Now I believe 
by Eric Laffoon from Portland Oregon, December 2005

I bought a new Strat in 1974 that was white with a maple neck. Of course it was an ode to Hendrix. I had to sell it years ago and now have a Gibson L6-S, but I always longed for the look and feel of that maple neck. I was reluctant to buy this guitar site unseen but when I saw a practically new one on ebay in flawless condition I decided to go for it. First of all the blue color is so retro cool.

My initial response was the guitar seemed smaller than a strat and also very light. Since tone comes from the mass of tone woods I've equated this to cheap and the guitar seemed almost too perfectly pristene, not warm. I should say that all the old Fenders and Gibsons seemed inconsistent due to manufacturing techniques, which is why you play them first. I plugged it in and strummed it open and it sounded terrible. Then I remembered that all guitars sound terrible until they are played. So I set about playing it.

The first thing to sink in is that this guitar doesn't need weight for tone because it uses digital algorithms to recreate classic tone. What do Les Paul owners complain about? Too bad such an incredible sounding guitar kills your shoulder after an hour. I also noted the neck had an incredibly fast action and the guitar is very easy to play clean and fast. It puts my collectible Gibson to shame. I ran it through my Alesis amp and Zoom recorder which both digitally model killer amp stacks with loads of distortion and I noticed something else that freaked me out. Something was missing and it was making the hair on my neck stand up... Pickup noise! There isn't any! I never realized just how much ambient noise a magnetic pickup generates. You take it for granted there will be noise in a tube stack, but mute the strings and there is no hiss, hum or anything. I can't stress enough the total impact on play. There is no noise and ease of play means more effort goes to artistic expression instead of trying to hit the note or suppress noise. The results are dramatically more polished.

After I got the right patches to play through for each sound and pulled up the music in my mind the sounds this guitar produces were spooky. The Martin D-28 is beautiful on an acoustic patch and this is the first 12 string digitally created that doesn't sound like you're stepping on a cat's tail. The Strat is so virtually perfect, it's worth it for that without the hum. The Es-175 makes love to jazz and ES-335 was fun to play through a fender tweed patch doing Chuck Berry. The Gibson Firbird is an overlooked sound for searing Southern rock, but I keep coming back to the Les Paul. Wow! I haven't even played with the workbench software much yet.

The Verdict? My L6-S is in the case and might even go on ebay. My Takamine EG-523SC is nice, but it only does acoustic, and just one at that. The Variax 600 is without a doubt the most fun guitar I've played in over 30 years, with the possible exception of that freak strat that the lacquer had run to the high strings and made nearly fretless. My advice - BUY IT! It will make you a better guitarist and you will have more fun than you can imagine.

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