Circa 2004 Line 6 Variax 700 Acoustic
Bought in August 2005 from a guy in Florida USA. As soon as I heard about these I had to have one. I had been gigging for a couple of years and doing a lot of material in open tunings. That meant a lot of stuffing about re-tuning between songs, or taking at least two guitars to every gig, or limiting each set to a single tuning.
I had read that these guitars could be set up so that different tunings are accessible at the press of a button. Essentially it's a solid body guitar, so acoustically it makes no more sound than a Les Paul or a Strat does. Every sound that comes out of it is digital, created by the circuit board inside it. So for example, if you have it set to Open G the circuit board just produces a note one tone below the E, A and E strings, making the tuning D G D G B D. Simple as that. Note that the strings do need to be in tune using normal tuning though. This guitar does not automatically compensate for an out of tune guitar!
Some people are concerned about 'latency' - a slight delay between plucking the note and when the sound comes out. I have never noticed this and in my opinion it's bullshit. I have recorded extensively with it and played with other people using it, and I have never heard any delay whatsoever. But I admit I'm not the most precise player on the planet.
In any event it's not perfect. The fingerboard is too narrow for my liking, and the piezo elements wear out every so often. I have had at least two replaced since I bought this one. That means it's not 100% reliable, which is its real drawback. You can see the piezos in the picture below - they are the metal parts set into the saddle, one for each string.
But for the convenience of the open tunings, and for the sound - I have never had punters come up and say how great my guitar sounds before, but they do it all the time with this one - these things are the perfect live guitar. In July 2010 I did a 3 week season in the orchestra pit for a musical theatre production and used this guitar for 2 songs, and the producer / sound engineer received an email commenting on the "great nylon string guitar sound".
They are also fantastic for recording. Plug it straight into your DAW and away you go - no mics, no BG noise, just perfect acoustic sound.
Later I got a black one as a spare, but sold it after a short while. I just cannot recommend these highly enough. I also bought quite a few electric models as well as a bass for recording.
My one is not standard. I added the pick guards and the tortoise tuner buttons.
This model is no longer made. I sold it to a guy in Brisbane in February 2021. It served me well.
