AXL USA Guitars, a look at the guts

AXL's Jim LaPlaca takes us through some of the highlights and features of the AXL USA SRO Artist's electronics. These guitars are assembled by hand in the AXL workshop in Hayward, CA. Filmed on iPhone, 4-28-11.

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[AXLMusicLink]

@evalasq1 Thanks for your comments. We take all of our customer service inquiries seriously, and are constantly trying to improve both our products and our customer service. We appreciate any and all comments and suggestions that will help us deliver a better product to players. We encourage anyone with questions or comments to email us directly. Thanks again for your suggestions and Happy New Year!

[AXLMusicLink]

@theverbalrelease I'm really surprised and sorry to hear that. We take pride in our customer service and try to respond to all inquiries in a timely way. If somehow we missed your emails, please accept my apology.

[theverbalrelease]

Have you guys increased your QC? I bought one of the AXL Badwater SRO reliced super strats right after they came out and it was easily the worst assembled guitars I've ever owned. Uneven frets, popped frets, jack plate not even screwed in all the way, messy messy body routing with random wooden chunks still sticking up, soft metal bridge and saddles and saddle screws that bent like butter... it made me very leery of AXL guitars.

[AXLMusicLink]

@theverbalrelease These guitars are all assembled by hand in Hayward, CA. We press and dress all of the frets, wire all of the electronics and do all of the assembly here in our workshop. These guitars have high-end components from the pickups to the bridge to the tuners to the fretwire. I'm sorry your experience with the Badwater SRO wasn't the best. We stand by all of our products with a lifetime warranty. We'd be happy to honor any warranty issues through your dealer.

[AXLMusicLink]

@ricerx1 The SRO Artist is the only one with our push/pull Super 7 switching. The SRO Classic (USA model) Pro and SE (non-USA models) all have standard 5-way switching.

[beachhutblues]

@theverbalrelease

Do you don't work for FENDER....by any chance?...do you??!?!?

Me smells a rat here...

[evelasq1]

From reading the bad customer relations in the video, no apology should be accepted. The heart of the business is good customer relations. By not responding to a customer, costs the both the customer and the manufacturer money and wasted time. AXL guitars should recheck their quality control or else they just might end up out of business just like TEISCO guitars. I was never sure about buying these guitars. If you want a super stratocaster, buy a Charvel or a G&L guitar. If you want an ordinary

[theverbalrelease]

@AXLMusicLink I appreciate the offer. However, the dealer I bought from, to be kind, isn't the easiest person to deal with, and mailing the guitar back to them would be prohibitively expensive. I've already since cannibalized the guitar for its pickups and one of its tone pots anyhow. When I originally got the guitar, I e-mailed AXL directly, through the website, 10 times over the course of a year, and never received a single response. And no, it wasn't rerouted to spam.

[usetaknow]

Hello Jim - I've been "shopping", & these do look good. Goes to show if one buys in bulk, & passes on the savings - "we" get a really nice unit, & you get to stay in business.

However, I do not "get" the price point difference in the SRO's $299 - 549 at a major vendor. As you comment the only difference is the SD PUP's & the P-switch.

Yes, I'd need an "in hand" AB comp - but for $250 I'd take my chances with the stock Alnico-V's; the funk will get lost'n mix w/P-switch -try Pinch harmonics!

[ricerx1]

Is the USA series, the only SRO with the push/pull pot? or do the Pro and SE come with it too?