Line 6 JTV-69 (Black) Reviews

4.9/5.0 based on 6 customer reviews

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Customer Reviews

Justin
from Norfolk, VA
December 18, 2012Music Background:
Worship Pastor

Fantastic Guitar

This guitar is simply amazing. The setup is great and it just feels right. The majority of the modeled sounds are great...a few of them sound a bit artificial, but they are the ones I would never use anyway. The digital capo is great, but when you start getting too far away (4-5 frets) from standard tuning with a modeled tone it starts getting a little weird. All in all it's a great guitar...even without all the bells and whistles it still feels like a solid instrument.

Tom
from Painesville, OH
November 17, 2012Music Background:
hobbyist

great guitar

a versatile and user friendly guitar. really enjoy using the features as well as playing without them.

from Gilbert, AZ
February 14, 2012Music Background:
Musician, Live Sound/Recording Engineer, Always a Student

Line 6 JTV-69

Having been a guitarist and mutli-instrumentalist and engineer all my life I was initially very skeptical of the Variax, I've had a number of different guitars and need to use an acoustic, electric and resonators in the music I play. This one does them all admirably AND it actually has a very good feel. Convenient, fast switching between the presets, and the resonance is very pleasing. Line 6 did exactly the right thing when they began working with James Tyler. This is a very worthwhile investment especially if you need to switch between instruments. This combined with the HD 500 is truly amazing.

Doug Dole
from Alexandria, IN
November 10, 2011Music Background:
Gutiarist 27 years (worship, rock, ect...)

JTV-69 Black

I have owned several Line 6 products for many years. Line 6 just keeps getting better with the technology available at the time. They listen to their customers and keep providing great gear!

The JTV-69 (black Korean version) is at a great price point. I couldn't afford the American version anyway but I wanted the black version anyway because the black tuning wheel stands out on the white pickguards. The American versioin was not offered in the color black....so I am very pleased with the color and quality of this Korean built guitar.

The addition of locking tuners and self lubricating nut are awesome. I had to add these to my 700 series which meant I couldn't take it out of the box straight to a gig. I received this guitar on a Thursday and I was giging with it that same Saturday night and then in church the same weekend! Since I was used to modeling guitars their was absolutely NO learning curve at all. The guitar felt and played like it should straight out of the box! I was amazed!

The pickups are a nice addition but I mostly use the modeled sounds anyway. I will not have to answer weird questions anymore about "hey, where are the pickups" like a did when I played the 700 out at gigs.

TUNING WHEEL!!!! Wow....what a nice addition to have this right on the face of the guitar so now I can play any of the modeled sounds on the fly and be able to select alternate tunings. On my old 700 I could still play alternate tunings but they had to be stored (in advance with the Variax workbench) on one of the custom banks and then I had my alternate tunings but only on the selected guitar I picked at the time I saved it. Now I can change my mind on a whim if I want to. If I'm feeling like a Drop D Telecaster in the first position then I can have it as opposed to being locked into a Drop D Les Paul that I originally saved in a custom bank on my old 700. The new flexability is so sweet!

Not that it's a big deal but the weight of this guitar is nice too. My old 700 is real heavy so the new JTV-69 can be played for hours without any fatigue and shoulder pain! Plus, the neck on this JTV-69 is a satin finish so there is no thick laquer like the 700 so again, you can play for hours without your hand sticking to the back of the neck.

The new tremelo makes for better contact of the Hexaphonic pickups when using the modeling sounds as well! On the 700 series the strings would loose contact with the Hexaphonic pickups when I'd dive bomb resulting in loss of intensity and volume. Much, much better design!!

This is a great guitar and I think any guitarist could benefit from what it has to offer....especially if you like a boat load of great sounds in one great instrument! This is pro quality and NOT a toy, so you should give it a serious chance....I did and I'm so glad!

Thanks so much LIne 6, DD

Owen Rasmussen
from Cleveland, OH
January 16, 2011Music Background:
Full Time Church Music Director, Private Instructor, Composer

Wow.

I had to write something here for all the people who keep looking at this thing and wondering if it's worth it. Let me tell you something...IT IS.

about a year ago I was looking for something new in my rig and I heard a bit about variax's so i bought a used 500 (drove all the way to detriot to get it). I was blown away by the versatility of the instrument. it was crazy, and super fantastic to be able not only to switch models with a footswitch (when used in conjunction with a pod floorboard), but also to set alternate tunings up!

I didn't have that guitar for long before they announced version two. i was hooked, and the new features really made me interested. I immediately sold off everything i could find and preordered one of these.

It just arrived and it is AWESOME. Let me list a few specifics.

* The build of the guitar is 1000x better than the 500 i had. the old one felt kinda like any old cheap guitar with some really cool electronics in it. this is a killer guitar with really cool electronics in it. plays great, bridge is amazing, standard locking tuners, trem is super cool. love the neck. whew. i cannot stress enough how big of a deal this will be for those who owned the first model or for those who stayed away from the first for build reasons.

* mag pickups are so neat to have in addition to the others, and they really sound good.

* the alternate tuning knob is amazing. before you had to set a tuning to a specific model in workbench. now tunings are seperate and work great. virtual capo is a really cool feature too (make sure you're in tune before you try to use it)

* the upgraded processor and new piezos make this thing soo much better sounding. for some reason line6 really hasn't pushed the improvement in models a whole lot. they are not NEW models, but they just sound way better for the reasons mentioned. this was the number one thing i was looking forward to, and its fantastic.

consider this guitar. i can't praise it enough. sounds great both through a tube amp and through a line6 pedal board. really amazing. wow.

Alan
from Smithfield, VA
January 21, 2011Music Background:
40+ Years Playing Pro/Semi-Pro All Styles; Software Engineer

Great guitar...but I wish...

Ok...waited a long time for this and I have owned the original Variax 500, 600, and 700. In short, the models have improved. I absolutely love the altered tunings and digital capo...but it does have limitations. I found that +/- 3 frets is about the extent of digital retuning you can realistically expect. The guitar build itself is way beyond the original Variax. However, I really wished they would have put a thinner profile on the neck. On the 69, mine was a deeper profile...I prefer a more modern thin profile. Also, the fret job was decent. However, the frets are high...if you use a standard capo or press hard on the string, the high frets cause intonation issues. I'm very happy w/the tailpiece/tremolo. With the Graphtech nut, it stays in tune once setup correctly.