Neal, I have a hunch that the JTV will play an important role in Line 6 brand awareness.

I agree with you about many of their products, not the least of which is the Variax 700. I was a believer and an early adopter. However, I don't think the instrument earned respect from tradtionalists -- even tech-savvy traditionalists who pride themselves on using cool new stuff. The guitarists I know thought it sounded good, but were more or less dismissive... not condescending, just essentially uninterested. It didn't even have (visible) pickups. Not that anyone ever mentioned the lack of pickups as a factor, but I can't help think it played a role in its perception as an instrument pretending to be a guitar. It didn't inspire wonder in them like it did me.

Enter the JTV. I think it will gain significantly more momentum than the 700 did. The 700 still holds the place of being the world's first pro-worthy, practical modeling 6-string guitar. And Line 6 can refer glowingly to the 700 in JTV marketing literature as the instrument that paved the way for the JTV and the new generation of L6 modeling instruments.

I really believe the JTV can help usher in Line 6 "2.0." To me, Line 6 has been stuck at "1.5" for a long time, unable to escape the shadow of its own first home run: the POD. Everyone knows about the POD, like you mention. Until now, only guitar/music geeks have known about L6's other excellent products.  Perhaps it has been the economy, or just the lack of a massive homerun to follow the POD's visibility. In any event, I think the JTV could be that breakout product, helped in no small part by this very community! :) We'll see. I know I will champion the JTV, and I have faith in it even before I've received my 69US (like... in Jan '11 or something). I've already been bitten and smitten by the Variax 700 sunburst... loved how it felt, loved its versatility, loved its connectivity with the XTL and X3L. I already have faith in the JTV. In this sense, Line 6 has a marketing headstart because of a built-in small army of believers. I can see only good things coming from this.

And for all the delays, bless them for wanting to GET IT RIGHT, even if it has meant a long development cycle, and now long backorder delays. I'm a fan of L6 and am happy to wait if it means they hit it out of the park as opposed to a mere base hit.

Thanks for posing these questions, Neal! Very thought-provoking.

(This ramble brought to you while sitting in the Borders cafe using my iPhone.)

I appreciate both of you cats. Let your hearts not be troubled, the HD-DT-JTV system will stand on its own. And let's not forget the silent partner in Europe (Propellerhead Reason-Record-Recycle genius)

There's going to be some sobbing, murmuring, crying, sniveling, backbiting, discourgament, geneal malaise, and your occasional upset stomach, diarrhea, and of course projectile vomiting until ALL the bugs are worked out. But they will be in short order. I am confiident of that because these folks got together in the "Real-Think/RealPolitik' round table mode and planned it right. Unlike the rest of the NAMM idiots who come to the holy Hejira twice a year to display the products that they have just recycled that are actually dysfucntional stand-alone whatevers or recycled retro something elses reinvented the same old wheel with a new faceplate.

This an amazing architecture that will SELL itself. But here's the rub. These three players involved now have to be very careful that when this rocketship takes off that they DO NOT do what a huge German Software company did and make themselves untouchable, unreachable, and basically not give a rats ars about their clients. That kind of arrogrance will sink any company into a very tiny slice of the market.

The second thing that they have to get over is the original 'POD' association. A lot of folks like me never liked the POD since its inception. I liked the POD X3 PRO of late's dual sound engine a lot but nothing prior to that. But this will NOT occur with clever marketing. It will occur with time and forgetfulness on the part of anybody who hated the mush of the POD as they get their little dickbeaters on these new wonderful products. Its kinda like politics and political campaigns. You can run a dirty personal attack campaign and win by being an arshole and keeping at it 24/7, or you can win by being positive superstar and sticking to the issues and keeping at it 24/7.  If they keep the focus on the 'ARCHITECTURE" and the limitlessness and open-endedness of this marriage of components from the ground up to output in any direction a user chooses to take it then they will keep rising.

Constant Product Improvement + Responsive Customer Support + Accessiblity + A Product That Sells Itself In Terms of Amazing Capabilites = TOP OF THE HEAP WINNER!

Period.

End of Rant.

Gotta Go. Amps on in 90 mins.

~skygod~

Excellent points. The first time I ever saw anything about a Variax was a post on the MacWorld site (of all places) praising the Variax 300 for its low price, cool features and Workbench (used on a Mac of course). Not one visit to Guitar Center (I have two close to my house) or Sam Ash showed any Line 6 guitars! I asked the sales guy at Guitar Center the time and he had no idea. When I asked the sales guy at Sam Ash all he had in the store was a broken 500 that had no audio out!

