johnnyayyy

You would get a well designed brige with piezos that do not move around in a slot and make terrible popping sounds - something many people with JTVs are lacking. If you are one of the lucky ones who got a JTV with a bridge that doesn't make loud popping sounds when the piezos move around I envy you, the crummy bridge on my JTV renders the guitar unplayable for many parts/styles. Adding a stop bar would also allow you to adjust string tension by lowering or raising the stop bar to compensate for different string gauges and tunings. That said I would not want to add a stop bar and swap in a TOM with piezos, instead I would recommend changing the bridge to a wraparound Graph Tech.

As I recall the US and Korean JTVs have the same bridge. Have not heard of anyone installing the GraphTech wraparound bridge on a JTV so no info there. If I ever get around to doing it I will post pics and info here.

I have installed GraphTech TOM bridges on my Variax transplants but have not installed one of these wraparound bridges, I do not know if it will just pop on with no mods or whether you would have to change the mounting posts. I measured my JTV bridge and the post spacing is the same. Once the briodge is mounted the only other thing to do would be connect the piezo wires. The GraphTech piezos have higher output than the older Variax piezos, do not know how they compare to the JTV piezos but if they have greater output you would also have to make adjustments in Workbench - I had to do this for both of my Variax transplants, a quick and easy adjustment. If I end up keeping my JTV I will definitely install one of these, still haven't decided whether to sell.

Plug in your guitar. Turn it up to a decent level. Instead of playing, grip one string at a time near the bridge pickup and pul it fron side to side to put tension on the piezo saddle. You should see the saddle moving back and forth in the slot on the bridge. When the saddle strikes the side of the bridge slot it will make a loud popping sound. The only way around this is to either: 1. Play gently or 2. replace your poorly designed/sloppily manufactured POS Tyler bridge with a nice high quality GraphTech like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Graph-Tech-Ghost-loaded-Resomax-NW1-Wraparound-Bridge-Chrome-/300948111993?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item4611e7c279

I don't get it - why sad? I had a Vetta II, sold it because my HD500 sounded way better, and if L6 or someone else comes out with something that I like even more than the HD I will probably get that instead. Progress makes me happy, not sad. Be happy for me!

Rich! Awesome to hear from you! Hope you are happy always, whatever you choose to do in life.

Erm, or an X3 with powered FRFR speakers... if this had come out pre - HD series it would have been the flagship amp, yes? With X3 modeling I will have to pass, can't go back to those inferior tones now. But if they ever put out an HD version with VDI input or just the cabinet with power amp in an HD500 friendly powered FRFR version I am definitely interested. Kind of a let down, but I still have high hopes for the future.

Yes, looking at the pics I believe you are right. Metal grille looks like the StageSource, I see what looks like a tweeter there (betting it is defeatable for non-acoustic tones). Modeling controllable/programmable by smart phone app, eliminating the need for computer interface. Nice. Don't really need a product like that as I am pretty happy with my current rig and I expect the sound quality to be similar to the HD stuff but who knows, it might blow my HD500 away - If so I might end up giving it a shot.

Hmmmmmm, I have one of these things packed away somewhere - as I recall the "Warp" control allows you to blend/morph between two different amps (green channel/red channel):

I really like this song. Is it your original composition? It sounds to me like it belongs in a classic Lucio Fulci film like City of the Living Dead or The Beyond maybe - an excellent piece, bravo if you wrote it. And I agree the acoustic sounds better on Ballad of Hades than on Paradox. I am assuming you used the exact same signal path/processing/acoustic model for both tracks. My experience recording has been the opposite, the recordings I have made with the new acoustics sound better to me than those made with my older Variaxes, but I have not recorded and compared anything in the style you are playing here - makes me think maybe the old acoustics will work better for certain things and the new ones will work better for others.

This reminds me of something I have failed to keep in mind. Line 6 has said the value of the Variax electronics is around $600-700, which means if I paid $1000 for a JTV I am getting a $300 guitar with some fancy added electronics. The neck on my JTV is sub- $300 guitar level, but I found a nice replacement neck for $50 and after I install it I will have a guitar that plays as nicely as any $1000 guitar. The problem I think is I expected my guitar to play nicely for the amount of money I spent and I am comparing it to other more "professional" instruments I own and have owned in the past (Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker etc.). I got my JTV new for $699 all in, which is about what L6 says the electronics alone are worth and I would have to agree. So if I look at my JTV as some electronics I bought that came with a free guitar, I think... mmmm, even for free the neck is mostly unuseable IMO and should be destroyed, but I do like the body a lot. When I bought it I was thinking I would be stripping out the guts and putting them into a transplant and $699 seemed like a good deal at the time for the guts, but once I had the guitar in my hands for some reason I forgot all about the transplanting plan and expected it to perform like a $699 guitar should. My mistake, Aww, the neck is not really "unuseable", it is probably fine for 80-90% of what I need it to do, but every time the strings fall off the neck it makes me want to smash the lollipoppppppping thing. And it is only when I add in my frustration over the problems with the bridge and the tuning and the firmware bugs that I get really angry at the poor defenseless guitar. I just have to keep reminding myself it is a $0 guitar that came free with my kewl new Variax electronics and not a professional instrument and I will not be so grumpy about the whole thing. Since there are no other $0 guitars I know of to compare my JTV to I guess it probably is the nicest $0 guitar on the market...

