snhirsch

The 3rd connection is for the serial bitstream that IDs gen-u-ine Line6 batteries. If that's not making solid contact, then no-go.

I believe you were trying to do an "old school" firmware refresh. That feature is not supported in firmware v2.x, which is likely what your instrument shipped with. Please try installing Line6 Monkey, connect the guitar to your computer with the interface box and do a complete reflash of the current firmware. When it asks if you want to preserve your customizations, answer "no". Either your guitar is defective (in which case this won't help) or, more likely, someone had it hooked to HD Workbench and blended in the mags.

Welcome to the club! A quality neck with sane dimensions does indeed make a big difference.

I concur. That noise is definitely mechanical in origin. Either the string is slapping vertically against the transducer or the entire transducer is slapping against the bridge casting.

Does the '59 use a push-on/push-off power switch arrangement similar to the '69? The 69s are notorious for a failure mode where the plastic knob does not permit the on-off switch to be depressed far enough to engage.

Absolutely. The proper combination is hard frets and soft strings. The person who did the Plek setup on my JTV strat neck also does SS frets. I think I'm going to take that route next time around.

This "branding" of the circuit board could be as simple as pull-up resistors being present (or not) on specific PCB pads or as complex as unique data written to, e.g. a serial EEPROM. Anyone know for sure?

Sonic issues aside, based on experience with Peavey stainless steel strings on my PRS I would warn that they cause significantly more fret wear than conventional alloys.

That will come as a big surprise to those who own Roland 13-pin systems. Given that piezo pickups suffer from vibrational crosstalk, there's an argument to made that a hexaphonic mag pickup can yield better isolation. I think the choice of piezo pickups is more a matter of design aesthetics and cost savings.

Only poorly designed convolution is likely to cause convulsions.

To make matters more confusing, Roland 13-pin processing pedals use the divided pickup for both functions. Their COSM modeling does DSP convolution on the actual pickup sound (similar to a Variax), while the synth functions and guitar-to-MIDI extract envelope and frequency information from the pickup signal (what I think you mean by triggering).

Affirmative. I mounted a Mighty-Mite compound-radius strat neck on mine, then sent it out for a Plek leveling. Plays like a dream.

Many of us loathe the stock JTV-69 neck simply for its dimensions and contour (nevermind the decal). Replacing it with a strat neck solves both problems.

Does anyone else find the number of reports about used JTV instruments without the USB adapter to be a bit odd? Every single one of these was sold with the adapter and a programming cable. Cables can always be misplaced, but personally I'd ask a lot of questions about the provenance of a JTV being offered without the adapter.

Teflon tape is an elegant way to do this, but only if you have installed discrete ground wires on the elements. Otherwise you run the risk of insulating the element from the bridge, which effetively kills the sound from that string since it relies on dumb mechanical contact for ground return.

HD workbench has the ability to set global string levels. Many of us have noted the soft High-E and B strings. It's particularly bad on the Spank models. I dropped the lower four strings about 6db on mine and it seems to have much better balance.

I don't have an Autotune guitar. I purchased the standalone ATG-1 pedalboard and drive it from a Roland GK-3 magnetic pickup (currently) mounted on a Korean PRS Soapbar II SE. I'll respectfully disagree with your point on the mag pickup "cutting out a bunch of frequencies". There's nothing about a magnetic transducer that inherently limits bandwidth (within the audible range). If that were the case, we wouldn't have millions of dynamic microphones out there. Piezo transducers tend to have all sorts of unpleasant spikes in their native response and typically exhibit rather major production variation. I'm convinced that Line6 uses the piezo transducers because they are far less expensive than a quality hexaphonic mag pickup. The proof is in the listening and I find the ATG-1 modeling (acoustic guitar particularly) to be much more realistic and the pitch shift just extraordinary.

I own a JTV-69, Roland GR-55 and Antares ATG-1 Autotune Pedal. All of them have their strong points and weak points. The JTV has the widest range of available models, the Roland gives you useful effect and amplifier modeling in addition to a few decent sounding models, but overall the ATG-1 has the most accurate modeling, lowest noise floor and artifact-free pitch shifting. I'm coming around to the belief that Line6's reliance on piezo transducers is not the best design choice. The quality and characteristics of these pickups tends to vary wildly and the end result is not always convincing.

Glad it worked out, but you may have some issues if the pickup ever needs replacement or if ground contact gets intermittant.

I've long thought that shaky contact between pickup and bridge assembly was responsible for many ills, both mechanical and electrical. The ultimate solution is to add grounding wires on all pickups to deal with the electrical issue, then wrap a turn or two of teflon plumbers tape around the pickup to prevent "slapping" back and forth under hard picking. Actually, the REAL ultimate solution would be for Line6 to acknowledge and address such problems at the design end. I'd be interested in knowing whether the Variax Standard has anything different in its bridge design.

Ah, blast. That's what I get for posting before morning coffee... I'll remove that misguided comment.

FWIW, I bought a compound-radius Mighty-Mite neck from StewMac. I expect any new neck to require fretwork and factored it into my planning. After the guitar was back together I shipped it to Weber Guitars in OH for Plek leveling. Plays great!

Yes, that scared me off as well (and cost Warmoth a sale). Turns out that they actually have a variety of pre-built necks in stock and available for immediate shipment. If that had been made more evident I'd have one on my JTV-69 instead of the Mighty-Mite I ended up with. Warmoth is doing themselves no favors in the way the website is setup.

That's one of the most annoying aspects of the JTV-69 bridge / tailpiece design. When all the string tension is removed the tremolo springs and bridge plate act to pry the height adjust inserts out of the guitar. The workroom wall paint is peeling from my language the first time that happened.

The Korean JTV-69 tuners have a steeper slope from end to end. All posts are noticeably taller than what I infer from that picture above. Considerably so in the case of Low E and A.