I did some online research and ended up buying a Variax 300 and Pod XT Live. Later I bought a second Variax 300 for a gift to a close friend that plays a little guitar. If it were not for the post on a Mac site I might have never or at least for a long time not even heard of a Variax. I later bought a Variax 700 Acoustic and a Variax 700 Bass. I now have a JTV-59 and JTV-69 on pre-order and will be getting a HD500 (as soon as I sell my Pod XT Live I just posted on ebay).

With all my trips to Guitar Center and Sam Ash I never saw a Variax setup to demo, still don't! I now own several other pieces of Line 6 gear, a Pocket Pod, GearPort and Pod Studio I use with Logic Studio and GarageBand.

Line 6 would benefit greatly if they had a better presence at the music retailers. I have bought several guitars online, but still prefer to play them before purchase. When I buy one online it is usually when I can not find what I am looking for locally or if I see a crazy low price. I always make sure the online retailer has a good return policy I the guitar don't fit when it arrives (think Zappos for guitars).

I have mentioned Variax and showed mine to many working musicians (which I am not) and many have no idea what I am talking about.

Pretty funny you mentioned Casio. I have a relative that is a working Jazz/Blues/Rock Bass player who said to me last week that she was on a gig and that the guitar player had a Casio Guitar (believe it or not - remember those midi guitars). She thought I would be interested! As if the Casio Guitar is like a Variax. I laughed.

Seems that this is the perception for so many musicians that do not see the Variax guitars around or in the local music stores or the big chains like Guitar Center or Sam Ash or Manny's.

Sometimes I think that in the 1940s this might have been the perception that electric guitars might have had. I am sure plenty of players might have thought Charlie Christian was a bit out there playing a Gibson ES-150 before it caught on. Everyone else was struggling to be heard clunking away at their unamplified arch tops.

The road line 6 is taking is a tough one. Weigh the following:

-Line 6 has tons of market presence in effects and amps. Among guitarists, probably 90% of them are familiar with the brand. Most guitarists i know, do know what the variax is. Its just they havent played one/have negative impressions based on the original  variax.

-Most Guitarists for better or worse are luddites.

-Guitars to many guitarists are like accessories almost like a purse. Brand recognition/name is more important than function for so many guitarists, as many end up playing the gear their idols played, and often focus too much on the name on the headstock. Most guitar sales are to people using this as their standard (Slash did wonders for the Les Paul's sales).

-The percentage of market demand for 'cutting edge' guitar products is a very small part of the whole. Roland has carried the torch for decades.

-Most guitarists dont need alternate tunings or so many different tones.

-While there isnt much market competition in terms of competing products which perform 'guitar modeling', Line 6's insistence on only making the technology available in a guitar which they alone sell, effectively constricts that advantage. The market is SUPER saturated with guitar brands. Line 6's guitar modeling is the best, but they arent (havent been at least) the best in terms of offering up an accessible/versatile package for said modeling. Rolands capacity to put their gk pickups on ANY guitar makes it more versatile. This is part of Line 6's gamble. They absolutely have a winning engine, its just they are insisting on putting it in a vehicle which only they sell to maximize profits. If the vehicle itself is lackluster, the engine, no matter how good, wont win the day alone.

-Line 6 is introducing a product with VERY small marketability due to its cost. Guitar sales dropped by 9.6% in 2009. This isnt the best general economic time for higher end guitars. The new Korean made JTV is triple the cost of the average guitar sold in the U.S in 2009.

-I dont think using workbench as a mass selling point is a good idea for some of the reasons I mentioned above. You dont want to intimidate the guitarist. I can just picture their reaction to seeing a setup with workbench. "Oh I need a computer to get this to work? forget it!". I think making it easier to store tunings without workbench will go a long way in helping to alleviate that 'luddite' instinct many guitarists have. Its great that workbench is there, but I dont think it should be a large aspect of their marketing. You want folks to know what they can do when using the variax with a pod and with a dt amp, but the danger is people may get the notion you NEED them all to work properly.

For instance a common impression/misconception I've heard about the variax, is concerning the notion that you need other 'special gear' to get it to work (VDI/Pod/Vetta). Sell the Variax on its own merits. Let the customer know whats possible but dont chance weighing them down with an OVERLY complex setup (see the luddite/tough economy statements above).