Same here, huge Line 6 fan/cheerleader, had the original bean, the XT, Vetta II, all three original Variax models... the JTV is the first bad Line 6 product I have experienced. I still love L6 and have high hopes for the future of guitar and amp modeling, my frustration with the JTV has not soured me on the concept or the company. I am anxiously awaiting whatever the new amp thingy is that they are unveiling this week, as usual with L6 products I expect it will be be a game changer.

No offense intended, sorry you took that personally, I should probably have said "different standards" and "different playing styles". Truth told, my standards in some areas are likely MUCH "lower" than other people's. Example: I could care less about finish flaws or splattered glue or just about anything that did not directly affect the playability or sound of the guitar, whereas others here have had huge problems with the quality of their JTV in this regard. My JTV might well have some cosmetic flaws I have not noticed that would bother others here, I never really bothered going over it with a fine-toothed comb. I have played many different styles of music in my lifetime, and for some of those styles of playing the problems with my guitar would have never been noticeable. In fact I could play a hundred different songs where the guitar's flaws never manifest themselves - I only do first string pulloffs and Travis picking occasionally and on certain songs and types of songs and these are the only areas where my JTV is unuseable. I assume everyone here has a different playing style and has different performance requirements for their guitars, did not mean to make one style sound superior to another as that is not my opinion. I think 90% of all guitar solos ever recorded could be played on my JTV without issue, and maybe 50% of all rhythm parts would sound right (most of what no guitarist would be able to perform properly on my JTV would be due to Variax palm muting issues). So any guitarist who never does first string pulloffs or Travis picking and needs light to no palm muting capabilities would have standards not necessarily lower than mine but definitely different than mine and probably would have never had any issues with my guitar. The problems with my guitar were not noticeable the first time I played it, or the second time... I used the guitar to do some acoustic strumming parts at first and think I only noticed the pulloff problem after a few weeks when I was recording a rockabilly solo. The sloppy bridge saddle fitment only became apparent when I was recording a country Travis picking bit some time later. If you never Travis pick you may have different standards for performance than I do. If you never do pulloffs you may have different standards for performance than I do. If you never tune your guitar to D Standard you may have different standards than I do. Not lower, just different. There could be plenty of things you play that I do not that would be unplayable on my guitar, and vice-versa.

Thanks for the info. Please replace "theory" with "wild speculation". Ooooh, what if Yamaha is planning to blow out the JTVs and put the Variax tech into Yamaha designs...? Yeccch, I don't like that daydream at all... I have never seen a sexy Yamaha guitar. Wait, I found one - would love one of these with Variax capabilities, and I bet the neck sucks but is still better than the one on my JTV:

Me too, but time and time again JTVs have been received with glaring defects - this is not a rare occurence and the more times it happens the less shocking it is. Still people keep ordering them, knowing full well what a crap shoot it is. The real question is how has Line 6 been able to get away with this for so long - If this were a normal guitar I think no one would put up with this crap and people would have stopped buying them long ago, but the JTV is special/unique and still has no real competition. In my case I took my chances, got a bad one with huge obvious defects, but after all the stories posted here I realized sending back guitar after guitar waiting to find a good one would be a huge waste of time/effort/money and decided to keep the guitar and repair the defects myself. Crooked/bent control knobs were reported by others in the old forums, I am not surprised Line 6 has made the old forums with all their complaints about the JTV disappear. My bet is that some of the people here who say their guitars arrived with no problems have lower standards/less demanding playing styles than those with complaints. Some of the problems with my guitar went unnoticed until it was too late to return the guitar, I am sure the problems were there all along but I never noticed them until I played certain standard styles/techniques that the guitar did not like.

