snhirsch

Hate to keep saying this, but I think a lot of these issues boil down to poor ground connectivity. I won't say it's impossible that small changes in angle help on a mechanical basis, but it's far more likely that the adjustment shifts the bridge piece enough to break through whatever oxide or corrosion has built up underneath and around it.

My vote is still on poor ground connectivity being behind about 80% or more of the "weak string" issues on JTV-69s. Adding ground wires cured a "dead" low-E string and general uneven volume problems on mine.

Another Burlingtonian!

I do not have pictures, sorry. I did post in detail on another thread, so hopefully that will help if you want to undertake this. Please do not consider this mod unless you have solid electronic bench skills, patience and the proper tools.

Yes, the JTV-69 bridge/tremolo assembly is a poor design. No arguments there. I had to disassemble mine last week to install grounding wires on all the transducers. Relying on a series of mechanical contacts for ground return is a terrible practice. In my case, there was a slow, steady degradation in sound quality culminating in a largely dead low-E string. I originally suspected a dead transducer element, but it turned out to be a high-resistance between the casing of the transducer in the bridge saddle and the little PCB mounted underneath. Soldering on ground return wires was a bit of work, but the improvement in sound qualtiy is not subtle. Unstringing the guitar is almost impossible to do safely with the tremolo springs installed. I tried wedging a strip of plastic under the rear of the bridge plate to hold it in place, but there's only a small area that's clear for this purpose before you obstruct the string ball during removal. Bottom line is that reinstalling the springs after having the bridge out is a royal PITA. If you put two on the outsides, the bridge has so much upward force that the height-adjust screw inserts start lifting out of the body (!). I ended putting one spring in the middle and stringing up at low tension. Then, as I started bringing up the pitch there was enough balancing force to allow me to replace the two outside springs without forcing out the inserts. Again, an awful design.

That's odd. My JTV-69 has slots milled into the top of the bridge plate to keep the individual saddles centered. Did the bridge design change?

I'm pleased to say that my problem with the bottom E string was poor grounding. This morning I removed the bridge/tremolo assembly from the JTV-69 and had a very close look. The transducers are just breathtakingly chintzy. They're stamped out of sheet-metal with the piezo element potted in epoxy. There's a single wire connected to a small PCB on the lower part of the assembly and ground return is strictly through a very iffy sequence of mechanical contacts: transducer --> bridge piece casting --> adjustment screws --> plate --> lower assembly. The good news is that you can, indeed, solder ground wires to the transducer and I'll describe the process as best I can. The signal wire emerges from the potting compound at one end of the transducer body. At the other, there is a small "tab" that's an artifact of the stamping process. Trick is to take a Dremel grinder with a dental-sized grinding bit and remove a very small amount of the epoxy that lies immediately on the inside of the tab. Surface tension causes the epoxy to climb up the tab while it's setting and this is all you want to remove - perhaps 1/32". If done carefully you don't get anywhere near the element. With the transducer clamped lightly in a metal-jawed hobby vise to draw off heat, put a tiny dab of flux on the inside of the tab and tin it with high-grade electronic solder. I used a temperature-controlled solder station, but any small iron should be fine if you work quickly. Then, strip the end of a piece of Kynar 30g wirewrap wire, tin it and carefully tack it to the inside face of the tab. If you have removed enough epoxy, it's possible to bend it around the tab to help hold it in place while you apply heat. After the joint cools, trim any projecting length of wire with a pair of diagonal cutters and carefully file off any solder buildup on the outside of the transducer body. If you don't get all of it, you will have trouble getting it back into the bridge piece. The ground wire can be dressed across the bottom of the potted area and routed out the back of the bridge piece alongside the signal lead (plenty of room). This process is not rocket science, but it isn't a whole lot of fun either, particularly with 63-year-old eyes :-). Definitely do NOT try this unless you have at least intermediate bench skills - this isn't a good candidate for "My first electronic repair" (I've been doing this stuff for more years than I like to think about...) As others have observed, there are six ground pads on the PCB all ready to receive these wires. After doing all six pickups, I reassembled the guitar and discovered to my delight that not only was the low E issue gone, but everything sounded better. I've been thinking there was a slow, steady degradation in the sound of the modeling and that seems to have been exactly the case. I'm glad that Line6 is saving themselves perhaps all of $5 in production costs by not using pickups with hard-wired ground return, but after this experience I can say authoritatively it was a poor decision. Hopefully this is an area where Yamaha can help. Another observation: If I was responsible for the design of that bridge and tailpiece assembly, I sure as heck wouldn't put my name on it. Let's leave it at that.

