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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

For starters, kudos to zZounds.com... I ordered this blood red JTV89F last Wednesday afternoon and it was in my hands by mid-day on Thursday. Very well packed promptly shipped. The guitar was marked as a "blem", but I'll be damned if I could find so much as a fingerprint on it. Physically it's flawless.As for the guitar itself, if you ignore the Line-6 modeling, you're still holding a seriously great axe. The workmanship is absolutely first class, solid with a beautiful finish from head to toe. The fret board is quite flat and plays quite nicely. If I had to describe it in a single word, I'd say it's "fast." The GraphTech locking trem system is just what you'd expect from a Floyd-Rose design... once the strings are stretched and tuned, it stays in tune despite string-luffing dives. The magnetic pickups are above average humbuckers, with the bridge position sounding a little hotter to me. Plenty of output if you want it, but with a nice clean sound as well. Now, plug in and bring the modeling into play. With a single knob you can get the essence of a Tele, Strat, Les Paul, Rick, ES, Acoustic, Banjo, Sitar and several variations of each. Are the sounds perfect? well, no... but they're pretty good, especially if used in context with other instruments. In a mix, yeah... that's a Rick 12 string and suddenly it's the neck pickup on a vintage Tele! Solo time? Dial up a Les Paul, or just turn the modeling off and enjoy the magnetic pickups. The only problem I have with this guitar is having to wipe off the drool whenever my friends play it.

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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

I have been eyeing up one of these guitars since the first Variax came out. This guitar is the perfect combination of style, flexability and function. It really is like having an arsenal of guitars at your fingertips. Sounds and plays beautifully! A great compliment for any Line 6 rig.

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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

I was looking into buying a new guitar that I could specifically keep in the drop D tuning. I was leaning towards a EVH Wolfgang Special specifically for the D'tuna designed Floyd Rose and had spent countless hours researching this model. Then, Zzounds dropped the price by $500 and it was in my cart ready for checkout. Right before I pulled the trigger though, I did one last search through the 6-string Electric guitar section and I am so glad that I did. I came across the James Tyler Variax model guitars by Line 6 and started to read a little about what these guitars are capable of and I said to myself, "No way, what's the gimmick?". First of all, I didn't even know that Line 6 was into manufacturing guitars. I thought they were just into amplifiers and effect pedals. Secondly, they had such a small selection of these guitars that I was very reluctant to even consider spending any more time researching whether this was a viable option for me or not. What made it even worse for me is that I couldn't even demo any of the Variax models at my local Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc. Then I came across the JTV-89F model and I became instantly more interested because of the graph tech designed Floyd Rose and that's when I decided to hold off on my purchase of the EVH and started my research. These guitars are a guitar players dream. Just the ability to switch tunings on the fly without turning a tuning key is well worth the purchase. The guitar is built with the utmost quality, the intonation is perfect, and throw in the ability to model different brand and model guitar tones with the turn of a knob pushes this Ax over the top. This guitar is setup for the musician to play very comfortably all while remaining versatile. Did I mention that it has a very sexy look to it?Long story short, this is the last guitar you will ever have to buy and you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead, arms if you want to play it. Only if Zzounds could take my wife as a trade in, I could then feel like i died and went to heaven.

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Verified Customer zZounds has verified that this reviewer made a purchase from us.

I've had a Variax 700 and a JTV 59. I made the mistake of selling my JTV 59, but decided to give the JTV 89 a go. The playability is great on my hands, the fretboard is built wonderfully. It's a beautifully built guitar. My problem lies within the electronics. Although I'm hoping after a trip to an authorized Line 6 repair facility these issues will go away. My first problem is with string volume issues. The D string was too loud on all models, and the G string was too quiet on some. I managed to lower the volume by 70% using Variax Workbench, however I feel this probably wasn't the way it was meant to be. (70% volume reduction on a string is quite crazy.) I'm not the only one with this problem, however. It has to do with the Piezo. My other (minor) issue is the tuning knobs. The DADGAD is not DADGAD, it's DADGBE. This was corrected by utilizing one of the 2 custom tuning presets, however it leaves me with only one left. I've managed to deal with this by just creating specific patches on my HD 500X. It's not a dealbreaker, however. I wouldn't say I got a lemon, because I'm still enjoying this guitar, but for the price paid, I want these issues squared away, and I can bump everything up to 5 stars, because it has that potential to be my favorite guitar of all time.

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After reading either glowing or very negative reviews about these guitars, i will confess to being a bit nervous about this purchase at first. That went right out the window once it arrived, though.Build quality is solid. It's a pretty hefty axe (mahogany body). Fit and finish were immaculate on mine. No blemishes or any apparent finish or construction mishaps that i can see. I have yet to see a photo that does the finish justice. The deep dark red finish combined with the nice woodgrain is really beautiful. Pots, switches, tuners feel solid. Overall, it's a pretty high-quality build.The neck is maple, with a rosewood fingerboard. Dot inlays are pearloid (mother of toilet seat, i suspect). The fingerboard is pretty wide, and perhaps just a bit chunkier than i'd prefer, but i've adjusted quite nicely. It's fast and easy to play.The intonation was a bit out of whack on mine, but since the guitar came strung with .10's (i prefer .09's), a string change and setup routine was in order anyway.The bridge is a graphtech floyd rose-type deal. If you've dealt with floyds, you won't be in for any real surprises. the piezo stuff doesn't really seem to make any difference in terms of the mechanicals.Sonically, the guitar leans toward the darker side (probably because of the body). Sustain is good. Magnetic pickups are okay. If you're familiar with the tonal variations of most 2 bucker/5-way switch ibanez-type guitars, it's pretty similar...a reasonable range of well-differentiated sounds to choose from. Perhaps not the most spectacular pups you've ever heard, but certainly not the worst, either. I doubt i'll be swapping them out.After the first battery charge, at last comes the variax part! As others have mentioned, the les paul models' sustain gets faded off a bit early, which is pretty disappointing (they do sound pretty good, but the mag pickups will cover that ground for me anyway, though). The ric models were "ballpark-y"...not the most convincing, but probably useful anyway. The tele, strat, jazzbox and acoustic models are pretty great though. The acoustics sounded best direct (no amp or sim) to my ear...good for recording, not so sure about gigging through an amp though (maybe just DI into the board for that?).The mag pickups/variax models were pretty well balanced in terms of output. I didn't experience "warbling" with the 12-string models as some have (probably due to intonation being set correctly). Despite the lighter strings, the graphtech bridge/piezos seem to track everything as they should. Palm muting didn't seem to cause me any issues, either.I did not mess with the tunings, i'm afraid. i don't really use alternates,beyond the occasional half-step down or nashville tuning (which i haven't set up yet!)...

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