Hi Dave,
Thanks for the response.
Here are some answers to your questions as well as some other information that might be helpful.
"Exactly which Jazz Guitar patch were you using Pitch Bend on in Kontakt? Did you get pitch bend working with Mixcraft guitars and which ones? Would love to try the guitars you used. For one of my DAW’s, I also have Mixcraft 8"
With Kontakt, I was using the patches configured by Artiphon, one of them is called “jazz guitar.”
With Mixcraft, unfortunately I haven’t set up pitch bend yet. For the firmware update, I quickly tested out some acoustic and clean classical and jazz guitar samples.
I found a useful tutorial, made by a knowledgeable musician and sound technician, on how one might want to set up the Artiphon using Kontakt’s Rock Guitar patch, although in this video he is actually configuring a Roli Rise25 to play Hendrix’s “Hey Joe.”
“i find with String Bending on, i really have to press down on the fretboard to get the bending and many of my kontakt patches and i have go into the editor and modify it a little for Pitch Bend control. Manuals say Instrument 1 can bend 2 semitones and only in the up direction.”
For sting bends, pressing down varies with the patches, I believe it is an aftertouch signal that triggers the bend after a certain threshold has been reached, so it does take some force.
On the second day I had this instrument, I found a free VST called midiMonitor. It lets you observe what messages are being sent from the Artiphon. From what I can tell, each setting, strum, bow, slide, and tap, has its own charm, meaning it sends messages in a particular way, almost like having a midi Swiss army knife. While, bowing, the fretboard is completely cold - or at least it was before - and midi signals are only sent when the bridge is activated. The tap mode is the most expressive, you can get aftertouch values as light as 5 and as heavy as 125 (for anyone reading this who doesn’t know, midi sends data values from 0-127). On strum, Artiphon sends velocity, and the signal is very hot, for instance the lightest touch sends 105, which might be part of the reason some people have had difficulties with it. Here is a link to the Midimonitor program:
http://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=midiMonitor
On another note, that PC users you can’t access the Artiphon interface while using a DAW is disappointing. I am surprised there currently is no VST or ReWire support. I found some potential workarounds, although I haven’t tested them out yet, here they are:
Midi-Ox (a tool that goes way back)
http://www.midiox.com/
LoopMIDI
http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/category/loopmidi
LoopBe1 (I think this one will work and allow accessing Artiphon software and a DAW at the same time).
http://www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html
The reason why I haven’t explored these further is because I ordered iConnectivity’s MIDI4+. It is a $200 device that allows sharing a couple dozen midi instruments with three computers at the same time, and route 8 channels of 48khz audio as well. I am hoping to use my desktop to stream SSD stored samples to a less powerful Windows ink enabled laptop, where I will run my DAW and write music using a digital pen into Finale - my preferred method for composition. I hope it works, if not I will probably go back to trying out those tools. Here is a link to MIDI4+
https://www.iconnectivity.com/products/midi/iconnectmidi4plus/
"I havent gotten into bowing yet, so I cant compare the before and after update changes.
Do you fingerpick or use a pick in Guitar mode with Instrument one?"
I tried picking the Artiphon a little, just to test it out, but prefer to pluck with my fingers.
As a guitarist, I use all five fingers. While I can work my pinky in on the Artiphon, I find it a little too cramped to fluidly finger pick with all five fingers simultaneously, maybe this will change over time.
Using the pre-update bow method, I had a blast, for about an hour, rapidly pounding the bridge with my fingers the way a piano hammers its strings. I believe the Mixcraft patch was called “garble vox,” it has a long sustain, that allows for really fun playing. Any patch with sustain can be interesting using the bow method. Give it a shot. 
All the best.
