products constantly, so most everything becomes a "Legacy" product with a rapidly shrinking inventory of replacement parts. Can't imagine gigging with many of their products and wondering about the long-term viability of my backup bass head, Low Down 750HD head; and going to trade in my seldom used Bass POD XT Live for something else at GC. Sad.

That’s a big downside about all companies that sell digital gear. Not very serviceable if something isn’t working properly. I do think it’s a cool bass though. I have seen a couple times over the years where someone has installed the electronics from a variax bass into a DIY or custom build bass so there still might be some parts out there.i guess worse case scenario you could always install a normal magnetic pickup in it

 

[BruceWane]

To be fair, this applies to practically all electronics made within the last 15 or 20 years. They're built to get a whole heck of a lot of technology into a small package, not to be serviceable down the road. This isn't a bad thing; the electronics of a Variax are certainly possible using old style through-hole components, after all, for the most part they're still just resistors, capacitors etc. But if you built it that way they'd no longer fit in a bass. Same thing with cellular phones, etc., in order to meet the size requirements, it's pretty much going to be a disposable, not a serviceable, device.

Also, a lot of the major components used in older stuff become obsolete because newer, better technologies emerge, and designers start basing new stuff on those. The market dries up for the lesser components, so they're no longer made. In your case, it's basically a matter of your Variax bass circuit being based around a specific digital processor or two or three, and those processors went out of production years ago. The Variax was probably hardly a blip as far as the total devices that used that/those particular processors, so once the market goes from, say, millions of processors per month to thousands, and to hundreds, the manufacturer's going to retire it pretty quick and move to where the money is.

I would guess the options are to acquire working spares, or move on to something current. I know it does similar stuff, but I don't know how the Roland GK pickup/VB99 system compares directly.

 

[BruceWane]

Just to clarify - gotta understand that Line 6 doesn't actually manufacture the base components of the stuff they build; they design stuff based around what's currently coming out of places like Motorola, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, etc. Once those pieces stop coming, game's over for the device based on them.

 

[BassHappy]

I happen to be living in a town in ny that just had a 110 mph tornado touch down on tues. I am on an iPhone so it is too tedious to type much as power is out no computer

I designed the viola bass in my avatar and it has a variax transplant. I bought a spare electronics coffin from Sweetwater around the time I decided to build so I have spare guts

Now that Yamaha basically owns line six things may change Sweetwater may still have a few coffins tucked away in the warehouse it would also be worth petitioning Yamaha for this and maybe an updated version

There is a build thread on my vbass on TV. if interested please do a search

Typos and brevity courtesy of iPhone

 

[dmt]

Shoulda bought a Fender...

Seriously. I say this as someone who has owned multiple pieces of Line6 gear and was actually just looking at their webpage a few hours ago, eyeing their POD HD500X and Firehawk FX to use for recording guitar tracks and possibly bass too (only 1 bass amp model onboard, unfortunately) in my apartment.

Digital stuff is cool (sometimes very cool) when it’s new and amazing, but old digital stuff is sad. The trick is to sell before everyone figures it out, but unfortunately, at least for digital gear that gets superseded by a new model, there’s not a huge window between when the new model becomes available and when the previous model starts looking quite unattractive. Then, a few years later, it’s worthless — and that’s not even counting stuff that breaks and is unserviceable. For stuff that doesn’t become directly superseded, the death can be slower and less obvious, but nevertheless, it’s occurring.

Anyway, I can see the attraction, but just go in knowing it’s not a lifetime companion like a Fender bass or handwired tube amp or a great [analog] pedal, etc. Which is legitimate — after all, I’m typing this on my iPad Pro that I spent a lot of money on but that will look like a joke and be barely useable in a just a few years time.

For a musical instrument like a bass, something where you ideally get deeply attached to the "hardware interface", a removable (and thus swap out-able with newer stuff as time goes on) electronics package might make more sense. Even then, connectors will eventually become a problem. A pedal might be the better way to go actually, if you’re going to get attached to the physical instrument you hold in your hands.

Sorry to hear about your trouble with the Variax bass — gear headaches are never fun

 

[eddododo]

I honestly just found this thread interesting and the views within to be very insightful… some of the ideas here are even more poignant in 2022 with the emerging pedal and gear trends