Shoddy Line 6 And Broken Strat Rant, Raaaaaaaaaaaa
norules
Feb 2 2016, 06:44 PM
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Posts: 77
Joined: 11-March 11
From: bristol england
I've had an awful lot of bad luck lately with expensive equipment breaking. Dunno what's going on but I'm skint and could do without this. Feel like I need to rant. If anyone else wants to rant about rig breakages with me then crack on!

Two weeks ago I put my strat in for service and the guy reckons the threads in the truss rod are knackered and its pinging back everytime he tries to adjust it and I need a new neck which is over £200. I'm a truck mechanic so I'm gonna try and take the truss rod out and see if I can repair it myself as I'm pretty good with threads but I can't at the minute as I have loads of gigs this month and its my only guitar.

On top of that I got it home from being serviced and plugged it in and it didn't work anymore. Got my multi meter out and found the switch inside my shadow kill pot I wired in years ago was knackered. (thoroughly recommend these by the way but you'll need a bit of electrical and soldering skills to fit it) Dunno what the guy did to it as its never played up before. Ordered a new kill pot and then spent 2 hours with the soldering iron out last night and replaced it. Plugged it in and the electrics are working now but since it being serviced the guitar sounds terrible. All the strings are buzzing and rattling like mad so I'm pretty sure there's a truss rod problem but there definitely wasn't before it went in for service :-( I've always been a bit reluctant to mess with the truss rod myself for this reason.

As well as my guitar my boss ds1 has developed a very slight delay from stomping on it to it actually turning on in the last few weeks which is doing my head in. My band go from playing dub reggae to ska to punk several times in each song so it has to come on immediately.

Finally my line 6 m9 over last 6 months 4 of the foot switches have gone from being stiff to hardly working and some now not working at all. I took it apart to see if I could repair it and I was gobsmacked at how badly designed they are and the cheap components they use. On the outside it looks really well built but underneath them big metal foot switches is a tiny good for nothing little rubber switch soldered directly onto the pcb. It was always going to break after a year or two of playing gigs and being chucked in and out of the van. Never been impressed by line 6 but I love what the m9 does but now I'm reluctant to replace it as its so expensive and built so cheaply but it's become a staple part of my sound. Try finding an alternative to it though and I can't unless you want amp models and all that crap and each effect type assigned to a particular switch. I need several delays, a phaser and all assigned to tap tempo. Not to mention the pitch shifter as well.

So I'm proper fed up, I got no money, get paid a pittance for most gigs that barely covers the travel expenses and drinks and I now need to blow a shed load of money on equipment to continue :-( raaaaaaaaaaaaa

Rant over, thanks for your time, this website has always been good to me x




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Todd Simpson
Feb 2 2016, 07:58 PM
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From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
I hear ya!! The only item I can really speak to is the Line6 m9. Great options, ability, for the price. But the problem is putting cheap pedal switches on the device itself. If you run a midi pedal board and it wears out, you just replace the board. If the switches are integrated, you usually need a new new unit. The good news is, midi pedals, especially used, like the behringer, are cheap and older fx units with midi can be had for $50 ( like the one in this vid, the art sgx nitro). So at least I can offer some hope smile.gif




QUOTE (norules @ Feb 2 2016, 12:44 PM) *
I've had an awful lot of bad luck lately with expensive equipment breaking. Dunno what's going on but I'm skint and could do without this. Feel like I need to rant. If anyone else wants to rant about rig breakages with me then crack on!

Two weeks ago I put my strat in for service and the guy reckons the threads in the truss rod are knackered and its pinging back everytime he tries to adjust it and I need a new neck which is over £200. I'm a truck mechanic so I'm gonna try and take the truss rod out and see if I can repair it myself as I'm pretty good with threads but I can't at the minute as I have loads of gigs this month and its my only guitar.

On top of that I got it home from being serviced and plugged it in and it didn't work anymore. Got my multi meter out and found the switch inside my shadow kill pot I wired in years ago was knackered. (thoroughly recommend these by the way but you'll need a bit of electrical and soldering skills to fit it) Dunno what the guy did to it as its never played up before. Ordered a new kill pot and then spent 2 hours with the soldering iron out last night and replaced it. Plugged it in and the electrics are working now but since it being serviced the guitar sounds terrible. All the strings are buzzing and rattling like mad so I'm pretty sure there's a truss rod problem but there definitely wasn't before it went in for service :-( I've always been a bit reluctant to mess with the truss rod myself for this reason.

As well as my guitar my boss ds1 has developed a very slight delay from stomping on it to it actually turning on in the last few weeks which is doing my head in. My band go from playing dub reggae to ska to punk several times in each song so it has to come on immediately.

Finally my line 6 m9 over last 6 months 4 of the foot switches have gone from being stiff to hardly working and some now not working at all. I took it apart to see if I could repair it and I was gobsmacked at how badly designed they are and the cheap components they use. On the outside it looks really well built but underneath them big metal foot switches is a tiny good for nothing little rubber switch soldered directly onto the pcb. It was always going to break after a year or two of playing gigs and being chucked in and out of the van. Never been impressed by line 6 but I love what the m9 does but now I'm reluctant to replace it as its so expensive and built so cheaply but it's become a staple part of my sound. Try finding an alternative to it though and I can't unless you want amp models and all that crap and each effect type assigned to a particular switch. I need several delays, a phaser and all assigned to tap tempo. Not to mention the pitch shifter as well.