Some of the pics seem to show a smart phone with effects settings... "the day you meet your match" might refer to tone matching ala Kemper/Axe/FX? So my guess is a new profiling amp that can be controlled with a phone app. Throw in tube/modeling hybrid with a blend control, why not? It will be the equivalent of a Kemper+Axe/FX II, but 100x better than either of those and 1/4 the price. Kemper and Fractal will be out of business within the year. That is, as long as L6 doesn't make the mistake of naming the new amp "Vetta III". OK, I don't know what it is, but I know I want it! :D

Hmmmmmmm, interesting... it doesn't say "sale price", it says "new price"... Theory: Yamaha buys L6, Yamaha has its own production facility which cuts out the middle man markup L6 was paying World Factory, Yamaha passes savings on to customer and sells waaaaaayyyyyy more guitars due to new lower price. Very nice! My bet is the QC is going to improve in a huge way with Yamaha building the guitars. Seems there is hope for this concept yet!

What evidence do you have to support this statement? The JTVs are packed really well for shipment from Korea - for that kind of damage to the guitar to happen in shipping the packing would have to be damaged or destroyed in an obvious way, Oleus said the packing was secure and I am sure he has a better idea whether the damage was caused in shipping than anyone else here could possibly have, and writing the problem off to shipping damage makes posters here sound like they are doing damage control for Line 6. The fact is QC at the factory is crap. I am not at all surprised to hear they let a guitar go out with a busted tone knob after reading about the problems so many others have experienced and after buying a JTV of my own. My guitar never would have made it out of the factory if it were built by Gibson, Fender etc. - not even as a "second" - it would have been destroyed, at least the neck would have. Even the cheapest $99 Squiers and Epiphones have nicer necks than the one on my $1299.99 (I got it for less) JTV-89 - mine is the worst neck I have ever seen on any guitar built within the last 30 years. If Oleus' bent tone knob were an isolated incident I could write if off, but it is just another story confirming that now is not the time to buy a JTV. I really hope Line 6 gets their lollipoppery together someday, I still think the concept is brilliant. But for now purchasing the guitar is risky, and no amount of the "haves" (those few who were lucky enough to receive fully working JTVs the first time) dismissing real problems that the "have nots" are experiencing (unlikely/improbable/implausible shipping damage) is going to change this. Really, it is the opposite of helpful. ` I recall complaints of smashed/bent knobs and controls that the owners said could not have been caused in shipping being discussed here in the past, this is not a new problem. Add it to the pile of reports of bad necks, bad bridges, ghost notes, guitars bricked during routine firmware updates, dongle that only works when it wants to, switches going haywire... what am I leaving out here...? Take all that in and the JTV looks like a pretty bad investment. And like clockwork here come the lucky few (maybe 10 so far?) "haves" who received a fully working guitar the first time rushing in to say "I didn't have any problems with mine" for the hundredth time, because of course one guy saying a hundred times he had no problems gives the appearance there are a hundred guys who had no problems, and another poor sucker considering purchasing a JTV reads this and thinks he has a shot at getting a functional guitar... and sure enough here comes that same poor sucker again later with yet another tale of Line 6's total QC failure. Closely followed by those same Line 6 defenders writing off the problem. Circle of life... (someone PLEASE edit this video in a humorous manner, maybe the monkey could annoint the baby lion's head by spelling out the word "sucker", then hold up a JTV for all the other stupid animals to see/freak out over)

Yes, a crapshoot describes it perfectly. Also, I believe certain flaws in the JTV's design and craftmanship might never be noticed by certain players - someone who is more of a chord strummer might never notice the fret edge/pull off problem, and if you never finger or Travis pick you would probably never notice the clacking noises coming from the piezo saddles. Also, the less palm muting a player does the more likely they are to be pleased with the JTV's modeling. I hope you luck out and get a good one, the 69 model seems to be the safest choice so I think you have a good shot at being satisfied with the guitar.

Some people think the pre-HD models sound better. With all the problems people have had installing the HD firmware (some folks here ended up with bricked guitars) I really would not recommend making any changes up or down in firmware versions if you have a properly working JTV, at least not until Line6 works out the bugs.

Right, I forgot, he was a Beta guy but never reached the "Expert" level. My mistake. I think he may have ended up getting two JTVs out of the deal, a sunburst US JTV59 and a Korean JTV89. Carry on...

:rolleyes: Maybe you meant none of the current Experts...?

I think if someone is buying a new JTV the 69 model is the safest bet - tons of options for replacing the neck if needed and fewer flaws in the bridge design.

As I understand it, if you roll the firmware back to the earliest version the JTV (including the acoustic models) will sound the same as the older Variaxes. I don't remember which JTV firmware revision changed the sound of the acoustics and am too exhausted to look it up, I am sure someone here will chime in with this info. If this doesn't make your JTV sound like the old Variax you may have other issues.