Variax 500 Modeling Guitar
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Being the guitarist for a worship band is becoming more and more difficult nowadays. Gone are the days when all a guitarist needed to know to play for church worship was a single bar chord shape, and the ability to count frets. As church worship continues to evolve and catch up with the rest of the music world in terms of quality and technical ability, worship bands are beginning to ask more and more of their guitarists. Guitarists are now expected to lead the line with strong acoustic rhythms or electric riffs for the “praise” songs and provide subtle fill-ins for the slow worship songs.
So it is safe to say that versatility is now the key to being a good church guitarist. There is no “one-size-fits-all” guitar sound for church music, or at least there shouldn't be, because what you'll end up with is an immensely boring, monotonous guitar twanging throughout your whole Sunday morning worship. Guitarists have to carefully choose suitable sounds and effects for all the various styles of music in church, which isn't always easy when you're always stuck with the same old guitar, going through the same old amp.
That's where the Variax comes in. This guitar from leading guitar modeling amplifier producer Line 6 is every church guitarist's dream come through. Imagine playing a guitar that could change from a Les Paul to a Strat at the push of a button, and in another instant, from the Strat to a vintage Taylor acoustic; and you'd be playing the Variax. Imagine having this baby on the road or in the studio! You wouldn't need an entire truck to carry all the different guitars you need, and the price is just a fraction of what you'd have to pay for all (or maybe even ONE) of those guitars!
Combining 25 different classic guitar sounds including a couple of non-guitar sounds like the sitar and banjo into one single axe, all available at the flip of a switch, makes the Variax truly one of a kind. The Variax does not function like normal guitars where the pickups translate the sound produced by the vibrations of the strings into electric signals for amplification. Rather, the Variax's piezo electric pickups in the bridge pick up the vibrations itself, and then the guitar's on-board digital circuitry determines the sound that it wants to be produced from the speakers.
Using the Variax is a breeze, as all of its controls come in the form of typical guitar knobs and toggle switches. On the electric Variax 500 and 700 guitars (Korean and Japanese made respectively) there is the usual toggle switch and 3 knobs: volume, tone and the guitar model selector.
The guitar model knob boasts several top guitar makers' vintage models to choose from: Fender, Gibson, Taylor, Gretsch, and Rickenbacker. And all you have to do to select the guitar you want is to turn the knob to the position of the desired guitar, toggle the selector switch (in the guise of a typical pickup selector switch) to choose the model/make, and start playing.
Unsurprisingly, the distinct sound characteristics of all the guitars were captured quite accurately, a result of Line 6's extensive research and evaluation of the guitars. The Telecaster has its sharp twang, the Les Paul has its crisp drive, the Strat with its sweet clear tone, and the Martin acoustic has its clear and warm tone. Basically, there're no complaints from this department.
The first and last positions on the guitar selector knob are the 2 custom memory banks. With 5 different selector positions, you can save 10 different guitars or sounds on the custom setting. This function is particularly useful in a church worship setting where you need to switch from acoustic to distortion frequently and instantly, which could be done on the Variax with just the flick of a toggle switch. The 2 custom banks were designated as the first and last positions on the knob so that guitarists would be able to switch from the first bank to the second easily, by simply turning the knob all the way.
Playing the Variax 500 for the first time is just loads of fun. The creative freedom that this axe gives you is just phenomenal. You can now play a sitar during the intro, a vintage Taylor acoustic during the verse, over-drive distortion on a Gibson for the chorus, a Les Paul solo, and an outro with the Stratocaster. It's all up to your imagination, and no longer to the amount of different guitars you have. Even if you had all those guitars, you wouldn't be able to change guitars every time the song goes into the chorus anyway.
© 2004 Ian Yee
Email : author@gsus.biz
http://www.gsus.biz
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