So I'm proper fed up, I got no money, get paid a pittance for most gigs that barely covers the travel expenses and drinks and I now need to blow a shed load of money on equipment to continue :-( raaaaaaaaaaaaa

Rant over, thanks for your time, this website has always been good to me x

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Mertay
Feb 2 2016, 08:12 PM
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Ouch sad.gif

+1 for a midi board, also if you can't fix the ds1 there should be used but good condition (never left the house kind of pedal) ones out there.

I hope the guitars neck can be fixed (keep in mind it might be a wood thing too), probably a good reason to get a backup squier until its fixed. Well setuped squiers though don't sound super nice, they still can be comfortable and if you're usually using dirty sound I wouldn't expect the tones to be too bad.

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norules
Feb 2 2016, 10:19 PM
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From: bristol england
Yeah I definitely could do with a back up guitar Mertey. Either way though I'm gonna have to get my strat repaired. I was lucky really as id only been playing a year when I bought it and didn't know much about guitars then but was dumb enough to spend a lot of money on one but it turned out to be my perfect guitar and best friend. I've never wanted a new guitar since I got it (pedals/amps a whole different story) Plus all the paint wear and all the battle marks make it really special to me ha ha.

I'm very interested in midi foot switches guys. I don't know much about them, can I just plug all my non midi (boss) pedals into it and make patches? It would help me a lot if it could. Always struggled cos I sing as well and my band is only 3 piece so im busy all the time. I have to have my ds1 sat tight in between a boss reverb and boss dd6 delay that way when I go from punk (distortion on) to dub/ska (dist off reverb on) to solo (rev off dist and delay on) I can turn my foot side ways and double or triple stomp. I have to have boss size pedals for the big footprint on them so I don't miss. I then have a wah and my m9 sat to the side of them as I don't use them when singing.

Also with a midi foot switch would it be able to control the m9's tap tempo and the individual effects? The m9 does have midi ports.. That could possibly get me around replacing it as its only the foot switches that are broken..

So yeah if I could assign a solo patch a clean patch a distortion patch where multiple pedals turn on or off with one stomp and control my m9 that would be a perfect solution.

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for your replies yo

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Mertay
Feb 3 2016, 10:55 AM
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From: Turkey / izmir
Same here, my current guitar was my 3rd and have been playing it for 20 years smile.gif what I have in mind though is a travel type electric guitar but havent checked them out personally yet.

The midi pedalboard that switches analog pedals are sort of expensive, boss recently released one you can check out. But I have seen low quality custom ones around a few times which can be affordable where I live.

But yeah there should be a solution product for the m9 so you don't have to deal with the broken switches. I suppose its best to make some web search just incase to figure whats the most compatible so you won't have a hard time setting it up. The m9 is a popular product I'm sure you'll find good advices.

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Todd Simpson
Feb 3 2016, 07:45 PM
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After a quick bit of googling I think your in luck smile.gif It looks like there are lots of folks using midi pedals on the m9 for this very reason. Here is a quick vid smile.gif But this is with a much simpler pedal.



I don't own the m9 so I have not hooked one up to a midi board but midi is an open standard so it should work just fine smile.gif

Here is a link to the reference at line 6

http://line6.com/data/6/0a060b316ac34f0593...v%20A%20%29.pdf

You can program the m9 to take midi data and back up all your scene files. You can use something like the Behringer FCB1010 which would also need to be programmed. They can be had used for a very good price on ebay.

Do you know anyone with a midi controller you could just borrow for a bit to try things out?

I"m using a PEAK midi controller to control my 11 rack. I was using a fcb1010 but I never used anthing but patch changes and I didn't like the volume/wah pedals. But it may be just the thing for your application.

http://www.peak2005.com/j/index.php?id_pro...troller=product


However, when I was using the FCB1010, I bought a small upgrade chip that let it talk to my 11 rack without any programming and let me switch channels using the first row of foot switches and let me turn things on and off stomp box style in each given patch using the top row of foot switches. That sounds like where you are headed so you need two rows of foot switches probably smile.gif It was very nice for it to just "work" without having to program it smile.gif

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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Feb 4 2016, 01:41 AM
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norules
Feb 4 2016, 02:20 PM
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Thanks for the advice mates. I've done some research and i think midi controllers are probably going to be too expensive and generally too much hassle. I've got my set up so that I can work really well with it now, it's taken me along time to get to this point it's just a right pain in the neck that things are breaking all at once. I think I'm gonna buy a new ds1 and a couple of cheap behringer delay pedals to get me through the next couple of months and then once I've raised the cash replace the m9 and the neck on my strat. After that maybe invest in some high quality cases for it all as well. Hard times ahead :-/

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Todd Simpson
Feb 4 2016, 09:44 PM
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Sounds like a plan smile.gif That would do the trick! Yeah the foot switches on some of the line 6 products are a bit crap. Some, like on the Helix, are actually touring grade. Just depends the unit.

Todd

QUOTE (norules @ Feb 4 2016, 08:20 AM) *
Thanks for the advice mates. I've done some research and i think midi controllers are probably going to be too expensive and generally too much hassle. I've got my set up so that I can work really well with it now, it's taken me along time to get to this point it's just a right pain in the neck that things are breaking all at once. I think I'm gonna buy a new ds1 and a couple of cheap behringer delay pedals to get me through the next couple of months and then once I've raised the cash replace the m9 and the neck on my strat. After that maybe invest in some high quality cases for it all as well. Hard times ahead :-/

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