I've got a
JS1000btb and it's excellent
Looks cool and since I've never seen any pix of Satriani holding one I don't feel like it connects me to him in any way. It's a pretty light-weight guitar, yet still feels solid enough to go wild on. Bridge is excellent for tuning stability, and the lo-pro allows subtle palm muting without affecting pitch (unless you're very heavy-handed!). I think that would be the same on the Jem, which is also a lo-pro yeah? Upper-fret access is obviously not as good as a Jem, but I have no problems hitting the 22nd fret and bending it like there's no tomorrow!
The guitar
feels great, but before I got it I was a LesPaul man, so I think the neck must be reasonably big compared to the Jem's. You can definitely get hold of it and wring the notes out of it
I didn't set mine up for speed or tapping, I set it up for blues / rock so I can dig in a bit more. But even with what most ppl here may consider a "high" action it's incredibly easy to play, and sounds superb. I also set it up with .10
guage strings since I was using .11's on my LP and couldn't bear moving down to .9's
Like others have mentionned, the
bridge pickup (Fred) is very defined, cutting, almost abrasive but it's full of character, and it's a
good kind of aggression! haha Definitely cuts thru the mix when soloing. Coil-tapped you get a nice trebly strat sound, but it's still reasonably full and doesn't sound too thin.
The neck pickup (PAF Pro?) is very warm, but doesn't get mushy. Great for mildly distorted rhythm, or even mellow solos. Coil-tapped you get a great mellow strat sound, which happens to be one of my favourite settings! Excellent for bluesy solos, hendrixy rhythm etc.
Both pickups combined I feel you get a neutral tone, hard to describe.. it's almost as if the biting character of the Fred is negating the warmth of the PAF and leaving you with a blank tonal pallete from which you can let more of the amp shine through.
In any case, it's the setting I use when I feel the bridge is too harsh or the neck too warm for the song!
coil-tapped and combined, I think you get a great strat sound, rolling off the volume a little (with high pass in place) gets you a really nice tone for clean rhythm work, and distorted it's just plain
good.
I've never had to describe the tone of my guitar before in any depth, so I hope I've done it justice and been accurate. The sound of a guitar is VERY subjective, and in this case beauty is in the
ear of the beholder
I love this guitar!