-Educating the salesman is huge, but theres only so much L6 can do for this. They cant monitor the staff of GC's with any regularity, and even if they could, theres not much recourse.

@jdenkevitz -- Good stuff. I disagree on a couple points, though.

I think Line 6 is doing the right thing by controlling not only the electronics, but also the vehicle for delivering them. You mentioned Roland. I think it's safe to say that far fewer people are aware of Roland's modeling technology than Line 6's. From my perspective, it's not just marketing, either. What mass market is interested in buying kits that they need to have installed on an instrument they play and love? Regardless how non-intrusive the gadget might be, that boils down to attaching gadgetry to a guitar I already own and "baby." And if I buy a guitar for the express purpose of attaching Roland modeling gear, why bother? The Variax is available, and it does its job more effectively, anyway. I think Line 6 has taken the right approach.

Regarding workbench, it isn't marketed as something required in order to use the Variax. It is simply available for those who want to tweak the models they have, or create new combinations of modeled components. I suspect most buyers won't use workbench, at least not for a while, because the Variax is eminently usable out of the box (or case or gig bag). On top of that, this is a fairly software-savvy generation. I don't see workbench as any sort of barrier to entry.

Message was edited by: Goocher Changed "imminently" to "eminently"

GC

1. The "Corporation' actually woke up two years ago and "became aware" of eBay, then quickly responded with an online auction of thier own that didn't take off very fast. Now their LA Store on-line for used gear is around 30 pages long. Huge volume business and fast turn around and good deals to be had.

2. Then they dowsized all their store merchandise to fast profit retail items that move. Rapid sales of the 'mediocre' bottom end of all their product lines is what they carry now on the floors. If you want something high end now it's: "Pay in full and we'll get it in. You can always return it and get a refund." The day of demoing good gear there is a bygone. Musiciansfriend (their sister corporation) carries all the high end gear now. The GC stores are basically a Musiciansfriend fast outlet albeit each has its own discrete central warehouse and management system.

3. Ten years ago when Line 6 introduced their first amp product line as well as the delay and OD pedals etc, the had a regional guy that came in weekly to Paramus, NJ and Totowa, NJ and just hung around the stores all day long once a week and did demos all day long. They got rid of all thier field reps a year later. Too much overhead. The stores dropped Line6 amps and the huge dedicated Line 6 displays.

4. Variax? If a monkey can operate it then they'll display it, otherwise, ~fuggedaboudit!~ These floor sales personnel for the most part are not musicians. Most store managers and assistants here in NJ anyway are usually active gigging drummers or guitarists or live sound guys etc, but the bulk of the sales people are total idiots who couldn't hook up a head to a cab at the correct impedance if AlQuaida had knives to their wives' & children's throats and threatened to behead them all unless they hooked them up correctly in the name of allah. You kidding me? I actually watched a sales guy take in a used plexi one day and turn it on w/o hooking up the cab. Can you say that's faaaked up boys and girls? Thank God I was standing there and jerked the ac plug and saved the poor guys head and told the salesperson to his face that if that was mine I would have knocked his dumb ars out on the spot. Yeah like the store would have reimbursed him for the loss when smoke came out the chassis huh? Go to any of their pro audio sections sometimes and start talking about mics and dynamics and eq and latency and it all comes out: Standard sales pitch covered with vanilla and smothered in BS.

Yeah its a tough one. For those like me who are not impulsive buyers and have to get their hands on gear this is gonna be a problem. I ordered my three components on faith because I trust both James Tyler and Reinhold Bogner having used their products in the past and doubt that either would ruin his integrity in this economy or market by putting out a cheap product and marry with the upgraded 'sound engine' of the HD that doesn't purport what it purports to purport to do. And thats a humdinger boys and girls.

Line 6 should do ok. This product will  gradually eclipse everything they have ever released to date, and by word of mouth it'll spread like wildfire. MerlinFL don't hold your breath about becoming a touring sales guy for them either. Everybody in this industry is hanging on for dear life and a remaining piece of the market in this sour economy. On last count around $30Million Americans are unemployed, home foreclosures are on the rise, and every other day I run into somebody else who "just lost their job" The entertainment industry is on its head. But if they did call you by a freak of nature, keep something steady to fall back on bro. Folks at the top in corporate USA are more concerned about their bonuses and golden umbrella's right now than about what stores are /are not doing, or displaying, or saying to customers in the weeds.

Hey but dat's what I tink-

~fuggedaboudit!~

and as always ... YMMV ....

~skygod~