Sterling By Music Man JP70 John Petrucci Signature - Transparent Greenburst Reviews

I have been playing guitar for five years now and I certainly think I am getting somewhere with it. For a while I have been wanting a 7-string guitar so that I could learn and play a few particular songs and perhaps increase my range of playing. As soon as I laid my eyes on this guitar (on sweetwater.com) I knew this was the one. It fit right into my budget, looked beautiful, and came with all of the features that I wanted (I'm not sure how many more you can fit on a guitar). I drove about four hours to visit Sweetwater just so I could test it out and compare it to others. After testing it out I was very satisfied and purchased the instrument. Jason Kovach was a great help too and truly represented how much Sweetwater cares. After a few weeks of playing this guitar I do believe I have made the right choice but there are still a few quirks with the instrument that bug me. This is probably an issue with the particular guitar that I bought but I have found that the bridge squeaks a little bit when I pull up. However, that is easy to fix. What I have found is that the pickup selector sometimes gets in my when when playing and the pickups are just a little duller than I would like. Of course I am comparing this to my Ibanez with vintage style pickups so I probably have no right to rate them over the other. The pickups seem to focus more on the low and mid ranges and less on the highs but I believe that is how it is supposed to be. Other than those things the guitar is a very nice build quality. Very flat neck, well fitted, and the smoothed neck helps a lot. I remember reading a comment saying that the body was the heaviest basswood body they had ever played. My Ibanez is basswood and is much heavier, which definitely compliments the vintage style pickups. I can't bring myself to give this guitar anything lower than a 5 star mostly because I know it can't get much better than this. Otherwise it would be a 4.5. Did I mention it is very pretty? The Sterling. Not the Ibanez. Actually they're both pretty.

Couldn't be happier. Charlie the sales engineer was fantastic and the guitar preforms better than advertised. 7 strings of awesome. It came very well set up out of the box and was a pure plug and play experience. I had concerns not having a locking floyd but those worries are long gone now. Sounds fantastic plugged into a Pod HD500X/StageSource. I couldn't recommend more in terms of bang for your buck.

I've had this JP70 by Sterling for a couple of months now so I feel I can give it a fair review.

The pickups sound great, the neck is smooth and my hand glides up and down with little effort. It stays in tune even after using the tremolo somewhat aggressively. I really like the color. It is a bit heavy but is solid feeling and I like that.

My only complaint is the location of the selector switch which is right under the bottom string. I cannot believe anyone would prefer this location, maybe it's not a problem for professional or semi pro players but I find it annoying and am thinking about moving it to another location and putting in a kill switch in it's place.

Overall I love this guitar and would recommend it as an affordable 7 string guitar with high quality craftsmanship.

I've played a Les Paul exclusively for 10 years now because nothing sounded as good to me. I always wanted a 7 string though so I took a chance on this one (being a dream theater fan). I was literally blown away by the sound. To my ears there is no need to swap the pickups, they are the best sounding stock pickups I've ever heard. The guitar is a pleasure to play, very easy to wear and the upper frets are the easier to get to than any other guitar I've played. The bridge is decent - definitely not a floyd but holds tune well with light to moderate use.

The few issues I had when I got it were some intonation problems on the low E and a strange issue with bending the G and A strings. They would go flat after any bend but return to pitch if you pressed down on them behind the nut and released. Sweetwater was ready to take a look at it for me, but then I tried a new set of strings and the problems all seem to be gone. Sweetwater customer service and tech support were all very helpful! The only other complaints are that its not offered in a 26.5 or 27 inch scale and the fact that it doesn't come with a hardshell case (although the included gig bag is decent).

Aside from that, this is a KILLER guitar. Now my main.