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GWDavis28

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Jun 23, 2003
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Subscribe to the “Ebay/Craigslist treasures” thread so you’ll get email notifications. Rest assured, if there is a deal to be had on one, Glenn/GWDavis will find it and post it!

-Jacob

Hahahahahaha, thanx for the accolades, I post there to keep from buying. If I can help someone score a good deal, then it's all worth it.

Glenn |B)
 

tbonesullivan

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Aug 24, 2012
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Hahahahahaha, thanx for the accolades, I post there to keep from buying. If I can help someone score a good deal, then it's all worth it.

Glenn |B)

Well, I'll definitely keep an eye out. There are a few Axis SS guitars on Reverb, but most are without trems, and the prices seem to be kinda nuts on some of them, even for ones with a Metallic finish. Right now used prices on Axis guitars seem to have gone nuts due to the pandemic, and of course the EVH connection.
 

jayjayjay

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Feb 18, 2021
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Wow, I'm feeling lucky now. Guitar Center had an Axis BFR in Steel Blue (Oct. '18 release) on clearance. I picked it up on Sunday, it's supposed to arrive tomorrow. Got a crazy good deal on it, too - it was a floor model that someone had returned, apparently.

This will be my first EBMM guitar - only other MM that I have is a SBMM Axis in White. Love the way it feels, and the pickups sound great (to me at least), considering it was $350.
 

GWDavis28

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Jun 23, 2003
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Wow, I'm feeling lucky now. Guitar Center had an Axis BFR in Steel Blue (Oct. '18 release) on clearance. I picked it up on Sunday, it's supposed to arrive tomorrow. Got a crazy good deal on it, too - it was a floor model that someone had returned, apparently.

This will be my first EBMM guitar - only other MM that I have is a SBMM Axis in White. Love the way it feels, and the pickups sound great (to me at least), considering it was $350.

Nice congrats, that's a great BFR run. Can't wait to see it, but it doesn't exist without pictures and a NGD post.

Glenn |B)
 

jones4tone

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Jun 24, 2016
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Texas
This was a fun read! I went down a bit of a VH rabbit hole after he died, but this was an angle I didn’t get elsewhere.
 

jayjayjay

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Feb 18, 2021
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Nice congrats, that's a great BFR run. Can't wait to see it, but it doesn't exist without pictures and a NGD post.

Glenn |B)

Just made my NGD post. But here's a teaser:

ACtC-3fVyj3q-LpT_aVXG-i3UFsysSkehO0fAkbXsE_sZPdcx6X9oPti56G6N7BPFkn7HhS2GhtM9O_WlDKvKe7gXilodBPnqkD0Jd2ktjIRWwK4bx1ulOQbPoduas9-aBD6pHqji-KumnBJs1vaH1w5RKIJ=w2032-h1524-no
 

wannarock8

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Oct 22, 2020
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Wisconsin
So much great info in the link at the beginning of this thread.
And it goes to show how much folklore starts to circulate.
Guitar magazine articles in the 1990s claimed that Van Halen's broken pickup in his Franken Strat was a PAF. I never knew it was a JB. And I didn't know he damaged it while playing a show. I'd read that it was just a real old vintage pickup that he'd potted and somewhere over the decades something happened to it.

I remember reading about the neck of his Franken Strat being measured in 3D and recreated for his signature guitar. The writer of the article speculates that either it came from the Kramer factory asymetrical or that Van Halen had sanded some wood away. The story I'd read was that it was just wear from years of him playing that neck. He was used to how the neck was worn and wanted that shape recreated on his EBMM signature.

I thought it was extremely interesting that the pickups in the Axis guitars are similar, though lower in output, to the Tone Zone. I'd always read that Van Halen was into vintage voiced pickups and figured they were some recipe of a hot PAF. Not hot as in high output, but hotter than a vintage pickup. I'd read that the EVH signature/Axis pickups were medium output, and kind of dark. I have two Axis Super Sports and did a shootout one day with them and some of my other guitars with medium output pickups like the PAF 36th Anniversary and the Duncan Screamin' Demon. The ASS pickups are right in the same league in terms of output.
From listening to my Axis Super Sports, you wouldn't guess the pickups are cousins to a hot pickup like the Tone Zone. They actually sound amazing through a clean amp. When I heard them, I realized the Axis Super Sport was as capable of sparkly clean ambient guitar tones as it was at crunchy rock tones, and the neck pickup even sounds like it would make a badass blues guitar.

I had read that Van Halen favored medium output, and preferred to "let the amp do the work" and crank the gain up at the amp.

I'd always read that the Tone Zone was sort of designed for Paul Gilbert, who went on to become a high profile Tone Zone player after the pickup was released.
 

GoKart Mozart

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Nov 21, 2002
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994
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Florence/Muscle Shoals, AL
And it goes to show how much folklore starts to circulate.
Guitar magazine articles in the 1990s claimed that Van Halen's broken pickup in his Franken Strat was a PAF. I never knew it was a JB.

There’s actually apparently ***2*** “broken” pickups in the Van Halen mythos:
1) the Frankie one, which supposedly was some type of PAF that was reading 0 ohms whenever the Fender guys measured it around the time they did the Frankie replica
2) The JB removed from the 5150 guitar, which was somehow measuring 160k ohms. Per some recent FB group postings, Jim DeCola of Gibson (who designed the Wolfgang while at Peavey) still has the “broken” JB mentioned in the article. Ed gave it to him to copy sometime in the mid-90s.

The whole “broken” pickup talk is a little silly, IMO. Always seems to be something “mystical” with his tone.
 
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