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Hi, I've scoured the forums on this and I can't seem to find all the answers to my questions. I'm interested in doing a neck transplant for my JTV-69, its one of the earliest stock of the korean versions so it does have some issues with the neck. Its now out of warranty, so I am looking to make some improvements to the hardware but I don't want to effect the technology. I'm looking to replace with a standard fender neck but the ones I can find on ebay in the UK (which are sparse as I don't want to spend 000s on a new neck. One replacement neck I am looking at now has 21 frets whereas the standard neck on the 69 has 22. Does anyone know if you can transplant a 21 fret neck onto the jtv-69? Also I am interested in turning my HSS into an SSS, probably replacing all the pickups, if anyone has had any experience of this I would love to hear it. Thanks in advance. Chris

Hi guys! I'm planning on doing a Variax Acoustic 700 transplant into a Epiphone Wildkat hollow body guitar and will like to hear some feedback on the project, specially regarding the correct compromise of strings and bridge to make the acoustic models work in an electric body while at the same time maintaining the functionality of the analog electric pickups. By the way before someone tells me that it's not worth buying and defiling a Variax 700 Acoustic just for a transplant project, let me clarify that I won't be doing that... I actually think the Variax 700 Acoustic body makes a terrific guitar as is. Me and my wife (who's my bandmate) have one in our rig and believe me when I say we won't parting with it anytime soon (I can't believe Line6 discontinued such a great product)... That being said, the reason I'm doing this project is because I find myself with an extra set of 700 Acoustic guts and electronics that are just siting around doing nothing, so I thought I might just experiment with them a bit before deciding to try and sell them on eBay. So here's the story... A couple of years ago I had an accident with my wife's Variax Acoustic 700... I was loading our gear into the car after a gig and I was about to put the guitar inside (last item) when someone called to me to check on something, so I leaned the guitar against the car and went inside the venue for a moment... As you can probably figure by now, I totally forgot about it so I jumped into the car, started backing up and rolled over the guitar!... The neck was completely destroyed but the body was intact. I sought Line6's help to see if the neck could be replaced as my wife had some custom paint job done to the body and she wanted to save it, but it was too much of a hassle and more expensive that buying a new guitar and painting it again (we had to send the guitar to Line6 because they would not sell a replacement neck to us for a local luthier to make the installation and since we were in Costa Rica at the time it just made no sense economically). So we ended up simply buying a new Variax Acoustic 700 off of eBay (haven't got around to reproducing the custom paint job yet, but I plan on do it soon). Ok so now I have an extra Variax Acoustic 700 body and electronics that work perfectly well. Piezos and guts are intact so I've been toying around with the idea of using them on this transplant project. I have en Epiphone Wildkat ( http://www.epiphone.com/Products/Archtop/Wildkat.aspx ) which I think will be an ideal candidate for this project. This is a very nice sounding guitar and a great player actually, but it is also very cheap and easy to replace in case I mess it up which makes me feel confortable about experimenting with it. The guitar is pretty much a hollow body (does have a small block in the middle to support the bridge but it is definitely not a semihollow: http://www.gretsch-talk.com/media/epi-wildkat-bodyslab.6811/full ) so my luthier agrees it won't take much routing to install the guts inside (and the carving required to place the slider controls on the side of the upper bout is minimal). We also figured that since both guitars are mahogany but the Wildkat has a maple top and neck (versus a basswood neck