Variax 700 Acoustic Modeling Guitar
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Just when you thought all you need was a Variax 500 or 700 to fulfill all your guitar tonal cravings, in comes the even more impressive Variax 700 Acoustic, which has 16 different vintage acoustic guitar sounds, and even more WHOA!-factor functions than its electric equivalent. The acoustic Variax is catered for the more discriminating acoustic players who want more than just a variety of different vintage acoustic sounds (that sound absolutely amazing!) conveniently at their disposal, but also a fair amount of customization in terms of sound quality and tuning.
Of course, most average church guitarists would be quite satisfied with the Martin acoustic models on the Variax 500 and 700, which sound quite impressive. But the Variax Acoustic is for the really serious acoustic guitarists who are very specific about getting the sounds and tones that they want and need.
The Variax acoustic definitely delivers in this aspect, with more than enough celestial sounding vintage guitar models from Martin and Gibson, for any style of music. More than that, they even throw in a nylon classical, a dobro resonator, a mandola, a sitar, a Japanese Shamisen and a banjo. What more would you need? Just fiddling and experimenting with these sounds and the digital alternate tuning (fantastic new function which we will explain further on), and how to apply them into worship, would be enough to last you your entire worship career.
Besides the same guitar selector knob on the Variax 500 and 700, the Variax Acoustic also has compressor, mic position, and volume slider controls, in the same position where EQs are usually found on normal acoustic guitars. The compressor is very effective, yet easy to use. There are no complicated settings and adjustments to be made with this compressor, as they have been taken care of by Line 6 to provide the perfect kind of compression for the modeled guitars. All we guitarists have left to do is to determine the amount of compression we want.
The mic position slider also allows guitarists to determine whether they want the string sounds or the body sounds to be emphasized. Setting the slider more towards the strings' position gives a hollower, upper frequency sound, which would be ideal for playing rhythm on most praise songs, which already have an abundance of bass from the bassists and pianists. When the slider is set towards the body sound, the sound produced is much more, full-bodied, powerful and with an abundance of lower frequencies; very useful for the climaxes of powerful worship songs.
Now to the fun part: the guitar Model Selector knob. Just like the electric Variax 500 and 700, this knob changes this guitar from one vintage sound to another. But this little knob does much more than that. It's most impressive feature so far is the ability to digitally tune every single string exactly the way the guitarist wants it or to the preset tunings already stored in the guitar' memory banks.
An LED indicator can be found just above the knob, which is on the side of the guitar, next to the neck and facing the headstock. The LED is usually green, but when you double-press the knob down, it turns red and you're in alternate tuning mode. With the compressor slider at zero, the mic position slider becomes a preset tuning selector. Just slide it up and down and you'll be accessing a whole new array of different tunings which opens up unlimited doors for creative expression. Beside that, the knob has other functions like virtual capo and custom tunings, great for worship sessions where you want the music to maintain the same distinct guitar style as the song changes into different keys. You'll be playing the same chord shape and sound, but at the push of a button, it'll be in a totally different key, all to your (or your worship leader's) liking.
The custom sounds and/or tunings that you invented can all be stored in custom memory banks that are easy and convenient to use. Just choose the guitar model that you want, adjust the mic position and compressor settings to your preference, select any preset alternate tunings or custom tune, press the model selector model down for a few seconds until the LED shines green or red, and you're done. And you can actually save 16 of these custom sounds, which is like 2 entire worship sessions!! Now you won't have to fiddle around with your amp knobs on stage during worship, or struggle to find the same perfect tone you found for a song during practice. You can save it all up now and just turn the knob when the worship leader switches songs, or even when he goes in and out of the chorus.
This guitar, along with its electric cousin, is bound to be an ion-cast favorite and an absolute revelation in every church that buys one. Even a Martin acoustic would've been a gem to most churches, but this guitar has more than one Martin model in it, and so much more. Besides the amazing sound quality and the amount of different sounds to choose from, this guitar is also easy to use, and intelligently designed with guitarists' and performers' convenience in mind. Most of all, it's value for money. Imagine paying the price for the cheapest Martin model available, and getting the sound of the best Martin, plus so much more! Well, that's the Variax for you.
© 2004 Ian Yee
Email : author@gsus.biz
http://www.gsus.biz
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