I second your emotion... Same here.

GREAT! Congrats. I ordered my just after you so I see hope. Glad Sweetwater did such a nice inspection and setup! Good luck!

well, they did miss the pinhole in the finish, but it probably looked like dust to them.  and the wrenches weren't included, but that's just how it goes being one of the first. even if they knew the wrenches were supposed to be part of the package, i would have wanted the guitar immediately.

i am, however, super happy with the setup.  whew!

It didn't... he already posted to the other thread.

I've been working with electronics for 18 years.  There's really no way to be sure without knowing the operating characteristics of the circuit/processor.  At this point, I'm holding out hope that maybe it's a software issue that can be remedied by a firmware upgrade, but there's no way for us to know yet.

My blue JTV-69 arrived at Guitar Center in Gilroy, California yesterday and I picked it up last night. I ordered it in early December.

My initial impressions:

Neck: Very nice. Some new guitars have a coating of lacquer on the back of the neck that makes it difficult to glide your hand up and down. My hand glides along the back of the neck of the JTV-69 very easily.

Tremolo System: I was pleasantly surprised. I'm used to a Floyd Rose and although this feels different, it seems to work fine. Tremolo systems on some of my other guitars require too much effort and only seem to be able to dive down to lower notes, not so much to higher ones. The JTV-69 tremolo system feels pretty good.

Knob Placement: Very good. All of the knobs are in convenient locations, but are out of the way of the strumming path. My only concern is that I want to swap out the neck pickup for a Sustainiac device and I'm not sure if there's going to be room inside the guitar for the additional electronics and I'm also not sure if there's going to be enough room on the pick-guard to install the additional toggle switches to control the Sustainiac. Putting a Sustainiac in a Variax would truly make it the FrankenGuitar of my dreams! The folks at Sustainiac are going to check out the JTV-69 at the NAMM show and let me know if they think the "surgery" will be possible.

Fretboard: Just okay. I'm not thrilled, but I think it's really just a matter of getting used to the way it plays. The action could be lower and faster, but I think an hour with a local luthier will probably change my opinion for the better.

UI: I really like how small the User Guide is for this guitar. A massive manual is the sign of an unintuitive UI, and in the case of the JTV, the UI is indeed as intuitive as the User Guide is thin. Very nice.

Modeling: Please don't hate on me, but I'm seriously disappointed with the instrument modeling. I watched several YouTube videos before I bought the guitar where I heard people get really impressive sounds from their JTVs. Several of the videos even compared the JTV sounds with the actual instruments that were being modeled and although they weren't an exact match, they seemed pretty impressive. I've not been able to get the tones I'm seeking. The Rickenbacker 360 12 string and 1959 Gretsch 6120 were the two models I was most interested in and they really just don't seem to compare with the actual models I've played or with what I heard in the YouTube videos. I'm playing through a POD X3 Live and have just started experimenting with using different custom tones (a Byrds tone for the Rickenbacker and a Stray Cats tone for the Gretsch) and although that does help, I'm still not where I want to be. I'm also disappointed that there are a lot more Telecaster models than Stratocaster models. I'm not putting down the Telecaster (it was and continues to be a very important instrument in the history of rock), but I'm a Strat guy and I wasn't blown away with the Strat sound either. I recently bought a FretLight strat (the frets light up to help you learn various scales or teach you songs, note for note) and that cheap little strat copy feels and sounds more Strat-like than the JTV-69. Again, please don't flame on me because I'm not being a hater here. I still very much like the JTV-69 and hope that I can figure out how to get the tones I want. After all, what I heard on YouTube was impressive, so it's just got to be a matter of not knowing what I'm doing yet.

These are my initial impressions and I'm certain I'll probably be happier once I get the guitar set up by a luthier and figure out how to get the sounds I heard in the YouTube demos of the JTV.

Overall, I'm still happy with my purchase and look forward to spending more time with it!

Yep, it is definitely not isolated.  It seems to be an inherent flaw with the 3-way selector switch/circuit on the JTV-59s.  I am very confident that Line 6 will get this sorted out ASAP, but it is a bummer.  It's really kind of a chance you take with first production-run electronics, though.  That being said, it's very weird that this didn't come up during BETA testing.  Did they put different switches in the production guitars?  Doesn't that defeat the purpost of BETA testing something in the first place?  Very weird.

orion8251 wrote:

 

JTV Model Received:  JTV-59BK

Order Date:  9/18/10

Received Date:  1/13/11

City/Country:  Los Alamos, NM

Retailer:  Sweetwater

 

Fit and finish was great out of the box.  The guys at Sweetwater really have the setup dialed in nice on this guitar.  The battery is charging so I have only played using the mag pups so far.  They sound really good!  I was actually a little surprised by the smooth, warm tone of the neck pickup.  The bridge pickup gives it more bite and snarl.  Very comparable to my Gibson Les Paul with '57 classic pups in it!  The neck feels very good and the fret work, in my opinion, is top notch.  I usually have to tweak the setups on new guitars to fit my playing style and taste, but I actually do not think that I will have to touch this one.  I may have to make tiny adjustments once I get my Ernie Ball Super Slinkys on it, but I doubt it since they are .10 gauge like the D'Addarios that come on the guitar.  Can't wait to try the modeling out and I'm praying I don't have the switching issues that others are reporting with their 59s.

 

Thanks Line 6 and Sweetwater!

I also ordered a black 59 from Sweetwater. I am hoping for the same positive experience.