and cedar top on the Variax) it might actually result in an improvement of the acoustic characteristics of the guitar (don't know if such tonal characteristics might have an effect on the models though... I'm guessing not). Finally even though the Wildkat is hollow and the Variax is solid, the unplugged volume of the two guitars is actually pretty similar (the Variax is amazingly loud for a solid body), so using the alt tunings on the Wildkat won't be more distracting than it is already on the Variax. Ok so far so good then... Now comes the dilema questions: (1) how do I adapt to an archt. body the Variax bridge that is obviously made for a flat top acoustic body, (2) what type of strings should I use to find a good balance between what the acoustic models need versus and what the electric pickups require. On regards to the first one (bridge) I feel like I don't wanna mess around much with the piezo saddles so I don't feel comfortable with trying to transplant them into a tune-o-matic bridge like I've seen other people more capable modders do to try and maintain the original look of the guitar on Variax transplants into Les Paul guitars. I'd rather just use the Variax's bridge as is. I don't mind altering the look of the bridge on the Wildkat but I do care about functionality and the dilema here is that it doesn't seems like the Variax Acoustic bridge can be raised to the height of a tune-o-matic as it is (which seems neccesary to get to the right angle for the bigsby to work well). The wood base piece will have to be modded or shimmed somehow so I was thinking that maybe going for a Gretsch type arch base would work to sit the Variax bridge and saddles on top of it (Variax bridge will obviously need to be trimmed anyway for the strings to be able to reach the bigsby)... Any thoughts? On regards to the strings, I don't think the Variax phosphor bronze electro acoustic strings will work for the electric analog pickups, so I'll need to use some type of electric guitar strings that are as close as possible to those so that the acoustic models don't suffer. Fortunately gauge and action is not gonna be a problem because I actually use the Wildkat for a lot of heavy chording, slide playing and even some jazz, so it is already set with a somewhat medium to high action and the same gauge as the Variax Acoustic: 0.12 - 0.54 with a wound G string (I'm using Ernie Ball Medium Light Nickel Wound strings: https://www.ernieball.com/guitar-strings/electric-guitar-strings/nickel-wound-custom-gauge-electric-guitar-strings#P02206)... My first impulse is to think that those strings should actually work fine for the Variax acoustic models because playability feels pretty similar between the Variax and the Wildkat as is (obviously the phosphor bronze strings feel more "acoustic" but we're talking modelling here so I'm guessing that as long as the gauge is the same piezos should function in a similar manner so it shouldn't affect the models significantly)... Still maybe there's a better option you can recommend?... Only thing I might add is that on a personal preference note, I like roundwounds strings and I feel like on this project where we're talking about using the Wildkat as an acoustic alternative it might bring it closer to home... But if someone can think of a reason why flatwounds or halfwounds will work better, then by all means I'll appreciate the recommendation. So there you go guys, I'll appreciate your thoughts... Sorry for the long post but it is a fun project so I wanted to be as detailed as possible on the line of though I'm following... This is probably the only scenario I can imagine where doing a Variax 700 Acoustic transplant will make any sense because as I said at the beginning, those are terrific guitars in my opinion so gutting a perfectly good one to transplant it into an electric (where there's obviously going to be some compromise) would be a real waste... And putting them into a real acoustic, well that'll be just ludicrous (ok maybe it might work on one of those old Fender Stratacoustic bodies, but then again the Variax Acoustic body is always a way better guitar than that one). Cheers!

