Music Man JPXI 7 Review

Do you love John Petrucci’s Beard?  Playing his guitars won’t help you grow a beard like him, but it’s a start. One of the main things that made me want to check out the JPXI 7 is my love for my JP7.  So when I saw a JPXI 7 come up for trade in the Wired Guitarist Gear Exchange, I jumped on it.  I traded my JP6 PDN for my JPXI 7 and it was love at first play.  The guitar fits me very well being that I play mostly prog and alternative metal.  Let’s get this JPXI 7 review started!  Oh, and if you want to learn what the differences are between all 82382 variations of the Petrucci model, then check our full guide out here.

Features:

The JPXI has a mahogany neck with ebony fretboard.  The body wood is alder with maple top and mahogany Tone Block.  All these different woods in the guitar give it a very interesting sound.  It has a gloss finish with looks very nice in direct light.  It has a piezo pickup built into the EBMM bridge.  The bridge is one of the best parts of this guitar – comfortable and rock solid.  Tuners are Schaller locking tuners, which are great, but the 7th peg tends to be too small for any string bigger than .59, so making it a bit wider usually solves that issue.  Scale length is 25.5” and all Ernie Ball Music Man guitars are made in California.  The stock pickups that come in the JPXI 7 are the Dimarzio liquifire neck and crunch lab bridge pickups.  Mine came with a Liquifire, but my bridge pickup was a Dimarzio D-activator.  These pickups fit the guitar very well; the D-act was very tight and sounded great. Another feature of the guitar is that you can pull up on the tone knob and it splits the coils when the pickup selector is in the middle position, making this guitar even more versatile!

Tone:

The JPXI 7 can get a lot of different tones with his piezo pickup and single coil sound.  The cleans sound very clear and glassy with the tone pot pulled, leads sound very smooth, and rhythm tones are very tight with the Dimarzio Dactivator.  The weakness of the guitar is that cleans on the neck pickup tend to sound very dead.  For the best clean sound, always use the split coil sound.

Build Quality:

Build quality on the guitar is very good.  The only issue I had on mine was a little finish swirling by the neck but it was very hard to see.  The stainless steel frets are very smooth, and even though it has a painted neck it is very quick and smooth.

Final Thoughts:

Being that I got my JPXI-7 used, it performs very well in that $1800- 2000 price range.  I can play almost anything.  The only weakness I found with the guitar is that the cleans can sound a little dead when using the neck pickup, but pull the tone pot to split the coils in the middle position fixes that right up.  The only changes I would make to the guitar is to make it come in different stock colors.  It comes in an onyx color which is cool, but a red or even blue would make it look killer.  If I were buying new, I would go with either a Mayones perhaps, only because you get more for your money.  If you are looking for one of the best American made mass produced guitars, it is very hard to beat EBMM.

Ratings

Tone: 4/5
Build Quality: 5/5
Features: 5/5

Overall: 4.5/5

Watch the JPXI 7 in action here:

This review was written for Wired Guitarist by our community member Lucas LeCompte.  If you would like to review your gear, join our dedicated Facebook group to get started.

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