I have to disassemble my JTV-69 this weekend to replace a dead transducer. While it's apart I'm going to take a very close look at how the transducers contact the bridge pieces. I've long had suspicions about both mechanical and electrical issues in this area. For example, if the bottom of the transducer has a slight rise in the middle and a little side-to-side "slop" it might be capable of draining energy from the string.

In my experience, fret buzz on solid G strings tends to manifest as a "dull" sound. Try raising the bridge saddle a bit and see if that helps.

Full Compass told me that they had ordered a bunch for stock at around the time I placed my order. I'm glad you were spared the long wait, but I doubt I had anything to do with it. :-)

I was planning on using a heat-sink, but that's certainly a good alternative. I'll practice on the bad transducer and see if it's even possible.

If the casing of the transducer will take solder, I'm planning to use some 30g Kynar wire to implement a real ground connection.

They rolled in this past Monday. Singularly unimpressive performance on Line6's part. I won't have time to pull the guitar apart until this weekend. Hopefully this will cure the numb low-E string.

Still waiting... It's 20+ days and counting. Full Compass indicates that Line6 is chronically slow to ship parts. Supposedly they were (finally) shipped at the beginning of last week. If the carrier is UPS I might have them by next Wednesday or so. Damn good thing I had my Roland GC-1 / GR55 as a backup for tonight's gig. This is really poor form in my opinion.

?? Are we talking about the same instrument? The stock 69 neck is exactly the same width as a strat at the body and narrows down smaller than a strat at the nut - too narrow for my fat fingers. Had to put on a Mighty-Mite neck to get more width.

A lot of dealers have been blowing out stock of the Fender/Roland GC-1 Strat. The local music store here had one on the rack for over a year and was happy to let it go for $450.

The built-in parameter editing is horrible. That's why "GR55 Floorboard" was written. And, as you point out, the "Roland Ready" strat has a nice, neat onboard hex pickup.

I definitely do not understand the comments about "...it prefers a TRS plug". A TRS cable is required only if you intend to power the onboard electronics from one of the little foot-pedal style adapters. I have never experienced an issue using a mono plug when running on batteries. Certainly nothing in any of the documentation indicates the need for a TRS cable under normal operation.

Seconded. I don't understand why the guitar out is so &*_(*^ noisy when the main outputs are actually very quiet. There is either some very poor gain-staging happening or Roland's analog designers made a dreadful choice of op-amps.

I asked Full Compass to have them drop-shipped directly to me (costs extra) just to avoid the latency of two shipping steps. When I called Full Compass yesterday, they promised to check up and get back to me. That never happened either. None of this inspires much confidence.

That's good to hear, thanks. I definitely don't expect instant gratification, but there are some requests (like my personal favorite: overload indication on the various virtual stages in an HD500) that are constantly near the top in terms of positive responses and yet have not been acted upon in the year+ since being posted. One thing that would help immensely: Publicize all cases where Ideascale suggestions materialize into products and/or features. Right now it just feels like a black hole. Another thought might be to award a prize to the original poster of an idea that is acted upon.

Thanks for creating the entry. FWIW, I gave it a thumbs-up. Unfortunately I have seen no indication that Line6 acts on any of the suggestions. I suspect it's more a "feel good" option to make customers feel empowered.

Thanks for posting that again!

Color me a bit annoyed. I ordered (2) replacement bridge transducers for my JTV-69 through Full Compass Systems on 9/29 with a request that they be drop-shipped directly to me. I was told that the order would be forwarded to Line6 immediately. As of yesterday, 10/11, there is no indication that they've even been sent - much less arrived. Fortunately, I have my Roland GC-1 + GR-55 available to use at an upcoming gig, but I find it mighty disappointing that Line6 is unable to ship one of the most common bits of the instrument in a timely manner. If anyone from Line6 service (Mr. Sarkassian?) is reading this, can you please light a fire under the shipping department?

Yes, I was aware of the RC load simulation. The interaction between pickup inductance, effective source impedance of backed-off volume pot, the bleed cap, cable capacitance and far-end termination is actually more complicated than a simple treble boost. I can't find it at the moment, but stevekc, aka Elantric, posted a link to some SPICE simulations showing the response curves for different control and cap values with typical cable and termination.