Are you the Mike Holmes from Newbury by any chance?

Bob - afraid not - seems more of us about than there are JTV's!

Hi Mike , well just tried mine out for a good hour and thankfully its behaving , just been wizzing up and down the models and the tunings to see if i could force an error but it appears to be one of the lucky ones . Did notice Andertons had a few communication breakdowns between the staff when ringing up , got told on Monday that I was fourth on the list and only 3 in stock despite being told end of august that mine was the only one in the warehouse and ready to be sent .... to be fair they have just had a major refit and things are a bit up in the air . My serial # is W110400641 which if i'm understanding the serial sequence correctly is the 641st to be made in Apr , so 3700 before yours ... I know Rich said they were ramping up preduction but thats a hell of a lot guitars ,

I dont think they picked up on the flux problem  till after april ( please correct if i'm wrong ) so i'm thinking they are just edging their bets and sending them out with the minimal of testing then the few that do come back faulty they sort out later , but your switch problem doesnt seem to follow the normal givin up the ghost sequence others are reporting , does the 3 way work ok with the mags ?

No, that isn't it.  I had several of these guitars pass through my hands.  I can assure you that the first 4 digits are consistent with the YYMM theory but I don't particularly know what the last 5 digits mean.

laelamiles wrote:

 

No, that isn't it.  I had several of these guitars pass through my hands.  I can assure you that the first 4 digits are consistent with the YYMM theory but I don't particularly know what the last 5 digits mean.

I agree. I was talking only about the last 5 digits, not the first 4.

Ahhh. Very good. Thank you.

Afkasm – glad yours is OK – but afraid I spent  3 hours testing last night and I confirm my JTV-59 is definitely faulty and going back to Andertons today. To clarify serial number is W110400343 not W1104004343 as previously reported – please excuse typo!

Pick up selector works fine when using magnetic pickups as standard guitar – but doesn’t work at all for model selections in modelling mode. Guitar itself is very good as a standard guitar – but I already have a couple of nice ‘standard guitars’ which is not why I bought a variax! I guess I should consider myself lucky that this is a repeatable fault that is easy to demonstrate and which I can believe is due to faulty switch/wiring/solder/flux or whatever.   

What is more worrying is that after some time playing in one model, the guitar started randomly switching modes on its own – I know this is widely reported existing issue but intermittent faults fill me with fear!! In fact I also found the guitar started randomly switching models on its own when connected to Workbench even when it was on a stand untouched!

Tried all sorts of things to check and fix...

- Checked software updates. I was surprised to find that Workbench didn’t recognise the guitar until the analogue guitar lead was plugged into an amp. I’d plugged a lead into the guitar so it was ‘switched on’ and was getting 2 green lights on the interface supplied but PC couldn’t find guitar until I plugged other end into amp – so it appears the amp has some impact on things? So...

- Tried connecting into 2 different amps and also into Line 6 UX1 USB interface

- Tried both analogue and digital connections via POD XT

- Removed & replaced battery

- Tried all sorts of combinations of connecting and switching things in different sequence to change models etc etc.

Edstar & bobthedog – FYI I also experienced some noise when connected via the digital cable plugged into POD XT Live but didn’t investigate too much as was focussed on the switching. But I note the digital cable is unscreened so if using analogue signal through a bit of unscreened data cable in a noisy environment I wouldn’t be surprised to find some noise getting through.

Bottom line is nice guitar (full marks to Mr Tyler), build and finish was great, tuning modelling worked great  – just a shame it’s all unusable if models don’t work!

As a Line 6 fan I have to say that I’m both gutted and surprised that after so many months of delays to ‘fix’ such a well documented and publicised problem that they are still shipping products with this fault and I have lost quite a bit of confidence that they really are on top of this issue – especially when we see examples on this forum of people who are now on their 3rd or 4th replacements – afraid I don’t have that patience.

Having said that, it’s a great concept so if I can get one that works then I’m prepared to give them a second chance - so I await a replacement with both hope but some reservations.

So come on Line 6 – please restore the faith! Maybe extending the warranty beyond 12 months would go some way to restore some confidence – nobody spends over a £1000 on a guitar fearing it will only last a year.

Thanks for feedback – but unfortunately its examples like yours which make me less confident – if Line 6 are really on top of the problem there should be no excuse for replacing a returned product with another which is still faulty.  When did yours go back for repair – what lead time is quoted for repair?