I have had the best damn time playing with my Line6 JM4 Looper/Effects/Jam box. It makes practicing a total joy. I like to explore among the 100 or so preprogrammed jam tracks. The screen tells you what key the song is in, and you can practice your pentatonic scales, or minor scales, or Dorian scales, whatever you want. The backup band never gets tired, doesn’t make snide comments when you miss your notes, doesn’t drink your beer never to replace it, or flirt with your wife right in front of you.

Heck, even my $100 special sounds good using this thing. It’s a strat-copy, and flicking between the pickup selectors gives even more tone variables to your playing.

I just started seriously exploring the minor scale, and playing along to a cool, slow (or mid-tempo) jam is the best way to drill that weird scale pattern into your head.

The JM4 is really a 5-in-one guitar center.I’ll be doing a full, in-depth review of it soon, but for the time, here are the main features as I see it. The JM4 gives you:

• Hundreds of Prerecorded (not midi) song tracks/drum tracks
• An Internal memory Looper
• A Recorder (via separate SD memory card)
• A Guitar Tuner
• Effects out the wazoo.

Everyone should have a Line6 JM4 box.