You should be able to get whatever tone you want from the variax. Shouldn't you? I'm pretty sure there is even an editing software so that you can edit pickup configurations.

http://line6.com/software/index.html

Scroll down to workbench.

digital...

Generally I wouldn't go with a modeling guitar. I'm very old-school when it comes to guitar equipment. I'd say go with the Schecter. I've got a Diamond Series guitar, S style, though. It's incredibly reliable, really easy to take care of. The problem with the Line 6 guitar is that they're obsolete within a few months. Besides which, the tone's never going to be as good as the real thing. Definitely go with the Schecter.

The Line 6 guitar is a fantastic idea, but it will still be a long time comming before it can have the expressive playability of a real world class guitar.

As it stands now, they'd need the sonic cababilities of six Eventide Harmonizers (one for every string) to accomplish what they are really trying to do. But they wouldn't be able to rake in the same high number sales at $20,000 a pop, if any at all!

They have many other technical hurdles too, mainly getting the pickups out of the bridge saddles and to a place where more of a guitarists expressivness can be translated.

If you want a cool toy, the Variax is fun.
But if you need an instrument to advance ones musical playing on guitar, I feel the Variax is lacking in the subtlties neccesary, and will actually stifle the techniques of the player.

BTW, the Workbench software is extremely buggy.

Line 6 is to be commended for its lofty goals, creativity and success so far, but I have a duty to spell it out for my fellow guitar players: Variax can't take the place of a good guitar yet, let alone a great guitar.
Its just a well functioning gimmick.

The Schecter would be a nice choice in its price range.

A great guitar has to be inspirational.

Tommy P:
As the owner of a Schecter PT, I appreciate the removal of the comments another poster had to say about Schecter owners. That person is getting very obnoxious and offensive.
Alex: There are lots of decent guitars out there with the coil tap option. I wouldn't hold that up as a reason to buy a particular model. But a nice guitar with humbuckers that have that option will be a nice complement to the Strat that you have now. And the playability of the Schecters will be a welcome change to the Variax. The better build quality is immediately recognizable.

Those PT Schecters are great. A thinner lighter Tele body and bridge with Gibson woods and Humbuckers. Man, I forget the scale length on those, 24 3/4" or 25 1/2". Do you have one of the earlier versions with the Seymour Duncan Jazz/JB combo ? That is a very bluesy smooth sounding guitar with that neck pickup engaged.

I once owned the C-1 E/A semi-hollow with the RMC piezo's. The only reason why I took it back was that the pickups didn't quite cut it for me on that model, and I couldn't justify another $300 or more for new pickups. The RMC's had weird phase issues that seemed to make the guitars intonation sound a little sour especially when mixed with the regular pickups (which had weak tone to begin with).

But Schecter is now using graphtech piezo saddles and Duncan designed pickups, so I'm wondering if its an improvement. I'm sure it is.

Oh yeah the coil tap option is nice but you want to know what? The whole idea is to get to a single coil tone with the split engaged. I never found it to be what one would expect from a single coil, it always seemed to fall short when splitting humbuckers. The only pickup I've personally heard split that has great tone is the Joe Barden Two -Tone. The split sound is actually better than the full humbucker tone in that pup IMHO.

I bought mine 2nd hand. I have a friend who is a very popular guitar teacher in town. The dude is ALWAYS running across "spoiled kids" with guitars they want to sell off-cheap. I ran across this from one of those students, only $275.00 with a case! The only problem is the kid liked to "mod" his guitars; the hack replaced the pups with "genuine Gibson" humbuckers out of a Les Paul Studio. I would love to hear it with a JB and a Pearly Gates, which I currently have in an Ibanez Artstar. Maybe I'll swap those out between the 2 guitars. I'm not very happy with the Ibanez,
it just isn't as stable as I am used to (neck/tuning issues). BTW, my PT is a 25-1/2" scale...

playabilitly

Oh, by the way, the the Variax guitars don't play well. The necks are like 2X4s.

That is true. It is also why Warmouth guitars makes body/neck kits to upgrade them.

warmouth

Yeah, they make some pretty awesome replacement stuff, but for the price you're better off just getting a decent-feeling guitar to start with.