This is my JTV69 to a Strat transplant. I sprayed it Lake Placid Blue with 4 clear lacquer coats on top. It's a Warmoth Swamp Ash body that I had them leave out the jack route and I routed the body for the end jack plate for the VDI / 1/4 jacks as well as routing for the alternate tuning switch. Then I cut the pickguard alt tuning hole with a electric coping saw, I got the pickguard from Warmoth and ordered it with no control holes so I could drill it for the JTV controls I also routed the back of the body for the PCB Board, I left out the battery compartment as I only use the VDI cable. It has Guitar Fetish lipstick P/U's in it, they sound ok but mostly use the models. AAA Flame Maple Warmoth neck with wizard profile and compound radius. 1 5/8" nut, abalone dots, 6150 SS Fretwire, Sperzel tuners. Original Floyd Rose that I put Graphtech Ghost Floyd saddles on and milled the plate for the P/U wires. I chipped the finish on the front of the body so I Brad Point drilled it and inserted a blue jewel in the spot, Oh Well... Plays excellent and sounds like a JTV69

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forums and - after much lurking - finally ready to build my dream guitar. Over the years, Line 6 has received quite a bit of my money. ;) So far, I have/had in my house the following products: - Variax 300 Acoustic - Variax 4-string bass - POD 2 with all the X3 updates - Pocket POD (will purchase on Friday) - POD UX 2 (will purchase this weekend) - Varix 300 Electric ... and if I had any more money, I'd probably spend it on some of the newer Line 6 products. :D Instead, like so many of you, I am looking forward to creating my own dream guitar with the electronics that I have in the Variax 300 (Electric). In the last 20+ years, I have used Ibanez guitars exclusively. Because my JS1000 is too thin for a transplant, I have decided to use a painted RG-type "semi"-blank (no Floyd, only humbucker and jack cavities so far) and an old GIO 25 1/2", 22-fret neck (square pocket) to build the guitar that I really want. Since wizard-luthiers Jeff Miller and Roosevelt Walker (midirose) have all but disappeared from the internet (and I don't have facebook :(), I only have you guys/gals to whom I can address my questions. I would appreciate it if some of my final questions could be answered; and that this list - given how comprehensive it - can help other future builders find their answers, too. --- Ok, here goes: Preparing the Body: 1.) Can I switch between magnetic pickups and the Variax 300 piezos by drilling an additional hole for a killswitch (thus not using them at the same time, of course)? 2.) If I can keep both the magnetic pickups and the Variax piezos, is this body thick enough to route the Variax 300 electronics from the back of the guitar? 3.) As you all know, the electronics of the Variax 300 come in a HUGE triangular shaped box (like a tin coffin). Can I pull the electronics from the coffin, so they fit better into the back cavity? 4.) Can I cut through the knob plate in order to facilitate the positioning of the knobs and the routing? 5.) I have seen a few back cavities in transplants that look like the letter "L" sideways. Any ideas where I can buy that type of template online? 6.) What's the best way to cover that type of "L" cavity? A ply of wood, or simply the material luthiers use for customized pickguards? I think the latter is less work... :P 7.) Do I have to drill 6 holes to hold the string ends, as it is the case for the Variax 300, or can I use a hardtail bridge with piezos (e.g. Graphtech Ghost)? 8.) If I can't figure out how to transplant the piezos from the saddle into a hardtail, how do I measure the Variax 300 "neck pocket - saddle - string hole" distance on a RG body? Does the distance matter? Electronics: 9.) If I cut the electronics into more sizeable pieces, do I need to isolate the cavities/parts with copper/conducive foil, to minimize noise and distortion? 10.) Can I connect my magnetic pickups directly to the Variax tone and volume knobs? (total: 1 tone + 1 volume + 1 model selector), or do I need separate knobs (total: 2 tone + 2 volume + 1 model selector)? 11.) Apart from a killswitch, is there another way to switch between the pickups on stage? 12.) One of my family members is a retired technician. He knows a lot about building TVs, radios and telephones. Will he be able to route the wires correctly? 13.) Are there any wiring templates for the "Variax 300 + two humbuckers" online? 14.) If everything above gets a green light, I'd then need to route/drill Back: - one "L" shaped cavity to hold the Variax 300 electronics - one rectangular cavity for the battery pack Side: - one bigger cavity for the dual Variax 300 jack Front: - two holes to hold the saddle with the piezos - six holes to hold the string ends - three holes for the Volume, Tone and Selector knobs, respectively - one hole for the humbucker selector switch (neck, n/b,bridge) - one hole for the piezo/humbucker killswitch - one small hole for the piezo ribbon that leads to the mainboard unit - two small holes for all the humbucker wires Is my math correct? --- Thanks again for all the help you are providing and for keeping their legacy products alive... one way, or the other. :) I'm looking forward to your answers. VX

Johnyay or anybody else, how can I put the electronics of the Variax 300 to a hollowbody? Requires drilling and wood cutting or can I transfer them by ungluing the glue from the body?